Shrikant Nandkumar
Shrikant Nandkumar
Marathwada’s Theatre of Resistance: Ecology and Caste in Bhakshak and Paazar
Marathwada’s Theatre of Resistance: Ecology and Caste in Bhakshak and Paazar
Marathwada’s Theatre of Resistance: Ecology and Caste in Bhakshak and Paazar
Shrikant Nandkumar
Shrikant, often spelt as Shriekanth, is a theatre and movement practitioner and a research scholar at the Department of Dance, University of Hyderabad, India. His area of interest intersects with performance historiography, dance-theatre interface, and the convergence-divergence of Indian performing arts.
Shrikant, often spelt as Shriekanth, is a theatre and movement practitioner and a research scholar at the Department of Dance, University of Hyderabad, India. His area of interest intersects with performance historiography, dance-theatre interface, and the convergence-divergence of Indian performing arts.
Shrikant, often spelt as Shriekanth, is a theatre and movement practitioner and a research scholar at the Department of Dance, University of Hyderabad, India. His area of interest intersects with performance historiography, dance-theatre interface, and the convergence-divergence of Indian performing arts.
To Begin With
As we observe in many performances, addressing social issues and reflecting on society and human values through theatre have been the core intentions of writers. It is sometimes expressed through dialogue and theatrical techniques, which are encoded within the act and the director’s creativity, allowing the audience to speculate. Marathwada, the Deccan region of Maharashtra, India, has had its own political, social and environmental challenges addressed through theatrical plays. Two Marathi one-act plays gained massive exposure due to their plots. One was Bhakshak, and the other was Paazar. The one-act play is another type of dramatic performance that contains only one act, a simple plot, a small number of characters, and specific themes. Generally, they are short and focused, and can last from 10 to 50 minutes of performance.
Bhakshak, which means ‘devourer’ or ‘predator’, addresses the issue of human interference in the jungle and wildlife conflicts. In Paazar, which means a drip or seepage, the director depicts a draught, human conflicts, and the relationship between the farmer and cattle. Ten years ago, spanning a few years, these forty-minute durational plays were performed several times across Maharashtra and won various prizes.
Theatre is not just a stage but a shared space of reflection.
The ecological plight and degradation in Marathwada is not a ‘neutral’ crisis; it is a layered phenomenon deeply entangled with caste hierarchies and systemic neglect. It reflects inequity, injustice and bias. Ecological scarcity exposes the caste disparities in land, water, and representation in districts where ecological stress is concentrated among Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi communities hailing from Beed, Latur or Osmanabad, along with the rural, as well as, urban Marathwada.
Against this backdrop, Bhakshak and Paazar cannot be seen as just ecological texts, but also as the symbolic theatres of caste ecology. Digging the well collectively in Paazar, for instance, is not only symbolic of environmental strength, but also resounding of a more socio-political reclamation of common resources that were never offered to the marginalised castes. This is echoed by Dr Ambedkar, who asserts, “Caste is not merely a division of labour, it is a division of labourers.” The characters who dig the well in Paazar are the same people who have traditionally been denied a share in the land they toil and the water they seek. Paazar casts a light on how the marginalised, formally uneducated fall for superstition through the ‘Jaanata’ – the one who knows – the priest. The priest, who promotes human sacrifice, also highlights the element of ritualised violence, which has been traditionally employed to dominate the lower caste through the manifestations of superstition and divine will. By appealing against this, the play exposes ecological violence and touches upon the social structure legitimising this violence.
Bhakshak explores how the perspective of Adivasis and groups, who live close to the jungle, share the value of compassion, not just for the flora and trees but for the fauna, the animals too. Alongside this, it portrays the other side of human nature, where compassion turns into violence. The background sounds of sawing the trees with machinery, symbolising the deforestation in Bhakshak, are more than ecological cues; they underscore the machinery of caste-capitalist extraction.
This intersection of caste and ecology interweaves the theatre of Marathwada. A theatre of resistance took place not in huge urban auditoriums but in village squares, one-act competitions, by rural amateur artists. It employs a minimalism style, physical theatre, dialect performances, parodies, and satire to question mainstream narratives, and to make itself accessible to mass audiences. This dramatisation is no abstract universalism; it is a brutal, visceral truth, where no such things as caste, drought, land environment, and death can be isolated as unique problems, but only as entangled realities.
Bhakshak
The opening scene starts with the sound of crickets. The blue light on the stage suggests a night scene, and suddenly, two or three animals start moving on the stage. The Predator, or the Tiger, appears suddenly and moves helter-skelter to seek a place to hide and escape from the human colony, where he mistakenly came. In a fade-out, Tiger leaves, and Two Villagers with bamboo sticks appear in search of the Tiger; they call the other fellow villagers. One of them says, “A Predatory Animal has attacked two people, and you folks are sleeping peacefully?”
Scene from ‘Bhakshak’: Villagers
While hunting for the Tiger, two villagers speak to each other about the unwillingness of the Forest Department as one of the causes of the displacement of wildlife. In contrast, the conflict for life is universal among living beings. The conversations in the play below are translated into English from the Marathi dialect.
Villager 1: I think we should call the police or forest officers. Wouldn’t that be okay?
Appa: You think so? Does it make sense? They are the reason we suffer! This government does its job, and then these poor animals are run down for life here. Are they (the government) concerned about us? What do they (forest officials) do? They come, see and go on initially, and on the second day, guess which Animal attacked! On the third day, (they) come with the cage! After three-four days, they catch it. But we are the ones who do all the hardship in between. In the meantime, it preys on seven-eight (people). We should kill and bury it!”
While they talk, the Tiger strolls behind them.
Scene from ‘Bhakshak’: Villagers and Tiger
In the next scene, Tiger attacks all of them, but they all escape somehow. The scene fades into a blackout. In the next scene, all the villagers, terrified of Tiger, gather at the village temple, a common place. One of the women wants to go home, as she realises that she left her infant in the swing in all this mess.
The very next scene, Tiger, whom the villagers have beaten, is now moaning in pain. He takes refuge at the house where the infant is in the swing. The Tiger listens to the human infant cry and gets beside the swing. He wants to see the baby out of affection but, suddenly, the villagers’ screams about catching him get louder. They come, and the Tiger leaves. They trace his paws and head towards the house. They see he was in the house a moment ago, and the baby is still in the swing, sleeping. One of the villagers approaches the swing and says,
“It turned out well; Baby is here. Look… Predator didn’t see it!”
Another one exclaims, “Thank you, God, for your mercy!”
The next scene jumps to the fight between Tiger and another animal, possibly a wild animal. Tiger lets the animal go, as he understands that he is not the only one affected by human interference in their territory.
The scenes fade out. In the next scene, the injured Tiger gets caught by villagers and begs to escape.
In response to the hitting of the stick, the wounded Tiger attacks and injures the villager. While the Tiger attacks, one of the villagers catches him and puts the stick to his throat, and the others get up and pull the stick back to choke him to death. In the background, a loud noise fades in and rises—the noise of drilling in the soil, of cutting of the trees with an axe and machines, of running of the sawmills and of trees falling. Now, on the left side of the stage, Tiger is killed by the villagers, and on the right side, the injured villager crawls and shouts—
“Stop it, stop that, all you bastards!”
The noise fades out and stops.
“Because of you, your encroachment, these poor animals attack us. Either they devour us, or else we devour them.”
Ecological Theme and Anthropocentrism
Bhakshak presents an incisive theme of human-animal conflict in light of a ruined ecosystem through human invasion. It lacks any pretentious set and uses a construct of minimum properties. Director Raoba Gajmal takes a symbolic approach to convey the message of environmental conservation and the deterioration of human values, society, class conflicts and politics, as exemplified by the Tiger.
Another central idea within Bhakshak is the accurately captured anthropocentric approach people take regarding interacting with the environment. As Kopnina highlights in the article “Anthropocentrism: More than Just a Misunderstood Problem” in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, “Anthropocentrism [(mis)understanding that only humans are the central entity in the universe] prioritises human desires and power, often at the expense of ecology and the environment.” In the play, Tiger is the epitome of all wildlife living in restricted areas—restricted due to increased human encroachment and exploitation of resources. The major threats that cause species decline are habitat loss and fragmentation, as discussed by the World Wildlife Fund. This is what Bhakshak plays: to make its viewers consume and realise the ugly side of civilisation’s development.
Paazar
Paazar was a contemporary Marathi one-act play of forty minutes. The one-act’s plot revolves around the drought, villagers struggle to dig a well, superstition, and a farmer’s cattle. Marathwada is a drought-prone region where water scarcity has been a crisis of decades in rural and remote areas, predominantly in low-income and backward districts like Beed. Most artists in this one-act are from this district. As a writer and director of the one-act play, Pravin Patekar weaved the emotion in exact words and dialects of Beed’s Marathi. He says, “Building this play took us nearly five to six years; it was one act, and we don’t know how we extended it, but it became a full play. We filled it up, started to explore it, and got it. The journey of the years is now becoming fruitful. Paazar was played seventy times as a one-act and sixteen times as a full play.” He gives credit to his village; he says, there was an old well where he got inspired to write this play. He met the characters while writing, and it became a play from a small story. It was also easy for him to write this play because he, too, comes from a drought-prone area.
Though it was a social one-act, it leaned towards comic and satire, as its dialogues were one of itcritical aspects, apart from the scenography.
In the curtain-up of the one-act begins with a child character named Babadya. He monologues to the audience about whether they can help him get water in the pot he has with him.
“Our fellow villagers say water is life. One who has it, he lives. Our village needs it. It rained everywhere except on our side. Unlike my father, who takes a loan from a lender, please, you folks, give me water on interest. I mean, whenever we have rain in our village, I will return it to you with all interest.”
The opening of the one-act itself narrates its theme; while the story moves further, the voiceover portrays various village characters; one is a young man, recently married, and his wife who has left his home due to water scarcity. All the characters get the idea of rejuvenating the old dry well by digging further manually to see if there is more water. Jija, the old man, has a dialogue in the scene—
“Villager 1: Jija, look, the well has become a garbage dumpster.
Jija: When the need gets over, humans see those things as garbage.”
Once the well had dried up and become useless, it became a dumpster in the village. Villagers decide to dig the well. Goraksha, the priest, pretends to know there is water in the soil, but his pseudo promise fails. Next, he suggests sacrificing a child to get rid of the drought. In one of the scenes, a peasant in debt with a bank and a local lender is dejected by the drought-stricken fields and his dying cattle due to water scarcity and heat waves. His fellow villagers suggest that he should sell his cattle to the butcher before it dies. He disagrees with them and replies that it is the one who gives us food.
Scene from ‘Paazar’: Villagers digging the well
Social and Climate Realities
As Paazar mirrors the socio-ecological struggle of rural India, especially the drought-prone villages, the one-act play narrates the harsh reality of water scarcity and its cascading effects on human lives, livestock and agriculture. In the experimental Marathi theatre, Paazar employs reality to showcase the situation and evocative dialogue to communicate the subject.
The one-act raises the question of water scarcity through the relationship between humans, animals and the environment. Through the play’s characters’ efforts to dig a well, the play critiques unsustainable agricultural practices and the lack of adequate water management policies, which is, in reality, that region’s political and social issue. Drought is one of the primary reasons for the farmers’ suicide in Maharashtra. In an article published by The Hindu on Feb 9th 2024, Deshpande writes that in 2023, 1088 farmers had ended their lives in eight districts of Marathwada—Maharashtra’s most drought-affected region.
The water scarcity problem in Marathwada is fundamentally embedded in the agrarian political economy of the region, with its predominant sugarcane crop that is water-intensive. The political patronage, along with the state policies promoting monoculture, has triggered districts such as Beed to become a sugarcane (and therefore also sugar, liquor and ethanol) mega producer, even though this region is highly drought-prone.
Beed is among the important sugar-producing districts in Maharashtra. This crop requires up to 2,000 litres of water to produce 1 kilogram of sugar. Such a mass scale sugarcane production is linked to the Government of India’s ethanol-blending policy, making it mandatory to add more ethanol into the fuel, such as petrol, to the extent of 20 per cent, aiming to reduce its carbon emissions and its petroleum import. Although the policy sounds environmentally framed, its ground-level implication remains paradoxical; it rewards increased sugarcane production, encouraging the groundwater crisis in already water-deprived regions, such as the districts of Marathwada.
Furthermore, the political elites who dominate the sugar mills of the area have either been the current legislators or past ministers and political figures.
Around 72 cooperative and private sugar factories in western Maharashtra, responsible for nearly 40 per cent of the state’s total sugar production capacity, are predominantly influenced by politicians, either directly through board membership or indirectly through patronage networks. This close relationship between politics and the sugar industry makes sugar production in Maharashtra not merely an agricultural enterprise but also a political stronghold and a vote-bank mechanism that shapes both local governance and electoral preparation.
This makes sugar production a political issue as well as a vote bank mechanism. The backbone of this system is made up of the cane cutters (sugarcane harvest labourers)—mostly Bahujan, Dalit, and Nomadic Tribal labourers. They are seasoned labourers who migrate from one district to another, like Beed, especially from October to April each year, to cut cane. As per the article in Scroll, 2019, by Gaikwad, estimates are made that about 5 to 6 lakh workers migrate annually for this purpose.
Cane labourers are usually denied fair wages, health care, and education, and their work conditions are worse, being bound under a contract of advance payment. Thus, a new form of labour exploitation is observed.
One of the more shocking aspects of this exploitation is that hysterectomies and oophorectomies are performed on large numbers of female workers so that they can skip their periods during the cane-cutting season—a clear indicator of the physical price of agricultural capitalism. This migration has caste dynamics that are not accidental but structural. Most cane cutters are Matang, Mahar, Dhangar, Pardhi, amongst other marginalised castes, who have been historically excluded from the possession of land, and hence, need to migrate circularly to survive. Writer Yogesh Maitreya asserts, “In Maharashtra’s rural economy, the caste of the worker often determines their proximity to water, land, and decision-making power.” The sugarcane, liquor, ethanol— the economy of Marathwada, reproduces a social-ecological apartheid, with scarcity of water being worsened through policies prioritising profit, and labour regimes based on caste based disposability.
To Conclude
Bhakshak and Paazar are beyond performance pieces; they count as activist and protest texts that interrogate human relationships with ecology. In Bhakshak, this specific theatre and discourse is the figurative representation of a tiger, symbolising what happens when humans interfere with natural environments in which they are ill-equipped to survive. The play challenges a human-centred perspective towards the world. It offers a new way of looking at the human place in the universe. Showing human greed concerning the environment reminds the audience of their involvement. On the contrary, Paazar portrays significant environmental issues, highlighting the problem of drought-affected villages and the strength of unity to deal with it.
Thematically, both plays resonate, provoking catharsis by the caste and ecological justice frame. They echo Arne Naess’s concept of deep ecology, which advocates recognising the intrinsic value of all living beings and rejecting exploitative human behaviour.
Altogether, the one-act plays dare the audiences to interact with ecological and social systems, and act as examples of how a theatre can deploy itself to activism. For this reason, they remain a testimony to the theatrical ability to educate the audience and encourage them to think, empathise and change.
To Begin With
As we observe in many performances, addressing social issues and reflecting on society and human values through theatre have been the core intentions of writers. It is sometimes expressed through dialogue and theatrical techniques, which are encoded within the act and the director’s creativity, allowing the audience to speculate. Marathwada, the Deccan region of Maharashtra, India, has had its own political, social and environmental challenges addressed through theatrical plays. Two Marathi one-act plays gained massive exposure due to their plots. One was Bhakshak, and the other was Paazar. The one-act play is another type of dramatic performance that contains only one act, a simple plot, a small number of characters, and specific themes. Generally, they are short and focused, and can last from 10 to 50 minutes of performance.
Bhakshak, which means ‘devourer’ or ‘predator’, addresses the issue of human interference in the jungle and wildlife conflicts. In Paazar, which means a drip or seepage, the director depicts a draught, human conflicts, and the relationship between the farmer and cattle. Ten years ago, spanning a few years, these forty-minute durational plays were performed several times across Maharashtra and won various prizes.
Theatre is not just a stage but a shared space of reflection.
The ecological plight and degradation in Marathwada is not a ‘neutral’ crisis; it is a layered phenomenon deeply entangled with caste hierarchies and systemic neglect. It reflects inequity, injustice and bias. Ecological scarcity exposes the caste disparities in land, water, and representation in districts where ecological stress is concentrated among Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi communities hailing from Beed, Latur or Osmanabad, along with the rural, as well as, urban Marathwada.
Against this backdrop, Bhakshak and Paazar cannot be seen as just ecological texts, but also as the symbolic theatres of caste ecology. Digging the well collectively in Paazar, for instance, is not only symbolic of environmental strength, but also resounding of a more socio-political reclamation of common resources that were never offered to the marginalised castes. This is echoed by Dr Ambedkar, who asserts, “Caste is not merely a division of labour, it is a division of labourers.” The characters who dig the well in Paazar are the same people who have traditionally been denied a share in the land they toil and the water they seek. Paazar casts a light on how the marginalised, formally uneducated fall for superstition through the ‘Jaanata’ – the one who knows – the priest. The priest, who promotes human sacrifice, also highlights the element of ritualised violence, which has been traditionally employed to dominate the lower caste through the manifestations of superstition and divine will. By appealing against this, the play exposes ecological violence and touches upon the social structure legitimising this violence.
Bhakshak explores how the perspective of Adivasis and groups, who live close to the jungle, share the value of compassion, not just for the flora and trees but for the fauna, the animals too. Alongside this, it portrays the other side of human nature, where compassion turns into violence. The background sounds of sawing the trees with machinery, symbolising the deforestation in Bhakshak, are more than ecological cues; they underscore the machinery of caste-capitalist extraction.
This intersection of caste and ecology interweaves the theatre of Marathwada. A theatre of resistance took place not in huge urban auditoriums but in village squares, one-act competitions, by rural amateur artists. It employs a minimalism style, physical theatre, dialect performances, parodies, and satire to question mainstream narratives, and to make itself accessible to mass audiences. This dramatisation is no abstract universalism; it is a brutal, visceral truth, where no such things as caste, drought, land environment, and death can be isolated as unique problems, but only as entangled realities.
Bhakshak
The opening scene starts with the sound of crickets. The blue light on the stage suggests a night scene, and suddenly, two or three animals start moving on the stage. The Predator, or the Tiger, appears suddenly and moves helter-skelter to seek a place to hide and escape from the human colony, where he mistakenly came. In a fade-out, Tiger leaves, and Two Villagers with bamboo sticks appear in search of the Tiger; they call the other fellow villagers. One of them says, “A Predatory Animal has attacked two people, and you folks are sleeping peacefully?”
Scene from ‘Bhakshak’: Villagers
While hunting for the Tiger, two villagers speak to each other about the unwillingness of the Forest Department as one of the causes of the displacement of wildlife. In contrast, the conflict for life is universal among living beings. The conversations in the play below are translated into English from the Marathi dialect.
Villager 1: I think we should call the police or forest officers. Wouldn’t that be okay?
Appa: You think so? Does it make sense? They are the reason we suffer! This government does its job, and then these poor animals are run down for life here. Are they (the government) concerned about us? What do they (forest officials) do? They come, see and go on initially, and on the second day, guess which Animal attacked! On the third day, (they) come with the cage! After three-four days, they catch it. But we are the ones who do all the hardship in between. In the meantime, it preys on seven-eight (people). We should kill and bury it!”
While they talk, the Tiger strolls behind them.
Scene from ‘Bhakshak’: Villagers and Tiger
In the next scene, Tiger attacks all of them, but they all escape somehow. The scene fades into a blackout. In the next scene, all the villagers, terrified of Tiger, gather at the village temple, a common place. One of the women wants to go home, as she realises that she left her infant in the swing in all this mess.
The very next scene, Tiger, whom the villagers have beaten, is now moaning in pain. He takes refuge at the house where the infant is in the swing. The Tiger listens to the human infant cry and gets beside the swing. He wants to see the baby out of affection but, suddenly, the villagers’ screams about catching him get louder. They come, and the Tiger leaves. They trace his paws and head towards the house. They see he was in the house a moment ago, and the baby is still in the swing, sleeping. One of the villagers approaches the swing and says,
“It turned out well; Baby is here. Look… Predator didn’t see it!”
Another one exclaims, “Thank you, God, for your mercy!”
The next scene jumps to the fight between Tiger and another animal, possibly a wild animal. Tiger lets the animal go, as he understands that he is not the only one affected by human interference in their territory.
The scenes fade out. In the next scene, the injured Tiger gets caught by villagers and begs to escape.
In response to the hitting of the stick, the wounded Tiger attacks and injures the villager. While the Tiger attacks, one of the villagers catches him and puts the stick to his throat, and the others get up and pull the stick back to choke him to death. In the background, a loud noise fades in and rises—the noise of drilling in the soil, of cutting of the trees with an axe and machines, of running of the sawmills and of trees falling. Now, on the left side of the stage, Tiger is killed by the villagers, and on the right side, the injured villager crawls and shouts—
“Stop it, stop that, all you bastards!”
The noise fades out and stops.
“Because of you, your encroachment, these poor animals attack us. Either they devour us, or else we devour them.”
Ecological Theme and Anthropocentrism
Bhakshak presents an incisive theme of human-animal conflict in light of a ruined ecosystem through human invasion. It lacks any pretentious set and uses a construct of minimum properties. Director Raoba Gajmal takes a symbolic approach to convey the message of environmental conservation and the deterioration of human values, society, class conflicts and politics, as exemplified by the Tiger.
Another central idea within Bhakshak is the accurately captured anthropocentric approach people take regarding interacting with the environment. As Kopnina highlights in the article “Anthropocentrism: More than Just a Misunderstood Problem” in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, “Anthropocentrism [(mis)understanding that only humans are the central entity in the universe] prioritises human desires and power, often at the expense of ecology and the environment.” In the play, Tiger is the epitome of all wildlife living in restricted areas—restricted due to increased human encroachment and exploitation of resources. The major threats that cause species decline are habitat loss and fragmentation, as discussed by the World Wildlife Fund. This is what Bhakshak plays: to make its viewers consume and realise the ugly side of civilisation’s development.
Paazar
Paazar was a contemporary Marathi one-act play of forty minutes. The one-act’s plot revolves around the drought, villagers struggle to dig a well, superstition, and a farmer’s cattle. Marathwada is a drought-prone region where water scarcity has been a crisis of decades in rural and remote areas, predominantly in low-income and backward districts like Beed. Most artists in this one-act are from this district. As a writer and director of the one-act play, Pravin Patekar weaved the emotion in exact words and dialects of Beed’s Marathi. He says, “Building this play took us nearly five to six years; it was one act, and we don’t know how we extended it, but it became a full play. We filled it up, started to explore it, and got it. The journey of the years is now becoming fruitful. Paazar was played seventy times as a one-act and sixteen times as a full play.” He gives credit to his village; he says, there was an old well where he got inspired to write this play. He met the characters while writing, and it became a play from a small story. It was also easy for him to write this play because he, too, comes from a drought-prone area.
Though it was a social one-act, it leaned towards comic and satire, as its dialogues were one of itcritical aspects, apart from the scenography.
In the curtain-up of the one-act begins with a child character named Babadya. He monologues to the audience about whether they can help him get water in the pot he has with him.
“Our fellow villagers say water is life. One who has it, he lives. Our village needs it. It rained everywhere except on our side. Unlike my father, who takes a loan from a lender, please, you folks, give me water on interest. I mean, whenever we have rain in our village, I will return it to you with all interest.”
The opening of the one-act itself narrates its theme; while the story moves further, the voiceover portrays various village characters; one is a young man, recently married, and his wife who has left his home due to water scarcity. All the characters get the idea of rejuvenating the old dry well by digging further manually to see if there is more water. Jija, the old man, has a dialogue in the scene—
“Villager 1: Jija, look, the well has become a garbage dumpster.
Jija: When the need gets over, humans see those things as garbage.”
Once the well had dried up and become useless, it became a dumpster in the village. Villagers decide to dig the well. Goraksha, the priest, pretends to know there is water in the soil, but his pseudo promise fails. Next, he suggests sacrificing a child to get rid of the drought. In one of the scenes, a peasant in debt with a bank and a local lender is dejected by the drought-stricken fields and his dying cattle due to water scarcity and heat waves. His fellow villagers suggest that he should sell his cattle to the butcher before it dies. He disagrees with them and replies that it is the one who gives us food.
Scene from ‘Paazar’: Villagers digging the well
Social and Climate Realities
As Paazar mirrors the socio-ecological struggle of rural India, especially the drought-prone villages, the one-act play narrates the harsh reality of water scarcity and its cascading effects on human lives, livestock and agriculture. In the experimental Marathi theatre, Paazar employs reality to showcase the situation and evocative dialogue to communicate the subject.
The one-act raises the question of water scarcity through the relationship between humans, animals and the environment. Through the play’s characters’ efforts to dig a well, the play critiques unsustainable agricultural practices and the lack of adequate water management policies, which is, in reality, that region’s political and social issue. Drought is one of the primary reasons for the farmers’ suicide in Maharashtra. In an article published by The Hindu on Feb 9th 2024, Deshpande writes that in 2023, 1088 farmers had ended their lives in eight districts of Marathwada—Maharashtra’s most drought-affected region.
The water scarcity problem in Marathwada is fundamentally embedded in the agrarian political economy of the region, with its predominant sugarcane crop that is water-intensive. The political patronage, along with the state policies promoting monoculture, has triggered districts such as Beed to become a sugarcane (and therefore also sugar, liquor and ethanol) mega producer, even though this region is highly drought-prone.
Beed is among the important sugar-producing districts in Maharashtra. This crop requires up to 2,000 litres of water to produce 1 kilogram of sugar. Such a mass scale sugarcane production is linked to the Government of India’s ethanol-blending policy, making it mandatory to add more ethanol into the fuel, such as petrol, to the extent of 20 per cent, aiming to reduce its carbon emissions and its petroleum import. Although the policy sounds environmentally framed, its ground-level implication remains paradoxical; it rewards increased sugarcane production, encouraging the groundwater crisis in already water-deprived regions, such as the districts of Marathwada.
Furthermore, the political elites who dominate the sugar mills of the area have either been the current legislators or past ministers and political figures.
Around 72 cooperative and private sugar factories in western Maharashtra, responsible for nearly 40 per cent of the state’s total sugar production capacity, are predominantly influenced by politicians, either directly through board membership or indirectly through patronage networks. This close relationship between politics and the sugar industry makes sugar production in Maharashtra not merely an agricultural enterprise but also a political stronghold and a vote-bank mechanism that shapes both local governance and electoral preparation.
This makes sugar production a political issue as well as a vote bank mechanism. The backbone of this system is made up of the cane cutters (sugarcane harvest labourers)—mostly Bahujan, Dalit, and Nomadic Tribal labourers. They are seasoned labourers who migrate from one district to another, like Beed, especially from October to April each year, to cut cane. As per the article in Scroll, 2019, by Gaikwad, estimates are made that about 5 to 6 lakh workers migrate annually for this purpose.
Cane labourers are usually denied fair wages, health care, and education, and their work conditions are worse, being bound under a contract of advance payment. Thus, a new form of labour exploitation is observed.
One of the more shocking aspects of this exploitation is that hysterectomies and oophorectomies are performed on large numbers of female workers so that they can skip their periods during the cane-cutting season—a clear indicator of the physical price of agricultural capitalism. This migration has caste dynamics that are not accidental but structural. Most cane cutters are Matang, Mahar, Dhangar, Pardhi, amongst other marginalised castes, who have been historically excluded from the possession of land, and hence, need to migrate circularly to survive. Writer Yogesh Maitreya asserts, “In Maharashtra’s rural economy, the caste of the worker often determines their proximity to water, land, and decision-making power.” The sugarcane, liquor, ethanol— the economy of Marathwada, reproduces a social-ecological apartheid, with scarcity of water being worsened through policies prioritising profit, and labour regimes based on caste based disposability.
To Conclude
Bhakshak and Paazar are beyond performance pieces; they count as activist and protest texts that interrogate human relationships with ecology. In Bhakshak, this specific theatre and discourse is the figurative representation of a tiger, symbolising what happens when humans interfere with natural environments in which they are ill-equipped to survive. The play challenges a human-centred perspective towards the world. It offers a new way of looking at the human place in the universe. Showing human greed concerning the environment reminds the audience of their involvement. On the contrary, Paazar portrays significant environmental issues, highlighting the problem of drought-affected villages and the strength of unity to deal with it.
Thematically, both plays resonate, provoking catharsis by the caste and ecological justice frame. They echo Arne Naess’s concept of deep ecology, which advocates recognising the intrinsic value of all living beings and rejecting exploitative human behaviour.
Altogether, the one-act plays dare the audiences to interact with ecological and social systems, and act as examples of how a theatre can deploy itself to activism. For this reason, they remain a testimony to the theatrical ability to educate the audience and encourage them to think, empathise and change.
To Begin With
As we observe in many performances, addressing social issues and reflecting on society and human values through theatre have been the core intentions of writers. It is sometimes expressed through dialogue and theatrical techniques, which are encoded within the act and the director’s creativity, allowing the audience to speculate. Marathwada, the Deccan region of Maharashtra, India, has had its own political, social and environmental challenges addressed through theatrical plays. Two Marathi one-act plays gained massive exposure due to their plots. One was Bhakshak, and the other was Paazar. The one-act play is another type of dramatic performance that contains only one act, a simple plot, a small number of characters, and specific themes. Generally, they are short and focused, and can last from 10 to 50 minutes of performance.
Bhakshak, which means ‘devourer’ or ‘predator’, addresses the issue of human interference in the jungle and wildlife conflicts. In Paazar, which means a drip or seepage, the director depicts a draught, human conflicts, and the relationship between the farmer and cattle. Ten years ago, spanning a few years, these forty-minute durational plays were performed several times across Maharashtra and won various prizes.
Theatre is not just a stage but a shared space of reflection.
The ecological plight and degradation in Marathwada is not a ‘neutral’ crisis; it is a layered phenomenon deeply entangled with caste hierarchies and systemic neglect. It reflects inequity, injustice and bias. Ecological scarcity exposes the caste disparities in land, water, and representation in districts where ecological stress is concentrated among Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi communities hailing from Beed, Latur or Osmanabad, along with the rural, as well as, urban Marathwada.
Against this backdrop, Bhakshak and Paazar cannot be seen as just ecological texts, but also as the symbolic theatres of caste ecology. Digging the well collectively in Paazar, for instance, is not only symbolic of environmental strength, but also resounding of a more socio-political reclamation of common resources that were never offered to the marginalised castes. This is echoed by Dr Ambedkar, who asserts, “Caste is not merely a division of labour, it is a division of labourers.” The characters who dig the well in Paazar are the same people who have traditionally been denied a share in the land they toil and the water they seek. Paazar casts a light on how the marginalised, formally uneducated fall for superstition through the ‘Jaanata’ – the one who knows – the priest. The priest, who promotes human sacrifice, also highlights the element of ritualised violence, which has been traditionally employed to dominate the lower caste through the manifestations of superstition and divine will. By appealing against this, the play exposes ecological violence and touches upon the social structure legitimising this violence.
Bhakshak explores how the perspective of Adivasis and groups, who live close to the jungle, share the value of compassion, not just for the flora and trees but for the fauna, the animals too. Alongside this, it portrays the other side of human nature, where compassion turns into violence. The background sounds of sawing the trees with machinery, symbolising the deforestation in Bhakshak, are more than ecological cues; they underscore the machinery of caste-capitalist extraction.
This intersection of caste and ecology interweaves the theatre of Marathwada. A theatre of resistance took place not in huge urban auditoriums but in village squares, one-act competitions, by rural amateur artists. It employs a minimalism style, physical theatre, dialect performances, parodies, and satire to question mainstream narratives, and to make itself accessible to mass audiences. This dramatisation is no abstract universalism; it is a brutal, visceral truth, where no such things as caste, drought, land environment, and death can be isolated as unique problems, but only as entangled realities.
Bhakshak
The opening scene starts with the sound of crickets. The blue light on the stage suggests a night scene, and suddenly, two or three animals start moving on the stage. The Predator, or the Tiger, appears suddenly and moves helter-skelter to seek a place to hide and escape from the human colony, where he mistakenly came. In a fade-out, Tiger leaves, and Two Villagers with bamboo sticks appear in search of the Tiger; they call the other fellow villagers. One of them says, “A Predatory Animal has attacked two people, and you folks are sleeping peacefully?”
Scene from ‘Bhakshak’: Villagers
While hunting for the Tiger, two villagers speak to each other about the unwillingness of the Forest Department as one of the causes of the displacement of wildlife. In contrast, the conflict for life is universal among living beings. The conversations in the play below are translated into English from the Marathi dialect.
Villager 1: I think we should call the police or forest officers. Wouldn’t that be okay?
Appa: You think so? Does it make sense? They are the reason we suffer! This government does its job, and then these poor animals are run down for life here. Are they (the government) concerned about us? What do they (forest officials) do? They come, see and go on initially, and on the second day, guess which Animal attacked! On the third day, (they) come with the cage! After three-four days, they catch it. But we are the ones who do all the hardship in between. In the meantime, it preys on seven-eight (people). We should kill and bury it!”
While they talk, the Tiger strolls behind them.
Scene from ‘Bhakshak’: Villagers and Tiger
In the next scene, Tiger attacks all of them, but they all escape somehow. The scene fades into a blackout. In the next scene, all the villagers, terrified of Tiger, gather at the village temple, a common place. One of the women wants to go home, as she realises that she left her infant in the swing in all this mess.
The very next scene, Tiger, whom the villagers have beaten, is now moaning in pain. He takes refuge at the house where the infant is in the swing. The Tiger listens to the human infant cry and gets beside the swing. He wants to see the baby out of affection but, suddenly, the villagers’ screams about catching him get louder. They come, and the Tiger leaves. They trace his paws and head towards the house. They see he was in the house a moment ago, and the baby is still in the swing, sleeping. One of the villagers approaches the swing and says,
“It turned out well; Baby is here. Look… Predator didn’t see it!”
Another one exclaims, “Thank you, God, for your mercy!”
The next scene jumps to the fight between Tiger and another animal, possibly a wild animal. Tiger lets the animal go, as he understands that he is not the only one affected by human interference in their territory.
The scenes fade out. In the next scene, the injured Tiger gets caught by villagers and begs to escape.
In response to the hitting of the stick, the wounded Tiger attacks and injures the villager. While the Tiger attacks, one of the villagers catches him and puts the stick to his throat, and the others get up and pull the stick back to choke him to death. In the background, a loud noise fades in and rises—the noise of drilling in the soil, of cutting of the trees with an axe and machines, of running of the sawmills and of trees falling. Now, on the left side of the stage, Tiger is killed by the villagers, and on the right side, the injured villager crawls and shouts—
“Stop it, stop that, all you bastards!”
The noise fades out and stops.
“Because of you, your encroachment, these poor animals attack us. Either they devour us, or else we devour them.”
Ecological Theme and Anthropocentrism
Bhakshak presents an incisive theme of human-animal conflict in light of a ruined ecosystem through human invasion. It lacks any pretentious set and uses a construct of minimum properties. Director Raoba Gajmal takes a symbolic approach to convey the message of environmental conservation and the deterioration of human values, society, class conflicts and politics, as exemplified by the Tiger.
Another central idea within Bhakshak is the accurately captured anthropocentric approach people take regarding interacting with the environment. As Kopnina highlights in the article “Anthropocentrism: More than Just a Misunderstood Problem” in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, “Anthropocentrism [(mis)understanding that only humans are the central entity in the universe] prioritises human desires and power, often at the expense of ecology and the environment.” In the play, Tiger is the epitome of all wildlife living in restricted areas—restricted due to increased human encroachment and exploitation of resources. The major threats that cause species decline are habitat loss and fragmentation, as discussed by the World Wildlife Fund. This is what Bhakshak plays: to make its viewers consume and realise the ugly side of civilisation’s development.
Paazar
Paazar was a contemporary Marathi one-act play of forty minutes. The one-act’s plot revolves around the drought, villagers struggle to dig a well, superstition, and a farmer’s cattle. Marathwada is a drought-prone region where water scarcity has been a crisis of decades in rural and remote areas, predominantly in low-income and backward districts like Beed. Most artists in this one-act are from this district. As a writer and director of the one-act play, Pravin Patekar weaved the emotion in exact words and dialects of Beed’s Marathi. He says, “Building this play took us nearly five to six years; it was one act, and we don’t know how we extended it, but it became a full play. We filled it up, started to explore it, and got it. The journey of the years is now becoming fruitful. Paazar was played seventy times as a one-act and sixteen times as a full play.” He gives credit to his village; he says, there was an old well where he got inspired to write this play. He met the characters while writing, and it became a play from a small story. It was also easy for him to write this play because he, too, comes from a drought-prone area.
Though it was a social one-act, it leaned towards comic and satire, as its dialogues were one of itcritical aspects, apart from the scenography.
In the curtain-up of the one-act begins with a child character named Babadya. He monologues to the audience about whether they can help him get water in the pot he has with him.
“Our fellow villagers say water is life. One who has it, he lives. Our village needs it. It rained everywhere except on our side. Unlike my father, who takes a loan from a lender, please, you folks, give me water on interest. I mean, whenever we have rain in our village, I will return it to you with all interest.”
The opening of the one-act itself narrates its theme; while the story moves further, the voiceover portrays various village characters; one is a young man, recently married, and his wife who has left his home due to water scarcity. All the characters get the idea of rejuvenating the old dry well by digging further manually to see if there is more water. Jija, the old man, has a dialogue in the scene—
“Villager 1: Jija, look, the well has become a garbage dumpster.
Jija: When the need gets over, humans see those things as garbage.”
Once the well had dried up and become useless, it became a dumpster in the village. Villagers decide to dig the well. Goraksha, the priest, pretends to know there is water in the soil, but his pseudo promise fails. Next, he suggests sacrificing a child to get rid of the drought. In one of the scenes, a peasant in debt with a bank and a local lender is dejected by the drought-stricken fields and his dying cattle due to water scarcity and heat waves. His fellow villagers suggest that he should sell his cattle to the butcher before it dies. He disagrees with them and replies that it is the one who gives us food.
Scene from ‘Paazar’: Villagers digging the well
Social and Climate Realities
As Paazar mirrors the socio-ecological struggle of rural India, especially the drought-prone villages, the one-act play narrates the harsh reality of water scarcity and its cascading effects on human lives, livestock and agriculture. In the experimental Marathi theatre, Paazar employs reality to showcase the situation and evocative dialogue to communicate the subject.
The one-act raises the question of water scarcity through the relationship between humans, animals and the environment. Through the play’s characters’ efforts to dig a well, the play critiques unsustainable agricultural practices and the lack of adequate water management policies, which is, in reality, that region’s political and social issue. Drought is one of the primary reasons for the farmers’ suicide in Maharashtra. In an article published by The Hindu on Feb 9th 2024, Deshpande writes that in 2023, 1088 farmers had ended their lives in eight districts of Marathwada—Maharashtra’s most drought-affected region.
The water scarcity problem in Marathwada is fundamentally embedded in the agrarian political economy of the region, with its predominant sugarcane crop that is water-intensive. The political patronage, along with the state policies promoting monoculture, has triggered districts such as Beed to become a sugarcane (and therefore also sugar, liquor and ethanol) mega producer, even though this region is highly drought-prone.
Beed is among the important sugar-producing districts in Maharashtra. This crop requires up to 2,000 litres of water to produce 1 kilogram of sugar. Such a mass scale sugarcane production is linked to the Government of India’s ethanol-blending policy, making it mandatory to add more ethanol into the fuel, such as petrol, to the extent of 20 per cent, aiming to reduce its carbon emissions and its petroleum import. Although the policy sounds environmentally framed, its ground-level implication remains paradoxical; it rewards increased sugarcane production, encouraging the groundwater crisis in already water-deprived regions, such as the districts of Marathwada.
Furthermore, the political elites who dominate the sugar mills of the area have either been the current legislators or past ministers and political figures.
Around 72 cooperative and private sugar factories in western Maharashtra, responsible for nearly 40 per cent of the state’s total sugar production capacity, are predominantly influenced by politicians, either directly through board membership or indirectly through patronage networks. This close relationship between politics and the sugar industry makes sugar production in Maharashtra not merely an agricultural enterprise but also a political stronghold and a vote-bank mechanism that shapes both local governance and electoral preparation.
This makes sugar production a political issue as well as a vote bank mechanism. The backbone of this system is made up of the cane cutters (sugarcane harvest labourers)—mostly Bahujan, Dalit, and Nomadic Tribal labourers. They are seasoned labourers who migrate from one district to another, like Beed, especially from October to April each year, to cut cane. As per the article in Scroll, 2019, by Gaikwad, estimates are made that about 5 to 6 lakh workers migrate annually for this purpose.
Cane labourers are usually denied fair wages, health care, and education, and their work conditions are worse, being bound under a contract of advance payment. Thus, a new form of labour exploitation is observed.
One of the more shocking aspects of this exploitation is that hysterectomies and oophorectomies are performed on large numbers of female workers so that they can skip their periods during the cane-cutting season—a clear indicator of the physical price of agricultural capitalism. This migration has caste dynamics that are not accidental but structural. Most cane cutters are Matang, Mahar, Dhangar, Pardhi, amongst other marginalised castes, who have been historically excluded from the possession of land, and hence, need to migrate circularly to survive. Writer Yogesh Maitreya asserts, “In Maharashtra’s rural economy, the caste of the worker often determines their proximity to water, land, and decision-making power.” The sugarcane, liquor, ethanol— the economy of Marathwada, reproduces a social-ecological apartheid, with scarcity of water being worsened through policies prioritising profit, and labour regimes based on caste based disposability.
To Conclude
Bhakshak and Paazar are beyond performance pieces; they count as activist and protest texts that interrogate human relationships with ecology. In Bhakshak, this specific theatre and discourse is the figurative representation of a tiger, symbolising what happens when humans interfere with natural environments in which they are ill-equipped to survive. The play challenges a human-centred perspective towards the world. It offers a new way of looking at the human place in the universe. Showing human greed concerning the environment reminds the audience of their involvement. On the contrary, Paazar portrays significant environmental issues, highlighting the problem of drought-affected villages and the strength of unity to deal with it.
Thematically, both plays resonate, provoking catharsis by the caste and ecological justice frame. They echo Arne Naess’s concept of deep ecology, which advocates recognising the intrinsic value of all living beings and rejecting exploitative human behaviour.
Altogether, the one-act plays dare the audiences to interact with ecological and social systems, and act as examples of how a theatre can deploy itself to activism. For this reason, they remain a testimony to the theatrical ability to educate the audience and encourage them to think, empathise and change.
