The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Theatre artistes plan fast

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 04, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Theatre artistes plan fast

Special Correspondent

Bangalore: Theatre artistes from across Karnataka, led by director and activist Prasanna, will launch an indefinite hunger strike from January 5 in support of their demand for recognition to regional language theatres.

Decentralisation

Accusing the Ministry of Culture of imposing a Hindi-centric "One nation-one theatre" policy across India, theatre artistes are demanding equal status to all language theatres.

They are also seeking decentralisation of key institutions such as Sangeet Natak Akademi and National School of Drama and introduction of theatre-in-education programme in all government schools.

The hunger strike will be launched in front of the Town Hall and will continue inside Ravindra Kalakshetra "until the demands are met", said theatre activists here on Wednesday.

NSD centres

"Though there was an announcement earlier about formation of NSD centres in other States, nothing has been done so far. But what we are asking for is not just formation of branches of NSD, but autonomous theatre schools that will give primacy to local language theatres," said T. Surendra Rao of theatre group Samudaya.

"As things stand today a person can be denied admission in NSD simply because he does not know Hindi."

A bias towards Hindi is seen in other policies of the Department of Culture as well, said theatre activists. A blatant instance of this is that more than half the budgetary allocation made for theatre activities by it is spent in the city of Delhi alone, they alleged.

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