ਬਲਵੰਤ ਗਾਰਗੀਬਲਵੰਤ ਗਾਰਗੀ

ਮੁੱਢਲਾ ਜੀਵਨ

Balwant Gargi was born on 4 December 1916 in Sehna, a village in what is now Barnala district of Punjab, the second son of Shiv Chand Garg, a head clerk in the Irrigation Department. The Canal House of his birth stood near the Sirhind Canal, close to the spot where Razia Sultana was once imprisoned. He studied at Government College, Lahore, and took his M.A. degrees in English and Political Science from Forman Christian College, Lahore. Drawn to the stage, he trained in theatre under Norah Richards at her school in the Kangra Valley.

From Lahore radio to the stage

Gargi began his working life at a radio station in Lahore in the mid-1940s, and in 1944 he wrote his first play, Loha Kutt (The Blacksmith). Its stark picture of Punjab's countryside made it controversial and announced a new voice in Punjabi theatre. In 1955 he attended a Bertolt Brecht rehearsal in Berlin and studied the working of the Moscow Art Theatre, encounters that shaped him as a director. His influences ranged from J. M. Synge, Garcia Lorca and Brecht to Sanskrit classics and Indian folk forms, and he wrote in both Punjabi and English from the start.

How did Balwant Gargi change Punjabi theatre?

In 1968 Gargi founded the Department of Indian Theatre at Panjab University, Chandigarh, the first university theatre department of its kind in India, and directed it until 1976-77. He built it as a laboratory where village folk forms met modern stagecraft, and the department's open-air theatre is now named after him. His students there included Anupam Kher, Kiron Kher, Satish Kaushik and Poonam Dhillon, who went on to become well-known film actors. He later taught as a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, Vassar, Mount Holyoke, Trinity College and the University of Hawaii, and in the 1960s at the University of Washington, the setting of his novel The Naked Triangle.

Plays and books

Gargi wrote about a dozen full-length plays and five collections of one-act plays. After Loha Kutt came Saelpathar (1949), Navan Mudh (1950), Ghugi (1950), Kanak di Balli (1968), Mirza-Sahiban (1976), Dhuni di Agg (1977), Saunkan (1979) and Abhisarka (1990), along with Kesro, Sultan Razia and Sohni Mahiwal. His plays were translated into twelve languages and performed in Moscow, London, New Delhi, the United States, Poland, the UK and Germany; his Sohni Mahiwal ran for three years at the Gypsy Theatre in Moscow.

As a scholar he wrote Theatre in India (1962) and Rang Manch (1962), the research work that won him the Sahitya Akademi Award, and Folk Theatre of India (New York, 1966), based on travels in which he interviewed more than 400 folk artists and took over 5,000 photographs. His semi-autobiographical novel The Naked Triangle (Punjabi title Nangi Dhup) drew on his American teaching years; The Purple Moonlight (Kashni Vehra) was another novel, and his short stories include Mircha Wala Sadh, Pattan di Berhi and Kuari Disi.

From 1980 to 1983 he served as emeritus producer at Doordarshan and Akashvani; his televised plays, such as Sanjha Chulha, won appreciation across the country. He also produced Punjabi and Hindi serials and documentaries on folk forms such as Jatra and Ramlila.

Who were Balwant Gargi's famous students?

The clearest measure of Gargi's influence is the generation he trained at Panjab University. Anupam Kher, Kiron Kher, Satish Kaushik and Poonam Dhillon all studied theatre under him at Chandigarh before their film careers. Through them, and through the department he built, his ideas about blending folk tradition with modern staging reached Indian cinema and television far beyond Punjab.

Awards and later life

Gargi's honours include the Sahitya Akademi Award (1962), the Wattumull Special Achievement Award (1967), the Padma Shri (1973), the Shiromani Punjabi Sahitkar Award from Punjab's Language Department, and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Punjabi playwriting (1998), making him one of the few writers to receive both the Sahitya Akademi and Sangeet Natak Akademi awards. In 2017 India issued a commemorative postage stamp in his honour.

He married Jeanne Henry, an American academic he met during his teaching years in the United States; the marriage later ended. His two children, Manu Gargi and Jannat Gargi, settled in the United States and work as film producers in Hollywood.

Legacy

Balwant Gargi died in Mumbai on 21 April 2003. He is remembered as the founder of institutional theatre education in Punjab: the Panjab University department he created in 1968 still trains actors, its open-air stage carries his name, and his plays continue to be staged in a dozen languages. Between Loha Kutt's village blacksmith and a postage stamp, his life traced the journey of Punjabi theatre from the folk stage to the world stage.