Kanpur: 1857 preview: Fringe show about Indian rebellion has 'unavoidable' parallels with Gaza
It may be set in mid-19th century India, but Niall Moorjani’s play Kanpur: 1857 has plenty of contemporary resonance, writes Joyce McMillan
In the old colonial history British people were taught at school, it was always called the “Indian Mutiny”. In Indian history, though, it is known as the Kanpur Uprising of 1857, one of the first stirrings of the movement against British colonial rule that would eventually, in 1947, lead to Indian independence; and Scottish-Indian theatre-maker Niall Moorjani – raised in Dundee, now based in London – was already working on the story when that period of colonial history began to take on a whole new contemporary meaning.
“It’s the story of a people suddenly rising up in a violent insurrection against a brutal colonial power,” explains Moorjani, “an insurrection that involved some atrocious acts of violence against British women and children; and then of the hugely disproportionate and violent response to that outrage, in which at least 100,000 people are thought to have died. The parallels to the current situation in Gaza were unavoidable; and it made me think even more deeply about how the colonial mindset never changes, through the ages.”
The result was Moorjani’s play Kanpur: 1857, this year’s winner of the Pleasance Theatre’s £10,000 Charlie Hartill award, designed to encourage the presentation of significant new plays on the Edinburgh Fringe. Working with fellow performer and co-director Jonathan Oldfield – rising star of BBC comedy, and director of four other comedy shows on this year’s Fringe – and the Scottish-Indian musician Sodhi, known as Talking Tabla, Moorjani has created a tense one-hour two-handed drama, backed by Sodhi’s music, in which Moorjani’s character – an Indian rebel strapped to a cannon, and about to be blown to pieces for his role in the rising – is interrogated by a British officer, played by Oldfield.
“That was a punishment widely used by the British in suppressing the rebellion,” explains Moorjani, “so the whole thing is closely based on the history of the event. It is a fictional story, though, and it has other elements – one theme of the play is how colonial attitudes appear both at the macro level, in major political events, and at the micro level, in people’s personal lives.
“So there is also a love story here, and it’s one that involves a relationship between the Indian rebel and a hijra, a member of India’s traditional “third sex”, neither male nor female, whose position in Indian society was always respected until the British passed a law against hijras and their culture, a few years after the events in this play. As a non-binary person myself, I’m fascinated by this aspect of Indian culture, and by how the British in India increasingly saw it as incompatible with their colonial rule.”
Despite its fiercely serious themes, though, Moorjani is clear that Kanpur: 1857 is not a solemn show, to be endured rather than enjoyed.
“In fact it’s quite a strongly comedic show,” says Moorjani, “because I think that when you encounter oppressive forms of power, laughing at them is one of the best ways of opposing and challenging them. The truth is that however much pain and horror they inflict, colonial attitudes are ridiculous - they’re based on a laughable set of assumptions about superiority, and so on. So why not laugh at them?
“And I should also say how wonderful it has been to win the Charlie Hartill award, and to have that support in bringing this show to the Fringe – it just transforms the Fringe from an unaffordable festival to one where you can pay people, and do the show you want to do.
“The Pleasance have been absolutely fantastic – they’ve given us all the support they promised and more, and without this award we simply couldn’t have done a full run of this show in this form. So it’s a wonderful thing that the Pleasance does every year, and there should be more of it. I know other venues also have their own schemes for supporting new work; but the more the better, because with costs soaring every year, it’s desperately needed.”
Kanpur: 1857 is at the Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, from 30 July until 24 August.
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