Tanvir: Grant cloud

Bhopal, Aug. 29: The Babulal Gaur government in Madhya Pradesh has blacklisted Habib Tanvir’s group Naya Theatre, accusing him of misappropriation of state grants.

The 76-year-old doyen of theatre has been at loggerheads with the BJP and the Sangh parivar over his stringent opposition to the Hindutva ideology.

Two years ago, Tanvir had staged his play Ponga Pandit across the state, drawing the wrath of the BJP. The party’s activists disrupted the play wherever it was staged, alleging that it portrayed Hinduism and its customs in bad light. The actors were targeted with eggs, tomatoes and stones.

Around this time, Tanvir received a grant of Rs 600,000. According to Pawan Jain, the state secretary in the culture department, “two years have passed but Tanvir’s group has failed to submit accounts of expenditure of the grant to the state government. Hence, it has been blacklisted”.

Tanvir was reluctant to comment, only saying that he was in the process of submitting bills. He cited health and family reasons for not settling the accounts yet.

Tanvir’s detractors in Bhopal could, however, barely hide their glee. “Here is a man who used to be a picture of honesty, decency and civil society. Tell me, since when has embezzling government grant been added to the so-called secular profile?” Devendra Rawat, the Bhopal district VHP chief, asked sarcastically.

Jain said that according to the government order, Naya Theatre will not receive any grant or help from the state.

Ajay Singhwa, a member of the theatre group, defended Tanvir, saying the matter was an excuse for the Gaur government to settle political scores.

“Everybody knows that the BJP is strongly against us,” he said, adding the government should have shown sympathy towards the theatre veteran. “His wife died recently. Tanvir was also recently injured in an accident in Delhi.”

Other associates of Tanvir said he was in the habit of “forgetting” to submit bills. “You do not expect an artiste of Tanvir’s stature to be a financial wizard. When Arjun Singh was human resource development minister in the Narasimha Rao regime, Tanvir had got into a similar problem,” said one of them, requesting anonymity.

He said Gaur and Jain had failed to recognise Tanvir’s contribution. “In any culture and in any age, it is rare for a person to become a legend in his or her own lifetime. Tanvir has attained this.”

Singhwa said things have become tougher for Tanvir since the BJP came to power in December 2003. For several years, Naya Theatre had been operating from a bungalow provided by the state. But a few months ago, Gaur’s government asked Tanvir to cough up the rent, which he could not afford and the artistes were evicted, Singhwa said.