New Delhi: How does a thespian stage a performance on Habib Tanvir, a pioneer of modern Indian theatre? Danish Husain chose to script it like an interview with an unseen filmmaker.
The result, Habibnama, where Husain plays the Urdu poet and playwright, was so true to life that it had Tanvir’s friends in tears when it was performed at Jawahar Bhawan on 7 December, belatedly marking his 101st birth anniversary, which was on 1 September.
The play is a biographical monologue based on Tanvir’s writings and public interviews, with an imagined filmmaker or interrogator in the audience.
“It is a device that I am using in the play,” Husain told ThePrint. “In the ending, the unseen silent filmmaker who was just assumed in the audience is revealed—an actor who joins ‘Habib sahab’, played by me, on stage.”
Instead of delivering an uninterrupted monologue like in a dastaan, Husain added layers. As Habib Tanvir, he interacted with other characters on stage who actively disrupted the narrative by performing scenes and songs from his famous plays. Their goal was to grab Tanvir’s attention and provoke a response from him as they tried to impress him with their skill. It was like an episode from The Office, where unseen filmmakers prod characters into revealing themselves on camera.
One scene had two actors performing from Kamdeo Ka Apna Basant Ritu Ka Sapna, Tanvir’s Hindi adaptation of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The two played star-crossed lovers, agonised to be separated by a wall. This wall was played by the writer – Husain as Tanvir – wearing brick-printed chart paper around his neck.
“I was asked to write it as a dastaangoi performance, but it did not give me the liberty to show excerpts from Habib Sahab’s plays and the songs in them. A dastaan would have just been me sitting and telling a tale in a single monologue,” said Husain.
Born in Raipur, now in Chhattisgarh, Habib Tanvir revolutionised Indian theatre by working with Nacha artists from his home state and incorporating folk theatrical traditions into his plays. The Naya Theatre group, which he founded in 1959, became known for bringing rural performance forms to urban stages through experimental — and often controversial — productions. One of its most talked-about plays, Ponga Pandit, even provoked protests from BJP leaders in Madhya Pradesh, who accused it of being “anti-Hindu.”
Beyond creating contemporary Indian theatre classics, Tanvir also adapted European works like Shakespeare’s plays folk art forms such as Nacha.
“Habib defined contemporary theatre in India. Instead of European modern theatre or the proscenium, he went back to the traditional ways,” said writer Sohail Hashmi, a trustee of Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT), which presented the play at Jawahar Bhavan. “He saw that the indigenous forms of storytelling will suit Indian audiences better and brought Shakespeare to the masses.”
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A play, interrupted
What made Husain’s portrayal of Habib Tanvir so authentic was his own relationship with the theatre legend. For five years, Husain worked with Tanvir in Agra Bazar, playing the lead role in the play about Urdu poet Nazir Akbarabadi and his life during the decline of the Mughal Empire.
The performance, in fact, opened with Khushamad (to welcome), a song from Agra Bazar by Akbarabadi.
In Habibnama, Husain wove scenes and songs from Tanvir’s best-known works as ‘interruptions’ the monologue. The audience got glimpses of Charandas Chor, Ponga Pandit, and Agra Bazar as snatches of dialogue and music broke through the monologue’s flow.
“That was how he worked,” Husain said. “He would give interviews right before his shows and would be interrupted by his crew sometimes, which I also decided to show in the play.”
The two characters who ‘interrupted’ Tanvir were played by Mohan Sagar, a traditional Nacha theatre actor from Chhattisgarh, and Purushottam Bhatt, a veteran actor and Tanvir’s colleague of 50 years from Naya Theatre.
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Songs of money, truth to power
Through this unconventional format, Habibnama revisits not just Tanvir’s work but the formative moments that shaped his approach to theatre.
Habib Tanvir, who died in 2009, is remembered not just for his theatre but for giving a voice to the poor and marginalised. His plays echoed their songs, their humour, and their struggles.
Speaking to ThePrint after the performance, Bhatt said that Habibnama included the song Paisa (money) by Akbarabadi from Agra Bazar because its message remains as sharp now as when it was written—an unflinching look at how money can make or break an ordinary person’s life.
Ghar bhī pākīza imārat se banā paise kā,
Khānā ārām se khāne ko milā paise kā,
KapḌā tan kā bhī milā zeb-fazā paise kā…
Jab huā paise kā ai dosto aa kar sanjog,
Ishrateñ paas huiiñ duur hue man ke rog…
Aisī ḳhūbī hai jahāñ aanā huā paise kā…
House was built from pure material with money,
Got to eat food peacefully with money,
Clothes to cover the body also from money,
Money is what united friends,
Happiness came near, mental illness went far away…
Such greatness happened when came money.
For Bhatt, Paisa is a reminder of a universal truth that still holds.
“Whether it’s a play or real life, money is everything. It’s relevant everywhere. This is every common person’s truth, and it’s this truth that comes through in the words of Akbarabadi,” he said.
But in Habibnama, the message doesn’t stop at money and personal struggle. It extends to power, exploitation, and who controls the narrative.
One of the play’s most striking moments comes when Danish Husain delivers a few lines from one of Tanvir’s public interviews.
It lands like a challenge to resist cultural exploitation and co-option: “Today, culture should be seen very clearly as belonging to two camps; one, of the exploiting class, and the other of the exploited classes. And if truth must be properly projected, it must have in its technique, an indigenous idiom involved. A deviation from it means a deviation from authenticity.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)