D Vasudha Dalmia-Luderitz I. THE MODALITIES AND PITFALLS OF DMTERCULTURALISM The essays in the first section of the book deal with three distinct, though interrelated, issues. Firstly, Bharucha pinpoints, though not always systematically, the modes, often reductivist, of the borrowing, adaptation and transformation of Indian theatre. Secondly, he questions the authority with which Indian theatre is represented in the west and the claims to authenticity which accompany it. And finally, he counters by reclaiming the theatrical and cultural territory thus 'ceded' to western authority. The categories under which I present his arguments are part of the ongoing 'orientalist' debate, as also contained in his own reading of the issues involved. Reductivist Tendencies Western theatre practitioners have, with remarkable consistency, restricted their interest in Indian theatre to what they have regarded as classical theatre, or at the most extended it to the kind of theatre which can be considered to have been sanctified by tradition. Traditional sources, then, have inevitably been seen as repositories of ancient wisdom. Whereas in itself taking resort to these sources seems a legitimate enough undertaking, it has seldombeen accompanied by any serious attempt to understand the historical, social, aesthetic, and most of all, the religious context of the performance tradition thus abstracted. Once extracted from the respective setting, it is easy enough to see afty given aspect of the performing arts as exemplifying and representing the essence of Indian culture. Yet, for all its essentialism, the engagement with traditional Indian theatre has inevitably been partial, eclectic, restricted often to a preoccupation with technique. Of late there has been increasing fascination with ritual theatre, which when transplanted can only lead to a deliberate desacralization of context. To this I would add that the essentialist perspective, in its almost consistent disregard of the recent developments in the country, has often been accompanied by an underlying disparagement of current cultural and political processes. Bharucha considers a series of theatre practitioners as participating in this intercultural encounter, whereby he seeks to view them in their context. Earlier theatre practitioners had a limited access to Indian theatre aesthetics and tradition and for all their essentialist categorization had approached it with some caution. Edward Gordon Craig, actor, director-designer as well as dramatic theorist (1872-1966), devoted most of his life's work to an en visualization theatre which in its early phase seemed entirely futuristic. Both attracted and repulsed by what he knew of Indian theatre, mediated as it was through Coomaraswamy, he could write in 1918: "Whenever you see an Indian work of art, tighten up the strings of your helmet. Admire it... venerate it... but for your own sake don't absorb it.' (p. 22) Though he tended to regard Asiatic traditions as static, monolithic, he did not seek to imitate. He maintained a distance and seems rather to have sought analogies in the European tradition. He remained faithful to what he Number 22