 Indianization of the National Academy of Administration
July 1972
 The National Academy of Administration had for long remained a school for training anglicised Chandra Kanta Gariyali, IASofficers to fit into theshoes of the erstwhile members of the Indian Civil Service. In its early years of formationafter independence, there was a lot of emphasis on English language. Till 1978, there used to be three compulsory papers in English namely essay, precis and general knowledge. The medium for writing the other five papers was also English alone. It put a lot of non-English knowing students at a disadvantage. Even if they managed to pass these exams the interview was still a great stumbling block. Those who could not converse in the Queen’s English found it difficult to get in. After the implementation of the Kothari Commission Report in the early eighties, regional languages were introduced and the emphasis on English was reduced.
However in 1972 when we went to the academy, it was a bastion of English education, though many of us had a very good grounding in Hindi and other regional languages. The winds of change were already blowing. One of my batch mates Subash Pani now well known as the Joint Election-Commissioner (one time right hand of T. N. Seshan) was bent upon changing the culture of the academy. He was a very bright young man from Orissa. He had stood third in the all India Civil Service Competition (might have stood first but for his Orriya accent). He was also a talented musician, dance composer and actor. One fine day, he announced that we were going to do a Hindi play in the academy. In the History of the academy, no one had dreamt of staging a Hindi play. Iit would be impossible to even find a cast who spoke proper Hindi.
Not to be deterred by all this, he styled himself as the director and put a notice inviting all and sundry to audition for Badal Sarkar’s famous play ‘Baki Itihas’. After considerable effort he was able to pick up a male cast of Naseem Ahmad (Haryana Cadre – one time Secretary of Shri Devi Lal) and R P Singh (Foreign Service) but it was a herculean task to find a female cast.
There were two female characters required - one was the ‘soul of the writer’ and the other his ‘wife’.
His first choice fell on me. Three times he auditioned me but all the three times I failed miserably due to my awful and nasal Kashmiri accent. What bugged him most was that I always said ‘ore’ for ‘aur’ and so on. Finally, Manjula Varma was picked up to play the ‘soul’. Again he went full circle auditioning every woman in the academy for the character of the ‘wife’. Eventually fatigued and tired he came back to me and said, "there is no one else. You have to do it. You better learn to say ‘aur’ instead of ‘ore’."
This is how I got into the first ever non-English theatrical production of the National Academy of Administration.
Everyone else was laughing at us as if it was a joke. Boys from St. Stephens College who had no idea about the Bengali literature did not even know how great a writer Badal Sarkar was. On the other hand, Pani wanted to project it as an epoch making event. He made press statements, invited critics and even invited Badal Sarkar to be present for the opening. (He was delighted but could not make it, but sent us his warm greetings.)
By this time, 400 odd officers and the faculty had realised that something very serious was happening. On the day of the play everybody turned up (some of them to jeer) including Mr.Sathe, the ICS director of the academy. At the end of the day, the Indian lobby won and no one could utter a word against the play which was very well directed. The deep existential theme of the play touched every western cord. The appreciation and praise came from all sides. The critics wrote that the academy play was better than that staged in Delhi by the professionals. The towns-folk of Mussoorie demanded that it be thrown open to the public. Hence, two more shows were staged for the people of Mussoorie and the academy gates were thrown open to the masses. We were all over in the newspapers and the supremacy of English language was broken at last. Pani’s great moment came when he was invited to co-direct English plays (after all the basis of all good theatre is the same). The memorable English plays put up by the 1972 batch officers was the ‘Little Women’. My dear batchmate Indrani Sen who is now battling cancer gave a brilliant performance in Little Women.
The Hindi play was followed by a ‘Kavi Sammelan’ (Hindi poets meet) in which Kaka Hathrasi himself participated. Soon the academy launched its first Hindi Magazine called ‘Chetna’ (the Awakening).
I wrote poems for Chetna. We also translated the work of non-Hindi knowing officers for Chetna. The first issue of the magazine also contained a poem by Neena Singh (now Neena Sibal after marrying the famous lawyer Mr. Sibal). Neena Sibal is today recognised as one of the finest English writers of Indian origin and the 1972 batch is very proud of her.
|
