Two powerful plays, one in German and the other in Marathi, will be showcased at a three-day conference on youth radicalisation in the city later this week.
Paradies , which was chosen as ‘Play of the Year’ in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, will be enacted at the conference titled, ‘Towards Peace’ between July 14 and 16. The event is organised by the Maharashtra Cultural Centre and Max Mueller Bhavan.
The play, written by German playwrights Lutz Hubner and Sarah Nemitz, deals with the life of Hamid, a teenager who is lured by radical groups with false promise of riches in the afterlife. It is directed by Mina Salehpour, the youngest awardee of the German theatre prize, ‘DER FAUST’.
The conference will also showcase ‘Y’, a Marathi play co-written by Vibhawara Deshpande and Shrirang Godbole (directed by Mr. Godbole), which talks about the vulnerability of youth in drifting towards radicalisation. The play, introduced to audiences in 2017, will be returning to Pune for the conference.
“After our first collaboration, Ms. Deshpande, Mr. Godbole, and I decided to work on another play together. We had a workshop about political issues that have a global impact, and chose to write about radicalisation in terms of religion and nationalism,” Mr. Hubner told The Hindu . “We wanted to put the focus on the motives of a fanatic.”
The story explores the mind of a radicalised young man, in the process looking at the fears, hopes, desires and emotions of young people, who want to fight and kill for an ideology, Mr. Hubner said.
The play goes a level deeper into unravelling why radical ideologies are so seductive. “We must understand why somebody decides to leave his normal life behind. It is easy to analyse what’s negative in these decisions, but we can only understand it fully when we know what the promises of these ideologies are. In case of the Islamic State, where the main topic is paradise, we thought that for many youngsters, it is a kind of pop phenomenon, that they are not really Muslims; they are just looking for adventure, being part of a group, fighting for something, that’s bigger than them,” he said.
Mr. Hubner said he found the Indo-German collaboration to be “extremely rich” and “interesting”. He hoped they would serve as a platform for discussion and prove stronger than mere “enlightenment campaigns”. The theme of youth radicalisation, he said, is as relevant in Germany today as it is in India.
Mr. Godbole said youngsters are involved in terrorist activities and acts of extremism not just in Europe or West Asia, but throughout the world. “Even in India, we have the youth taking part in extremist activities like mass killings and lynching. And this is not just due to religion, it moves far beyond it.”
The youth, especially those who are unemployed, are manipulated into being part of extremist groups since they are given a sense of belonging and feel empowered, he said.
“Radicalisation among them is what inspired us to write about it. ‘Y’ is basically a crossroad that the youth find in their life, to either choose radicalisation or an evolved and mature path,” he said.
