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The British Council conducted a survey late last year in a bid to better understand Shakespeare’s popularity around the world. The >findings of the survey were surprising — at least to the people who conducted it — for it appeared that the country that claimed to have liked — and more importantly — understood Shakespeare the best was India. The rankings saw India at the top with 89% of surveyors who agreed or strongly agreed that they liked Shakespeare, followed by Mexico at 88% and Brazil at 87%. 83% of the Indian sample also agreed or strongly agreed to the statement that they understood Shakespeare, followed, once again, by Mexico (80%) and Brazil (79%). Shakespeare’s country of birth, the United Kingdom, on the other hand, found itself closer to the bottom with only 59% claiming to like him, and 58% understand him.
This Indian fascination for Shakespeare is nothing new. And very real. We have taken his stories, translated it into our languages, ensured that his work is mandatory reading for any English syllabus ever conceptualised in India, and converted some into Bollywood films — films, I should add, that included item numbers...
... a feat which only an intimate working knowledge of Shakespeare's Othello could have facilitated.
Shakespeare wrote of love, of loss, of friendship, of betrayal and of mischief. The themes were universal. And the stories were intended for the stage, with their complex plotlines, generous violence, and exaggerated emotion (so much so that it wouldn’t be too far off the mark if I claimed that Shakespeare was actually an Elizabethan >Visu ). Shakespeare’s stories were designed to evoke shock and awe from the audience. Today we talk of George RR Martin and the ruthless way he kills his characters, but Shakespeare was the true pioneer in the art of character-slaughter. If you look at the number of dead protagonists in his plays, it is evident that he enjoyed the provocative nature of his tragedies.
A cursory look at Shakespeare’s plays will also reveal what appears to be an infatuation of his for dysfunctional families. You see, even though he wasn’t aware of it then, Shakespeare was actually laying the foundation for the modern Indian mega-serial. When you think about it, the proof is as clear as day — Hamlet saw his mother marrying his own uncle, King Lear’s elder daughters were essentially psychotic frauds, and Romeo and Juliet wasn’t as much about love as it was about two families which hated each other because they were so alike. Midsummer Night’s Dream saw a fairy princess fall in love with a donkey, which is every Tamil film these days.
When I first read about the survey and the results of it, I wondered if our nation’s love for drama could have been the reason behind the enthusiasm for the Bard. We are, after all, a country whose newsreaders are more talented in histrionics than its actors.
The Indian love-affair with Shakespeare could also be part of the literary residue that our pastmasters left behind. I think about advertisements by Indian brands which feature foreign models, for it has been ingrained in us that something is worth purchasing only >if a white person wears it , to the point where a regional jewellery retailer released an ad featuring white women wearing locally made jewellery, and labelled it ‘elite’.
So great is our colonial hangover — and insecurity — that even today most Indians associate quality only with items of “international” repute. Our apparent understanding of Shakespeare may as well be that foreign model who we think is making us international. Could it be?
My own journey in discovering Shakespeare began in school. I studied in a school which followed the CBSE syllabus, and I remember Shakespeare being an all-pervasive presence in my English textbooks across classes. There was even a brief period of time when my classmates used to refer to certain other students as “Shakespeare”. These Shakespeares were usually the more obnoxious brats (I say this with authority, because I was one of them) in the class who chose to speak in English even during lunch breaks, when our school’s strict “we only speak English here” policy suspended itself for a brief and sacred thirty minutes.
Pop culture and cooler seniors later introduced the term “Peter” as a more able substitute, but I suppose the term “Shakespeare” originally came about because, when you’re in school, Shakespeare is the epitome of all that encompassed English literature, simply because his work is that much harder to read than any other works. The 17th Century syntax and the archaic vocabulary convinced us students that the Bard was the toughest literary nut to crack. Even the mere act of discussing a play or story made us feel like we were part of an elite club that had deciphered a nearly four-hundred-year-old code, and entitled us to a smugness that was usually reserved for IIT aspirants during Standard X physics classes.
Even today, Shakespeare is held in very high regard by teachers and students alike for the challenge he presents, and any mastery over the man’s work continues to be a source of great pride. It gives weight to your claim on the English language.
I want to say that Shakespeare is loved in India because of his stories, his poems, the rhythm and flow of the iambic meter, the way he could amplify ideas to tap into our intimate selves, yet, between our country’s craving for validation, and love for everything that is over the top, I can’t help but have my suspicions.
Then again, wasn’t it Shakespeare who said that “Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind?”
