Islam in Performance: Contemporary Plays from South Asia

Islam in Performancebrings together six contemporary plays from Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan that highlight the political performance of Islam in South Asia, especially since the 1947 partition of the subcontinent.

The plays invite comparison with one another, engaging with the issue from perspectives of the three countries concerned: Hindutva politics in India othering the Muslim population for electoral gains, radical Islamization of Pakistan paralyzing political governance and encouraging jihadi violence, and the ever-increasing Islamist threat to Bangladesh’s founding secular ethos. Finally, this anthology focuses on the suffering such exclusionary politics of religious nationalism has piled upon minorities across the region. Widely performed but largely unpublished, the plays with their geographic and stylistic range provide a good spectrum of some of the best writing in contemporary South Asian drama.

The editor’s scholarly introduction offers a framework for studying the plays as both texts and performance pieces.

Ashis Sengupta is Professor of English at the University of North Bengal, India. He is the recipient of the Olive I Reddick award (1995), Fulbright American Studies Institute fellowship (2002), Fulbright visiting scholarship (2006) and SASNET guest lecturer grant (2009), and has published numerous essays and chapters on South Asian and American theatre in journals and edited volumes that include the Journal of American Studies, Comparative American Studies, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Indian Literature, and DLB: South Asian Writers in English.