Rustom Bharucha Somebody's Other - Disorientations in the Cultural Politics of our Times What I propose to examine in this essay is the politics of interculturalism in a global context with an additional focus on the increased communalisation of politics and culture in India today. Without assuming the directions of a clear-cut theory (which could be somewhat illusory to assume at this particularly confused moment in time), I choose to speak through what Edward Said once described as "disorientations of direct encounters with the human".1 It is through these disorientations, these shifts in space and time, that I would like to open up some thoughts on the nexus of interculturalism, globalisation, and communalism with particular reference to post-colonial realities in India. As a first step, it would be useful to puncture the primary assumptions of these seemingly disparate movements which are concealed in the every title of this essay: "Somebody's Other." Three interventions Containing two unknowns - a 'somebody' and an 'other' - the title of this essay (at first glance, at least) would seem to be steeped in enigma. Neither of its components is named though they seem to be linked through a relationship, bound through a possessive clause. Locating myself in relation to the title, I am compelled to ask if I am an absence or some kind of recalcitrant element, another 'unknown', hovering on the periphery of the title. As I confront its hidden agenda, I realise that I have no other option but to view myself as a 'third' element and that I am obliged to intervene. But how does one intervene? As I problematise the title, its enigma yields to the immediate pressures of history, as the Other acquires a face, a name, a history. Theoretically loaded, politically charged, the construction of the Other in contemporary India is almost inextricably linked with the spectre of com-munalism by which entire communities are being differentiated, ostensibly on the grounds of religion which has become a pretext for unleashing all kinds of violence in an increasingly fascist mode. As this 'banality of evil' enters our everyday lives, 'Somebody's Other' no longer remains enigmatic. On the contrary, it becomes disturbingly real. 1. In this context, the first intervention that needs to be made without elaboration or qualification is that 'Somebody's Other' need not be mine. If this 1 Edward Said, Orientalism, Vintage Books, New York, 1979, p 93. SPIRITS IN THE CITY OF WOMEN 103 Rustom Bharucha sounds evasive, one should add that it may not be sufficient merely to negate the construction of 'Somebody's Other'. One may have to oppose it consciously if only for one's own survival and for the protection of a particular sense of history. II. There is another way of puncturing the seeming enigma of the title. This intervention, however, does not come from the immediacies of communa-lism, but from what has been harboured for a much longer time and assimilated in the name of 'Orientalism'.2 Through the thickness of its discourse, I hear a small, yet taunting voice that reminds me of something familiar. It says: You could be Somebody's Other. And it is with the reiteration of this thought, this layered reality by which the history in post-colonial societies continues to be assumed, named designated, theorised, and represented for 'us' that the construction of 'Somebody's Other' acquires a larger political dimension. Deconstructed, debated, and perhaps flogged to death (theoretically), the realities of Orientalism continue to provoke writers and artists from non-Western cultures, whose positions are more embattled than ever before. First of all, the constructions of our 'otherness' in non-Western cultures continue to proliferate, though in increasingly covert ways. It is possible, for 'the Orient' to be manufactured in India itself, catering to dominant images of our 'otherness' abroad. In this context, the marketing of the Other has become more aggressive and strategic. There are also new agencies and middlemen for the representation of non-Western cultures, particularly in connection with Asian immigrant communities and their search for cultural identities (and authenticities) in the diaspora. In addition to this phenomenon, the emerging critiques of Orientalism from non-Western locations are in the process of being appropriated by the very system that has academicised 'otherness', thereby feeding the publishing industry with material from the 'Third World'. Our vigilance in non-Western societies, therefore, is called for on at least two levels: one, at the level of the constructions of our 'otherness' by which Orientalism is further consolidated; and secondly, at the level of the appropriation of our critiques by which - and I will try not be cynical - the sentiments, humanitarian feelings, and guilt pangs of our erstwhile critics are legitimised and empowered through their seeming endorsement and understanding of our positions in non-Western cultures. Now our critiques of their representations are also being thrust on us in 'other' voices. It would seem that we have yet to think for ourselves. 'They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented.' We can represent ourselves; we are represented. The irony does not stop here. As the scenario becomes more intricate, one confronts the truism that Orientalism is never made possible just through the coercion of one political system over another. Rather, it is consolidated through complicity, or a series of complicities between systems of power, no just outside of one's political location, but inscribed within it. So, on the one hand, it is possible to criticise Peter Brook's appropriation of the Mahabharata within an Orientalist framework of representation,3 but it is 2 I am using the term as defined by Edward Said in Orientalism as "a certain will or intention to understand, in some cases to control, manipulate, even to incorporate what is a manifestly different... world; it is, above all, a discourse that is ... produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power, shaped to a degree by the exchange with power political... power intellectual... power cultural." See Introduction to Orientalism, op. cit., p 12. 3 See my critique "Peter Brook's Mahabharata: A View from India?" Included in my collection of essays on performance and the politics of culture, Theatre and the World, Routledge, London, 1993, pp 68-86. SPIRITS IN THE CITY OF WOMEN 105 Rustom Bharucha more jolting to see how this essentialised reading of 'the Poetical History of Mankind' was actually endorsed by the Indian government and validated as part of its propagation of 'festival culture' in the world. Not only did this trivi-alised reading of 'Hindu' culture return to India as a commodity, it was hailed by the press end a large section of the intelligentsia in elitist forums for invited audiences. The overwhelming deference and absence of critical inquiry in this forums could be dismissed as a colonial hang-over were it not for the economic of this Durbar-like tour of metropolitan cities. It is worth pondering that the Indian government and its cultural satellites spend more money on this enterprise of the Mahabharata than it has supported any other cultural group in India itself. And to enhance the irony. We never even got to see the production in India apart from its film version. The 'real thing' proved to be too expensive to transport 'back home'. In such and example, the complicities between two seemingly disparate systems of power become apparent by which an internationally acclaimed, intercultural production with a 'universal' aura is valorised at a national level within the cultural politics of the Indian state. Interculturalism, therefore, is not some utopic return to a pre-national state of cultural/human togetherness, as some of the more euphoric Euro-American interculturalists have suggested. Trough the propagation of megastructures of intercultural practice like the Mahabharata (and I would suggest, even at micro-levels), interculturalism is embedded within and transmitted trough governments bodies and states. Today, in particular, in the alleged aftermath of the Cold War, when the illusions of 'development' have soured, it is not surprising that the UN should assume a new role vis-a-vis intercultural ventures through its promotion of that most philistine of categories - 'cultural development'. In this scenario, a 'Third World' critique of interculturalism confronts at least two possible areas of risk and appropriation. On the one hand, 'Third World dissent' can be marketed through a strategic slotting of 'controversial' voices within a spectrum of liberal exchanges on intercultural possibilities. In the process, the 'Third World' writer can become conveniently 'othered', fetishised, set u against the mainstream of voices in his or her discipline, or else tolerated to endorse the democratic credentials of liberal structures of representation. On the other hand, 'Third World dissent' can be marginalised at home through the machinery of the cultural establishment monitored by the State, not directly, but through the media, press coverage, and general endorsement that government-sponsored intercultural ventures are expected to receive. Between the 'marketisation' and 'marginalisation' of dissent, the 'Third World' writer inhabits a space that is becoming increasingly difficult to negotiate, particularly in the absence of 'indigenous' structures of production and representation.4 III. Is there a way out where one does not have to think about 'Somebody's Other' in such an embattled context? Can it be viewed outside of an oppositional framework altogether? I would like to believe that this is not just desirable but necessary. Quite simply, if we had constantly to define ourselves in opposition to the constructs of others thrust on us, then that would be the surest way of othering ourselves. The moment we allow ourselves to be subsumed within categories of otherness, we automatically empower what we are set against, 4 I will resist the temptation to elaborate on the politics of publishing because it needs detailed analysis. Suffice it to say that there are few publishing houses in India concerned about the representations of contemporary culture and idioms of dissent. Foreign collaborations with Western publishing houses are invariably sought in the absence of basic professional norms relating to the marketing and distribution of such books in India. Significantly, this is not the case with the 'social sciences' and 'history' which are, increasingly to my mind, produced, represented, and marketed with greater accountability at the levels of production and reception. Meanwhile, the representation of 'the arts' (apart from the coffee-table variety) continues to be marginalised. As for the 'politics of culture', it is almost silenced through the non-availability of forums. SPIRITS IN THE CITY OF WOMEN 105 Rustom Bharucha but in the process, we fail to call attention to our own history and culture, and attempt to find alternatives to the practices that we are criticising. So at the risk of indulging in a certain bravura, I do not wish to be seen as anybody's other, but as somebody who has on occasion found it expedient to define himself in opposition to certain monolithic Others if only to clear the air, to breathe, to think, but who has also found it equally necessary to explore himself in relation to differences within my multicultural context in India and beyond. In this context, my critique of interculturalism (which we will get to later) cannot be separated from my exploration of translations and exchanges within India in an intracultural rather than intercultural context. I believe that the 'intracultural'-the interaction of various cultures within the boundaries of a particular state - as opposed to the 'intercultural' - the exchange of cultures across nations - needs to be reinstated at a time when globalising forces are in the process of homogenising 'indigenous' cultures everywhere. This is a particularly necessary intervention in 'Third World' countries like India whose governments appear to be increasingly distanced from the realities of local communities and cultures as the State implements the agendas set forth by the World Bank and the IMF. The exploration, translation and exchange of cultures in specific contexts both within regions, and between the 'metropolis' and the 'rural' across regions, could be the only source of reaffirming cultural self-sufficiencies and self-respect at a time when, politically and economically, our capitulation to global power seems irreversible. Imbrications of the Other At a macro level, there are two particularly dominant constructions of the Other that are determining the very process of interpreting who and where we are in India in relation to ourselves, to one another, to our communities, and the world. One such construction of the Other continues to be the 'developed world' as it is being propagated by the forces of globalisation in the country, notably the government, through the invasion of the cable networks which have infiltrated to all parts of the country in the last few years. 'Invasion', I stress, not 'importation': the phenomenon has been too swiftly engineered, monitored, and legislated to be described in more euphemistic terms. Now, in villages which continue to be denied the basic necessities of life, it is possible to see Star TV, MTV, Zee TV, cable TV, blue movies, and Doordarshan (the national television system which has almost consciously marginalised itself). The implications of this cultural invasion are enormous, not merely because of the grotesque disparity between the consumerist representation of 'development' on television (what is desirable) as opposed to the abject economic conditions of the vast majority of its viewers (which determine what is available). At a less obvious level, this invasion of images - more often than not, context-less but not value-free - is of critical significance because, for the first time in our cultural history, we are seeing the homogenisation of Western cultures into a very consolidated and alluring image of the Other - a liberal, SPIRITS IN THE CITY OF WOMEN 105 Rustom Bharucha capitalist, sexually enticing market of a world - in relation to which we can now see and compare ourselves in the so-called 'Third World' with greater deference than ever before. Along with this construction of the Other, we are also seeing, simultaneously and within the boundaries of our nation, an unprecedented unleashing of communal hatred, which has resulted in a perverse denunciation of entire communities as 'Others' - a denunciation that has been reinforced through the celebration of monolithic categories of 'Indian/Hindu' culture. What is particularly unnerving is when these constructions of the Other, emerging from the seemingly disparate movements of globalisation and communalism get imbricated in each other's priorities, scenarios, and languages. Tellingly, when the Babri Masjid was razed to the ground on December 6, 1992, no attempt was made by the networks to contextualise what that demolition could mean to people in India. No thought was given to the fact that the glibly represented images of violence on television, followed by commercials and the 'regular' programmes, could actually lead to more violence resulting in more deaths. So far as the networks were concerned, we could take it or leave it. Our government, despite a few protests, chooses to take it without disturbing its allegiance to the World Bank and the IMF. These are the new complicities of our times. And we have no choice but to live with these representations of the Other in the absence of alternative networks and narratives. Our dissent has yet to be consolidated into a platform of political action. The global politics of interculturalism The global indifference to the context of specific cultures, and os non-Western cultures in particular, is what provided the underlying thrust of my critique of interculturalism in my book Theatre and the World. Today, more clearly than when I started to write about cultural representations in a spirit of liberal dissent, I would see interculturalism - the phenomenon by which diverse are exchanged, transported, and appropriated across nations - as a vital component of globalisation, but also perhaps as the flipside of it. Because, if in globalisation we are seeing the homogenisation of Western cultures into the Other of the 'developed world', in interculturalism - from the politics of my location, at least - it is possible to see how non-Western cultures have been encapsulated into the alluring Other of the Orient. From my particular study of interculturalism in theatre, I discovered how the practice of interculturalism cannot be separated from the larger history of Orientalism in which it has been inscribed. Through numerous examples I learned how the Orient (in which India was conveniently subsumed) served as a source of self-definition for the West - a self - definition that was achieved at the expense of confronting the specific history and realities of non-Western cultures. It was the very distance, foreignness, and exotic nature of a text like Shakuntala (or, for that matter, the Mahabharata or the Bhagavad Gita) that stimulated points of departure for many artists to create their own imaginary 'Orients'5. At a very superficial level, one could say that this decontextualising of a text from 5 Read my opening essay in Theatre and the World, op. cit., "Collision of Cultures: Some Western Interpretations and uses of the Indian theatre", for a more detailed description of how Shakuntala has inspired a range of Western artists like Theophile Gautier, Lugne-Poe, Tairov, and Jerzy Grotowski to 'invent' their own languages in theatre. Also, for a critical reading of how the Bha-gavad Gita served as a libretto for Philip Glass's opera Satyagraha, read "Satyagraha: A World Outside of Time", Theater, Vol. XIX, No. 12, Spring 1988. SPIRITS IN THE CITY OF WOMEN 105 Rustom Bharucha its history and culture could be dismissed as irresponsible were it not for the fact that this 'misreading' can be valorised, authenticated, and empowered at political levels as in Peter Brook's production of the Mahabharata. More problematically, I found that the practice of interculturalism cannot be separated from what could be described as a neo-colonial obsession with materials and techniques from the 'Third World'. These resources drawing primarily on our traditional disciplines - our 'modernity' being of no concern to most interculturalists - have been recorded, transported, appropriated, and transformed in other scenarios for other audiences. Kathakali, Yoga, breathing exercises, Kundalini and martial arts have provided the base, as it were, for a new 'science' of acting, an 'anthropology' of theatre, where 'laws' and 'rules of behaviour' relating to the 'energy and 'pre-expressivity' of actors have been formulated at 'transcultural' levels (ie, cutting across the specificities of particular cultures).6 We need to ask ourselves whether the bios or being of an from a particular culture can be separated from his or her ethos. Can the expresivities of particular performance traditions be divested from the narratives in which they are placed and the emotional registers by which they are perceived? Can stories be extracted from the multiple and contradictory ways in which they are told to their own peoples? More problematically, can the 'pre-expressivity' of theatre cultures, say of tribal societies, which is grounded in the rituals, rhythms, and gestures of everyday life, be decontextualised and 'restored' into techniques of performance? These questions may be rooted in a theatrical context, but they have resonances that extend to our confrontation of 'other' cultures at more general levels. Today, I am much less prepared to dismiss the political naivety of those interculturalists advocating the pursuit of 'cultures of choice' just as different foods can be selected by certain classes of people in metropolitan cities.7 Not only is this naivety rooted in an unexamined affluence and a mindless euphoria af pluralism, it is very product of a post-capitalist, postmodern condition which can afford to indulge in a historical amnesia about those parts of the world where food may not be a matter of choice. In retrospect, I also see the fascination for 'other' cultures by the West - and 'fascination' is the key-word - emerging from a fundamental dissatisfaction with its own cultural resources. Indeed, one could argue that interculturalism was born out of a certain ennui, a reaction to aridity and subsequent search for new sources of energy, vitality, sensuality through the importation of 'rejuvenating raw materials'.8 We need to question the implications of this importation for the 'other' (non-Western) cultures themselves. It is all very well to be rejuvenated, but at what cost? And at whose expense? Today, the most critical metaphors relating to the problematics of exchange in interculturalism are not be found in the theatre, but in the very vital debates surrounding 'intellectual property rights' with reference to biodiversity. The ownership of these basic organisms of existence is an issue that has been raised by many ecologists, and not just from non-Western locations, which is what makes the debate so hopeful. At long last, differences are being exchanged across cultures within a context of political and economic struggle, 6 One of the most articulate theorists of 'theatre anthropology' is Eugenio Barba whose transcultural explorations in Theatre have been reviewed critically in my essay, "The Theatre of Migrants", included in Theatre and the World, op. cit., pp 54-67. 7 Note, for instance, the 'cruel irony' that Richard Schechner acknowledges in his advocacy of 'cultures of choice' in 'The Crash of Performative Circumstances': "... as cultures more and more come to be performative actions, and information links among them emerge into view, people will choose the way many of us now choose what foods to eat". (The End of Humanism, PAJ Publications, New York, 1982, p. 125). It is obvious that this view is part of Schechner's unproblema-tised endorsement of a 'world information order' in which he envisions 'PANHUMAN, EVEN SUPRA- .HUMAN, COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS' (Schechner's capitals). Today, it is clearer to me that his views on intercul-turalism, linked as they are in a 'postmodern' map to sociobiology, computer languages, and multinational corporations, are 'global' in their construction and disregard for historical and cultural specificity. For a critique of Schechner's position, read the concluding part of my essay "Collision of Cultures", op. cit., pp. 28.41. 8 Patrice Pavis, "Interculturalism in Contemporary Mise En Scène", Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture, Routledge, London, 1993, p. 211. SPIRITS IN THE CITY OF WOMEN 105 Rustom Bharucha which ironically has emerged as a counter to the imagined benefits of global enterprise. As the Indian eco-feminist Vandana Shiva has pointed out trenchantly, the 'Third World's' biodiversity is no longer being viewed as the "common property of local communities", nor the "national property of sovereign states", but the "common heritage of mankind" - another universal, up for grabs as it were, easily assimilated, transported, recycled, manufactured, marketed, and then sold back to the 'Third World' as "priced and patented seeds and drugs".9 In this context, we could question: Who owns cultural property rights? Theatrical property rights? Hopefully, we will not take refuge in nostalgia and invoke the metaphors of theft that have been valorised for so long in humanist discourses of theatre. We need to ground our metaphors within the immediacies of our times. It is with this premise in mind that I am compelled to question yet again: Who owns the numerous documentations that have been taken of traditional, folk and tribal performances from non-Western cultures with no acknowledgement or, perhaps, even payment to the communities involved? Does access to technological power ensure the rights of ownership and representation? What gives artists from one culture the right to decontextualise other cultures and borrow conventions and techniques with no accountability of their changed, or perhaps, distorted meanings? I think we need to confront these questions critically and assert that the 'Third World' can no longer be reduced to a repository of materials, rejuvenating or otherwise. If a genuine exchange has to take place, it should materialise at the level of our products. Or if our materials are involved, then they need to be accompanied with appropriate concepts and interpretations. The point is not to impose these concepts and interpretations - indigenous modes of expertise - but to negotiate them through the creation of new narratives with shared responsibilities, if not a shared history. What I am advocating, therefore, is not a closed-doors policy, but an attitude of critical openness, a greater sensitivity to the ethics involved in translating and transporting other cultures, and a renewed respect for cultural self-sufficiencies in an age of globalisation, where there is a tendency to homogenise the particularities of cultures, if not obliterate them altogether. All these considerations are most movingly and pertinently resonant in a statement once made by Mahatma Gandhi in the context of 'Monoculture in Education' when he said: "I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any."10 That 'but' is important for us to keep in mind. Countering the Other At a time when our politicians seem to have lost their voices in the wilderness of the global market, when our Finance Minister echoes the language of the World Bank without the faintest trace of subversion or even irony, it becomes necessary to contradict the dominant premises and idioms of a global world 'order'. In this context, Gandhi's assertion of self-sufficiency becomes 9 Vandana Shiva, "Farmers' Rights, Biodiversity and International Treaties", Economic and Political Weekly, April 3, 1993, pp. 555560. 10 Mahatma Gandhi, "Monoculture in Education", Selected Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Collins, London, 1971, p. 171. SPIRITS IN THE CITY OF WOMEN 105 Rustom Bharucha all the more moving because it does not deny the value of openness, which should not be equated with spineless deference, but rather a generosity of spirit that, nonetheless, retains the right to accept only those cultural resources which are appropriate to our context. As much as we have reason to be wary of, if not hostile to the homogenising forces of 'global cultures', the reality is that we are also obliged to interact with other cultures in the world at more complex levels than ever before. The quest for cultural self-sufficiency should not yield to the insularities of 'regionalism', which can only reinforce cultural chauvinisms at micro levels, a further splintering of communities into multiple 'others'. Somehow we have to hold on to our cultural bearings while being open to the cross-currents of change in the world. This vigilance can materialise in concrete terms only if we are prepared to protect our self-respect (or of what remains of it) and to affirm a renewed respect for differences. At an organisational level, it becomes necessary to envision new forums where 'self-respect' and 'cultural difference' can be activated instead of being rhetoricised. In this regard, one cannot sufficiently stress the need for intracul-tural interactions in India where differences can be exchanged and translated between, within, and across regions. The infrastructure for such exchanges simply does not exist. At a time when 'the world' is being transmitted through satellites in millions of homes, how can we continue to derive strength from the essentially fabricated illusion that 'Indian culture' is timeless, or else, so integrative that it has the capacity to absorb any number of foreign interventions? At a more critical level, how can we continue to believe in the 'indigenous' at purely local levels? Is it not also necessary to create wider structures where 'indigenous' cultures can be linked across regions? At this point, we need to ask if the State can be entrusted to initiate this linking process in the context of its own role in the communalisation of cultures, and earlier still when it actively promoted regionalism at the very inception of official cultural policies in the Fifties.11 How do we negotiate the 'regional' with the 'national' at cultural levels today? At no point in time has it been more necessary to uphold multiple cultural identities, but these can only be represented meaningfully a process of translation, which remains one of the most neglected areas of cultural research in our multilingual, multicultural society. Here, too, new forums are needed which can investigate new modes and structures of representing cultures whose contexts can be translated not only through words but gestures, rhythms, music, dance. Just as we need to investigate 'languages' at non-verbal, performative, and unconscious levels, we also need to create new narratives - more multi-centred, reflexive, self-critical of 'communal' and sexist assumptions, and above all, more deviant in the countering of monolithic discourses and images that have solidified through communalist and fundamentalist propaganda. If 'pluralism' provides one of the foundations for the construction of secular identity, we need to embody it in different idioms instead of reducing it to a slogan. The monoliths of our times cannot be defeated through the construction of other monoliths, but through the creation of several voices of dissent, multiple 11 For some background on how 'official cultural policies' were developed in India in the mid-Fifties, with a strong focus on 'regional states' providing the basic units around which notions of 'Indian culture' were formulated, read my critique of the Haksar Committee Report entitled "Anatomy of Official Cultural Discourse: A Nongovernment Perspective", Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 27, No. 31-2, pp. 16671676. SPIRITS IN THE CITY OF WOMEN 105 Rustom Bharucha points of attack and defence, sharply individuated, yet linked. In our search for a common platform, let us not speak in one voice. This need for new narratives became imperative to me when I was an 'experimental' dance-theater production from India in Toronto. It is ironic how one alerted to the construction of one's otherness on the periphery of one's location. In this mess of a production, which seemed to drift in a Vedic haze, we witnessed a spectacle including the chanting of mantras and Vedic hymns, the burning of incense, the clanging of cymbals, a 'contemporary' mish-mash of 'traditional' dance and martial forms, with a 'real' pujari (a temple priest) coming through the audience and blessing the spectators with sprinkles of gangajal. From these details, it becomes clear how the 'Orient' can be manufactured in India itself and then transported abroad to validate earlier modes of 'Orientalism' which are in the process of being dismantled elsewhere. I mention this background to the production in order to situate one particular image in its mise-en-scene that hit me with the immediacies of our history in India today. This image was disturbing precisely because it was unmediated, unquestioned, assumed to be timeless: the sacred symbol of OM. When this symbol was flashed on to the screen, I did not read 'timelessness' in it. I read 'Hindutva', the ideology of the forces of communalism and fundamentalism in the country. In that moment, I realised the power of the symbol, the power of the appropriation of the symbol and its conversion into a political sign, and the need to re-appropriate that sing and endow it with a new meaning. Reappropriations can never be assumed. On the contrary, they have to be invented at intensely creative levels of subversion. As the priorities of the 'global' and 'communal' scenarios converge, it becomes necessary to strategise new modes of cultural intervention. Ironically, these are less likely to emerge from the imagined securities of earlier modes of dissent than the shifting grounds of our new uncertainties. Only by working through the disorientations in the cultural politics of our times can we hope to dismantle the constructions of the Other appropriated by others, without being buried in them ourselves. Author's note:I am grateful to the organisers of the London International Festival Theatre for suggesting the provocative title "Somebody's Other" for a lecture delivered at the National Theatre in London, June 1993. This essay is at once a reworking of the lecture and an attempt to restrategise its issues within the immediacies of the realpolitik in India. Rustom Bharucha (India): Theater theoretician. Author of The Question of Faith (1993), Theatre and the World: Performance and the Politics of Culture (1993), The Theatre of Kanhailal: Pebet & Memoirs of Africa (1992), Rehearsals of Revolution (1 983). SPIRITS IN THE CITY OF WOMEN 105