Draft:Rati Bartholomew
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Rati Bartholomew | |
|---|---|
 Rati Bartholomew, c. 1970s | |
| Born | Rati Batra January 4, 1927 Calcutta, British India |
| Died | September 23, 2021 (aged 94) Gurugram, India |
| Occupations |
|
| Spouse | |
| Children | Pablo Bartholomew Robin Bartholomew |
Rati Bartholomew (née Batra; 4 January 1927[a] – 23 September 2021) was an Indian teacher, theatre director, and cultural activist based in Delhi. She taught English literature at Indraprastha College, University of Delhi, was a founding member of the bilingual theatre group Yatrik and vice-president of Dishantar, and was later involved in street theatre in India and, from the late 1970s and 1980s, in Pakistan and Bangladesh. She was a founding member of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT).[1][2][4][5]
Early life
[edit]Rati Batra was born in Calcutta on 4 January 1927 to Attar Chand Batra, a barrister at the Calcutta High Court, and Supriti Batra, a member of the Cooch Behar royal family and granddaughter of Brahmo Samaj leader Keshub Chandra Sen.[1][2] The family later moved to what became Pakistan, and she attended Kinnaird College, Lahore, from 1944 to 1946, serving as Senior Student in 1945–46.[1][6] In a 1995 reminiscence for the college's alumnae history, Jamila Verghese, a fellow Kinnaird alumna and wife of journalist B. G. Verghese, recalled Rati Batra as among former classmates "still very involved in theatre."[7] The 1947 Partition of India displaced the family, and she relocated to Delhi, where she continued her studies at St. Stephen's College, Delhi.[1][4] There she met Richard Bartholomew, a Burmese-born writer and art critic who had come to India in 1942; the two married in 1953.[8]
Career
[edit]Teaching and campus theatre
[edit]Bartholomew taught English literature at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi. Alongside her teaching, she was closely involved in Delhi's campus and student theatre, directing student plays, writing theatre reviews, and mentoring college drama societies.[2][1] She was regularly invited by Ebrahim Alkazi, then director of the National School of Drama, to serve as guest faculty and examiner there.[2][1][4]
Yatrik and Dishantar
[edit]In 1964 Bartholomew was a founding member of Yatrik, described as Delhi's first bilingual theatre group, alongside Kusum Haidar, Sushma Seth, Joy Michael, and Roshan Seth.[1] She appeared in the group's production All the King's Men (1964), directed by Marcus Murch.[1] From 1969 she was vice-president of Dishantar, another Delhi theatre group of the period, which staged productions including Dharamvir Bharati's Andha Yug and Badal Sircar's Evam Indrajit.[1][2][4]
She wrote theatre reviews and criticism during this period, including a review, published in the magazine Thought, of the first Hindi production of Adya Rangacharya's Suno Janmejaya, directed by Mohan Maharishi at the National School of Drama in 1965.[2][1][4]
Street theatre
[edit]From the late 1970s Bartholomew became active in street theatre. She was associated with the Delhi group Theatre Union, alongside Manohar Khushlani, Anuradha Kapur, and Maya Rao; the group's best-known production was an adaptation of Saadat Hasan Manto's Toba Tek Singh (1979), dramatising Partition trauma and performed in several Indian cities, and it later staged Marz ka Munafa, which critiqued medical profiteering.[9][1][2]
She also documented and wrote about street theatre elsewhere in India: her account of touring street-theatre "jathas" organised by the Karnataka-based group Samudaya was published as "Samudaya's Jatha, Karnataka" in the journal How in 1983, and has been cited by later scholars of Indian street theatre.[9]
Bartholomew's street theatre activism extended into Pakistan and Bangladesh. In Pakistan, the Karachi-based feminist theatre group Tehrik-e-Niswan lists her among the international directors it has worked with.[10] In Bangladesh, she got village women to create issue based performances by collaborating with the rural women's and landless rights organisation Nijera Kori—a prominent autonomous social movement in Bangladesh focused on gender and economic justice—writing an unpublished 1995 manuscript, "Poetics of the Oppressed: A Case Study of Nijera Kori, Bangladesh," later cited in academic writing on South Asian women's theatre.[11][12]
SAHMAT
[edit]Bartholomew was a founding member of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT), established in 1989 in memory of street theatre activist Safdar Hashmi, who was killed while performing.[4][5] For SAHMAT's Chauraha, described as India's first All-India Street Theatre Festival, she wrote the catalogue essay "On the Dramatic Performances Act: Censorship in Theatre," addressing the colonial-era Dramatic Performances Act of 1876.[2][1][4] She also researched the Act for director Anamika Haksar's production Raj Darpan, staged with National School of Drama students in 1994.[2][1][4]
Personal life
[edit]Bartholomew was married to Richard Bartholomew, an art critic, painter, poet, and photographer, from 1953 until his death in 1985.[8] He served as Secretary of the Lalit Kala Akademi and co-curated Contemporary Indian Art at the Royal Academy, London, in 1982.[13][8] They had two sons: the photojournalist Pablo Bartholomew (b. 1955), recipient of the World Press Photo of the Year (1985) for his image of the Bhopal disaster and the Padma Shri (2013), and Robin Bartholomew.[14]
Following Richard Bartholomew's death, Rati Bartholomew, Carmen Kagal — a former managing editor of SPAN magazine — and their son Pablo Bartholomew edited the 2012 book Richard Bartholomew: The Art Critic, a collection of his writings, with an introduction by Geeta Kapur.[15][8][16] Pablo Bartholomew also self-published the book under his own imprint, Bart.[17][8]
Death
[edit]Rati Bartholomew had a stroke in her later years.[1] She died on 23 September 2021 at her son Robin's house in Gurugram, aged 94.[1][2][4] Tributes were published by, among others, theatre director Anuradha Kapur and social activist Aruna Roy — a co-founder of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan and a leading figure in India's Right to Information movement, who studied English literature at Indraprastha College and received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2000 — both former students of Bartholomew's.[2][18][19] SAHMAT held a condolence meeting at which trustee Ram Rahman spoke about her work.[5] The Wire included her among seven feminist figures whose deaths it marked in a joint retrospective published in October 2021.[3]
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Singh, Harsha (13 January 2025). "Pioneering A Performer: Rati Bartholomew And Her Contributions To Contemporary Indian Theatre". Feminism in India. Retrieved 28 August 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Kapur, Anuradha (23 September 2021). "Rati Bartholomew: 4 January 1927 – 23 September 2021". Indian Cultural Forum. Retrieved 28 August 2026.
- 1 2 "The Summer of Sadness: Celebrating the Contributions of Seven Feminist Stalwarts". The Wire. 31 October 2021. Retrieved 29 August 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 "Remembering Rati Bartholomew: Teacher, Friend and Mentor to Generations of Theatre Practitioners". The Wire. 13 October 2021. Retrieved 28 August 2026.
- 1 2 3 Saghar, Amol (9 January 2022). "SAHMAT Celebrates India's Annadatas". Peoples Democracy. Retrieved 28 August 2026.
- ↑ Stacey, Vivienne (2001). "Independence and Partition 1947". Celebrating Kinnaird: Pioneering Women's Higher Education in the Punjab. Lahore: The Association of Kinnaird College for Women.
Rati Bartholomew née Batra, at Kinnaird from 1944–46 and Senior Student from 1945–46.
- ↑ Verghese, Jamila (2001). "Reminiscences". Celebrating Kinnaird: Pioneering Women's Higher Education in the Punjab. Lahore: The Association of Kinnaird College for Women. essay "Thankyou, Kinnaird!", dated 29 March 1995.
Rati Batra (now Bartholomew) ... still very involved in theatre.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Jhaveri, Shanay (14 March 2013). "Time Regained". Frieze. Retrieved 28 August 2026.
- 1 2 Deshpande, Sudhanva (1997). "The 'Inexhaustible Work of Criticism in Action': Street Theatre of the Left" (PDF). Seagull Theatre Quarterly (16). The Seagull Foundation for the Arts: 2–21.
- ↑ "About Tehrik-e-Niswan". Tehrik-e-Niswan. Retrieved 28 August 2026.
- ↑ Kabeer, Naila (2003). Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies and Development Thought. Verso. pp. 245–248. ISBN 978-1859842522.
- ↑ Nagar, Richa (2002). "Women's Theater and the Redefinitions of Public, Private, and Politics in North India". ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. 1 (1): 55–72. Bibliography cites: Bartholomew, Rati. 1995. "Poetics of the Oppressed: A Case Study of Nijera Kori, Bangladesh." Unpublished manuscript.
- ↑ "Richard Bartholomew Biography". Impart. Retrieved 28 August 2026.
- ↑ "1985 Photo Contest". World Press Photo. Retrieved 28 August 2026.
- ↑ Gupta, Gargi (16 September 2012). "They joined the fight". Business Standard. Retrieved 28 August 2026.
- ↑ "Richard Bartholomew: The Art Critic". Asia Art Archive. Retrieved 29 August 2026.
- ↑ "Meet the Artist: Pablo Bartholomew". India International Centre. Retrieved 29 August 2026.
- ↑ Roy, Aruna (30 October 2021). "To 'Barty', With Love". The Wire. Retrieved 28 August 2026.
- ↑ "Aruna Roy". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 29 August 2026.
Category:1927 births Category:2021 deaths Category:Indian theatre directors Category:Indian theatre educators Category:Indian women theatre directors Category:Academic staff of the University of Delhi Category:People from Kolkata Category:Delhi University alumni Category:Indian street theatre Category:Indian feminists Category:Founders of Indian arts organisations Category:Partition of India refugees
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