Introduction: The Field of Ramlila

This special issue is intended to briefly introduce the field of Ramlila, as a performance practice and as an idea. It is designed to give a taste of its geographic range and a sample of its multiple and diverse manifestations in India and the Indian diaspora. The Introduction briefly discusses the literary sources of Ramlila, its history, chief styles, and emerging trends. It also includes a synopsis of the story of Ram in Ramlila. Following this, a translation of three scenes from the Lav-Kush Ramlila in Old Delhi, with a critical introduction, sheds light on the mounting politicization of Ramlila by the Hindu Right. Two articles, one on Nautanki and one on Ramayan Gaan, illustrate that Ramlila is a form of theatre very much in dialogue with other forms of popular performance in the Hindi belt and along its linguistic borders, narratively, aesthetically, and ideologically. A review-essay of two documentaries and an interview with an expert on Kumaoni Ramlila further demonstrate the diversity of Ramayan-themed performance, despite the continued homogenization and commercialization of Ramlila. An article on a distinctive Ramlila in Trinidad and another in the United States (North Carolina) speak to the global reach of Ramlila, and its important role in "homemaking." Finally, a report on a festival to commemorate a Ramayan-themed dance drama (wayang wong) at Prambanan recalls the Ramayan's early journey from South to Southeast Asia.

Pamela Lothspeich is Associate Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research spans the Hindu epics, modern Indian literature, performance studies, and postcolonial studies. She is the author of Epic Nation: Reimagining the Mahabharata in the Age of Empire (Oxford University Press, 2009). She has been researching Ramlila since 2006, and has observed performances in the state of Uttar Pradesh over seven Ramlila cycles (2006, 2010–2013, 2017, and 2019). She is currently a fellow at the National Humanities Center and completing a book on the Radheshyam Ramayan and the neighborhood Ramlila.

This special issue is intended to briefly introduce the field of Ramlila (Rāmlīlā, the play or sporting of Lord Ram) as a performance practice and as an idea. It is designed to give a taste of its geographic range and a sample of its multiple and diverse manifestations in India and the Indian diaspora. Although some commentators on Ramlila read the term very broadly, merging it with the more expansive idea of Ram-katha (Rām-kathā, storytelling about Ram), for the purposes of this special issue, I am framing it as a mode of intentional performance that places human agents in the roles of figures from the Ramayan, on temporary or fixed stages with a "picture-box" opening, and/or in the round, in natural and built environments. The performers in Ramlila most often declaim dialogue and act out the story, but sometimes also narrate and sing it.

Central to the way most Ramlila-premīs ("lovers" or fans of Ramlila) think of the form is its inextricable link to poet-saint Tulsidas's circa-1574 version of the story, the Rāmcaritmānas (literally, "the [sacred] lake of the deeds of Ram"), the most popular and beloved textual source in the Hindi-speaking regions. Indeed, the most common mode of presentation of Ramlila alternates solo singing from the Rāmcaritmānas, generally by a priest-vyās (singer/symbolic director) playing the harmonium, with dramatic enactment and spoken-word dialogue in the vernacular on a simple, outdoor proscenium, in a series of

Figure 1.

The heads of Ravan (left) and Meghnad (right) for effigies, still under construction, at the Ramlila Ground Linepar, in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, 15 October 2010. (Photo by the author)

performances spread over ten to fifteen evenings. Attendance is massive. I would conservatively estimate that in India, at least ten million people watch some portion of a Ramlila performance on each of the last ten days of the annual festival, with audiences surging over 100,000 for the finale on the last day at many venues. This calculation is based on my observations and interviews over more than a decade in Uttar Pradesh, where I have calculated that there is approximately one Ramlila per 150,000–200,000 people, an estimate I believe holds in both urban and rural contexts. But we should keep in mind that Ramlila audiences are fluid. Each day brings a different mix of people to the grounds, and audiences roam freely, moving in and out of performances.

Beyond these general statements, my working definition of Ramlila requires some qualification, beginning with its textual basis. Despite the insistence of many Ramlila artists and spectators that the Rāmcaritmānas by Tulsidas is the literary and ideological basis of performances, in my experience, that connection is overstated and becoming more tenuous with each passing generation. Ramlila scripts and songs rarely track the words in Tulsidas's text verbatim, even in translation into modern standard Hindi, and in any case, the vast majority of Ramlilas are plotted around locally produced scripts, which are often hybrid in terms of their sources and excerpted material, or "remembered" scripts not committed to writing. Oftentimes, they reflect multiple literary, cinematic, and oral versions of the Ramayan. Whereas the Rāmcaritmānas is composed in literary Avadhi, a precursor to modern Hindi, most dialogues spoken on Ramlila stages are in Hindi, Hindi-Urdu, or one of the many related dialects on the fringes of the "Hindi belt," a region that stretches roughly from Rajasthan to Bihar on the west-east plane, and from Himachal Pradesh to Madhya Pradesh on the north-south plane. For all intents and purposes, the geographic home of Ramlila is coterminous with the Hindi belt in India and parts of bordering Nepal, possibly Sita's homeland. Ramlila is generally strongest where Hindi is the mother tongue of the majority. The densely populated state of Uttar Pradesh is its beating heart (see Fig. 2). Ayodhya, where Ram is said to have been born, is the name of an actual town in Uttar Pradesh. So is Varanasi (also known as Banaras and Kashi), where Tulsidas is thought to have written much of his Ramayan, and where Ramlila may have begun.

The story of Ram is told in Valmiki's classical version of the Ramayan in Sanskrit (circa fourth century, bce), but there are many more versions, both oral and textual, spanning two millennia. Besides Valmiki's text, among the most historically impactful literary tellings of the story of Ram in North India where Ramlila is prevalent include

Figure 2.

Map of the state of Uttar Pradesh. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Uttar+Pradesh,+India/@27.0696732,76.3891259,6z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x39994e9f7b4a09d3:0xf6a5476d3617249d!8m2!3d26.8467088!4d80.9461592 (Image courtesy of Google Maps)

Bhavabhuti's eighth-century play in Sanskrit, Uttararāmacarita, which sympathetically reworks Valmiki's conclusion to the story; the fifteenthcentury poem in Sanskrit, Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa, which gives the story a mystical, Vedantic interpretation, that is, that of a particular philosophical school; Krittibas's fifteenth-century poem in Middle Bangla (Bengali), Srīrāmpāñcālī, and Tulsidas's sixteenth-century poem in Avadhi, the Rāmcaritmānas, which both inject new devotional meanings into the story; Keshavdas's sixteenth- or seventeenth-century poem in Braj Bhasha, Rāmcandrikā, a poetically "ornamented" abridgement; and Radheshyam Kathavachak's twentieth-century poem in Hindi-Urdu, Rāmāyaṇ, commonly known as the Radheshyam Ramayan (Kathavachak and Sharmma [1908–1924] 1959–1960), a "novelistic" adaptation with a modern sensibility. Newer Ramayans encompass electronic and print sources, including TV serials, films, and novels, including graphic novels. All of these and, of course, oral storytelling, have fed into the story of Ram in Ramlila, with more recent sources being especially relevant. The impact of Ramanand Sagar's 78-episode television serial, Ramayan (Sagar 1987–1988), the most popular cinematic adaptation of all time, is apparent in many Ramlilas—particularly in their costuming, props, stage setups, and blocking. Its songs and background score can frequently be heard emanating from Ramlila stages. But then Sagar himself was deeply influenced by the conventions and style of popular visual art, music, and theatre, so there has been much cross-fertilization of forms.

Although Ramlila is closely associated with Tulsidas and the Hindi-speaking regions of India, it is not limited to any one nation or any one language, and there is no accepted date for when Ramlila was "invented." Many oral accounts posit that it was started in Varanasi by Tulsidas himself or perhaps his contemporary Megha Bhagat. The oldest Ramlilas are generally accepted to be in Varanasi-Ramnagar, but even these are only documented from the early nineteenth century (Lutgendorf 1991: 254–267; Schechner 2015: 114–120), and there is anecdotal evidence that there are other very old Ramlilas at places like Ayodhya, Prayagraj (Allahabad), and Old Delhi. In sum, we know very little about the early history of Ramlila.

Looking at the broad sweep of known Ramlila history, I believe there have been three important moments: ∼1820–1890 when many ritually oriented, field-based Ramlilas were established, not entirely derivative of, but stylistically in conversation with the Ramnagar Ramlila; ∼1935–1970 when a "Ramlila renaissance" saw an explosion of new, "realistic" Ramlilas inclined toward mimetic theatre and performed on outdoor proscenium stages; and ∼1990–2005 when there was a brief resurgence of interest in Ramlila, thanks to the profound impact of Sagar's serial and other TV "mythologicals" in its wake.

The character of Ramlila is continually changing. In many ways, Ramlila, now more than ever, blurs the useful but porous distinction between modern urban theatre and "traditional" or "folk" theatre. Ramlila purists may decry the move away from "tradition" in recent decades, but many of the changes afoot in Ramlila communities, especially amateur ones that are the lifeblood of Ramlila, are ones that many would praise as socially progressive. The most seismic shift I have noted in the past three decades is the opening up of Ramlila associations and casts to a much wider community of artists, organizers, and stakeholders. On the community level, this has meant that those from historically marginalized groups, particularly with respect to caste, class, and gender, have increasingly found Ramlila a welcoming medium, one where they more easily find roles and other opportunities for creative expression, often initially through invitations by family members and friends already involved in their local Ramlila. Since I began my Ramlila research in 2006 in Uttar Pradesh, I have seen powerful evidence of this. In the last two decades, for instance, two small amateur Ramlilas in the Cantonment (Cantt) area of Bareilly have gradually brought in more cisgender female actors, and in the nearby city of Shahjahanpur, the same thing happened even earlier. There, they have been performing in its two major Ramlilas, both amateur ones, since the 1990s, and in this, Sagar was clearly a factor. The number of cis female actors at the Ordnance [sic] Clothing Factory Ramlila in Shahjahanpur has grown from six in 1990 to twenty in 2019, and there has been a similar trend across town at the Khirni Bagh Ramlila, reorganized by a splinter group from the "Factory" Ramlila in 1995. In Almora in the mountainous state of Uttarakhand, the site of an important regional style of Ramlila, cis female actors started performing in the 1970s and 1980s, as I discuss in my interview with Himanshu Joshi in this issue.

In October 2019, on my most recent visit to the stage of the Subhashnagar Ramlila, the largest amateur one in Bareilly (my research base), I was surprised to hear some organizers talk of their desire to bring cis female actors into the production the following year, something they had previously said was not possible due to the māhaul (environment) of the Ramlila. Part of the reason for their change of heart may have been that on 2 December 2018, Subhashnagar's amateur Ramlila group had staged a very successful rendition of the scene "Dhanus. yajña" (The Bow Ritual), with a cast that included four cis female actors, at a celebration of hometown author Radheshyam Kathavachak (1890–1963), organized by Bareilly's then District Magistrate V.K. Singh. The Subhashnagar team even won first prize in a competition among twelve teams. This example suggests there is a growing sense among amateur Ramlila groups that professionalism in theatre demands that they bring cisgender women into their casts. But there is more to this story. This is also the first year I have heard Ramlila organizers anywhere say that some young male actors are now starting to find performing as women distasteful and are refusing female roles, suggesting the global circulation of Western gender norms.

Social station, as accorded by caste and socioeconomic class, is another marker that is increasingly breaking down in terms of who assigns and who receives roles, and amateurs more than professionals deserve credit for this. Artists in their local communities are the ones in the vanguard of socially leveling the performance playing field in Ramlila. Among the most elite professional troupes that perform in Delhi and other major cities, there are generally no social prescriptions about who can perform in Ramlila. But among the great majority of professional troupes that perform all over the Hindi belt, traditional caste and gender norms related to Ramlila are still largely in place. The troupes themselves are predominantly male and brahmin/high-caste, at least from what I have seen in Uttar Pradesh. By contrast, rare are the amateur Ramlila communities that still insist on placing brahmins in the roles of the divine leads or svarūps. At a few amateur performances I have heard the explanation, "We have to place brahmins in the roles of the svarūps so that everyone can touch their feet," and some organizers do tend to place upper-caste men in divine roles, but overall, old caste prescriptions are breaking down quickly, especially in amateur performances. Non-Hindus have also become more prevalent in Ramlilas, a subject I touch on below.

Ramlila's New Center of Gravity

In the late 1970s, Richard Schechner and Linda Hess were largely responsible for initiating a wave of scholarly interest in the Ramlilas of Ramnagar (and Varanasi) (Schechner and Hess 1977; Hess 1983; Schechner 1985, 1993, 2015; Bonnemaison and Macy 1990; Kapur 1990; Sax 1990; Swann 1990; Lutgendorf 1991; Kumar 1992; Pandey 1993; Parkhill 1993; Mehta 2011, 2015; Rani 2011; Singh 2016). Before the 1980s, there were just a few now classic works on Ramlila generally (Gargi 1966; Hein 1972; Suresh Awasthi 1974; and Induja Awasthi 1979a, 1979b, 1980). All of these have scholars contributed immensely to our knowledge of the history and culture of Ramlila. Thus, those schooled in the former body of scholarship may be surprised to learn that there is no article in this issue on the month-long Ramnagar Ramlila.

To explain this, I must first give some background on this most famous of Ramlilas. The royal house of Banaras (Varanasi) developed the Ramlila at Ramnagar, on the opposite bank of the Ganga (Ganges) River, originally under Raja Udit Narayan Singh (r. 1795–1835), and then Maharaja Ishwariprasad Narayan Singh (r. 1835–1889). With the help of advisers, they spread the performance over several square miles of local geography, concentrated at a series of sites (sthals) in natural and built environments—fields, streets, water tanks, ponds, temples and temple courtyards, etc. (Kapur 1990:5–6, 11–12; Lutgendorf 1991: 264–265; Mehta 2015: 16; Schechner 2015: 94–96). The learned "Kashthjivha Swami" (Wooden-tongued Swami, died c. 1855) and others composed songs and the famous writer Bharatendu Harishchandra (1850–1885) wrote dialogues (saṃvāds) for the performance in modern Avadhi, an early step toward the modernization and nationalization of Ramlila (Lutgendorf 1991: 266–267; Dalmia 1997: 82, 130; Schechner 2015: 82, 116). In performance today, some of the original songs are still in place (Lutgendorf 1991, 146–147), but the chief pattern alternates choral chanting of the Rāmcaritmānas by twelve brahmin pandits known as Rāmāyaṇīs (specialists in Ramayan recitation) and dialogues spoken by actors with a lilting, dramatic cadence (Kapur 1990: 6).¹

The Ramnagar Ramlila is extraordinary for its scale and grandeur, but I would say that it has received outsize attention, largely because of an academic precedent established by scholars drawn, understandably, to its mythic pageantry and esteemed reputation. This is in line with a broader post-1960s trend of western scholars, the present author included, being especially focused on "traditional" or "folk" styles of theatre, at the expense of India's modern urban theatre (Dharwadker 2005: 127–161). By "outsize," I mean to suggest that the attention paid to the Ramnagar Ramlila is not relative to its audience size, which I would estimate to be in the low tens of thousands on most days—about the same as at many major urban Ramlilas. Even more importantly, the Ramnagar Ramlila is not representative of the way in which the vast majority of Ramlilas are performed and therefore experienced. The character of Ramlila overall has changed immensely since the early nineteenth century, and this is not reflected in the performance at Ramnagar, which I would call "preservationist" in the sense that it attempts to adhere to nineteenth century conventions of tableau-style devotional theatre, as many of the scholars cited above have observed. Organizers there pride themselves on what they consider the changeless character of their Ramlila, although they have made some accommodations such as a few electric lights on the battlefield, and have allowed some encroachment and development at the Ramlila sites (Schechner 2015: 105–114).

More than the outward presentation of the performance, however, I would say it is people's inner sensibilities and perceptions that have changed the most since the Ramlila's founding. This is suggested by what one local scholar, Dharmendra Yadav, told me about the politics of labor and social hegemony at Ramnagar:

When you talk to ordinary people from lower caste groups like Yadavs, Lohars, Prajapatis, Patels (Kurmis) in the audience at the Ramnagar Ramlila, they say things, like "When I watch Ramlila, I revere the mukuṭ (the crown), not the brahmins who play Ram and other characters (pātras). … But in the Ramlila fair (melā) as well as in the Ramnagar market in daily life, you'll see people touching the feet of the brahmin performers and giving them sweets as gifts. They'll even do this for the monkey king Sugriv, but never for the monkeys Nal and Nil, who are of the OBC ("Other Backward Class," a government designation) Prajapati caste. The tribals Guha and Shabri are brahmin, but the boatman Kevat is Mallah (OBC). No one touches Kevat's feet either.

(Yadav 2019)

Since the 1990s, I would say Ramlila's center of gravity has shifted away from Ramnagar on the eastern side of Uttar Pradesh, to the nation's capital, Delhi, on the western border of the state, and it has taken on more of the character of a national performance genre. At the same time, Ramlila, as an art form, has undergone considerable homogenization and commercialization, and lost some of its earlier support, in ways that have sidelined and imperiled the social capital and livelihoods of the many artists who perform on stages and create the literary, musical, and visual works of art that are on display in Ramlila. These include actors, musicians, singers, songwriters, scriptwriters, backdrop painters, effigy makers, tailors, prop and mask artisans, weavers, and embroiderers, to name a few. (See Fig. 1 for examples of effigies under construction.) This is a fact affectively touched upon by many of the contributors to this issue, especially those writing from and/or about India. This speaks to the scope and the hurt of the problem.

Delhi is now the new "capital" of Ramlila in post-liberalized, that is, post-1990s India. Some of the indoor stages in Delhi package Ramlila as national culture in exquisite productions featuring classical and semi-classical dance and music, like the "flagship production" Shri Ram at the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra that dates to 1957 and runs for a full month each year, with repeat, daily performances. The production at the Parvatiya Kala Kendra (PKK), by contrast, retains a regional Ramlila flavor, that of the Kumaon region, and is discussed by Himanshu Joshi in this issue. In fact, two contributors to this issue, Devendra Sharma and Joshi, performed together as Ram and Lakshman respectively for several years at the PKK (see Fig. 3). In my interview with him, Joshi discusses the operatic style of Kumaoni Ramlila, a hybrid one that reveals traces of musical influence from many places in India, as well as the cosmopolitan flourishes of Uday Shankar (1900–1977), a renowned dancer and artist.

On the elite stages of Delhi and other major cities, there is much innovative and experimental Ramlila theatre. Some of these new urban Ramlilas actively reimagine the form, giving contemporary insights and interpretations. One recent production had an all-female cast, and many have casts where gender, religion, and social station are no bar.² In Bareilly, a medium-sized city half a day's journey from Delhi, a community-theatre group, Rang Vinayak Rangmandal, has been staging a two-hour Ramayan performance in a modernist style on an indoor stage for the last two years. But even many "ordinary" Ramlilas, like the Factory Ramlila in Shahjahanpur, show the influence of India's modern urban theatre.

It is on the big outdoor stages of Delhi, however, not on sophisticated indoor stages that the most resources are spent, and the

Figure 3.

The cast of the Ramlila production at the Parvatiya Kala Kendra, circa 2001, with Devendra Sharma as Ram (fifth from left), and Himanshu Joshi as Lakshman (third from right). (Photo courtesy of Devendra Sharma)

most famous actors and politicians make appearances—signalling how Ramlila has become politicized at major venues in the nation's capital. Given the newfound national prominence of Delhi's major Ramlilas, it is appropriate that Radhica Ganapathy's translation of three scenes from Old Delhi's Lav-Kush Ramlila sits at the top of this issue. Established in 1979, the Lav-Kush Ramlila is one of four large Ramlila productions staged within or near the seventeenth-century Lal Qila (Red Fort) complex in Old Delhi.

In the introduction to her translation, Ganapathy relates how watching the Lav-Kush Ramlila is deeply personal and affective for her, because it evokes memories of Sagar's television serial, Ramayan, and all of the excitement and public discourse it engendered when it first aired on the state-run Doordarshan channel in the late 1980s. She details how the performance recalls Sagar's historic serial, particularly in its sets, costuming, diction, and melodrama. Sagar himself claims to have drawn on various literary sources but as Ganapathy suggests, it is now his version of the Ramayan that has become canonical and authoritative in the minds of many.

Although it was not easily discernible in all the excitement when the TV serial first came out, in hindsight it is clear that the serial was a boon to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Hindu Right generally. Attuning us to the politics of the serial and the politicization of the Lav-Kush production, Ganapathy describes how India's rightwing Prime Minister, Narendra Modi (BJP), appeared at the 2018 performance and positioned himself as Ram, releasing the arrow that symbolically set the effigies of Ravan and his kinsmen ablaze. Modi's gesture was as though a snub to India's approximately two hundred million Muslims, given that the political spectacle took place on the grounds of a UNESCO World Heritage site, Red Fort, built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in the seventeenth century. As Ganapathy suggests, the tableau of Modi was also déjà vu, conjuring images of the then president of the BJP, L.K. Advani on his Rām rath yātrā (Ram's Chariot Journey), across North India in September–October 1990, urging Hindus to take up the call to reclaim the alleged site of Ram's birth in Ayodhya. Responding to that call on 6 December 1992, a group of Hindus demolished the mosque known as Babri Masjid, built by the first Mughal emperor in the sixteenth century, leading to much violence and bloodshed.³

What Ganapathy deftly shows is how we have come full circle with Sagar's serial, the BJP, and Ramlila. As she explains, three leading actors in the serial subsequently joined the BJP; meanwhile, on the Lav-Kush stage, movie stars have recently displaced actors who specialize in Ramlila, and star politicians regularly show up as VIP guests, and occasionally, even as actors (The New India Express 2019).⁴ In my own research I have seen how local politicians, dignitaries, and wealthy businessmen often show up at Ramlilas, especially on the exciting last days of the war, to partake of the performance, give speeches, and sometimes help distribute awards to amateur actors and community members. I saw the crowd part, for instance, when Member of Parliament Menaka Gandhi (BJP), Indira Gandhi's daughter-in-law, briefly visited the massive rural Ramlila in Bisalpur, Uttar Pradesh, on the day Ravan was slain, 2 October 2017. Although politicians may step up such visits in election years, in the same way that politicians in this country make the rounds of high-profile churches in the lead up to elections, they primarily visit Ramlilas as goodwill gestures to the community. However, Modi and the BJP have taken this to a new level and politicized Ramlila in an increasingly exclusionary way.⁵

Ganapathy's translations are of three key scenes in the Ramayan and Ramlila, which she has titled "Ram's Exile," "Shurpnakha's Humiliation," and "Hanuman Fetches the Sanjivani Herb to Save Lakshman." Ganapathy includes translations from both the 2016 and 2018 productions to give us a window into how, even in the span of two years, this extravagant Ramlila is quickly changing. For example, she explains how, in 2016, Sofia Hayat, an English actor of South-Asian heritage, invoked the Bollywood trope of the westernized vamp with her accented Hindi and hypersexualized persona, in her role as Beautiful Shurpnakha. This calls to mind Bollywood actor Helen [Anne Richardson Khan] (born 1938) who was typecast in such roles throughout much of her acting career. Ganapathy's translations of this scene also reminds us of how gender performance typically works in Ramlila. As in the Lav-Kush production, in most productions two different actors play the disguised Beautiful Shurpnakha and the "real" Demonic Shurpnakha, to create a dramatic contrast. Usually these roles are played by cisgender men, but sometimes by transgender women and transfeminine people, especially in the case of Beautiful Shurpnakha (and other female roles), since Ramlila audiences are generally averse to seeing cisgender women in highly sexualized and "barbaric" roles. In fact, I have only heard of one Ramlila outside of Delhi, the Factory Ramlila in Shahjahanpur, placing cis women in the role of Beautiful Shurpnakha, and that too only since 2018. Placing them in the role of Demonic Shurpnakha is almost unheard of. In 2011, the director of the Khirni Bagh Ramlila in the same city, Krishnamohan Sharma, told me that one year, in 1995, they tried putting a lady in the role of [Beautiful] Shurpnakha, but the public wouldn't accept it. They didn't like it. It was a flop, he said, and afterwards people were criticizing it (Sharma 2011).

Ramlila, On the Theatrical Margins

One of the main premises of this issue is that Ramlila is a form of theatre that is very much in dialogue with other forms of popular performance in the Hindi belt and along its linguistic borders, like the mostly secular theatre of Nautanki (nauṭaṅkī) and the devotional theatre dedicated to Lord Krishna, Raslila (rāslīlā), as well as India's modern urban theatre and TV/film media. These forms are all different, of course, but they have related vernacular idioms, story archives, sociocultural worldviews, and knowledge systems. It used to be quite common for multiple forms of theatre to be staged together and over a longer period of time during the fall festival season. Even now one can often catch scenes of Raslila staged by professional troupes in between Ramlila performances or right after Dussehra. As scholar Anil Mishra, one of my main Ramlila interlocutors in Bareilly, told me, "When I was a child in the 1980s, dramas, some in the Parsi style, were constantly being staged, right from Krishna Janmashtami (Krishna's birthday) all the way through Diwali (the festival of lights)—from August to November. Now it's just around the time of Ramlila. And there used to be more live singing" (Mishra 2019). It also used to be more common for Ramlila itself to be staged at other times of the year besides Dussehra.

Two of the articles in this issue illustrate some of the theatrical overlap between Ramlila and related forms. The first, "'Ramayan Gaan' or Singing the Ramayan in West Bengal, Assam, and Bangladesh," by Tutun Mukherjee and Saymon Zakaria, is about a style of Bengali theatre similar to Ramlila. However, as the authors suggest, Ramayan Gaan performances, whether amateur or professional, provide more intimate and visually understated theatrical experiences than Ramlila, with narrators conversing directly with audiences, and singers and instrumentalists providing emotional musical accompaniment.

Mukherjee and Zakaria also give insight into how the festival of Navaratri ("nine nights") has deep significance to Bengalis in the Indian states of West Bengal and Assam and in Bangladesh (see Fig. 2). As they explain, in Bangladesh, Muslims are instrumental to Ramayan Gaan as both performers and spectators. They also suggest that while Bengalis primarily associate Navaratri with Goddess Durga and the festival of Durga Puja, those in the Hindi-speaking regions often associate it with Ram and the theatre of Ramlila, which corresponds to geographic patterns of devotionalism. But then too, Ramlilas often incorporate moments of public worship of live Durga(s), stationed in tableau on stage. Even when the story of Ram is enacted in the Bengali speaking regions, Mukherjee and Zakaria show, it typically intertwines elements of both streams of devotion, with Ram himself invoking the Goddess during the war. Following narrative lines in Krittibas's Ramayan, Sita is said to be the child of Ravan, and is so formidable, she is able to transmute into the ferocious goddess Bhadra Kali and singlehandedly defeat a second, more dreadful form of Ravan—one with not ten, but a thousand heads.

What I have observed in Uttar Pradesh and heard among Ramlila enthusiasts is that especially since the turn of the twenty-first century, the festival of Durga Puja has become more and more popular across the Hindi belt, as a wave of Durga devotion has rolled west from greater Bengal.⁶ This follows a longstanding trend of increased Navaratri/Durga Puja celebrations nationally (Simmons et al. 2018). I thought of this on Dussehra, also known as Vijayadashami, the momentous conclusion to Navaratri, this past year in Varanasi when I saw a number of women in Bengali-style white saris with red borders dancing in the streets, their faces smeared with red sindūr (vermillion powder), a sign of wifehood and blessedness, and many elaborate paṇḍāls (temporary covered shrines) dedicated to Durga. One of the great appeals of Durga Puja, as Mukherjee and Zakaria suggest, is that it celebrates the goddess's return to her parental home with her children, an emotional event that many women can relate to.

Even on the western side of Uttar Pradesh, I have seen an uptick in goddess celebrations and rituals, including those known as Devī or Mātā kī jāgaran. (The Goddess's or Mother's vigil), and Devī or Mātā kī caukī (The Goddess's or Mother's platform-altar). Atul Sharma, who played Ram at the Subhashnagar Ramlila in his youth and now works as a priest in Bareilly, told me the first two have become especially popular at the time of Navaratri (Sharma 2013). I have also seen, in recent years, more jhāṅkī (tableau)-style dance routines in which performers impersonate, often to dazzling effect, various Hindu deities. Filled with much song, dance, and merriment, neighborhood jāgaraṇs and jhāṅkīs are often participatory and inclusive public events led by inspired citizens, in temples, streets, and other public spaces. This follows what I see as a broader trend in popular Hinduism—DIY and public forms of worship led by laypeople of various backgrounds and stations, often without the intercession of brahmin priests. This trend toward the democratization of Hindu traditions reflects profound, broad-based social change, and moves out from an earlier shift in the late nineteenth century, which Vasudha Dalmia calls "the nationalization of Hindu traditions" in her study of Bharatendu Harishchandra and the culture of Varanasi in that period (Dalmia 1997).

The second article about Ramlila and related forms is Devendra Sharma's "Community, Artistry, and Storytelling in the Cultural Confluence of Nautanki and Ramlila." Here Sharma brings us inside the theatrical realms of Nautanki, Ramlila, and Raslila in which he grew up, along the border of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. He describes some of the narratives and styles of these forms, especially the operatic form Nautanki and its devotional subgenre Bhagat (bhagat), showing how the latter, in particular, has affinities with Ramlila. This latter point he draws out through a close reading of the Bhagat Sundar kathā (The Beautiful Story, 2008), written by his father Ram Dayal Sharma, and the parallel scene in the Radheshyam Ramayan, a popular sourcebook for Ramlila scripts. One of his chief points is that Nautanki generally evinces a broader narrative repertoire and greater poetic sophistication than Ramlila. In his concluding segment, "Reminisces with My Father, a Nautanki Master Artist," Sharma and his father give us more oral history and insights about the interconnected histories and intertextuality of Nautanki and Ramlila. For example, the senior Sharma discusses the ways in which professional troupes have worked in and across the two traditions, despite the increasing commercialization of both forms and the decline of Nautanki especially in recent decades.

Some of the main points Devendra Sharma focuses on are ones I have seen in my own observations of Ramlila: the way some professional troupes perform in multiple genres, the coordination and cooperation between neighborhood Ramlila associations and professional troupes, the great sociality and fun afforded by Ramlila, the important role senior actors play in mentoring young actors and transmitting cultural knowledge, and the frequent use of dialogues from the Radheshyam Ramayan.⁷ To give an example of the warm relationship that often exists between Ramlila associations and professional troupes, I have seen how organizers of the Subhashnagar Ramlila annually invite the same troupe from Mathura district to do a three-day Raslila following their main production. Although the event is quite small—only one or two hundred people usually attend—members of the committee host the eight to ten actors whose troupe has been coming to Bareilly for the last forty-five years, though not always performing on the Subhashnagar stage. As the troupe headed back to their lodging after their first night's performance in 2019, I heard the following friendly exchange between the head of the Raslila troupe and his amiable host, a senior Ramlila actor and organizer:

"Ram is indeed purushottam, the ideal man. He abides by maryādā (the bounds of society).

"Yes, and Krishna breaks maryādā. We see that in Raslila."

"Right, that's fine and good for Krishna, but we have to follow Ram's example."

This exchange transpired with knowing smiles, deep respect for both theatrical traditions, and of course, loving devotion for both of Vishnu's avatārs (incarnations).

The Diversity of Ramayan-Themed Performance, on Film

Enlightening in different ways is Rustom Bharucha's review essay on two documentaries—Molly Kaushal's Leela of Kheriya, about a Ramlila in Kheria, a village near Agra, and Shankhajeet De's In the Shadow of Time (2016), about the shadow-puppet tradition Ravana Chhaya (Rāvaṇ chāyā) in state of Odisha (Orissa) (IGNCA 2019). These two films and others produced by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in Delhi—along with conferences, workshops, exhibitions, and books—are all part of its sustained effort to document and educate about Ramlila in all of its diversity, and other regional forms of oral storytelling, performance, literature, and visual art. Tying into ideas Mukherjee and Zakaria present in their article, Bharucha's review-essay on these two illuminating documentaries destabilizes the notion that Ramlila is an exclusively Hindu practice, and that storytelling about Ram is based chiefly in the Hindi belt. De's film also reminds us that shadow puppetry relating to the Ramayan and Mahabharata has been prevalent in regions of India for centuries, although many westerners tend to associate it exclusively with Indonesia's wayang kulit tradition.

More critically, as Bharucha relates, both documentaries show it is the intersectionally marginalized subaltern artists who perform in Ramlila and Ravana Chhaya in rural contexts who have been most hurt by the crushing wheel of neoliberalism and commercialism. This especially comes out in his discussion of In the Shadow of Time. The strengths of both films, Bharucha shows, are that they bring out the human dimensions and the personal losses of highly skilled artists with a passion to create and perform, ones who have yet been subject to exploitation, cultural theft, and cultural appropriation by questionably well-meaning metropolitan agents and organizations. This Bharucha conveys for us through highly descriptive and lyrical prose, and with a keen eye toward social complexities.

I pause here to note that I see much common conceptual ground in Kaushal's film and my own Ramlila research. As Bharucha movingly notes, the Kheria Ramlila, with its active Muslim participation, is a powerful expression of communal harmony, and perhaps also a coping mechanism against the larger sociopolitical backdrop of communal tensions, violence, and poverty. The film also highlights how neighborhood productions are grounded in local social networks and close inter-generational friendships. This latter point is one I have clearly seen in neighborhood productions which, I should add, often demonstrate more creative energy and artistic originality than many "professional" ones. I have also seen that there is much more non-Hindu participation in Ramlilas than is often recognized.

I have observed, for example, one Ramlila in Bakshi Ka Talab, on the northern outskirts of the state capital of Lucknow, that like the Kheria Ramlila, is the result of a friendly collaboration between Hindus and Muslims, and a strong gesture of communal harmony. As in Kheria, here too Muslims are placed in leading roles by design. This Ramlila was founded in 1972 by two friends, Muzaffar Hussain Khan and Maikul Yadav, and some of their descendants are still involved in the Ramlila.⁸ About half of the cast and organizing committee, including the director, are Muslim. Explaining his support for the Ramlila, Shahzad Ahmad Khan, the son of one of the founders, told me, "If we [Muslims] do pūjā (Hindu worship) and put on a ṭīkā (Hindu sectarian mark), what is the harm? Orthodox people, the hardliners, say that such things

Figure 4.

The horse fair at the Ramlila in Nawab Ganj, Uttar Pradesh, 23 October 2012. An effigy of Ravan can be seen in the background. (Photo by the author)

break our religion, but we don't agree with that" (Khan 2013). Also like the Kheria Ramlila, this one has understandably garnered considerable outside attention, in the form of awards and media coverage. Notably, I have never seen as many politicians giving speeches at a Ramlila as I have at Bakshi Ka Talab's.

Beyond this exceptional example, I have also seen a small but significant number of religious minorities including Sikhs, Christians, and Muslims as actors and musicians at a number of neighborhood Ramlilas. Some are highly respected leaders and directors. Significantly, these non-Hindu performers have entered amateur Ramlila stages gradually and organically, in a way they have not in many professional troupes. At the gender-diverse Factory Ramlila in Shahjahanpur, for example, there are several non-Hindu performers and organizers who came into the Ramlila without fanfare. For instance, Patrick Das who is Christian, and Arshad Azad who is Muslim, have been active there since 1990 and 1997 respectively, performing in major roles such as Dashrath, Ravan-in-disguise, and Meghnad (Das), and Parashuram and Vibhishan (Azad). They have also taken on leadership roles. As they explain it, they are not involved in Ramlila for religious reasons, but simply for the love of theatre and the sheer fun of it. In 2013, Azad told me, "First of all, I am an actor and I want to act—in any role. It's my passion (śauq). But there's also a message I want to convey to other Muslims—you won't turn into a Hindu just by getting involved in Ramlila." He went on to cite the example of the famous Muslim film star, Dilip Kumar (born 1922), who changed his name to a Hindu one and has mostly played Hindu roles. "If people don't object to him," he said, "why should they object to me?" (Azad 2013). Likewise, one of the most popular actors at the Subhashnagar Ramlila in Bareilly is Rajendra Singh Taneja, a Sikh who has been a regular fixture in the Ramlila since 1990, playing many roles, including Parashuram, Kevat, Ravan-in-disguise, and Jambavan. Like Das, he has served as a director, and his two sons have also played roles like those of Bharat and Shatrughna. Taneja, whose wife is Hindu, reports that he sees no conflict between his Sikh faith and performing in Ramlila: "Look, Ram's name is mentioned 1,001 times in our gurvāṇī (or gurbāṇī, Sikh scriptures), so where is the conflict?" (Taneja 2013).⁹

It is likely that religious minorities, including Muslims, have always been involved in Ramlila, working behind the scenes providing much needed logistical support, labor, and material products, as both Bharucha and Joshi relate in this issue. Many Muslims also come into Ramlila as vendors, and of course, as spectators. The business traditionally conducted at many Ramlila fairs cuts across religious lines. In my own Ramlila research, I have seen the greatest number of Muslims at the rural Ramlila in Nawab Ganj, Uttar Pradesh. At this venue, there is a huge horse market that runs concurrently with the Ramlila, reminding us that at rural venues especially, seasonal commerce and celebrations often go hand-in-hand (see Fig. 4).

The Global Reach of Ramlila

It is likely that some 1,500 years before Tulsidas composed his Rāmcaritmānas, Indian travelers introduced the Ramayan and Mahabharat to Southeast Asia where they were embraced and incorporated them into new forms of performance. In light of this cultural link between South and Southeast Asia, this issue concludes with the report, "Indonesian Ramayana Festival at Prambanan (2012)," by I Nyoman Sedana and Kathy Foley. This report describes the commemorative performance event that was held in 2012 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the statesponsored Ramayan ballet in the performance genre known as wayang wong, at a UNESCO world heritage site. As their report makes abundantly clear, the Ramayan is part and parcel of Indonesia's cultural life, though primarily in a secular capacity. Here, dancers perform highlights of the story in the courtly style of wayang wong, which has human agents kinetically effect the graceful and energetic movements of shadow puppets in wayang kulit. The report also explains how the Ramayan ballet at Prambanan has helped stimulate greater interest in the Ramayan across the Indonesian archipelago, even though the country has historically been more drawn to the Mahabharat than the Ramayan.

Turning next to David Mason's article, "Ritual and Theatrical Performance in Ramdilla," we move to the Caribbean. After the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in the early nineteenth century, an estimated 500,000 Indians were brought to the Caribbean to work on European-owned plantations, especially sugar plantations, in a system of indentured servitude. Many Indians went to Trinidad, Guyana, and Suriname, and about two thirds ultimately stayed in the Caribbean after their contracts expired (Roopnarine 2017). Writing of what she terms the "afterlife of indenture," Nalini Mohabir says that the effects of indenture outlived its formal end in 1917: "… Indians remained tied to the planation generations after the end of indentureship; the long-term communal experience of residing on the sugar estate and being dependent on it for subsistence fueled the formation of an Indo-Caribbean identity" (Mohabir 2017: 82).

Many Indian indentured laborers were from the eastern side of the Hindi belt, which today is home to many professional Ramlila troupes, and spoke Hindi or one its related dialects. Conversant with the language of Tulsidas's Rāmcaritmānas, some managed to bring copies of the text with them to the Caribbean (Richman 2010: 78–79).¹⁰ Although we lack documentation prior to the 1880s (Richman 2010: 78), we can imagine that Hindu indentured laborers in the Caribbean recited and on occasion performed the text, as they had in India. As Mason vividly explains, there is still an active Ramlila culture in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, where it is played on an open field. Only now the performance is carried out in the medium of English, reinforcing the idea that Ramlila is not dependent on Hindi.

With a focus on the Ramdilla (Ramlila) organized by the Hindu organization, the Hindu Prachar Kendra, Mason effectively illustrates how the performance continues to knit together the Hindu community and provide them with a powerful sense of home. He also makes an important point that has applicability in the Indian context as well, namely, that Ramdilla/Ramlila cannot be reduced to either theatre or ritual; both, he argues, are more or less entangled in the same performance. Mason also explains that this Trinidadian Ramdilla comments on contemporary politics and society, and even incorporates elements of pop culture, not unlike what happens in Indonesia's wayang forms. Finally, Mason shows that children are instrumental to the vitality of Ramdilla in Trinidad, and this is exactly so with amateur productions in India, where stages are often filled with neighborhood boys playing sainiks (soldiers) in the monkey and demon armies, and other small roles. The Muslim movie star Shah Rukh Khan has even reported playing a foot soldier in the monkey army, as a child in Delhi (Letterman 2019).

In the Caribbean context, as Mason relates, some of the terminology is different; we have "Ramdilla" in place of "Ramlila," and "grong" instead of maidān (ground or field). Yet as I scan Mason's photographs of Ramdilla, I cannot help but be reminded of certain Ramlila places and moments I have witnessed in India, particularly at venues that keep to the older, nineteenth-century style of presentation on an open field, as at Pilibhit, Bisalpur, and Kasganj in Uttar Pradesh (see Figs. 5 and 6).¹¹ At these sites, the fields are fitted with pavilions meant to serve, chiefly, as (1) Ram's camp during the war; (2) Sita's forest prison in the aśok vāṭikā (grove of ashok trees); and (3) Ravan's fortress in Lanka. (Various other locales beyond the field are also used prior to the war.) The pavilions are set in a triangle, with Ram to the North, Ravan to the South, and Sita to the West or Southwest. There is a similar configuration at the much larger field of "Lanka" at Ramnagar, where Ravan has not one but two adjacent pavilions: a fort

Figure 5.

The Ramlila field flooded by rain in Kasganj, Uttar Pradesh, 22 September 2017. The pavilion where Sita is held captive is among actual ashok trees, while the pavilion with steps for Ram's camp stands to its right. Compare with Figures 2 and 4 in Mason's article. (Photo by the author)

Figure 6.

Ravan's brother Kumbhkarn (left) battles Hanuman (right) on the Ramlila field at Pilibhit, Uttar Pradesh, 23 October 2012. The "Lanka" pavilion, partially obscured by a temporary yellow structure (left), and the white "ashok grove" pavilion (right) are both visible in the background, as are the bases of the three effigies. Compare with Figure 5 in Mason's article. (Photo by the author)

(qilā) and a court (darbār) (Schechner and Hess 1977: 57; Schechner 1985: 176–177; Kapur 1990: 119).¹² On both Ramdilla grongs in Trinidad and Ramlila maidāns in India, performers ritually circumambulate the field, traditionally barefoot, in acknowledgement of the ground's sanctity. It is generally only relatively old Ramlilas that are still played on fields. In her ground-breaking work in the 1970s, Induja Awasthi notes that this old style of Ramlila characterized by pantomime and tableau was likely the initial form of Ramlila (Awasthi 1979a: 33–36).¹³

Similarly, the use of masks at the Trinidad Ramdilla—I'm thinking especially of the large, brown demonic mask used for Shurpnakha—is suggestive of nineteenth-century Ramlila aesthetics before the wider use of makeup (see Fig. 7). Although it sits above the wearer's head, it looks very similar to the large mask used for Demonic Shurpnakha (and others) at Ramnagar and is quite like smaller ones I have seen at the old Ramlila in Bisalpur (see Fig. 8). We can also see Sagar's touch in the bare-chested attire of the heroes and the costuming

Figure 7.

The demoness Shurpnakha (center) interacts with Ram and Lakshman, just before Lakshman attacks her, at a Ramdilla in Trinidad, 2016. (Photo by David Mason)

Figure 8.

Gods and goddesses seated on the Ramlila field in Bisalpur, Uttar Pradesh, 27 September 2017 (from left to right, Parvati, Shiva, Ganesh, Kali, and Ram). Ganesh and Kali have papier mache masks, created by artists decades ago, which are carefully preserved and repainted each year. (Photo by the author)

generally in Ramdilla. In fact, Paula Richman has noted that there was a resurgence of Ramdilla in Trinidad in the 1990s, which I suspect may be attributable, at least in part, to Indo-Caribbeans tuning in to Sagar'sTV serial in that period (Mahalingam 2006: 196).

The following article by Afroz Taj and John Caldwell, "Lord Ram Plays the Parking Lot: Ramlila in the Diaspora," is also about a Ramlila outside of India. In fact, the authors have themselves played Ravan and Hanuman, respectively, and provided tech support for the performance since its founding in Morrisville, NC, in 2009. Like Mason, Taj and Caldwell stress the community-building function of the event among diasporic South Asians. This is signaled even by the naming of the event itself, which is "NC Dussehra Festival" rather than "Ramlila," which immediately opens up the event to a wider audience on a semiotic level. "Dussehra" has a wider cultural purchase than "Ramlila," which most spectators know is largely confined to the Hindi-speaking regions. The several thousand people in attendance at this annual celebration represent a range of languages and geographic regions in South Asia, and also includes some with no familial ties to the subcontinent.

In many ways, this diasporic Ramlila, organized by the Hindi Vikas Mandal (Association for the Development of Hindi) and the Hindu Society of North Carolina (HSNC), conforms to others staged in North America. For example, it is of a relatively short duration—only about two hours—and staged on the weekend. But as Taj and Caldwell explain, this particular Ramlila is somewhat unusual in that it is mounted in a high register of literary Hindi, while many North-American Ramlilas are staged in English. This is according to the wishes of the director who progressively developed the script over the past decade. Yet the medium of the performance is not without controversy. As Taj and Caldwell note, keeping the script's language on the Hindi pole of the Hindi-Urdu spectrum leaves many in the audience in the cognitive dark. One surprising fact about the Morrisville Ramlila is that it uses a pre-recorded audio track to ensure the quality of the language, but this is not entirely out of step with staging conventions in India. Some of the big Ramlilas in Delhi also use a voice track and lip syncing (Nagpal 2016).

One aspect of both the Morrisville and Trinidadian productions that is hard to miss is the gender diversity of their casts. Contrastingly, as mentioned cis women are not well represented in Indian Ramlilas, and rarely play "negative," that is, conventionally unattractive and inauspicious characters like demonesses and aged widows (see Figs. 9 and 10).

The more secular presentation of Morrisville's Ramlila also distinguishes it from Ramlilas in India. Here there is no ārtī ritual, in

Figure 9.

The hunch-backed maidservant Manthra (Gaurav Kumar) pressures Queen Kaikeyi (Monty Saxena) to accept her plot, at the Subhashnagar Ramlila in Bareilly, 6 October 2013. Compare with Figure 4 in Taj and Caldwell's article. (Photo by the author)

which the divine leads are worshipped while stationed in tableau. There is also no ritual waving of the flame before the Rāmcaritmānas, another customary act in India. Despite this, we can still see Tulsidas's—and Sagar's—imprint on the performance, especially in its dialogues and costuming. While many of the textiles in the performance come from India, there is an upscale refinement to the costuming: less rhinestones, sequins and metallic embroidery, and more fine hand-loomed silk. Similarly, makeup displays less paste-on gems and glitter, and more simple applications.

I can also see how the Morrisville team has had to adapt certain conventions due to the lack of Ramlila materials and the presence of strict fire codes in this country. As Taj and Caldwell explain, representatives from the local fire department are always on site during the burning of Ravan in the parking lot. Also, Ravan's effigy is so sturdy, with its skeleton of two-by-fours and wooden lattice, it takes considerable time to burn down. Effigies in India, by contrast, are more delicate, being finely crafted out of strips of bamboo, and burn very quickly. In 2013 in the Model Town neighborhood of Bareilly, I once saw a Ramlila effigy disastrously topple over in the wind, hours

Figure 10.

The same actor, again in a widow's white sari, as the tribal ascetic Shabri, serves humble refreshments to Ram (Ajay Sharma) and Lakshman (Rajkumar Tiwari) during their forest exile, at the Subhashnagar Ramlila, 8 October 2013. Compare to Figure 6 in Taj and Caldwell's article. (Photo by the author)

before it was to be set alight. There are other accommodations in Morrisville: in place of hand-painted backdrops, there are electronically projected scenes, and in lieu of light bamboo arrows, stiff wooden dowels. The cast, comprised largely of first- and second-generation immigrants, also skews older than most in India, for it is mainly the older generations who retain the cultural knowledge and fond memories of Ramlila in India. It is also tipped toward the professional class, as the authors explain.

By Way of Conclusion, the State of Ramlila

In my Ramlila travels across Uttar Pradesh over more than a decade, I have charted, through interviews with Ramlila performers and organizers, and observations of audiences and venues, reduced by encroachment, both declining audiences and reduced patronage for Ramlila. When I consider what I have heard anecdotally and seen firsthand in Uttar Pradesh, I believe the estimate conveyed to me by the Ravan of Bisalpur, Dinesh Rastogi, in 2012, likely reflects a more general pattern. He estimated then that there were 20–25 percent less people coming to see the Bisalpur Ramlila than in the 1970s and 1980s when he was young. I actually believe that today the overall decline across the Hindi belt may be as much as one third, after adjusting for population growth.

Even at the historic Ramlila at Ramnagar, attendance is down. Memories can be unreliable, but when I compare crowds I saw in Ramnagar in 1993, 2013, 2017, and 2019, it does seem to me that there are now fewer people in attendance.¹⁴ As I looked out at the thousands of spectators—sadhus, nemīs (devoted spectators; literally, "those who adhere to the Rule"), and ordinary citizens—this past Ramlila season in 2019, I could not help but notice that the vast majority of the nemīs, identifiable by their white dress, walking staffs, and worn copies of the Rāmcaritmānas, tended to be in the 50-plus age group. Speaking to a half dozen nemīs, steadfast men who had attended the month-long production for anywhere from 26 to 59 years, I got the impression that audiences were indeed declining and changing in character, with fewer and more "casual" spectators overall. One frankly told me that audiences had gone down thirty percent in the last two decades, an estimate I found compelling.

Although overall attendance at Ramlila is declining, it is not easy to see or document. To the casual observer, Ramlila may seem robust because India's population is growing, thus new Ramlilas do occasionally spring up. Also, Ramlila attendance seems high at many venues because many people come to the grounds primarily to attend the fairs that are growing larger at some venues, not to sit down and watch the performance. This seems to be true even at Ramnagar, at least on the days of the war when the battlefield is filled with vendors. There is also something else at work. When I speak to professional Ramlila actors, they frequently insist that demand for their work is going up, and I do believe this is the case for many troupes, especially those based in Mathura district, a respected center of devotional theater between Delhi and Agra. But this does not indicate an overall increase in Ramlila attendance as much as the fact that neighborhood Ramlila associations are increasingly contracting with professional troupes to do performance work they once did themselves in amateur productions. Even in 1979, Awasthi mentioned that the style of Ramlila presented by professional troupes was becoming "increasingly popular" (Awasthi 1979a, 35). In greater Bareilly, I would estimate that now only about a quarter of Ramlilas are still performed by local amateur teams. This is not for lack of talent, will, or devotion. It is just that people often do not have the time or means to devote six to eight weeks to rehearsals and performances, the latter often totaling around fifty hours of theatre. Joshi, speaking on Kumaoni Ramlila, also notes this state of affairs in his interview with me.

To conclude, it is my sincere wish that the scholarly interventions and provocations in this special issue will give more attention to Ramlila, not as a static performance genre of a"classical-leaning" India, but rather as a contemporary theatre on its own terms. The pieces in this issue together speak to the fact that this is a theatre with many forms, and one very much in conversation with other styles of theatre and contemporary sociopolitical realities. At the same time, they demonstrate that Ramlila is a powerful expression of faith and community. I especially hope that this work will give credit to the countless makers of Ramlila who continually re-enliven the form through their artistry, dedication, devotion, and knowledge. In India, I have seen countless doors to Ramlila open to me. I am deeply indebted and grateful to all of the many people who warmly welcomed me into their theatrical worlds and communities, and generously shared with me their deep knowledge and passion for Ramlila.¹⁵

As this issue was going to press, we were very saddened to learn that one of our contributors, Tutun Mukherjee, passed away on 7 January 2020. Tutun had been a professor at the University of Hyderabad in India, and was a highly respected scholar of comparative literature and theatre, and a prolific translator of Bengali literature. We dedicate this issue to her memory.