It’s such a shame that an iconic, timeless play by one of India’s greatest playwrights has been stopped from being performed at the IPTA Theatre Festival. I am referring to the award-winning play “Jaat Hi Pucho Sadhu Ki” by Padma Vibhushan Vijay Tendulkar (1928-2008), which was originally written by him in Marathi and later translated into Hindi. Sign my petition.

The play was to be performed at the 5-day festival of the Indian People’s Theatre Association in Chattarpur district in Madhya Pradesh in February 2021. The entire event was funded by the public and all the permissions were in place. However, ignorant miscreants took offence to the play, and threatened the organisers with violence. In the absence of police protection, the organisers were forced to cancel the festival.

What’s ironic is that those who objected to the play haven’t even read or watched the play and have little cultural understanding of one of the greatest playwrights of India and took objection to the title of the play.

Jaat Hi Pucho Sadhu Ki, is a comedy that harmoniously blends slapstick and satire to highlight several ills of the Indian society — casteism, patriarchy, nepotism and the snags in our educational system. The IPTA theatre festival staged successful versions of the same play earlier in the month.

The cancellation of the play and the festival is a huge loss to all theatre lovers and the people of India. As a theatre lover myself and a member of the theatre community, I regret the inaction by the District Administration, Chattarpur, Madhya Pradesh, for not supporting the staging of the play and not assuring the organisers of protection in light of the threats.

Sign my petition  for the festival to be restored so that the play can be staged without any hassles. 

Through this petition, we are appealing for the IPTA Theatre Festival to be held, with adequate protection for the organisers and the artistes. We also ask that they be compensated for damages incurred by the event's cancellation.

Many theatre artists and playwrights are supporting this petition.

If you too believe and support the Freedom of Expression as guaranteed by the Indian Constitution and the rights of artistes to perform in public, then join us.


Amba Sanyal
Atul Kumar
Arundhati Nag
Amitabh Srivastava
Avijit Dutt
Ashvin Gidwani
Bharat Babbar
Chetna Jalan
Dadi Pudumjee
Dilip Shankar
Dilip Tayade
Faraz Ahmed
Gautam Bhattacharya
Imtiaz Alam
Kriti Jain
Kiran Saigal
Lillete Dubey
Meghana Kothari
Namit Sabharwal
Nandita Puri
Nikhil Dey
Nandita Narain
Pankaj Rakesh
Ramesh Tekwani
Rohini Hattangady
Rajinder Arora
Salima Raza
Sanjoy Roy
Sharmila Tagore
Shabana Azmi
Shekhar Mallick
Sudeep Chakravarti
Umesh Vyas
Virendra (Viru) Saxena
Vinay Shukhla