Prayas Presents: "Midnight Gods" Play Reading

We invite you to join us for a reading of the first-draft of “Midnight Gods” - A play on the partition of India.

Midnight Gods(A play on the partition of India.)by Shekinah Jacob

In the small border town of Dinanagar in Punjab, India’s first Independence Day unfolds in starkly different ways for a Dalit family and those around them.

The plot centres around Bhola’s struggle to find a freedom of his own from caste oppression and to shed the skin of his past, using the momentum of the confusion caused by partition.

His grandmother clings to a death wish, hunting for a heroic end to mark the occasion of Independence Day. His parents are unable to shield him from a world only that keeps its promises to the upper castes. A white missionary’s son chases adventure, only to find it far darker than he imagined. And the town’s authorities, whose decisions shape the family’s fate, find their own lives swinging like a pendulum—because even on this day of freedom, Dinanagar’s place on the map is shifting, redrawn by distant political hands.

This play explores what makes human beings capable of hurting their own. Does it come from our innate need to "other" people in a bid for self-preservation? Do we claim superiority because it seems to be a way to thrive in a world where only the fittest survive? Perhaps the partitions within us are more dangerous than those on land.

It is almost 80 years since the end of the British rule in the subcontinent which resulted in the partition of India and the formation of two nation states – India and Pakistan. A quickly drawn-out arbitrary border, a quick and desperate exit of the British administration, political conflicts and expediencies of the day all resulted in one of the largest displacement and migration of humanity and communal violence killing hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens. This momentous and traumatic event has ever since defined the course of social and political trajectory of the subcontinent.

While the partition events are largely viewed from the perspective of conflict between the two religious majorities on either side, many other minority communities got affected such as the Dalit and Sikh communities.

Written by Shekinah Jacob, an established playwright and part of the Prayas whanau (Playwright: Mrichhakatika – The Clay Cart 2023)