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Shanta Gandhi

Shanta Gandhi
Born (1917-12-20)20 December 1917
Nashik
Died 6 May 2002(2002-05-06) (aged 84)
Mumbai
Nationality Indian
Occupation theatre director, playwright
Known for Jasma Odan (play)

Shanta Gandhi (20 December 1917 – 6 May 2002) was an Indian theatre director, dancer and playwright. She was a founder-member of the central ballet troupe of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA), and toured the country widely through the 1950s. As a playwright she is remembered as an early pioneer in reviving ancient Indian drama especially Sanskrit drama and folk theatre to modern Indian theatre and amongst her most noted plays are Razia Sultan and Jasma Odan based on a Gujarati legend on the practice of suttee, her own production of the play in Gujarati Bhavai style, became a landmark in contemporary Indian theatre, and along with 'Maina Gurjari' by her sister Deena Gandhi (later Pathak), it is one of the most popular Bhavais today.

She was a founder-member of Avehi, an education resource centre established in 1981, and also remained Chairperson of National School of Drama, 1982–1984. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 1984 by Government of India and the 2001 Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in Direction, given by Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama.

She joined Pupil's Own School, an experimental residential school in Pune in 1932, where she was a classmate of Indira Gandhi. And later moved to Bombay, here when her engineer father found her becoming too involved in the left-wing student movement in the 1930s, he sent her to England to study medicine. Here she stayed at a Fairfax Road boarding house, and across the hallway stayed Feroze Gandhi, soon Indira, Feroze and Shanta became close and started going to concerts together, and later when they got secretly engaged in 1936, only Shanta knew about it, beyond them. Soon she started frequenting India House, meeting up with Krishna Menon and his young 'Free India' associates, and even joined a dance troupe to raise funds for the Spanish Civil War. But before long her father called her back, as the World War II in Europe was starting, thus ending a possible medical career.


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