![]() ![]() During that period, after a yajna or ritual sacrifice, the festivities of the ritual bath took place, which often involved processions that included dancing, singing, chanting and other performative acts. These processional marches are said to have had their origins in the Vedic society. The devotees make a journey from one place to another in a processional march and then return to the place of origin following the idol or the deity. As a noun, a ‘jatra’ is the journey of devotees who are believers of a certain cult. This observation opens up in front of us the question, where does the word ‘theatre’ stand semantically, and can we call ‘theatre’ ‘bilati jatra’? Now ‘jatra’ the word in Bengali means journey. The book begins with the mention of the fact that during the colonial period, theatre was often mentioned as ‘bilati jatra’. ‘Jatra’ is a performative tradition mainly from Bengal and Orissa. What is interesting is the idea of ‘bilati jatra’ or foreign ‘jatra’. The title of the book written in Bengali and edited and sub-edited by Subir Raychoudhury and Swapan Mazumdar, respectively, can be translated as Foreign Jatra to Swadeshi theatre. An interesting observation has been made in the book Bilati Jatra Theke Swadeshi Thiyetar.
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