Shanta Gandhi Biography 
Shanta Gandhi was an Indian theatre director, dancer and playwright who is best known as a founder-member of Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA). As a playwright she is remembered as a pioneer who revived ancient Indian Sanskrit works to modern Indian theatre. Razia Sultan and Jasma Odan are her most acclaimed works. Jasma Odan was based on a Gujarati legend on the practice of sati which she directed in Gujarati Bhavai style and is still regarded as a landmark work of Indian theatre. Dina Pathak, a veteran film and theatre artist (born as Dina Gandhi) known for portraying mother and grandmother was her younger sister. Gandhi is a recipient of Padma Shri in 1984 and Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in Direction for the year 2001.
She was born in Nashik on December 20, 1917 as the daughter of an engineer. She joined Pupil's Own School, an experimental residential school in Pune in 1932. Indian Prime minister Indira Gandhi was her classmate there. She moved to Mumbai with her father and got involved with left-wing student movement in the 1930s. Her father sent her abroad to study medicine. During this time, she came close with Indira Gandhi and Feroze Gandhi. When they got secretly engaged in 1936, Shanta was the only person who knew the matter. She started frequenting India House and even joined a dance troupe to raise funds for the Spanish Civil War. When World War Second was to start, her father asked her to return and thus she couldn’t complete her studies.
Once returned, she joined Uday Shankar's 'Uday Shankar India Cultural Centre', at Simtola and studied Bharata Muni's Natyasastra from one of the teachers. When it was closed in 1942, she became a full-time member of the Little Ballet Troupe, a wing of IPTA along with her sister. She was married to Marxist historian, Victor Kiernan in 1938. But the couple separated in 1946 before Victor left India.
Published: N/A
Updated: March 05, 2014
