Mar 05 2026 to Mar 05 2026 7 p.m.

Book/Buy

Where

Sabha Blr

No.44/A, Kamaraj Road, Bharati Nagar, Shivaji Nagar, Bengaluru 560042

Event Description

India Foundation for the Arts presents

अमर सिंह राठौड़ (Amar Singh Rathore)

A puppetry performance by Ram Lal Bhatt and Ishwar Singh

Free and open to all. 

Amar Singh Rathore brings to life the legendary tale of the eponymous valiant prince through string puppetry, performed by the hereditary Master Katputhli artist Ram Lal Bhatt. 

The show grows out of the story’s radical interpretation by activist and dramaturg late Smt. Tripurari Sharma, who reframed the tale as one of resistance, dignity, and defiance of feudal power. Bringing this text into puppetry is both an artistic choice and a political act for Ram Lal Bhatt, allowing the story to be retold through a form historically shaped and silenced by caste hierarchies, foregrounding the voices that were kept at the margins of Rajasthan’s cultural memory. This performance is Ram Lal Bhatt’s homecoming - by reviving Amar Singh Rathore through string puppetry, he reclaims an art form he once abandoned, restoring to it both artistic excellence and the dignity of a community long denied its due. 

Ram Lal Bhatt is a hereditary Katputhli artist from the Natt (Nomadic-Dalit) community. Born into a caste-bound Jajmani Pratha, his community performed for royal courts while living under deep structural exclusion. At 17, refusing a life defined by caste, he burned his ancestral puppets, breaking from the identity imposed upon him. Years later, he returned to puppetry with a renewed purpose: to use it as a language of assertion and social critique. 

Ishwar Singh is an activist and researcher from Central Rajasthan. He currently works with Ek Potli Ret Ki as a programme coordinator, working on socio-political education of young people across States in North India. 

This project was supported by Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.