The 85-year-old multi-faceted giant of Indian theatre was hospitalised three weeks ago following respiratory trouble, but had made a brief recovery last week. A few days ago, he was again put on a ventilator. Doctors at National Hospital in Bhopal declared him dead at 6.30 am.

The Padma Bhushan awardee, who was actively connected with theatre till recently despite his failing health, was born Habib Ahmed Khan in Raipur on September 1, 1923. But ‘Tanvir’, the name under which he wrote poems at an early age, stuck forever.

He was in the process of finishing his autobiography when he passed away. His only daughter was with him at the time. His wife died in 2006.

Agra Bazar, Charandas Chor and Jis Lahore Nai Dekhya... were among Tanvir’s seminal works, beginning in the 1950s and continuing through the next five decades. He directed Raj Rakt as recently as 2006.

While Tanvir also dabbled in films, theatre remained his first love. He wrote, directed and acted in plays, not only energising the medium but also lending it a new Indian idiom. He deftly fused popular forms of theatre with social consciousness and blend folk theatre with modernity.

His fascination with the folk melodies of Chhattisgarh, which he picked up during his frequent visits to the countryside where his uncles were landowners, was a reflection of the same.

“He was able to blend folk and classical forms with modern styles,” said Sahitya Academy Award winner Rajesh Joshi. “He was experimental and ‘Indianised’ the theatre when European, Greek and Classical styles were in vogue.”

After finishing his Bachelor’s degree from the Aligarh Muslim University in 1945, Tanvir moved to Bombay as an All India Radio producer, and joined the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) and Progressive Writers’ Association (PWA). This association laid the foundation for his unwavering commitment to social consciousness. During this period, he also acted in a few films besides writing songs.

In 1954, soon after he moved to New Delhi, Tanvir wrote and produced Agra Bazar. Widely hailed as a masterpiece, Agra Bazar was the based on the life and times of Nazir Akbarabadi, an 18th-century Urdu poet. Javed Malick, his nephew and collaborator on various productions, wrote: “In a highly interesting (and, for its time, revolutionary) artistic strategy, put on the stage was not the socially and architecturally walled-in space of a private dwelling, but a bazar — a marketplace with all its noise and bustle, its instances of solidarity and antagonism, and above all, its sharp social, economic and cultural polarities.”

Soon after, Tanvir went to England on a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. During this time, he was influenced majorly by the work of Bertolt Brecht, whom he encountered in Berlin while travelling through Europe in 1956.

Consequently, Tanvir took an opposite direction from what his European training had taught him, realising that socially meaningful theatre could be produced working within the indigenous cultural context. After returning from Europe, he produced Mitti ki Gadi, a translation of Shudraka’s Mrichchakatikam. Using six actors from Chhattisgarh, the play distinctly used the conventions and techniques of the folk stage.

In 1959, Tanvir and wife Moneeka Misra founded Naya Theatre in Bhopal, which focused on plays based on ancient and modern classics. As time passed, Tanvir worked on improvisations in folk theatre, with a growing realisation that constraining rural artistes by asking them to refine their language to a chaste form of Hindi was a “fault”.

In 1975, Tanvir’s improvisations of form and style reached its apogee in his masterpiece Charandas Chor, which won him the Fringe Firsts Award at the Edinburgh International Drama Festival in 1982. He was awarded the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1969, Padma Shri in 1983, Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship in 1996 and the Padma Bhushan in 2002. He also served as a member of the Rajya Sabha from 1972-78.

One of Tanvir’s works, Ponga Pandit, got him into trouble with Hindu activists post-Babri who accused it of denigrating Hinduism.

“His death is the passing of an era,” said famous theatre personality Alakhnandan. “He truly established People’s Culture in theatre. He fought the onslaught of media and technology through his art.”

Anup Joshi, who worked with Tanvir as an actor and designed lighting of his last play Raj Rakt, said he preferred simplicity of form, though his plays were always meaningful. “Despite his stature he had no ego,” said Joshi.

For poet and writer Manzoor Ehtesham, Tanvir was simply “one of those people who mattered”.