“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.

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