Shanta Kalidas Gandhi (20 December 1917 – 6 May 2002) was an Indian theatre director, dancer and playwright who was closely associated with IPTA, the cultural wing of the Communist Party of India.
She received many government awards and sinecures under the Indira Gandhi administration, including the Padma Shri (1984) and being made chairperson of the National School of Drama (1982–84).
She was a founder-member of the central ballet troupe of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA), and toured the country widely through the 1950s.
[6] She later moved to Bombay, when her engineer father found her becoming too involved in the left-wing student movement in the 1930s and sent her to England to study medicine.
[10] In 1952, she started working with a group of children in the village Nikora, on the banks of the Narmada River, in South Gujarat with an informal curriculum.
She was first to revive 4th century BC, Sanskrit playwright, Bhasa's through her productions of Madhyamavyayoga (1966) (The Middle One) and Urubhanga (The Broken Thigh), a decade before Pannikar and Ratan Thiyam began working with them.
Jasma Odhan remains an integral part of Bhavai repertoire to date[13] and ran successfully in cities like Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Delhi for many years[14] and was also performed in London, Poland and GDR.