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Collected Plays in Translation
This book is a collection of plays by one of India's most respected playwrights, and offers for the first time his best-known plays published previously by OUP, together in a single volume.
- GenresPlaysIndian Literature
650 pages, Paperback
First published January 30, 2002
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About the author
Vijay Tendulkar
81books68followersVijay Tendulkar (Marathi: विजय तेंडुलकर) (7 January 1928 � 19 May 2008) was a leading Indian playwright, movie and television writer, literary essayist, political journalist, and social commentator primarily in Marāthi. He is best known for his plays, Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe (1967), Ghāshirām Kotwāl (1972), and Sakhārām Binder (1972).Many of Tendulkar’s plays derived inspiration from real-life incidents or social upheavals, which provides clear light on harsh realities. He provided his guidance to students studying “Playwright writing� in US universities. For over five decades, Tendulkar had been a highly influential dramatist and theater personality in Mahārāshtra.
Early life
Vijay Dhondopant Tendulkar was born on 7 January 1928 in a Bhalavalikar Saraswat brahmin family in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, where his father held a clerical job and ran a small publishing business. The literary environment at home prompted young Vijay to take up writing. He wrote his first story at age six.
He grew up watching western plays, and felt inspired to write plays himself. At age eleven, he wrote, directed, and acted in his first play.
At age 14, he participated in the 1942 Indian freedom movement , leaving his studies. The latter alienated him from his family and friends. Writing then became his outlet, though most of his early writings were of a personal nature, and not intended for publication.
Early career
Tendulkar began his career writing for newspapers. He had already written a play, “Āmchyāvar Kon Prem Karnār� (Who will Love us?), and he wrote the play, “Gruhastha� (The Householder), in his early 20s. The latter did not receive much recognition from the audience, and he vowed never to write again . Breaking the vow, in 1956 he wrote “‘Shrimant�, which established him as a good writer. “Shrimant� jolted the conservative audience of the times with its radical storyline, wherein an unmarried young woman decides to keep her unborn child while her rich father tries to “buy� her a husband in an attempt to save his social prestige.
Tendulkar’s early struggle for survival and living for some time in tenements (“chāwls�) in Mumbai provided him first-hand experience about the life of urban lower middle class. He thus brought new authenticity to their depiction in Marathi theater. Tendulkar’s writings rapidly changed the storyline of modern Marathi theater in the 1950s and the 60s, with experimental presentations by theater groups like “Rangāyan�. Actors in these theater groups like Shreerām Lāgoo, Mohan Agāshe, and Sulabhā Deshpānde brought new authenticity and power to Tendulkar’s stories while introducing new sensibilities in Marathi theater.
Tendulkar wrote the play, “Gidhāde� (The Vultures) in 1961, but it was not produced until 1970. The play was set in a morally collapsed family structure and explored the theme of violence. In his following creations, Tendulkar explored violence in its various forms: domestic, sexual, communal, and political. Thus, “Gidhāde� proved to be a turning point in Tendulkar’s writings with regard to establishment of his own unique writing style.
Based on a 1956 short story, “Die Panne� (“Traps�) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Tendulkar wrote the play, “Shāntatā! Court Chālu Aahe� (“Silence! The Court Is In Session�). It was presented on the stage for the first time in 1967, and proved as one of his finest works. Satyadev Dubey presented it in movie form in 1971 with Tendulkar’s collaboration as the screenplay writer.
1970s and �80s
In his 1972 play, Sakhārām Binder (Sakhārām, the Binder), Tendulkar dealt with the topic of domination of the male gender over the female gender. The main character, Sakhārām, is a man devoid of ethics and morality, and professes not to believe in “outdated� social codes and conventional marriage. He accordingly uses the society for his own pleasure. He regularly gives “shelter� to abandoned wives, and uses them f
Early life
Vijay Dhondopant Tendulkar was born on 7 January 1928 in a Bhalavalikar Saraswat brahmin family in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, where his father held a clerical job and ran a small publishing business. The literary environment at home prompted young Vijay to take up writing. He wrote his first story at age six.
He grew up watching western plays, and felt inspired to write plays himself. At age eleven, he wrote, directed, and acted in his first play.
At age 14, he participated in the 1942 Indian freedom movement , leaving his studies. The latter alienated him from his family and friends. Writing then became his outlet, though most of his early writings were of a personal nature, and not intended for publication.
Early career
Tendulkar began his career writing for newspapers. He had already written a play, “Āmchyāvar Kon Prem Karnār� (Who will Love us?), and he wrote the play, “Gruhastha� (The Householder), in his early 20s. The latter did not receive much recognition from the audience, and he vowed never to write again . Breaking the vow, in 1956 he wrote “‘Shrimant�, which established him as a good writer. “Shrimant� jolted the conservative audience of the times with its radical storyline, wherein an unmarried young woman decides to keep her unborn child while her rich father tries to “buy� her a husband in an attempt to save his social prestige.
Tendulkar’s early struggle for survival and living for some time in tenements (“chāwls�) in Mumbai provided him first-hand experience about the life of urban lower middle class. He thus brought new authenticity to their depiction in Marathi theater. Tendulkar’s writings rapidly changed the storyline of modern Marathi theater in the 1950s and the 60s, with experimental presentations by theater groups like “Rangāyan�. Actors in these theater groups like Shreerām Lāgoo, Mohan Agāshe, and Sulabhā Deshpānde brought new authenticity and power to Tendulkar’s stories while introducing new sensibilities in Marathi theater.
Tendulkar wrote the play, “Gidhāde� (The Vultures) in 1961, but it was not produced until 1970. The play was set in a morally collapsed family structure and explored the theme of violence. In his following creations, Tendulkar explored violence in its various forms: domestic, sexual, communal, and political. Thus, “Gidhāde� proved to be a turning point in Tendulkar’s writings with regard to establishment of his own unique writing style.
Based on a 1956 short story, “Die Panne� (“Traps�) by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Tendulkar wrote the play, “Shāntatā! Court Chālu Aahe� (“Silence! The Court Is In Session�). It was presented on the stage for the first time in 1967, and proved as one of his finest works. Satyadev Dubey presented it in movie form in 1971 with Tendulkar’s collaboration as the screenplay writer.
1970s and �80s
In his 1972 play, Sakhārām Binder (Sakhārām, the Binder), Tendulkar dealt with the topic of domination of the male gender over the female gender. The main character, Sakhārām, is a man devoid of ethics and morality, and professes not to believe in “outdated� social codes and conventional marriage. He accordingly uses the society for his own pleasure. He regularly gives “shelter� to abandoned wives, and uses them f
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April 20, 2025
Vijay Tendulkar has frequently been described as the angry young man of Indian theatre in the seventies, attacking societal indifference and injustice to the great social questions of the day. Intolerance of any sort, violence, political corruption and power plays, the abuse of women in almost every human activity, infanticide, greed, caste and homosexuality found in Tendulkar a powerful call to attention. Almost every play drew social and political controversy for their scandalous content. Several plays were banned, for one reason or other, and played in most cases only after lengthy legal battles.
Yet, after sixty years or more, the plays remain fresh. Even the original sources of the controversies are eroding imperceptibly; some, of course, will never go away: the lust for money is eternal. Discrimination on the basis of caste or homosexuality and sexual preference are both punishable by law. (Same-sex marriages are not yet recognised.) Yet they all face almost insurmountable social taboos. Similarly, there are protective laws for women, and extremely harsh courts for the abuse of children or minors. But women and children remain vulnerable.
This Oxford edition of seven of Tendulkar's plays contains some of his most passionate, even vitriolic statements about the nature of the society we live in. Every play has been excellently translated by the leading Marathi-English translators, and these have become the definitive translations of Tendulkar's works. A summary of each play is given below.
KAMALA
(Priya Adarkar, transl.)
When a prominent investigative journalist buys a tribal, or at least, a low-caste woman at an illegal auction in a poorly governed State in India, and brings her home to his upmarket New Delhi residence, he naturally shocks his wife and her uncle. He explains that he had wanted to expose the nexus between the politicians and the sellers of women as chattel. It sounds reasonable enough, but the underlying truth is far more complex.
At a press conference the next day, the woman is exhibited, the target of crude and unwelcome questions and speculation. The wife, unlike the journalist, displays much greater sympathy with the bought woman, who, impressed by the house, is equally frank and sympathetic with the wife, suggesting a division of duties, where, since both were slaves, the bought woman Kamala should be the drudge, including the bearing and rearing of children, while the wife remain as the toy of the man to whom both belonged.
This stark appraisal of social conditions, in which illegal flesh markets flourished with the connivance of all three power groups � the politicians, the business lobby, and the cops at all levels of the hierarchy, was never raised as dramatically before as in this short and very intense play.
SILENCE! THE COURT IS IN SESSION
(Priya Adarkar, tr)
First presented in theatres in 1967, this shook staid audiences, dealing as it does with verboten subjects like premarital or extramarital affairs and illegitimacy. A group of teachers playing at amateur theatricals are to present a play that evening, but thanks to local train timings, have arrived almost three ahead of schedule. After checking that the props have not been forgotten, that the mikes are in working order, and making sure that a plentiful supply of tea is laid on, the group have still a couple of hours to kill before the event of the evening is due to start. Unfortunately, two cast-members are absent. The group decide to co-opt the local guide who takes care of their needs to the part of the missing cast-member. He agrees, reluctantly, and the group immediately decide to enact a mock trial so the new boy is familiar with basic stage terminology. The “accused� is a lively single woman who plays along until she hears the charge: infanticide.
From being a mild joke, the trial becomes a savage indictment on the manners and morals of the unfortunate woman, Leela Benare, who is the accused in the trial. No defence is permitted, no counsel for the accused, she is not allowed to speak, and only prosecution witnesses are permitted to add to the evidence against her. Every shred of self-respect is stripped from her, until the ugly truth comes out: she has been having an affair with a married colleague, is pregnant by him, but he refuses to acknowledge their relationship. The judge, who is also the headmaster in the institute where she is employed, passes the sentence on her: dismissal from her job, and to take away the infant as soon as it is born, so that it is not corrupted by the mother's morals, or lack of them.
But who is actually on trial here? The unfortunate girl, whose lively spirit and joy in life render her vulnerable and used, or an intolerant society of her peers, whose judgmental mind will hear nothing in her defence? Sadly, nothing has changed in the last sixty years: a woman is always judged guilty.
SAKHARAM BINDER
(Kumud Mehta and Shanta Gokhale transl.)
Another very controversial play, in which Tendulkar challenges the traditional ideas of marriage, relationships outside marriage, the this-for-that agreement in which the man provides food, shelter, clothing and the daily dose of beating and bullying, in exchange for the woman’s acting as domestic drudge by day and sex slave by night. The play also shines a searchlight into promiscuity and hypocrisy, and the abuse of religious rituals.
The women that Sakharam, (who is employed in a printing press, and hence known as “Binder,�) last for a year or less. In spite of his bullying, the women come to feel affectionately towards the old rascal, until the moment when the past and present meet and collide.
THE VULTURES
(Priya Adarkar, transl.)
Tendulkar’s passionate cry against societal and familial wrongs finds its most violent expression in ‘The Vultures,� a tragedy of Jacobean proportions, in which two brothers and their sister are pitted against each other and all of them against their father. ‘The Vultures� explores themes of family dynamics, societal norms and morality, presenting them with uninhibited brutality onstage. Although it might seem an extreme portrayal of attitudes which are accepted as the norm fifty years later, the plot includes fraudulent business dealings, greed and avarice even at the cost of fratricide or patricide, exaggerated and hypocritical expressions of family honour, general debauchery, chronic drunkenness, impotence, illicit affairs, misogyny, dehumanisation and anything else you can dream up.
In August 1970, Vijay Tendulkar's play "Gidhade" (The Vultures) was banned by the Maharashtra Theatrical Performances Examination Board (MTPEB) due to concerns about its realistic portrayal of "perverted socio-familial complications",
citing the realistic portrayal of complex social and family issues as the reason for the ban. However, after a prolonged legal battle, the ban was lifted, but with extensive cuts in the performance.
(ENCOUNTER IN UMBUGLAND)
(Priya Adarkar, tr)
This is a straight political satire on the election of Mrs Indira Gandhi to the premiership. She was chosen because of her name and political heritage, plus the fact that she was, at the time, little more than her father's social secretary and occasional hostess, a socialite who “knew everybody� and was easily controlled by the senior politician-puppeteers of the day.
‘Encounter in Umbugland" sketches the rise and fall of Mrs Gandhi through the allegory of the Princess Vijaya’s own rise in popularity. What was started as a campaign to uplift the plight of the Kadambas, a slum-dwelling tribe, becomes instead, a power struggle between the Queen and her aristocratic Cabinet. Then the public, disillusioned with what they see are unfulfilled promises by the Queen, turn against her.
The play underscores the government and media role in spreading disinformation. At a time when the public had no access to information except through the medium of print, which in turn was centrally controlled and censored by the government, this meant much more than it does today. Outright lies by the politicians were published straight-faced as if it was the official party line.
Gradually, the Princess’s high-spirited determination to work for the poor and socially discriminated against becomes high-handed and autocratic, domineering and intolerant. The result is the alienation of everyone who once supported her wholeheartedly. Through Vijaya’s eyes � and even more, through the eyes of her steward, the eunuch, we see the bitter battle for power and all that it entails: hypocrisy, sycophancy, mob-manipulation, sops and bribery (the “abolition� of taxation and the “sacrifice� of one of the hated Kadamba tribe), treachery, corruption and open savagery.
GHASIRAM KOTWAL
Jayant Karve and Eleanor Elliot (Transl.)
Perhaps Ghasiram Kotwal is the most controversial of Tendulkar's plays; it is not simply society's crimes he rails at, but here he enters the political arena as well. He lashes out at a deeply polarising political party on the rise, as well at the complacent Brahmin community who closed their eyes to heinous deeds perpetrated by those in power. To this end, he uses historical persons to illustrate his point.
Ghasiram starts as an obscure Kanauj Brahmin who comes with his wife and daughter in search of fortune in Poona. While there, he attends a public celebration in honour of Nana Phanavis, the greatly respected Administration and Finance Minister of the Peshwa, or Prime Minister, of the Maratha Empire in the days before the British Raj, when the East India Company was still a trading company seeking to make alliances, occasionally influencing local political leadership, but not yet a behemoth.
In the course of the celebration, Ghasi is accused of theft, and although witnesses, including a Company Officer are present to attest to his innocence, he is beaten up badly and imprisoned for a night. Determined to avenge himself, he attends the Peshwa’s feast the next day, accompanied by his daughter. He barters the girl to Nana Phadnavis in exchange for the post of (Moral) Security Officer of the city, where his duties include military security, and safety from brigandage as well as overseeing the public and private morals of its citizens. Soon, with his daughter in the Nana’s keeping, he is in a position to blackmail Nana himself. Although he does not realise it yet, he has alienated not just the citizenry, but the political leadership, who tremble before his abuses of power for venial offences. When Ghasiram’s daughter dies in childbirth, and Nana Phadnavis displays a horrifying indifference, Ghasi’s fury is let loose on the town, until the mob rises and calls for Ghasi’s blood., Nana signs the warrant for the execution happily. After all, it means freedom from his tormentor.
Nana Phadnavis, despite the implications of moral depravity here, was historically an able administrator in civil affairs, and an excellent military and political strategist, although he himself was no soldier. He brought stability to the land and to the Maratha Empire at a time of immense danger and uncertainty under attacks by Muslim and English hostility. There was a considerable and unfavourable reaction to this play when it was first staged, both from the Government of Maharashtra and the Brahmin community of Poona, who are satirised in the play.
‘Ghasiram Kotwal� is a deeply sympathetic study of the rapid degradation and degeneration of a good man into a bad one. How a kindly family man is transformed into a pimp and procurer, selling his own child in return for favours, an honest upright man into a blackmailer, or a gentle innocent from a small village a vicious, power hungry savage bellowing for blood, is the essence of ‘Ghasiram Kotwal.� Savage and satirical though it might be, the play also brings out the tragedy that dehumanises Ghasiram, and the careless indifference with which a man can discard and efface the memory of a simple village girl. This consigning to oblivion is just another act of degrading women, a theme very alive in Tendulkar's plays.
A FRIEND’S STORY
Trans
Gowri Ramnayaran
Vijay Tendulkar specialised in attacking outmoded societal traditions and injustice, especially against the subjection and oppression of women. ‘A Friend’s Story� moves further, as for almost the first time in modern Indian writing, does a serious writer tackle the taboo subject of lesbianism. Tendulkar’s work in the other plays in this collection has raved against the objectification of women, and their use as domestic cattle. Even educated women like Leela Benare in ‘Silence!� or the wife, Sarita in ‘Kamala,� or a radical political leader like Vijaya in ‘Encounter� are unable in the end to vindicate themselves with any honour.
But lesbianism is altogether a new battleground. The decriminalisation of gay sex in India became law only in September 2018, and though legally enforceable, it remains a social no-no. And this play was performed in the 1980’s to empty theatres! The story is about the outing herself of a young student, whose parents, appalled at her news, try hurriedly to get her respectably married. When this fails, they throw her out of the house.
Sumitra (Mitra), the protagonist, has already displayed suicidal tendencies, but in an effort to rehabilitate herself, she takes part as the lead male character in a play with an all-woman cast. There the unfortunate girl falls in love with the female lead, a pretty but insipid young woman, who already has a boyfriend. In the tug-of-war that ensues between the boyfriend and Sumitra over rights of possession to Kama, the ultimate loser is Kama, but in the process Sumitra manages to hurt and even harm every one of her wellwishers.
Very sensitively dealt with, Tendulkar nevertheless shocked Bombay, considered the most advanced and progressive city in India, both intellectually and culturally, when Tendulkar wrote the play. It was only later that Bombay became Mumbai, and was overtaken by a far more conservative Delhi society.
KANYADAAN
Trans by Gowri Ramnayaran
Although touted as a fulmination against the caste system, which it is, the play itself shows not so much caste abuse as the snobbery and condescension of an upper caste father towards his lower caste son-in-law, a brilliant poet. The daughter had married him over her family's objections despite his social status and poverty, and despite the fact that she herself did not really love him.
The husband is physically abusive towards the wife, displaying all the signs of a classic wife-beater, drunk before each attack, but abject and craven when the drink has worn off, full of protestations of love, and excuses that he comes from the ranks of the lowest of the low, or that wife beating is a hereditary fault, and so on.
But is this a question of caste? Or is it something more? Deliberate cruelty in retaliation for the thousands of years of debasement of a particular group of people, or revenge against the wife's family in return for what he perceives as a fawning condescension to him? In that respect, it appears to me very ambivalent. And Lata the wife, although an educated woman, plays the role of victim with an air of martyrdom (I made my bed, so must lie in it), which probably only infuriates the husband more.
It is worth remembering that the wife's parents are both very active in serious social and political movements, their time and life spent in lectures and meetings on social upliftment, a casteless society and similar Gandhian concepts. Although Seva, the mother, has major objections to Arun as a suitable husband for her daughter, the father is very noble about it, treating him “as one of the family� until it is too late to change anything.
Yet, after sixty years or more, the plays remain fresh. Even the original sources of the controversies are eroding imperceptibly; some, of course, will never go away: the lust for money is eternal. Discrimination on the basis of caste or homosexuality and sexual preference are both punishable by law. (Same-sex marriages are not yet recognised.) Yet they all face almost insurmountable social taboos. Similarly, there are protective laws for women, and extremely harsh courts for the abuse of children or minors. But women and children remain vulnerable.
This Oxford edition of seven of Tendulkar's plays contains some of his most passionate, even vitriolic statements about the nature of the society we live in. Every play has been excellently translated by the leading Marathi-English translators, and these have become the definitive translations of Tendulkar's works. A summary of each play is given below.
KAMALA
(Priya Adarkar, transl.)
When a prominent investigative journalist buys a tribal, or at least, a low-caste woman at an illegal auction in a poorly governed State in India, and brings her home to his upmarket New Delhi residence, he naturally shocks his wife and her uncle. He explains that he had wanted to expose the nexus between the politicians and the sellers of women as chattel. It sounds reasonable enough, but the underlying truth is far more complex.
At a press conference the next day, the woman is exhibited, the target of crude and unwelcome questions and speculation. The wife, unlike the journalist, displays much greater sympathy with the bought woman, who, impressed by the house, is equally frank and sympathetic with the wife, suggesting a division of duties, where, since both were slaves, the bought woman Kamala should be the drudge, including the bearing and rearing of children, while the wife remain as the toy of the man to whom both belonged.
This stark appraisal of social conditions, in which illegal flesh markets flourished with the connivance of all three power groups � the politicians, the business lobby, and the cops at all levels of the hierarchy, was never raised as dramatically before as in this short and very intense play.
SILENCE! THE COURT IS IN SESSION
(Priya Adarkar, tr)
First presented in theatres in 1967, this shook staid audiences, dealing as it does with verboten subjects like premarital or extramarital affairs and illegitimacy. A group of teachers playing at amateur theatricals are to present a play that evening, but thanks to local train timings, have arrived almost three ahead of schedule. After checking that the props have not been forgotten, that the mikes are in working order, and making sure that a plentiful supply of tea is laid on, the group have still a couple of hours to kill before the event of the evening is due to start. Unfortunately, two cast-members are absent. The group decide to co-opt the local guide who takes care of their needs to the part of the missing cast-member. He agrees, reluctantly, and the group immediately decide to enact a mock trial so the new boy is familiar with basic stage terminology. The “accused� is a lively single woman who plays along until she hears the charge: infanticide.
From being a mild joke, the trial becomes a savage indictment on the manners and morals of the unfortunate woman, Leela Benare, who is the accused in the trial. No defence is permitted, no counsel for the accused, she is not allowed to speak, and only prosecution witnesses are permitted to add to the evidence against her. Every shred of self-respect is stripped from her, until the ugly truth comes out: she has been having an affair with a married colleague, is pregnant by him, but he refuses to acknowledge their relationship. The judge, who is also the headmaster in the institute where she is employed, passes the sentence on her: dismissal from her job, and to take away the infant as soon as it is born, so that it is not corrupted by the mother's morals, or lack of them.
But who is actually on trial here? The unfortunate girl, whose lively spirit and joy in life render her vulnerable and used, or an intolerant society of her peers, whose judgmental mind will hear nothing in her defence? Sadly, nothing has changed in the last sixty years: a woman is always judged guilty.
SAKHARAM BINDER
(Kumud Mehta and Shanta Gokhale transl.)
Another very controversial play, in which Tendulkar challenges the traditional ideas of marriage, relationships outside marriage, the this-for-that agreement in which the man provides food, shelter, clothing and the daily dose of beating and bullying, in exchange for the woman’s acting as domestic drudge by day and sex slave by night. The play also shines a searchlight into promiscuity and hypocrisy, and the abuse of religious rituals.
The women that Sakharam, (who is employed in a printing press, and hence known as “Binder,�) last for a year or less. In spite of his bullying, the women come to feel affectionately towards the old rascal, until the moment when the past and present meet and collide.
THE VULTURES
(Priya Adarkar, transl.)
Tendulkar’s passionate cry against societal and familial wrongs finds its most violent expression in ‘The Vultures,� a tragedy of Jacobean proportions, in which two brothers and their sister are pitted against each other and all of them against their father. ‘The Vultures� explores themes of family dynamics, societal norms and morality, presenting them with uninhibited brutality onstage. Although it might seem an extreme portrayal of attitudes which are accepted as the norm fifty years later, the plot includes fraudulent business dealings, greed and avarice even at the cost of fratricide or patricide, exaggerated and hypocritical expressions of family honour, general debauchery, chronic drunkenness, impotence, illicit affairs, misogyny, dehumanisation and anything else you can dream up.
In August 1970, Vijay Tendulkar's play "Gidhade" (The Vultures) was banned by the Maharashtra Theatrical Performances Examination Board (MTPEB) due to concerns about its realistic portrayal of "perverted socio-familial complications",
citing the realistic portrayal of complex social and family issues as the reason for the ban. However, after a prolonged legal battle, the ban was lifted, but with extensive cuts in the performance.
(ENCOUNTER IN UMBUGLAND)
(Priya Adarkar, tr)
This is a straight political satire on the election of Mrs Indira Gandhi to the premiership. She was chosen because of her name and political heritage, plus the fact that she was, at the time, little more than her father's social secretary and occasional hostess, a socialite who “knew everybody� and was easily controlled by the senior politician-puppeteers of the day.
‘Encounter in Umbugland" sketches the rise and fall of Mrs Gandhi through the allegory of the Princess Vijaya’s own rise in popularity. What was started as a campaign to uplift the plight of the Kadambas, a slum-dwelling tribe, becomes instead, a power struggle between the Queen and her aristocratic Cabinet. Then the public, disillusioned with what they see are unfulfilled promises by the Queen, turn against her.
The play underscores the government and media role in spreading disinformation. At a time when the public had no access to information except through the medium of print, which in turn was centrally controlled and censored by the government, this meant much more than it does today. Outright lies by the politicians were published straight-faced as if it was the official party line.
Gradually, the Princess’s high-spirited determination to work for the poor and socially discriminated against becomes high-handed and autocratic, domineering and intolerant. The result is the alienation of everyone who once supported her wholeheartedly. Through Vijaya’s eyes � and even more, through the eyes of her steward, the eunuch, we see the bitter battle for power and all that it entails: hypocrisy, sycophancy, mob-manipulation, sops and bribery (the “abolition� of taxation and the “sacrifice� of one of the hated Kadamba tribe), treachery, corruption and open savagery.
GHASIRAM KOTWAL
Jayant Karve and Eleanor Elliot (Transl.)
Perhaps Ghasiram Kotwal is the most controversial of Tendulkar's plays; it is not simply society's crimes he rails at, but here he enters the political arena as well. He lashes out at a deeply polarising political party on the rise, as well at the complacent Brahmin community who closed their eyes to heinous deeds perpetrated by those in power. To this end, he uses historical persons to illustrate his point.
Ghasiram starts as an obscure Kanauj Brahmin who comes with his wife and daughter in search of fortune in Poona. While there, he attends a public celebration in honour of Nana Phanavis, the greatly respected Administration and Finance Minister of the Peshwa, or Prime Minister, of the Maratha Empire in the days before the British Raj, when the East India Company was still a trading company seeking to make alliances, occasionally influencing local political leadership, but not yet a behemoth.
In the course of the celebration, Ghasi is accused of theft, and although witnesses, including a Company Officer are present to attest to his innocence, he is beaten up badly and imprisoned for a night. Determined to avenge himself, he attends the Peshwa’s feast the next day, accompanied by his daughter. He barters the girl to Nana Phadnavis in exchange for the post of (Moral) Security Officer of the city, where his duties include military security, and safety from brigandage as well as overseeing the public and private morals of its citizens. Soon, with his daughter in the Nana’s keeping, he is in a position to blackmail Nana himself. Although he does not realise it yet, he has alienated not just the citizenry, but the political leadership, who tremble before his abuses of power for venial offences. When Ghasiram’s daughter dies in childbirth, and Nana Phadnavis displays a horrifying indifference, Ghasi’s fury is let loose on the town, until the mob rises and calls for Ghasi’s blood., Nana signs the warrant for the execution happily. After all, it means freedom from his tormentor.
Nana Phadnavis, despite the implications of moral depravity here, was historically an able administrator in civil affairs, and an excellent military and political strategist, although he himself was no soldier. He brought stability to the land and to the Maratha Empire at a time of immense danger and uncertainty under attacks by Muslim and English hostility. There was a considerable and unfavourable reaction to this play when it was first staged, both from the Government of Maharashtra and the Brahmin community of Poona, who are satirised in the play.
‘Ghasiram Kotwal� is a deeply sympathetic study of the rapid degradation and degeneration of a good man into a bad one. How a kindly family man is transformed into a pimp and procurer, selling his own child in return for favours, an honest upright man into a blackmailer, or a gentle innocent from a small village a vicious, power hungry savage bellowing for blood, is the essence of ‘Ghasiram Kotwal.� Savage and satirical though it might be, the play also brings out the tragedy that dehumanises Ghasiram, and the careless indifference with which a man can discard and efface the memory of a simple village girl. This consigning to oblivion is just another act of degrading women, a theme very alive in Tendulkar's plays.
A FRIEND’S STORY
Trans
Gowri Ramnayaran
Vijay Tendulkar specialised in attacking outmoded societal traditions and injustice, especially against the subjection and oppression of women. ‘A Friend’s Story� moves further, as for almost the first time in modern Indian writing, does a serious writer tackle the taboo subject of lesbianism. Tendulkar’s work in the other plays in this collection has raved against the objectification of women, and their use as domestic cattle. Even educated women like Leela Benare in ‘Silence!� or the wife, Sarita in ‘Kamala,� or a radical political leader like Vijaya in ‘Encounter� are unable in the end to vindicate themselves with any honour.
But lesbianism is altogether a new battleground. The decriminalisation of gay sex in India became law only in September 2018, and though legally enforceable, it remains a social no-no. And this play was performed in the 1980’s to empty theatres! The story is about the outing herself of a young student, whose parents, appalled at her news, try hurriedly to get her respectably married. When this fails, they throw her out of the house.
Sumitra (Mitra), the protagonist, has already displayed suicidal tendencies, but in an effort to rehabilitate herself, she takes part as the lead male character in a play with an all-woman cast. There the unfortunate girl falls in love with the female lead, a pretty but insipid young woman, who already has a boyfriend. In the tug-of-war that ensues between the boyfriend and Sumitra over rights of possession to Kama, the ultimate loser is Kama, but in the process Sumitra manages to hurt and even harm every one of her wellwishers.
Very sensitively dealt with, Tendulkar nevertheless shocked Bombay, considered the most advanced and progressive city in India, both intellectually and culturally, when Tendulkar wrote the play. It was only later that Bombay became Mumbai, and was overtaken by a far more conservative Delhi society.
KANYADAAN
Trans by Gowri Ramnayaran
Although touted as a fulmination against the caste system, which it is, the play itself shows not so much caste abuse as the snobbery and condescension of an upper caste father towards his lower caste son-in-law, a brilliant poet. The daughter had married him over her family's objections despite his social status and poverty, and despite the fact that she herself did not really love him.
The husband is physically abusive towards the wife, displaying all the signs of a classic wife-beater, drunk before each attack, but abject and craven when the drink has worn off, full of protestations of love, and excuses that he comes from the ranks of the lowest of the low, or that wife beating is a hereditary fault, and so on.
But is this a question of caste? Or is it something more? Deliberate cruelty in retaliation for the thousands of years of debasement of a particular group of people, or revenge against the wife's family in return for what he perceives as a fawning condescension to him? In that respect, it appears to me very ambivalent. And Lata the wife, although an educated woman, plays the role of victim with an air of martyrdom (I made my bed, so must lie in it), which probably only infuriates the husband more.
It is worth remembering that the wife's parents are both very active in serious social and political movements, their time and life spent in lectures and meetings on social upliftment, a casteless society and similar Gandhian concepts. Although Seva, the mother, has major objections to Arun as a suitable husband for her daughter, the father is very noble about it, treating him “as one of the family� until it is too late to change anything.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 14, 2008
i happened to go to the queens museum when they were showing of Ardhya Satya at the Queens Museum in 2004. Vijay Tendulkar was on a panel after the movie to discuss things. He was impressive and I fell in love. I bought this collection and he was kind enough to sign it. He even asked me what I did.
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