The Theatre of Violence, Defiance and Confidence in the Plays of Vijay Tendulkar
Theatre has always been a medium of expression or reflection of life. Starting its journey as primarily a musical form in the realms of folk narrative and traditional performance, Indian theatre in general and Marathi theatre in particular, developed the concept of realism and naturalism from the onset of the colonial period. This mode of “realism carried not only the voices from the neglected margins of society,” as Shanta Ghokale wrote in Playwright at the Centre, Marathi Drama from 1843 to the Present, “but also from the mainstream, the educated middle class, the upholders of norms, and also those who carefully defied them, in whom was invested the responsibility for creating a modern society in their newly independent country.” This enabled playwrights, who are socially conscious authors, to understand their circumstances in order to effect change.
Vijay Tendulkar, one of the most talked about internationally acclaimed Marathi playwright was no exception in this case. Like his contemporaries, Mohan Rakesh and Mahesh Elkunchwar, he too dealt with living characters who speak their own language in their separate personal style. But he went a step further to explore, through his living characters, the violence, the inequalities, gender discrimination, hollow institutions, and hypocrisies of middle class life. His insightful objectification made him realize that the root cause behind the social crises of the society that disturbed him was the basic human instinct of violence and sex. He genuinely attempted to study, explore and validate ‘violence’ as the natural phenomenon and thereby the root cause of all problems of life through his plays. But through this attempt, he took up for his experimentation socially controversial themes that jolted the orthodox Marathi theatre completely, causing it to protest vehemently against all of them. The fact that most of these plays had censor trouble compelling the producers to go to court, gave Tendulkar the public image of a fighter, of a writer at cross-purposes with the mainstream.
The inner core of almost all works of Tendulkar is rooted in his deep compassion and respect for human life – for life in the social reality of post-colonial India. Seeing its exploitation and waste, his response was an unrelenting literary output and non-stop social activism. Until his death, through his literary output his ultimate purpose was in fiercely seeking justice for the victimized – mainly the poor and those disfranchised by communal riots and structural violence. Unlike the makers of the confrontational theater of the late 1980’s, he did not believe that an evening at the theater would change society, but he was always hopeful that a good play could raise public awareness. It is because of this reason that there has been hardly a play by him that has not ended up in controversy.
One of his initial efforts with which probably he stepped into playwriting was “Shrimant” (“The Rich”) in 1955. It depicts the sorry yet despicable predicament of a rich man who searches the marriage market to “buy” a suitable boy for his unmarried daughter who insists on keeping her bastard child. During the fifties, such bold themes were not even thought of for the stage though incidents of such kind did happen within the realms of the then society. The theatre lovers or audiences were not at all used to see such a real reflection of their own life on stage. The play therefore met with such a disastrous audience response in 1956 that the playwright vowed never to write again. But thankfully, Tendulkar broke that vow, and “Shrimant,” despite its all-round rejection, became the first step towards his daring depiction of ‘slice of life.’
Among his large oeuvre of work, Tendulkar’s most controversial plays are “Ghasiram Kotwal” and “Sakharam Binder,” both staged during the 1970’s. In “Ghasiram Kotwal” there was the controversial depiction of the historical character of Nana Phadanvis, a revered statesman during the Peshwa rule in Maharashtra that angered Brahmins and led to a series of protests. The troupe of “Ghashiram Kotwal,” directed by noted director Dr Jabbar Patel faced violent protests from the audience that targeted the artists using the missiles of eggs and tomatoes in theatre halls to stop the performances. It was former Lok Sabha Speaker and Shiv Sena leader Manohar Joshi who was in the forefront of the anti-“Ghasiram” agitation in Mumbai as the party stopped the staging of the play in the metropolis in 1971-72. In Pune also, protests marked the staging of the play with allegations that it insulted the Brahmin community and maligned its culture. The detractors of Tendulkar even approached Bombay High Court to prevent the “Ghasiram”troupe from going abroad to stage performances on invitation but did not succeed in getting a favorable verdict.
However, Tendulkar was never apologetic over the characterization of Nana who was portrayed as a lecher hunting for women not withstanding his stature as a statesman. Unperturbed, he maintained that he was entitled to freedom of expression and that though the character of Nana had a historical base, the treatment was fictional. Thus the play unfailingly challenged the accepted concepts and norms pertaining to morality in society and brought to the fore the hidden cruelty and lust in the human psyche, exposing hypocrisy that covered it.
A similar controversy erupted when Tendulkar came out with “Sakharam Binder” inviting the charge of obscene presentation. Eminent stage and film actor Nilu Phule played the role of the protagonist from the lower strata of society. The play had a scene that showed the female character undergoing abortion after being subjected to cruel treatment at the hands of the Binder who had total disregard for moral, social and cultural mores. But even in this case, Tendulkar won the battle with the censors clearing the play for performance on stage.
Again in 1970 came “Gidhade” (“Vultures”) which shocked the conservative Maharashtrian society by its explicit depiction of violence. The play was considered obscene because it showed a woman with a huge red spot on the front of her sari. The Censor board objected to the play, but cleared it after some cuts. So, when Satyadev Dubey produced it, he replaced the red spot with a black one and told the audience to think of it as red.
Controversies like this and many more were common for a Tendulkar play. Some people thought that he was interested in controversy but it is we (the public) who have tried to cash in on these controversies. It is interesting to note that most of the calls for banning his plays did not come from the government but from particular segments of the public who saw in his dramatizations attacks on their power positions –challenges to caste, gender or class structures. Tendulkar had been attacked for his work many times, sometimes physically. After “Gidhade,” someone actually beat him with a stick. After “Kanyadaan,” he was literally thrown a slipper by members of the Dalit caste.
But Tendulkar never shrank from public controversy as it gave him a unique opportunity to engage his opponents in public discourse. He rather tore through the barrier of propriety and with ruthless yet clinical dispassion, turned the genre of "social realism" to focus back on the individual. He portrayed Man in his primal avatar, denuded of his socially acceptable trappings and prey to the rawest of animal passions thereby exposing us to a disturbing truth. It is perhaps his daring attitude of exposing the truth that in spite of all the controversies, most of the plays at the same time gained him not just popularity but also fame and honor. “Ghasiram Kotwal” stood up to all the controversies to create a record of being the longest-running play in the history of Indian theater with a tally of 6000 performances in India and abroad. Plays like “Sakharam Binder,” “Giddhade,” which depicted violence brutally and the psychic explorations of his earlier works led to Tendulkar being awarded the 1974-75 Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship. The popularity and the theme of “Kanyadaan” awarded him with the Saraswati Samman. In his speech at the award ceremony, he added:
“You are honoring me with the Saraswati Samman today for a play for which I once had a slipper
hurled at me. Perhaps it is the fate of the play…”
Thus fame, honor and controversies ran together hand in hand for Tendulkar. The way he handled the controversies proves the defiance and confidence in himself. It is for this reason that during his lifetime he was stimulating a rare kind of immortality in the world of Indian theater: few writers of any genre get recognized as arguably as the “greatest ever.” At the same time his daring plays lifted up the position and popularity of Marathi Theatre internationally. Even after his death, packed with controversies and fame, his position and honor remains evergreen. • 2010
Reprinted with the permission of the author.
SHUKLA CHATTERJEE is a research scholar at the Department of English, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, India. Presently she is working under Prof. Sukla Basu (Sen), on Vijay Tendulkar’s plays. In May, 2006, she did an interview with Vijay Tendulkar, which is being published in ‘Indian Literature’ the Sahitya Akademi Journal. Ms. Chatterjee is also a lecturer of Communicative English in Dr. B. C. Roy College of Pharmacy, Durgapur, West Bengal, India.
