Lucky Gupta

Breaking the Myth; A Postcolonial Reading of Vijay Tendulkar’s Kanyadaan

After the fall of imperialism Indian Writing in English has occupied a great significance. In past sixty years of independent India, English language has become the medium of creative expressions. In the galaxy of Indian writing in English, Vijay Tendulkar, the most influential dramatist, has got wide spread popularity and appreciation as a pioneer of experimental theatre movement not just in Marathi but Indian theatre as a whole. To quote Gawri Ramnarayan: 
He has been criticized for exaggerating ‘the spiritual bankruptcy of the degenerate socio-cultural milieu in which we live’. He has been accused of neo-realistic projections of squalor, poverty, crime, disorder, and mental perversions to titillate the viewer / reader, and worse, of promoting defeatist apathy. But he has also been acclaimed as one of India’s best living playwrights. (Interview 168) 
With criticism and appreciation, Tendulkar reveals the realistic world in his creations. He perceives the realities of human society without any pre-conceived notions, reacts to them as a sensitive and sensible human being and writes about them in his plays as a responsible writer. In his ‘Afterwords’ to the English version of Kanyadaan, he confesses how he goes about writing his plays: 
I have written about my own experiences and about what I have seen in others around me. I have been true to all this and have not cheated my generation... they contain my perception of society and its value and I cannot write what I do not perceive. (71) 
Beginning his career as a dramatist in the mid-fifties, this prolific writer has twenty-eight full length plays, twenty four one act plays, and eleven children’s dramas to his credit, a good number of which have been translated in major Indian languages. Kanyadaan, publish in 1983, is his most complex creation about the cultural and emotional upheavals of a family. It dwells on an extremely sensitive conflict between upper class and Dalit caste that is still prevalent in several parts of India. Despite sixty years of Independence, Dalits continue to suffer abject misery and ill-treatment in the hands of upper castes. Politicians instead of trying to uproot this evil, seem to capitalize on it. As a genuine playwright Tendulkar opens his reader-audience’s eyes to a social problem that continues to evade easy solutions. 
In this paper an effort is made to explore the controversial and problematic postcolonial dalit sensibility in the light of Homi-Bhaba’s definition of postcolonialism. The term ‘postcolonial’ refers to the writings, culture of nations and people who were once colonized by European powers. Therefore all Post-colonial theories look at the feminization, marginalization and dehumanization of the native. They exhibit the psychological effects of colonialism on both the colonizer and colonized. Homi Bhaba defines ‘postcolonial’ as: 
That form of social criticism that bears fitness to those unequal and uneven processes of representation by which the historical experience of the once colonized Third world comes to be framed in the West. (Qtd. By Nayan 164) 
Thus post colonized seeks to understand how oppression, resistance and adaptation had occurred during the colonial rule. It analyses specific strategies of power, domination, hegemony and oppression utilized by the colonizer in the colony. Therefore postcolonial studies uncovers the ideological subtexts of differences, discrimination and unequal power relations. This ideology of postcolonialism has become central motif in the creation of the play Kanyadaan. 
In Kanyadaan Jyoti, the protagonist, becomes a site, a battleground on which the clash between the upper class and Dalit class takes shape. She becomes the vessel in which the conflicting caste ideologies pour their aspirations. In the play inter-caste marriage has been offered as a solution to the caste problem for which Tendulkar has been criticized that he is flogging the dead horse of inter-caste marriage. The title Kanyadaan – giving away of the daughter – is very suggestive as it centres on an unusual marriage of Jyoti, a Brahmin girl who comes from a politically and socially active family. Her father, Nath Devlalikar, is an M.L.A. and her mother Seva, is a busy social worker. Her brother Jayaprakash is an M.Sc. student, Jyoti is an educated working woman. Theirs is an urban middle class family. Brought up in such a progressive minded family Jyoti decides to marry Arun Athavale, a Dalit youth from a village whom she had known only for two months. Arun, a B.A. student, is poor but talented. He writes poetry. Jyoti puts forward her decision to marry Arun before her parents and brother. Nath and Seva are socialists and work hard for Dalits for a long time. Nath is very happy and says, “but if my daughter decided to marry into high caste it would have not pleased me much” (8) since he considered the boys background and profession irrelevant. But Seva’s response to this news displayed a gap between theory and practice. She does not give her consent to this uneven union and finds one excuse after another to prevent the marriage. When Jyoti expresses her ‘trust’ in Arun and her faith in his poems and biography which inspired her, Seva warns Jyoti for her hasty decision. Although she is self-righteous enough to say that she is not opposed to intercaste marriages: 
My anxiety is not over his being a Dalit. You know very well that Nath and I have been fighting untouchability tooth and nail ... but your life has been patterned in a certain manner. You have been brought-up in a specific culture... he is different in anyway. You will not be able to handle it. (13) 
In fact Seva’s anxiety is perfectly natural and genuine since cultural deformities foster the problem of identity crisis and become the cause of marital disharmony. Seva here seems more rational and pragmatic than Nath and Jyoti who are in the passion of idealism. But Jyoti fails to see sense in Seva’s forewarning and asserts, “I will manage mother” (13). The final decision is postponed till they meet Arun. 
In the second scene of the first Act Arun comes to Jyoti’s house while she is alone. Arun is dark complexioned and has a harsh face, yet he is good looking. The feelings of inferiority that he has acquired in the Dalit environment imposed by our hierarchized society, surface in his mind and make him uncomfortable in this Brahmin house. Being a Dalit he possesses his own insecurity and unconsciously seeks a fulfillment of it in the company of Jyoti. So he requests Jyoti to be with him. Arun feels quite nervous when she is about to go into the kitchen to make tea for him. We also hear about his phobia of big houses and big people, “I feel uncomfortable in big houses,” Jyoti is surprised, Arun continues: 
If you will see my father’s hut you will understood. Ten of us big and small, lived in that eight by ten feet. The heat of our bodies to warm us in winter. No clothes on our back no food in our stomach, but we feel very safe. Here, these damn houses of the city people, they’re like the bellies of sharks and crocodiles each one alone in them. (16) 
All in all from this the contrast between the soft and protected life in which Jyoti has been brought up and the harsh existence through which Arun has come becomes all the more conspicuous. Arun becomes more eloquent as the conversation developed on the subject of untouchability. His words spit venom. They express the age long hatred for upper caste. He persecutes Jyoti to avenge the oppressions of Dalits by upper class people. He asks Jyoti :
Surely we can not fit in your unwrinkled Tinopal world. How can there be any give and take between our ways and your fragrant, ghee spread, wheat bread culture... 
Will you marry me and eat stinking bread with spoilt Dal in my father’s hut without vomiting? Tell me, Jyoti, can you shit every day in our slum’s village toilet like my mother?” (17) 
Jyoti is unable to bear such rebellious talks and covers her face with her hand. She starts crying on hearing Arun. Yet Arun goes on relentlessly, “And you thought of marrying me. Our life is not the socialist service camp. It is hell. And I mean hell. A hell named life.” (18) 
At Jyoti’s cries, Arun shows his apologies on his rude speech. He realizes that he is causing Jyoti a great pain by his bursting out due to his inferiority. He asks her to forgive his mood as they arise out of his feeling of injustice, frustration, inner desire for revenge and his utter helplessness. This pleases Jyoti and she takes her hand off her face and smiles. Arun in his excitement chants a rhyme, “it is jolly game; caught a Brahmin dame.” Hearing this Jyoti’s self is knocked. She asserts that she is not a sophisticated girl. Arun suddenly twists her arm violently. Jyoti is painfully hurt, more so because of this sudden change in Arun’s manic behaviour. Here we can establish that Jyoti first plays the role of Rescuer while Arun plays the victim. Her role prevents her from perceiving the reality. Her rescuing, at first, makes him behave more helplessly and then triggers his feelings of inferiority and insecurity. It brings a philosophical guilt in the psyche of Arun all through marginalized suppression. Consequently Arun shifts to the role of persecutor inorder to feel powerful and becomes violent towards Jyoti. 
Further, Seva face to face with her proposed son-in-law, asks about his future prospects of job so as to ensure economic security as it is essential for running any household. As Seva puts her finger on Arun’s raw nerve, Arun feels cribbed by his bottonholding like this. He retorts giving her the answer that, “We shall be brewing illicit liquor.” (21) 
Arun goes expatiating on the advantages of the trade of brewing illicit liquor even in the presence of Jyoti and Jayaprakash, and when Jyoti tries to temporize the situation and calm down the flayed feelings, Arun shouts at her to shut-up. 
Nath’s entry at this juncture eases the situation. Unaware about the brewing storm, Nath is overjoyed with the prospective marriage. As an ideologist he reveals his high ideals on intercaste marriage; 
... Seva until today, ‘Break the caste system’ was a mere slogan for us. I have attended many intercaste marriages and made speeches. But today I have broken the caste barrier in real sense. My home has become Indian in the real sense of the term. I am happy today, very happy... (23) 
After sometime Arun leaves caring without even touching the tea that Jyoti brings for him. Seva and Jayaprakash then complain about Arun’s vile behaviour but Nath ignores their accusation and defends him : 
Not only is he a middle class man, he is a Dalit. He has been brought up in the midst of poverty and hatred. These people’s psychological make up is all together different... We must understand him and that is extremely difficult. (27) 
Nath makes a plea for compassion and sympathetic understanding. The rough edges of Arun’s character are justified by him on the name of social justice. Here, like Jyoti, Nath also plays the role of the rescuer and in rescuing Arun he tries to get a  change from  Arun’s behaviour. He does not consider him like a similar human being. He wants to be ‘catalyst in the transformation’ and tries to make ‘a difficult experiment’. (31) With the difference of opinion, the decision is left to Jyoti. Unresponsive to her mental confusion, Jyoti marries Arun with the moral support of Nath. The marriage is expected to be the meeting of two cultures rather than coming together of two persons in flesh and blood. It is on this high moral, idealistic note that the first act ends, as the stage direction indicates that the darkness descends at the end of Nath’s speech that suggests the darkness descends on them. It also foreshadows the future storm in which the family is going to be engulfed after this marriage of two ideologies. 
Some months passed away, Arun and Jyoti’s marriage is on the rocks. Jyoti returned home, crushed and tired. She is a ‘beaten’ figure in every sense of the term. Seva’s fears come true. Arun has no room of his own hence the couple has to spend their nights to some friends or the another’s. Every night Arun comes back and beats Jyoti. She comes home with the determination not to return to Arun. Nath is firm on his resolution not to break the relationship; “... Seva, let not this experiment fail.” (41) He finds out a solution of Arun’s frustration and offers that Arun and Jyoti should stay with them rather than wandering. He condones Arun’s ill-treatment of Jyoti as a result of the harsh environment in which he has been brought up : if he gets a better surrounding, such as Jyoti’s maternal home, he will definitely mend his ways. Then, Arun, appears in defence of his attributed errors. He not only rings up but again comes to apologize for his behaviour. In a perverse conduct, he takes out a knife saying that he is going to cut off his arm with which he beats Jyoti. Sensitive to his histrionic act, Jayaprakash snatches away the knife. To Seva’s question why he beats Jyoti he responds :
Arun : What am I but a son of scavengers. We don’t know the non-violent ways of brahmins like you. We drink and beat our wifes ... We make love to them ... but the beating is what get publicized.
Seva : Drunk or sober, wife-beating is called barbarism. 
Arun : I am a barbarian, a barbarian by birth. When have I claimed any white collar culture? (44) 
The rage expressed in the above lines exposes Arun’s psychological state of polarized mind that is suffering with the deformities of the society. His behaviour towards Jyoti cannot be taken as an individual torturing his wife but this is due to the age-long suppressions and subjugations out of which he wants to declare war against upper caste. To be a persecutor, he keeps himself on the above scale to overcome his inferiority and makes use of his power as a typical husband and continues : 
... I am what I am ... and shall remain exactly that. And your Jyoti knew what I was even before she married me. In spite of that she married me. She did it out of her own free will. (44) 
Jyoti, to prevent the further embarrassment to her parents and brother surrenders to the situation and leaves the house with Arun forever. In rescuing Arun, Jyoti intensifies his feeling of inferiority. Seva is aghast but Nath is delighted; as a traditional father he seeks his aspirations in Jyoti.  
... Jyoti I feel so proud of you. The training I gave you has not been in vain. (Suddenly dejected). If only I believed in God, then Jyoti this is the moment I’d go down on my knees and pray for you. 
With pride and anguish Nath wishes that his daughter would lead a happy married life. Yet he is surrounded by unknown fears. 
Between the first and second scenes few months passby. Arun publishes his autobiography which receives a good acclaim. Nath praises it, “Such a powerful autobiography. Hats off to Arun Rao.” (46) At the same time, Seva returns from the hospital where the pregnant Jyoti has been after her being brutally beaten and kicked by Arun in the belly. Nath fails to understand Arun’s behaviour. He sits completely baffled and wonders as to how a person who himself has gone through so much suffering can inflict pain on others.  
Nath :  Such behaviour towards a pregnant wife! ... Here in these pages he describes the humiliations he has gone through with extraordinary sensitivity... and the same man kicks his pregnant wife on her belly? How ... ?” (47) 
Seva cannot control herself any longer and bursts before.  
Seva :  The truth is that your Dalit son-in-law who can write such a wonderful autobiography and many lovely poems wants to remain an idler. He wants his wife to work. And with her money he wants to drown himself in drinks and have a hell of time with his friends. On top of that, for entertainment, he wants to kick his wife in the belly. (47-48). 
Later, Jayaprakash joins the discussion by quoting the news item that the Jews who were once persecuted have now become the merciless murderers of Palestinians. This helps to put Arun’s behaviour in a perspective that Nath can understand.  
Jayaprakash :  But I remember that some years ago, Hitler’s Nazi troops had inhumanly decimated the Jews. ... And today the Jews have become the murderers of Palestinian women and children. 
Nath : Perhaps they believe that this is necessary as defence strategy. 
Jayaprakash : Perhaps. It’s possible that guning down women and children is essential for one’s defence. But this means that very victim of violence may go on to perpetrate the same brutal violence upon others, perhaps they get a peculiar enjoyment out of it. 
In other words, ‘yesterday’s victim is today’s victimizer.’ Therefore there is no hope of man’s gaining nobility through experience, he can only become a greater devil. Jayaprakash infers at the persecution of Jyoti, a brahmin lady by Arun, a Dalit.            
Tendulkar’s firm belief that violence is an innate part of human nature, is seen throughout and most of the ameliorationist like Nath fail because they do not take into account this innateness of evil and violence. Nath then confesses that he too feels anger for what Arun says and does after all he is no Mahatma. To put Nath’s ideology to further test, Arun visits him with his two friends. He requests Nath to talk about his book in the meeting. When Nath politely refuses, he blackmails him saying that, as his name has been included in the list of speakers, people will say, “The rise of Dalit son-in-law to the literary heights caused heart-burn in the upper caste socialist father-in-law” (55) if he does not speak. Seva, thus, advises him to concede to Arun’s request because she fears “If we go against his wishes, it will mean more suffering for Jyoti.” (57-58) 
In the final scene we see Nath returning home after chairing the discussion on Arun’s Autobiography. As he comes home he is tormented by his conscience. He blames himself for the misery of his daughter. 
If she has committed any crime, it is this; she took his father’s words for gospel truth. She adopted her father’s value. (62)
At this juncture Jyoti enters, the encounter between Nath and Jyoti is a great exercise by Tendulkar. Through the discussion he completely demolishes the school of thought that regards man as innately good and violence is merely a matter of environment with the change in circumstances. Jyoti rebukes his father for his insincerity, “Your speech today was not only lousy, it was a hireling’s speech.”  (66) Referring to her own life, Jyoti raised the question how to separate the evil Arun from the good Arun for both are inextricably twined up with each other; Arun is both the passionate lover and her evil tormentor. She has to accept him in total. She expresses:
... I grew up listening to such talk day in and day out ... No man is fundamentally evil, he is good. He has certain propensities towards evil. They must be transformed ... It is essential to awaken the god slumbering within him. .... The truth is you know very well that man and his inherent nature are never really two different things. Both are one and inseparable. And either you accept it in totality, or you reject it if you can... Putting man’s beastliness to sleep and awakening the godhead within him is an absurd notion. You made me waste twenty years of my life before I could discover this. I had to learn it on the strength of my own experience... (67)
In the beginning, she was feeling herself helpless but now she realizes that she can handle the situation leaving aside her pre-idealistic notion by accepting Arun in his totality. She tells Nath how he had made her mentally crippled and how Arun is better than he.
Jyoti : “... tell me where is that beast I should drag out and destroy, where is that God I should rouse from his sleep? Tell me ... Arun is made of all these things bound together and I have to accept him as he is, because I cannot reject him. (68)
When Nath proposes him to comeback, she brilliantly checkmates him by one of his favourite ideas on his face.
Jyoti : It will not happen, Bhai because you yourself have taught us that one must not turn one’s back upon the battle field ... This drug ... has entered and mingled with our blood. (69)
As a married daughter she reminds her father:
Jyoti :  (harshly) I have my husband. I am not a widow. Even if I become one I shan’t knock at your door. I am not Jyoti. Yadunath Devlalikar now. I am Arun Athavale, a scavenger.(70)
Jyoti firmly disassociates herself from her family and forbade them to visit her out of charity.  It is through the assertion of Jyoti of her right as a woman and as a wife, she becomes an instrument to break the barriers of marginality and to establish the identity of Arun in the ‘centre’ as a responsible human being and considerate husband beyond the treachery of caste barriers.

 

 

Works Cited

Nayar, Pramod K. Literary Theory Today, New Delhi: Asia Book Club, 2006.

Interview, Vijay Tendulkar in conversation with Gawri Ramnarayan’, Vijay Tendulkar’s Plays, An Anthology of Recent Criticism, V.M. Madge. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2007.

Tendulkar, Vijay. ‘Afterword’ Kanyadaan. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.

 Tendulkar, Vijay. Kanyadaan’ Bombay, Oxford University Press, 2006.