Women in the plays of Vijay Tendulkar

Dr. Vibha
Assistant Prof. of English
Govt. College for Women
Tosham
India
Abstract

Vijay Tendulkar, the Marathi dramatist demonstrates how society adds to the depreciation of
women as human being and deprives them of most human rights. He shows how women are
exploited, tortured and victimized. Tendulkar probes deep into the recesses of human nature. His
plays delve deep into the realities of life in contemporary social milieu. He states “As a social
being I am against all exploitation and I passionately feel that all exploitation must end.”
He wrote thirty full-length plays in Marathi and ten plays were translated into English.
Tendulkar‟s most plays, deal with the syndrome of power and violence. His plays depict the
women not only as a commodity of male gaze and as a victim subjected to violence whether
physically or emotionally. Tendulkar has achieved a milestone in exploring the relationship
between men and women at different levels. He has focused on men‟s superiority complex and
shown subtle, inverted and preservative relationship men and women. He has studied the
psychology of all the characters and put them together in the play in natural shapes. The present
research paper will focus on his three plays, to present the subjugated position of women in
society, Silence! The Court is in Session, Sakharam Binder and Kamala. In his plays, Silence!
The Court is in Session and Kamala he takes the issue of oppression on the basis of gender. The
play, Sakharam Binder is a study of human violence. His plays divulge the message that woman
possesses the strength, the courage and puissance for facing and surviving the onslaughts of
institutional power.

Key Words: Women, Exploitation, power, violence, relationship, courage, puissance.

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Vijay Tendulkar is a prolific playwright of Marathi language. He has to his credit twenty- eight
full length plays, twenty four one act plays and eleven children dramas. Most of his plays have
been translated into English and in some other languages of India. Tendulkar‟s play demonstrates
how society adds to the depreciation of women as human being and deprives them of most of
human rights, related to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the Individual. He shows how
women are exploited, tortured and victimized. Women are made to suffer throughout their life, is
the central concern of the paper. An attempt has been made to display the unfair treatment of
women that compel them to tolerate all types of violence: Physical, mental & emotional. The
paper devotes three plays respectively to Tendulkar‟s Silence! The Court is in session, Sakharam
Binder and Kamala.
In the play Silence! The Court is in session (1967) with three acts Tendulkar introduces a theatre
group that concentrates on some social evil, dissects it and finally disrupts it for its elimination
through stage performances before the villages. The present problem, the charge of infanticide is
put against a spinster Leela Benare who gets pregnant the case is set to examine in a court, a fake
court that assumes to be real. Arundhati Banerjee maintains that the accusation brought against
Benare at the beginning of the trial turns into the verdict in last because contemporary Indian
society, with its roots grounded firmly in reactionary ideas, cannot allow the birth of a child out
of wedlock. This very, reversal in the attitude of the authorities expresses the basic hypocrisy and
double standards on which our society is founded. In the course of court proceedings, Miss
Benare‟s private life is exposed and publicly dissected revealing that she is a woman of loose
character, Tendulkar displays, the psychological violence that makes a female individual as
helpless as Lachrymose. When Kashikar, the Judge listens that Benare is a spinster, he very
irrationally approves the custom of child Marriage. It also displays how women desires are
repressed under the onslaught of reactionary ideas of the fundamentally orthodox society. It also
displays how women are disrupted to do certain things. She cannot talk freely, walk freely & live
freely. If she does this like Benare and some mishappening occurs, this misfortune will
inevitably fall upon her head. It is important that it is men who ruin society but accused will
remain Leela Benare. Prof. Damle is equally guilty but the trial cannot be set against him. The
situation becomes complicated when Ponkshe reveals that Benare lives only for the child in her
womb and will give birth to it. Now Sukhatme, the lawyer, counsels for the prosecution:

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 The woman.... has made a heinous blot on the sacred brow of motherhood ...
Motherhood without marriage has always been considered a very great sin by our
religion and our traditions. Moreover, if the accused‟s intention of bringing up the
offspring of this unlawful maternity is carried to completion, I have a dreadful
fear that the very existence of society will be in danger... Milord, infanticide is a
dreadful act. But bringing up the child of an illegal union is certainly more
horrifying ... „Woman is not fit for independence‟... That is the rule laid down for
us by tradition. Abiding by this rule, I make a powerful plea. „Miss Benare is not
fit for independence‟. (p.115)
The main charge is put aside during the trail. The characters try to pinpoint their own personal
opinions and blame Benare of wrong-doing and immoral acts. The mock trial, which began just
for pleasure, turns into Benare's tragedy. Benare is totally devastated. She is in a sense of fear
like a caged animal, and has been dismembered morally and socially. Benare utters only these
words, after her failure in love with her maternal uncle: "Life is a poisonous snake that bites
itself. Life is a betrayal. Life is a fraud. Life is a drug. Life is drudgery… Life is a very dreadful
thing."(p.74) she wanted to die, but she could not.
The most naturalistic play, Tendulkar‟s Sakharam Binder (1972) revolves round its central
character, Sakharam a book binder, a brahmin by caste but presents an antithesis to the general
conception of a member of his community, He also exploits women, tortures them and treats
them mere as an object of lust, both mentally and physically. Laxmi and Champa like other six
whom Sakharam kept in his house. Now Sakharam brings Champa who runs away from her
husband. She runs away because her husband, Fauzdar Sindhe, becomes more of an animal than
a man to her. He treats her like a beast, and gratifies his sadism and sexual needs in unnatural
ways. Champa bursts out in voilence as soon as she sees her husband and beats him:
I don‟t have a heart. He chewed it up raw long ago. He brought me from my
mother even before I‟d become a woman. He married me when I didn‟t even
know what marriage meant. He would torture met at night. He branded me, and
stuck needles into me and made me to do awful, fifthy things. I ran away. He
brought me back and stuffed chilly powder into that god-awful place, where it
hurts most.(p.46)

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It is not only the case of Laxmi and Champa but of the whole female race from the time
immemorial, women are treated like beasts and animals. From the time immemorial, women are
treated like beasts and slaves. Virginia Woolf delineates the same picture of women in society:
Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely
insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from
history. She dominates lives of kings and conquerors in fiction, in fact she was the
slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger...... (And) in real life
she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her
husband.(p.66)
Tendulkar‟s Kamla (1981), a topical play is grounded on a real life incident. Like in his previous
plays, in Kamala, Tendulkar has explored the condition of women in contemporary Indian
society, women who are toppled throughout and are treated as feeling less objects as if they have
no sentiments. Kamala and Sarita, the two women characters in the play, in the same condition
and Tendulkar displays how both of them are prevented from doing certain essential works and
suffer an unfair justice emotional and mental crises overleap Sarita with a sense of realization
that like Kamla, she is also just a pawn in his game of chess. Now Sarita asks the overwhelming
and thought provoking question; Why are women not masters like men? Why can‟t a woman
atleast ask to live her life the same way as man? Why must only a man have the right to be man?
Sarita insistently asserts on the need of a change in the concept of manhood and the possessions
and execution of certain rights in all domains of life. She cries out: “This must be changed.
Those who do manly things should be equal to men”. Those who don‟t are women. And there
will be some among them who have beards and moustaches too. Isn‟t being Prime Minister of
India a manly thing? And isn‟t it an effeminate thing to grovel at that Prime Minister‟s feet?
Virginia Woolfs in her A Room of One’s Own asserts to expose women to the same exertions and
activities, make them soldiers and sailors and will not women die off so much younger, so much
quicker than men.
The paper discusses Tendulkar‟s three plays and presented varied range and reveals a single
strand running through the fabric of the play. The main preoccupation is with the use and misuse
of power. Tendulkar describes his plays as about the reality that surrounds us.

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Works cited
Aiyer, Ramnath. ed., “Protection of Human Rights Acts, 1993”, Legal Dictionary Nagpur;
Vadhava and Co., 1940, reprint 2007.
Banerjee, Arundhati. “Introduction,” Five Plays, New Delhi; Oxford India Paperbacks, 1995,
Eight Impression, 2006.
Tendulkar, Vijay. Silence! The court is in Session, trans. Priya Adakar, Calcutta:
Oxford University Press, 1978
Tendulkar, Vijay. Five Plays, New Delhi: Oxford India Paperbacks, 1995, Eight
Impression, 2006.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own, London: The Hogarth Press, 1929.
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