"Kanyadaan" by Vijay Tendulkar

Vijay Tendulkar, one of India's foremost playwrights, is a prolific writer. Twenty

eight long plays are to his credit. He has written several one-act plays as well as
children’s plays. He often portrays socio-political problems in his plays. His plays
are performed in various languages, translated from their original Marathi. Recipient
Of several prestigious awards such as the Padma Bhushan, the Vishnudas Bhave
Memorial Award, and the Katha Chudamani Award, Tendulkar belongs to those
avant-garde groups of dramatists who represent reality as it is. His plays are viewed
as a sharp criticism of Indian society and the condition of women in a patriarchal
society. They also deal with the complexity of human relationships. Each of his plays
contains a subtle critique of modern Indian society and a distinct character and
message.
Kanyadaan is the first English translation of a major, award-winning Marathi
play of the same name by Tendulkar. It is one of his best works and a characteristic
one by Tendulkar, charged with certain central social and moral questions that are
deeply thought-provoking, and to which there are no easy answers. It brings into
focus the age-old conflict between upper and lower castes with its social, logical and
political dimension and effectively reflects how it is corroding our culture and
society. It depicts the caste conflict effectively and conveys how politicians
capitalize on class and caste discrimination instead of trying to abolish it.
A young woman, Jyoti from a politically active family that regards itself as
progressive has decided to marry a socially inferior, but a talented Dalit youth, Arun
Athavle. Though the gulf between them is vast - she is an educated, affluent Brahmin
and he is from a desperately poor, rural, low-caste background - her father
encourages her in the belief that the marriage would set a progressive example.

The play is about the predicament of Jyoti’s parents, Nath Devlalikar, an MLA and
his wife Seva, a social worker. Jayprakash, Jyoti’s brother, is an M. Sc. Student. The
play is divided into two acts. In the first scene of the first act, Jyoti informs her
parents about her decision to marry Arun. Seva is shocked to know it but Nath is
relaxed and happy inside because he wants to remove the class-system which is his
dream. He gives his consent for Jyoti’s marriage with Arun, whom she has known
for the last two months! Nath wants to experiment with this marriage, which is a sort
of political act.

In the second scene of the first act, Jyoti brings Arun, who is a dark-complexioned
Dalit youth doing his B. A. Jyoti is very much interested in his poetry and his
autobiography. Arun feels uncomfortable in “big houses” and gets nervous and
finally leaves home. What hurts Jayaprakash and Seva most is Arun’s unruly
behavior and his intention to brew liquor in order to survive, if he is left jobless.

In the first scene of the second act, Jyoti arrives perplexed and looking unhappy.
Then Arun follows, rather drunk. He asks for Jyoti’s forgiveness as he had beaten
her. Jyoti leaves with him again. At this juncture also, Nath does not want his dream
to get broken before his eyes though he’s aware of the plight of his own daughter.

In the second scene of Act two, Arun’s autobiography gets published in which he
has depicted the oppression and miserable condition of the poor – the lower class.
But the irony is that Arun himself exploits Jyoti and lives as a parasite on her.
Though Jyoti is pregnant, he makes her work at home. His ill-treatment to Jyoti is a
kind of answer back from the Dalits to the upper-class.

Arun asks Nath to deliver a public speech on the launch of his autobiography but he
refuses to do so. But looking at the plight of his daughter, in the final scene of the
second act, Nath gives a hypocritical speech by praising Arun’s autobiography
against his will. Nath wants to prevent Jyoti from further annoyance, but Jyoti
understands his hypocrisy. He tries to patch up the matter by saying, “You are
making a mistake .I don’t hate Arun, I hate only those tendencies.. .’’ Angry Jyoti
retorts, “Tendencies! I grew up listening to such talk day in and day out. All false,
vicious claptrap.” Jyoti is not able to tolerate her father’s hypocrisy and she leaves
home for forever. At the end, Nath, the idealist is turned into Nath the realist. He
says at the end in rage that the entrance of such dalit (Arun) has polluted his home.
Thus the play ends with Jyoti’s departure never to come back to Nath’s home.
The end of the play leaves a question in the readers mind regarding the future of
Jyoti’s marriage. The marriage does not succeed at al. It is suggested that the class-
divide and the conflict between the upper-class and the Dalit would continue to
remain, which is very unfortunate. Anyone expecting a happy ending for such
transgressive form of love is in for a shock because the marriage is a disaster. Arun’s
alcoholism, his ill-mannered and foul-mouthed behaviour quickly escalates into
physical violence after marriage. But despite this suffering Jyoti chooses to remain
with her husband, not out of love, but purely for the principles of duty and sacrifice.

Tendulkar explores the texture of modernity and social change in India through the
forces this marriage unleashes. The tense, gripping play, charged with an
undercurrent of violence, uncertainties and anger, concerns itself with questions that
are crucial to all societies which have to grapple with change and with social barriers.
Being puffed up by false romantic notions and by ‘unworldly Gandhian viewpoints
on the Harijan’, Nath destroys his daughter’s life. Jyoti realizes her true womanhood
by rejecting her father’s wrong philosophy and accepting life as it is.

The play is a ruthless criticism of the caste ridden Indian society. Tendulkar not
only highlights the discriminatory caste system, he also pinpoints how all attempts
of social amelioration prove fruitless in our progressive post independent society.
India's caste system is perhaps the world's longest surviving social hierarchy. A
defining feature of Hinduism, caste encompasses a complex ordering of social
groups on the basis of ritual purity. A person is considered a member of the caste
into which he or she is born and remains within that caste until death. Despite its
constitutional abolition in 1950, the practice of "untouchability"-the imposition of
social disabilities on persons by reason of birth into a particular caste- remains very
much a part of rural India. Representing over one-sixth of India's population-or some
160 million people-Dalits endure near complete social ostracization -
"Untouchables" may not cross the line dividing their part of the village from that
occupied by higher castes. They may not use the same wells, visit the same temples,
or drink from the same cups in tea stalls. Dalit children are frequently made to sit at
the back of classrooms. In what has been called India's "hidden apartheid," entire
villages in many Indian states remain completely segregated by caste.
In the play also, the untouchables are represented as drunkards and as prone to self-
destruction because of their habits, customs and festivals. They are portrayed as a
dehumanised bunch of people and termed dirty, uncivilized and barbaric: “It is
perfectly natural that the boy (Arun) should have rough edges; they are the product
of the circumstances he has endured. In fact, it would be surprising if these
peculiarities didn’t exist” (pg. 30). In fact, in Kanyadaan, when she comes to know
that her daughter is regularly beaten by Arun, Seva says to her husband Nath, “If
you ask me, I have my doubts as to whether these Dalits understand what gratitude
means.”(pg.47).
The play also depicts the hypocrisy of the so called reformist upper class
intellectuals like Nath. Taking up the cudgels of Gandhian reformism, Nath urges
his daughter to go ahead and marry Arun by saying:
He (Arun) may not be a gentleman, but neither is he a scoundrel. He is like
unrefined gold, he needs to be melted and moulded. This is the need of the
hour. Who can perform this task if not girls like Jyoti? …remember, it is we
who are responsible for the age old sufferings of these people. We have
betrayed them for generations. We should feel guilty about this. And now if
Jyoti breaks her word…it would be a kind of treachery. It would amount to
running away from the challenge. What you are doing could be wise and
foolish. But one thing is certain. It upholds the norms of civilized humanity,
and therefore, I stand by you. Go ahead my child, and let us what happens (pg.
31).
Being puffed up by false romantic notions and by ‘unworldly Gandhian viewpoints
on the ‘Harijan’, he destroys his daughter’s life. In the end, it is Nath’s gradual
disillusionment with the Gandhian Hindu reformist philosophy that is the true theme
of Kanyadaan. After Arun’s departure, he becomes enraged and disgusted:
I was nauseated by his overweening arrogance. And he’s the same man who
wrote that autobiography….his visit has polluted this drawing room , this
house, and this day…It stinks….This furniture, this floor…all this …he has
made them filthy, dirty, polluted! Why did I have to come into contact with a
man like this?”
The same disillusionment runs parallel within Jyoti as well, and at the end she
accuses her father for rearing her as a “guinea pig” for his “experiments”. (pg. 69).
It shows that what we assume as social and cultural progress in modern India, is
nothing but a big hoax and to obliterate caste system, to uplift dalit community, such
an inter-caste marriage can never be a solution
Apart from the caste-dynamics, patriarchy is one of the main themes in the play.
Tendulkar himself has heavily criticized patriarchy throughout his works and
in Kanyadaan also, he alludes to the to the traditional Hindu custom of marriage in
our society-to give a marriageable daughter by one’s guardian to an eligible young
man who will give her safety and security in life.. The word Kanyadaan itself, as
defined by Manu of the Manusmriti fame, means the “gift” of the girl from the father
to the husband. The desires of the daughter herself are meaningless. The women in
inter-caste marriages could end up being the double victims, both of caste and of
patriarchy, and Tendulkar has tried to show this in Kanyadaan. Jyoti, along with
Arun’s violence, is also subject to her father’s domination, even if the purpose of
this domination is reverse. Nath urges Jyoti to marry Arun to fulfil his own ideals.
By putting his cherished ideals ahead of everything else Nath undermines Jyoti’s
autonomy. She is the ultimate victim of Kanyadaan.