CHAPTER-I

INTRODUCTION

Indian Drama

Indian drama and theatre has the longest and richest tradition in theatres

across the world. Bharata is considered the founder of the Indian dramaturgy

and he described drama as the “fifth Veda.” His Natyasastra in Sanskrit

appears to be the first attempt to develop and arrange the technique or rather

art of drama in a systematic manner. Bharata says in Natyasastra: “The drama

as I have devised will give courage, amusement and happiness as well as

counsel to them all” (111-112).

Natyasastra advises the reader not only about what is to be portrayed in

a drama but also how the portrayal is to be executed. Natyasastra deals

elaborately with both the theoretical and practical aspects of traditional Indian

drama such as rituals, voice, choreography, theatre architecture, costumes,

ornaments, music and other related dimensions. It consists of minutely detailed

precepts for both playwrights and actors. The much renowned Bharata talks

about ten types of drama ranging from one to ten acts. The history of drama

states that he had also laid down guidelines for stage design, make-up,

costume, dance, acting, directing and music culminating in the theory of rasas

and bhavas. Written in six thousand verses, Natyasastra is irrefutably a unique

text on dramaturgy, exerting a profound influence over genres, theatre

formation and structure.

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Talking about the efficacy of what has been formulated by Bharata in

Bharata-The Natyasastra, Kapila Vatsyayan writes:

Bharata shows a deep understanding of the senses, body and

mind relationship. This is the sub-stratum of his entire work.

The inner states of consciousness find expression at many levels.

There is an intrinsic relationship and mutability of mind,

intellect, brain and body. Diverse configurations emerge which

can be identified as distinct states of being or as what is

commonly called emotive states. (19)

With the impact of Western civilization on Indian life, a new chapter

began in Indian arts, including drama. While the theatre movement in the

Indian languages had already gathered momentum mainly under the influence

of British drama, the theatre in English in India as such did not flourish on

expected lines.

“Modern” theatre in India originally began in the colonial cities set up

by the British as commercial ports in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. These

cities had an urban middle-class audience with values and tastes shaped by the

English education they received and by the need to work with the British in

administration and commerce. Much of the theatre in this era copied the British

troupes that toured the country and took on to some extent the aesthetics,

dramaturgy and even the architecture of Western drama. Significantly, most

performances did not take place on a proscenium stage. Nor did they depend

upon ticket sales but upon patronage. The proscenium which was adopted later
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separated the participants from the observers and; ticket sales put an emphasis

on theatre as a commodity, making it available to a smaller and wealthier

group.

Contemporary Indian English Drama

The description of English as an "Indian" language no longer needs

elaborate defence. English is officially recognized as a national language in

India. Drama is a much neglected genre in the domain of Indian writing in

English. Indian English drama is a relatively recent phenomenon and a

gradually developing literary form. Indian writing in English is steadily

gaining popularity and acceptance in literary circles today the world over and

has become an important branch of Literature in English. When we consider

the contributions made in other branches of Indian writing in English like

novel and poetry, Indian English drama is almost a non-entity. Although there

are many Indians who have written plays in English, Indian English drama

remains the “Cinderella” of Indian English Literature (M.K. Naik and

Shyamala Narayan, Indian English Literature 1980-2000: A Critical Survey

201).

There are four important factors that explain the slow growth of Indian

drama in English. Language is a fundamental factor that has impeded the

growth of plays in English in India. For Indians, English is a language learnt

and acquired in academic circles and, at best, it is a second language. This has

affected both the playwrights and the audience. Formerly Playwrights wrote in

verse or stylized speech which was different from the socio-cultural idiom and
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sensibility of the common masses. The great exuberance of thought and

language which Aurobindo exhibits in his plays may have an appeal to the

scholar but that cannot fulfill the demands of the stage. Similarly Kailasam’s

language in his English plays cannot equal the natural, easy-flowing spoken

language of his Kannada plays.

Some hold the opinion that there are very few “actable” plays in

English because Indian characters speaking in English will not sound

convincing unless the characters are drawn from an English speaking milieu of

the urban society or are Anglo-Indians whose mother tongue is supposed to be

English. Some playwrights, therefore, have confined themselves to the urban

milieu. It is absurd to expect all the characters in Indian drama to have English

as their mother tongue or imagine that they normally use it in their everyday

conversation.

The lack of a living theatre in English in India may be attributed chiefly

to the language factor. A playwright needs a living theatre to put his/her work

to an acid test, evaluate its total effect on the audience and thereby get a chance

to improve upon his/her performance. Although Indian plays in English have

been staged abroad, the success or failure of those plays cannot be measured in

those terms because the “foreign” context is very different from the one in

India. A foreign audience may not always understand the Indian and local

idiom and sensibilities expressed in those plays. The absence of a living theatre

in English in India has prevented the experimentation, growth and

development of the Indian drama in English.

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The failure of most Indian playwrights in English to recognize and use

Indian models such as those found in Indian classical drama as well as folk

theatre is another important reason for the stagnation of Indian plays in

English. Not making any creative use of Indian myths, legends, folklore and

history has been another major setback for Indian playwrights in English,

Naik, in Dimensions of Indian English Literature, levels a sharp criticism

against the Indian playwrights in English:

It is a shocking fact that he [the Indian playwright in English]

has mostly written as if he belonged to a race which had never

had any dramatic traditions worth the name, and must therefore

solely ape the West. Actually what a rich and varied dramatic

tradition he can draw upon! Drama was the ‘fifth Veda’ for the

ancient Hindus, the Indian classical drama which flourished for

ten centuries and more can safely challenge comparison with its

counterparts anywhere in the world. And even when this

tradition was broken after the Muslim invasion, it did not die but

was absorbed into folk forms in several Indian languages

actually gaining fresh vitality in the process, by drawing closer

to the common man. (157-58)

In recent years Indian drama in the vernacular has been increasingly

turning to folk forms and has been using folk techniques with splendid results.

While the playwrights in English have failed to use the folk forms those

writing in Indian languages such as Karnad, Tendulkar, Gandhi, Tripathi, Dutt,

Sircar, Rakesh, Bharti and Tanvir are prominent examples of those who have
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successfully employed folk forms in their plays in regional languages and

secured vital artistic leverage.

Indian English drama has never reached the high status of the other

genres mainly because the English language is not the natural and authentic

medium of communication in India. However, Indian English drama has

achieved a considerable measure of success in the recent decades but has to go

a long way to compete with the other literary genres in Indian writing in

English. It has all the possibilities and potential to carve out a niche for itself in

the years to come.

The evolution of Indian drama in English has been quite extensive but

without “notable gains” (Naik and Narayan 255) as in the vernacular. The

process of change had two phases: the first was smooth and new but belonged

to the English stage in style and deliberations as in the major pre-independence

playwrights like Tagore, Aurobindo and Kailasam; the second was rid of the

colonial mind-set and was enriched with an East-West encounter to create

socially relevant themes as in some post-independence playwrights like

Currimbhoy, Das, Karnad, Sircar, Rakesh and Tendulkar.

While discussing the status of contemporary Indian English drama one

can identify three varieties of Indian plays in English. They are: plays in the

vernacular that have been translated into English by Indians who are not the

authors of the originals, plays in the vernacular that have been translated into

English by the authors themselves, and plays written originally in English by

Indians. This section investigates the second and third varieties mentioned
above. There are not less than 700 plays written in English by Indian authors

since 1831. Of these dramatists, hardly fifteen to twenty have made their mark

in that genre.

Krishna Mohan Banerji wrote the first Indian English play The

Persecuted, or Dramatic Scenes Illustrative of the Present State of Hindoo

Society in Calcutta in 1831. This play presents the conflict in the mind of a

Bengali youth between orthodoxy and the new ideas introduced by Western

education. For more than a generation this play remained the lone dramatic

output in the whole of India. A more consistent attempt to write plays in

English began with Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s translation of his own Bengali

plays into English: Ratnavali (1858), Sermista (1859) and Is This Called

Civilization? (1871). His Nation Builders was published posthumously in

1922. Ramkinoo Dutt’s Manipur a Tragedy (1893) is the last Indian drama in

English that was published in Bengal in the nineteenth century.

Modem English Theatre in India, emerged in the late eighteenth century

to entertain the British soldiers and citizens who were residing in India.

Proscenium-arch auditoriums based on London models were built in major

cities like Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. The British expatriates enacted

famous English plays in these playhouses. Quite frequently drama groups and

individuals from England staged performances in these specially built theatres.

But the educated Indians were not interested in these British shows; they

yearned for an Indian theatre. Consequently, rich and young Bengalis in the

nineteenth century established temporary private theatres in their houses.

 By the early twentieth century, the theatre movement in the Indian

languages had already gained momentum under the influence of British drama,

but the theatre in English still lagged behind. Several dramatic organizations

were launched from 1940 but none exclusively for drama in English. The

National School of Drama was established after Independence. Institutions for

training in dramatics such as Rukminidevi Arundale’s Kalakshetra in Madras

and Mrinalini Sarabhai’s Darpana in Ahmedabad were founded. Several

universities like Baroda, Calcutta, Punjab, Annamalai and Mysore started

departments of drama. The Sangeet Natak Akademi in New Delhi started the

annual National Drama Festival in 1954. The British Council and the U.S.

Information Service arranged visits of foreign troupes from time to time. With

all theses initiatives it was drama in the Indian languages that did well but

drama in English remained impoverished. An exception was Gopal Sharman’s

Akshara Little Theatre putting up a few performances occasionally. Though

some plays like Gurcharan Das’s Mira, Pratap Sharma’s A Touch of Brightness

and Asif Currimbhoy’s The Dumb Dancer were successfully staged in the

West they did not fare well in India.

Pre-Independence Phase

In the pre-Independence phase, many playwrights in English emerged

but only a few among them were prominent. This phase presents plays and

playlets, the themes of which were from legends and epics, events from history

and the problems of contemporary society. The major playwrights of this

period were Sri Aurobindo, Rabindranath Tagore, Harindranath

Chattopadhyaya, A.S. Panchapakesa Ayyar, Bharati Sarabhai, the first woman

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playwright during the colonial period, J.M. Lobo Prabhu, T.P. Kailasam and

V.V.S. Ayengar.

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) is one of the leading writers in Indian

English literature. His writings bear testimony to his intense knowledge of

Eastern and Western thought. He wrote five complete blank verse plays

besides six incomplete verse plays. His complete plays are The Viziers of

Bassora-A Dramatic Romance, Perseus the Deliverer, Rodogune (1958),

Vasavadutta (1957) and Eric. These plays were written in English as original

dramatic creations in five acts and in blank verse. Of these, only Perseus was

published during his lifetime. His incomplete plays are The Witch of Ilni: A

Dream of the Woodlands (1891), Achab and Esarhaddon, The Maid in the

mill: Love Shuffles the Cards, The House of Brute, The Birth of Sin (1942) and

Prince of Edur (1907). The most striking feature of Sri Aurobindo’s plays is

that they deal with different cultures and countries in different epochs.

Commenting on the significance of Sri Aurobindo’s plays, K.R. Srinivasa

Iyengar writes: “Like the poems, the dramas too were a part of Sri Aurobindo’s

life! The outer projections of the richer or quintessential part of his life—the

imponderables of his ‘inner’ life” (204).

Rabindranath Tagore, one of the major Indian dramatists in English,

wrote all his plays originally in Bengali and later translated a few into English.

A versatile, multi-dimensional personality, Tagore used the dramatic medium

to convey moral values and philosophical ideas. While his dramas have artistic

richness they are also dramas of ideas. He made a prolific use of imagery and

symbolism and “saw the universals behind the particulars” (.Indian Writing in
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English 122). Iyengar further observes that Tagore created his dramas out of

“certain traditional national attitudes . .. unshakable obscure racial memories .

.. [and] perennially recurrent archetypal memories . . . ” (122).

Naik, in A History of Indian English Literature, classifies Tagore’s

plays under two broad categories (101). Thematically, Sanyasi, Malini, Chitra

(1913), The Cycle of Spring (1917), Sacrifice (1917), Red Oleanders (1924)

and Natir Puja (1927) are thesis plays. The King and the Queen, Kacha and

Devayani, Kama and Kunti and The Mother’s Prayer are psychological

dramas. Mukta Dhara (1922) is another important play of Tagore.

Another playwright who has made significant contribution to the

growth of Indian English Drama is Harindranath Chattopadhyaya. He wrote

his first play Abu Hassan in 1918. There are seven verse plays to his credit

which he published under the title Poems and Plays (1927) and these plays are

based on the lives of Indian saints. His Five Plays (1929) is written in prose

and reveals his social consciousness, and displays a touch of realism.

A.S. Panchapakesa Ayyar’s first play In the Clutch of the Devil (1926)

has the superstitious practices of witchcraft and ritualistic murder that were

prevalent in the rural South India of his time as its central motif. Sita's Choice

and Other Plays (1935) contains the title play and also Brahma’s Way and The

Slave of Ideas. The Slave of Ideas and Other Plays (1941) is yet another

collection of his plays where he uses the prose medium effectively and is seen

as a vigorous critic of contemporary life. His plot and characterization are

subordinated to the message. His last play The Trial of Science for the Murder

of Humanity (1942) is allegorical.

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Bharati Sarabhai is the first and most distinguished of the women

playwrights of Indian drama in English during the colonial era. She wrote two

plays, namely, The Well of the People (1943) and Two Women (1952). The

first is symbolic and poetic, and follows the Gandhian social order while the

second is realistic and is written in prose, and investigates the private world of

a sensitive individual. The Well of the People is based on a real story published

in Gandhi's Harijan and is a poetic pageant. Two Women brims with poetic

feelings and is packed with thought.

Joseph Mathias Lobo Prabhu has written more than a dozen plays. But

only Mother of New India: A Play of the Indian Village in Three Acts (1944)

and Death Abdicates (1945) appeared before the Independence. His Collected

Plays was published in 1956.

Thyagaraja Paramasiva Kailasam wrote both in English and Kannada

and is considered the father of modern Kannada drama. His genius finds its full

expression in his English plays such as The Burden, Fulfilment and A

Monologue: Don’t Cry—all three published in one volume titled Little Lays

and Plays (1933). His other plays are Kama or The Brahmin’s Curse (1946)

and Keechaka (1949). He has a uniform technical excellence in both Kannada

and English. His English plays are inspired by Puranic themes but he renders

them brilliantly in the intellectual idiom of the present day. In The Burden,

Kailasam has shown that he can make prose a fit vehicle for the expression of

tragic emotion. Fulfilment is the best of Kailasam’s plays. In it, Krishna fails to

persuade Ekalavya from joining the Kauravas and so stabs him. This raises

questions about life and death, good and evil, and means and ends. Kailasam
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wrote only a few plays but these are enough to establish him as an original

talent,

V.V. Srinivasa Ayengar was a master of social comedy. He delighted in

the incongruous, ludicrous and droll elements in the lives of the sophisticated

middle-class people in the cities. His plays are collected in two volumes of his

Dramatic Divertisements (1921). Some of his plays are Blessed in a Wife

(1911), The Point of View (1915), Wait for the Stroke (1915), The Bricks

Between (1918) and Rama Raj'ya (1952).

The Upanishads, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and popular

Puranas like the Bhagavata have been a perennial source of themes for Indian

writers during the pre-Independence phase. There have been many plays with

the following social themes: widow marriage, evils of caste and dowry

systems, superstition and witchcraft, domestic problems, corrupt practices of

doctors, lawyers and religious personalities. Other themes are scholarly

discussions on the conflicting opinions on social customs and the consequence

of wielding excessive authority over youngsters. Bhatta observes:

But, in dealing with these themes, most of them show greater

enthusiasm in composing dialogue on these topics than in

creating appropriate situations and dramatizing them. However,

except for a few playwrights like V.V.S. Iyengar . . . others like

Narayan and A.S.P. Ayyar show some seriousness in exposing

the evils of the contemporary society, (81)

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Post-Independence Phase

Indian English drama continued to occupy the back seat in the post-

Independence phase as well. A prime factor for this dismal scenario is that

even after India became politically independent there was no living theatre so

far as the Indian English playwright was concerned. Highlighting the post-

Independence phase of Indian drama in English, Naik, in A History of Indian

English Literature, remarks, “As in the earlier periods, the number of

playwrights with sustained dramatic activity remains very small, thought stray

contributions are quite numerous” (255-56). Although many plays by Indian

playwrights like Currimbhoy, Sharma, Das, Karnad and Dattani have been

successfully staged abroad, a full-fledged school of Indian drama in English is

yet to be established in India.

Asif Currumbhoy is an important and the most prolific playwright in

English of the post-Independence period. He has written and published more

than thirty plays. The Clock (1959) and The Dumb Dancer (1961) are studies

in abnormal psychology. The East-West encounter is the main theme of The

Tourist Mecca (1959), The Hungry Ones (1965) and Darjeeling Tea (1971).

The Restaurant (1960) deals with the partition and its aftermath. The

Doldrummers (1960) deals with a group of young Christian dropouts on a

Bombay beach. OM (1961) is a philosophical play. Thorns on a Canvas (1962)

is a protest against censorship. The Captives (1963) deals with the Sino-Indian

conflict against the background of the Chinese invasion. Goa (1964) deals with

the liberation of Goa from the Portuguese occupation. Monsoon (1965) deals

with the freedom of an island in the Malaysian archipelago. An Experiment

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With Truth (1969) deals with the Indian freedom struggle and the assassination

of Gandhi. Inquilab (1970) deals with the naxalite movement. The Refugee

(1971), Sonar Bangla (1972), Angkor (1973) and The Dissident MLA (1974)

are some of his other plays.

Currimbhoy handles a wide range and variety of subject matters like

history, contemporary politics, social and economical problems, the East-West

encounter, psychological conflicts, religion, philosophy and art. Iyengar, in

Indian Writing in English, notes that Currimbhoy “with his feeling for variety

and talent for versatility” is “the most prolific and the most successful of our

dramatists. Farce, comedy, melodrama, tragedy, history, fantasy: Currimbhoy

handles them all with commendable ease” (732). But Naik, in A History of

Indian English Literature, levels several criticisms against Currimbhoy’s

plays. Though he admits that isolated scenes in his plays do give evidence of a

genuine dramatic talent, his plays have not been successful in general because

of “a woefully superficial treatment of promising themes and pasteboard

characters” and the “extreme poverty of invention” in his dialogue (260). He

observes further that Currimbhoy “appears to confuse dramatic technique with

theatrical trickery, and stage gimmicks with dramatic experience” (260).

Pratap Sharma’s works are Bars Invisible (1961), A Touch of Brightness

(1968), The Word (1966), The Professor Has a War cry (1970) and Bangla

Desh (1971). His more recent plays include Echoes from Auntie’s Booze-Joint,

Power Play (1980) and Queen Bee (1981). Power Play is a three-act satirical

farce on the years following the Emergency.

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Nissim Ezekiel was a poet, scholar, dramatist, critic and Professor of

English at Bombay University. He limits his themes to the urban, middle and

upper middle classes of Bombay in particular. His Three Plays (1969) includes

Nalini: A Comedy, Marriage Poem: A Tragic-Comedy and The Sleepwalkers'.

An Indo-American Farce. These plays exhibit a skilful use of ironical fantasy.

Nalini is a comedy in three acts. It exposes corruption in the field of

advertising and the alienation of some educated Indians. Marriage Poem

presents a husband caught between marital duty and love. The Sleepwalkers is

a one-act farce and satire that deals with the Indo-American encounter of the

1960s. It attacks the absurd vulgarism of the Americans and the Indians

flattering the Americans. Ezekiel’s fourth play is Songs of Deprivation (1969).

Ezekiel’s plays focus on conflicts within families and the plight of the

individuals in a conventional society. He has largely succeeded in creating the

right idiom for his characters because he knows the life situations and lifestyles

of his characters. His other plays include The Wonders of Vivek, a comedy in

three scenes, and Don’t Call It Suicide (1989), a tragedy in two acts. Both

these plays are “well-written, stageable and remain focused on those themes

that Ezekiel understands best, the English-speaking urban middle and upper-

middle classes of Bombay” (Karen Smith, “India” 124-25).

Gieve Patel is a doctor, playwright, painter and poet. His Princes

(produced in 1970 but unpublished yet) is remarkable for its experimentation

with language, successful handling of characters, dialogue and dramatic

situation. The play is set in Southern Gujarat immediately after Independence.

It deals with the death of a landed, rural Parsi family. The family loses its male
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heir and patrimony due to its ineffective response to external changes. Patel’s

second play is Savaksha (completed in 1981 and produced in 1982 but

unpublished yet). This play also is set in Southern Gujarat. It depicts “the

collapse of an intended marriage . . . [and] the fragile state of traditional

patronage-based authority within the family and a rural community” (Smith

120). Mister Behram (1988) also is set in Southern Gujarat in the late

nineteenth century. It is a psychological play that explores the complex

relationship between an old Parsi landowner and his adopted tribal son-in-law.

Ethnicity, class-consciousness and Behram’s dormant homosexual attraction

towards his adopted son-in-law are some of the themes dealt with in this play.

These three plays “are intense portrayals of family relationships.” Patel’s

“main characters are Parsis, the community Gieve Patel belongs to and

understands intimately, but his plays’ concerns are pertinent to Indian society

more generally” (Smith 119-20).

Prithipal S. Vasudev’s early works include The Forbidden Fruit (1967),

The Sunflower (1971), Escapes and Adventures of Citizen H, The Outcastes,

and How President Huckleburger Nearly Won the War in Vietnam (1973). His

The Government of Avadh Wajid Ali Shah is an attempt “to redress the

common depiction of the last king of Oudh as an ineffectual sybarite” (Smith

126). It also presents the British colonization of India and its politics. The Limb

(1979) is about power mongering, Vasudev’s favourite theme. The Celestial

Empire and M/s. Jardine, Matheson and Co. (1974) depicts British

imperialism and its role in the opium trade in China. Jagat Seth and Lord

Ravan of Shri Lanka (1977) are two of his other plays. His characters “reflect
 17

sexism, racism, imperialism, greed, lust, megalomania, and personal spite”

(Smith 127), They are complex and are portrayed as individuals who are

products of their culture, environment and social position.

R. Raj Rao’s The English Professor (1985) and its sequel White Spaces,

deal with the absurdities of higher education, including nepotism within

departments, professional incompetence, falling class attendance and academic

standards. His important one-act plays are found in The Wisest Fool on Earth

and Other Plays (1996).

Badal Sircar is another notable playwright of this phase. He uses

contemporary situations to highlight the existential predicament of modern life.

Popularly known as a “barefoot playwright,” Sircar stands in the forefront of a

new theatrical movement in India. He has created a genuine people’s theatre,

known as Third Theatre, a theatre supported and created by the people, and not

just performed by the people.

The avant-garde Marathi playwright Vijay Dhondopant Tendulkar

symbolizes the new awareness and attempts of Indian dramatists to depict the

agonies, suffocations and cries of ordinary people, focusing on the middle

class society. Many of Tendulkar's plays derived inspiration from real-life

incidents and/or social upheavals, which throw clear light on harsh realities.

Tendulkar is a recipient of many prestigious awards like Padma Bhushan,

Katha Chudamani, Kamladevi Chattopadhyaya award, Sangeeth Natak

Akademi Award and Kalidas Samman.

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Of the thirty full-length plays of Tendulkar, only seven have been

translated into English. His plays highlight intricate human relationships and

reveal uneasy truths, pregnant with meaning, as in his Silence! The Court Is in

Session (1979) and Sakharam Binder (1972). Tendulkar raises several

questions about love, sex, marriage and moral values in the Indian context,

making ample use of irony, satire, pathos and mock-element to highlight the

hollowness of middle-class morality. He exposes the hypocrisy of the

traditional Indian society. The Vultures (1961), Kamala (1981), The Cyclist,

(2001), Kanydddn (2002), His Fifth Woman (2004) and Encounters in

Umbugland are his other notable plays. In his latest plays To Hell with Destiny

and The Tour, he highlights the typical middle-class mentality and value

system.

Tendulkar’s plays along with those of playwrights like Sircar, Rakesh

and Karnad, have changed the face of Indian theatre. Tendulkar has changed

the form and pattern of Indian drama by demolishing the three-act play and

creating new models. He has managed to bridge the gap between traditional

and modern theatre by creating a vibrant new theatrical form, an example of

which is Ghashiram Kotwal {Ghashiram, the Constable) (1984) which has

included the folk art of ‘thamasa’.

Tendulkar is a sarcastic critic of contemporary politics. His Mitrachi

Goshta (1982), translated into English as A Friend’s Story: A Play in Three

Acts (2001), is regarded as the first Indian play with a lesbian protagonist, and

faced empty halls when premiered.

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Girish Karnad, a theatre and film personality, is a living legend in the

arena of contemporary Indian English drama. Karnad has received many

awards including the Padma Shri (1974), Padma Bhushan (1992), Sahitya

Akademi Award (1994) and Jnanpith Award (1998). Most of his plays were

originally written in Kannada and then translated into English by the

playwright himself. Like Tagore, Karnad turns to Indian epics and myths for

his themes. His journey from Yayati to The Fire and the Rain holds a mirror to

the evolution of Indian theatre in the last four decades. Saryug Yadav remarks

that Karnad “represents a synthesis of cultures and his formal experiments

have been far more rigorously conceived and have certainly been far more

successful than those of some of his contemporaries” (9). Karnad has

succeeded in creating an Indian theatre which is true to its long tradition and at

the same time sensitive to contemporary concerns. He has been successful in

employing various techniques of Indian classical and folk theatres in his plays.

Karnad’s plays are Yayati (1961), Tughlaq (1972), Hayavadana (1975),

Bali: The Sacrifice (2004), Naga-Mandala: Play with a Cobra (1990), Tale-

Danda (1993), The Fire and the Rain (1998), and The Dreams of Tippu Sultan

(2004). His lone one-act play is A Heap of Broken Images (2005).

Commenting on Karnad’s Hayavadana, Naik observes, “his [Karnad’s]

technical experiment with an indigenous dramatic form here is a triumph

which has opened up fresh lines of fruitful exploration for the Indian English

playwright” (A History of Indian English Literature 263).

Karnad is perhaps the boldest of the Indian playwrights in English to

experiment with the stage techniques of Sanskrit drama, folk theatre and
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Western drama. He has experimented with the English language by introducing

slang, Indian English idioms and expressions, and vernacular and Sanskrit

words. He has used Indian myths, folk tales and history to interpret socio­

cultural, political and religious realities of modern India. Such interpretations

combine disciplines such as psychology, philosophy and ethics. Karnad has

thus demonstrated that there is a truly Indian theatre, which can be true to the

Indian tradition and at the same time responsive to modern and contemporary

concerns. Karnad and Tendulkar concentrate on giving an intense theatrical

experience to the audience.

Quite recently young writers like Manjula Padmanabhan and Mahesh

Dattani have gained national and international recognition. Playwrights like

Karnad, Dattani and Padmanabhan have proved that Indian English drama can

claim its rightful place in both national and international arenas. In this

context, Dattani emerges as one of the “princes” of Indian English drama. His

Final Solutions and Other Plays appeared in 1994, Collected Plays in 2000

and Collected Plays Vol. II in 2005.

Final Solutions and Other Plays contains four full-length plays: Where

There’s a Will, Dance Like a Man, Bravely Fought the Queen and Final

Solutions. Collected Plays (2000) has six full-length plays and two radio plays.

The full-length plays are: Where There’s a Will, Dance Like a Man, Bravely

Fought the Queen, Final Solutions, Tara, and On a Muggy Night in Mumbai.

The two radio plays are: Do the Needful and Seven Steps Around the Fire.

Collected Plays Vol. II contains two stage plays, four radio plays and four

screen plays. The stage plays are Thirty Days in September and Seven Steps
 21

Around the Fire; radio plays are Clearing the Rubble, The Swami and Winston,

Uma and the Fairy Queen and The Tale of a Mother Feeding Her Child.

Dance Like a Man (written with Pamela Rooks), Mango Souffle, Morning

Raga and Ek Alag Mausam are his screen plays. Underscoring the

complementary nature of Dattani’s themes, Naik and Narayan write:

In a sense, Dattani’s drama complements Karnad’s, in that

mythology and history are Karnad’s favourite subjects, while

Dattani is preoccupied with social and political realities in India

today. His themes are the Indian joint family and its impact on

the individual; the plight of women in Indian society; and

homosexuality - an explosive subject (for an Indian). Dattani is

the first Indian English playwright of note to deal with this

theme. (206)

In Where There’s a Will, the main theme is the negative influence a

father has on his son whom he loves dearly. At the end the son realizes the

truth but it is too late to change himself. His wife, Sonal, is also in a similar

situation, for she had lived under the influence of her elder sister. But Sonal

realizes it early enough to change herself.

In Dance Like a Man, the protagonist takes up dancing and marries a dancer

against the wishes of his father. Besides the clash of generations, social

prejudice against male dancers and the plight of the temple dancers are the

other themes. Both these plays portray modern women who are bold and self-

confident.
 22

In Tara, the protagonist is a woman but this time she is a victim of

gender discrimination. In Bravely Fought the Queen, the queen is the Rani of

Jhansi. But her name is brought in “as an ironic parallel to the women in the

play who are passive, helpless victims of male tyranny” (Naik and Narayan

207). This play also touches upon homosexuality as its theme. Homosexuality

is at the centre of On a Muggy Night in Mumbai. Final Solutions is a political

play and deals with communal clashes.

Both the radio plays of Dattani deal with homosexuality. Do the

Needful has family relationship as its theme. Seven Steps Around the Fire is

partly a detective play in which the mystery of the murder of a hijra is solved.

The play offers insights into the lives of the hijras, their beliefs and customs.

Dattani’s stage technique is important. He makes optimum use of the

stage space to create maximum dramatic effect. In Where There’s a Will “there

are three stage spaces” (Naik and Narayan 209). Another device of his is the

use of “double dialogue” as in Do the Needful. The character’s reaction is

heard first as thought and then it is presented as speech. Dattani also uses the

Chorus and masks in Final Solutions. His dialogues are short and functional

and he employs monologues only where necessary. He has an innate sense of

dialogue that is vital, stimulating, lucid and effective. He mixes modem

English colloquialism, Indianism, and words and expressions from Indian

languages such as Hindi, Gujarati and Kannada.

The plays of Dattani are perhaps the first to challenge effectively the

assumption that Indian drama written in English represents a disjunction

 23

between language and sensibility, material and medium. Dattani does not see

liis clioioe of Engl isIi as arbitrary, as a ^postcolomal" gesture or as an example

of "the empire writing back"—a phrase which he incidentally describes as

"politically incorrect" (Final Solutions and Other Plays 11). English is simply

the language in which "he can best express what he wants to say" (Final

Solutions 9). Dattani's work signals a new phase in the naturalization of

English as a medium of theatre in India.

To the canonical list of playwrights like Sircar, Tendulkar, Karnad and

Rakesh who have shaped contemporary Indian theatre, one must add the name

of Dattani, who is the first playwright writing in English to receive the

prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award in 1998 for his Final Solutions. Dattani is

one of the most interesting and important playwrights writing in India today

and his work demonstrates the wide range of styles, philosophies, and issues

being dealt with in the contemporary Indian theatre. Naik and Narayan write,

“Karnad seems to have a worthy successor in Mahesh Dattani, who enjoys the

distinction of being the first Indian English playwright to win a Sahitya

Akademi award” (.Indian English Literature 1980-2000: A Critical Survey

205).

Padmanabhan is a novelist, playwright, cartoonist, illustrator and artist.

Her play Harvest (1998), which won the Onassis Prize in 1997, portrays a

world of poverty and its shocking effect on mothers who sell their children. It

is a “futuristic play, a frightening vision of a cannibalistic future, in which the

sale of human organs has become all too common” (Naik and Narayan 213).
 24

The leitmotif of her play Lights Out (2000) is the victimization of women in

Indian society.

Vera Sharma’s Life is Like That (1997) is about the plight of a middle

class woman without much education. It is an exercise in social realism. Her

Reminiscences (1997) is also about a middle-aged and childless woman who

has been abandoned by her husband. Her The Early Birds (1983) contains five

one-act plays, mostly about middle class life. The Chameleon (1991) is a

collection of her radio plays. Sharma is good at light social comedy as in The

Early Birds than at tragedy.

Uma Parameswaran’s Sons Must Die and Other Plays (1998) contains

plays which were written over many years on different topics. Sita’s Promise

is a dance drama which showcases different kinds of Indian classical dances.

Meera is another dance drama. “Sons Must Die is a war play against the

background of the Kashmir conflict in 1948” (Naik and Narayan 212). Dear

Deedi is a stylized play that features ten women from ten countries and is set in

Canada. Her most successful play Rootless but Green Are the Boulevard Trees

is a social play with a modern setting and presents the problems of the

immigrants in Canada.

Most playwrights of the post-Independence phase have gone beyond the

models and techniques of classical Sanskrit drama. The post-Independence

drama has experimented with typical Indian expressions and idioms in English

translation. The play wrights of this phase died not confine themselves to our

myths, legends, folk tales and history but went beyond these themes. They
 25

have addressed social and economic problems like untouchability, sex, power

and wealth.

Mahesh Dattani

Mahesh Dattani was born to rural Gujarati parents in Bangalore on

August 7, 1958. He completed his schooling at Baldwin High School and his

graduation and post-graduation at St. Joseph’s College of Arts and Science at

Bangalore. After his education he started as a copywriter in an advertising firm

and also supported his father in the family business. With a Master’s degree in

Marketing and Advertising, he thought he would lead a normal life helping his

father in the family business.

When he was ten, his parents took him to watch a Gujarati play. Living

in Bangalore, theatre was, for his parents, one way of staying in touch with

their community. Quite frequently he went along with his parents and two

elder sisters to watch Gujarati plays performed in Bangalore. This experience

helped him to keep in touch with his roots and also kindled his interest in

theatre. As a college student in the early eighties, he joined Bangalore Little

Theatre and participated in workshops, and started acting and directing plays.

in 1985, he made his debut with an English play Surya Shikar, Five

Finger Exercise in Bangalore. His first play as a director came a year later with

a drama titled God. But it was not until he directed Woody Allen's God that

Dattani realised that theatre was his vocation. From 1984 to 1987 he

underwent training in ballet at Alliance Fran?aise de Bangalore from Molly

Andre, He also learnt Bharathanatyam from Chandrabhaga Devi and Krishna

 26

Rao in Bangalore from 1986 to 1990. In 1989 he mastered Ranga Pravesh

(Dance Debut Solo).

Dattani created his theatre group called Playpen in 1984, and started

directing plays ranging from classics to contemporary ones. Playpen ’$ aim was

to train and showcase fresh talents in acting, directing and stage craft. It is

around this time that he started his search for Indian plays in English. He

writes:

At that point I felt the need to do plays, Indian plays in English

language. I wasn’t entirely happy with the translations available.

I felt that the language was stilted. It just didn’t present any real

speech; it was either far too academic or just did a literal

translation of the original. So I felt that there ought to be more

plays to be written originally in the English language. I decided

to try my hand at it. That’s how I began writing. (169-170)

Dattani wrote his first full-length play Where There’s a Will for the

Deccan Herald Play Festival in 1986. His maiden play was an instant success.

The encouraging response and acceptance from people motivated him to write

and direct Indian plays in English. He is a reluctant playwright but a passionate

director. Hesays, “I sometimes get itchy fingers as a director . . . The minute I

write a play, the minute it’s ready and finished on my computer, 1 want to

direct it”. And on another occasion he commented, “When I’m directing a

play, I feel like I’m a complete human being. That makes me happy” (“Mahesh

Dattani - The Invisible Observer”).

 27

Dattani directed a thriller Double Deal: How Far Would You Go early

this year. It is an adaptation of Richard StockwelPs Killing Time, and tells the

story of two strangers Jeet and Rhea, their initial encounter and the dramatic

revelations that follow. Dattani’s latest play is Brief Candle. It was written by

him and directed by Lillete Dubey. This play is on cancer and cancer hospices.

Dattani writes in English and takes the complicated dynamics of the

modem urban family as his subject. Reeling under the oppressive weight of

tradition, cultural constructions of gender and repressed desire, his characters

struggle for freedom and happiness. "I write for my milieu, for my time and

place—middle-class and urban Indian. My dramatic tensions arise from people

who aspire to freedom from society," confesses Dattani (The Hindu, March 09,

2003).

Dattani’s plays question some of the norms and conventions of the

Indian society. In the process, significant questions arise regarding gender and

other issues like homo—sexuality, lesbianism and, paedophile. He tackles

issues that afflict societies the world over. Dealing with issues like male-

female divide, patriarchy, consumerism and, communalism, he holds back

nothing. "I'm not looking for something sensational, which audiences have

never seen before," asserts Dattani. "Some subjects, which are underexplored,

deserve their space. It's no use brushing them under the carpet. We have to

understand the marginalised, including the gays. Each of us has a sense of

isolation within given contexts. That's what makes us individual" (The Hindu,

March 09, 2003).

 28

Dattani is one of the two Indians, the other being Rukshana Ahmed,

among the twenty one writers commissioned by BBC Radio to write plays to

commemorate Chaucer’s six hundredth death anniversary. Dattani quite

frequently writes plays for BBC Radio 4. His radio plays are popular in UK as

he is able to create the right ambience and context through sounds and word

pictures. Seven Steps Around the Fire caught the imagination of the British

audience because of the character Uma Rao, the wife of the Superintendent of

Police who investigates a murder. After its huge success, Dattani was asked to

write a detective story having Uma Rao to investigate interesting cases.

Michael Walling, The Artistic Director of the multicultural theatre company,

Border Crossings, in his introductory note to Bravely Fought the Queen,

comments:

His plays fuse the physical and special awareness of the Indian

theatre with the textual rigour of western models like Ibsen and

Tennessee Williams. It’s potent combination, which shocks and

disturbs through its accuracy, and its ability to approach a

subject from multiple perspectives. Post-colonial India and

multi-cultural Britain both have an urgent need for a cultural

expression of the contemporary; they require public spaces in

which the mingling of eastern and western influences can take

place. Through his fusion of forms and influences, Mahesh

creates such a space. This is in itself a political and social

statement of astonishing force. (229)

 29

Apart from being commissioned by international and national bodies to

write plays, Dattani has won many reputed scholarships and held senior

positions in theatre groups and institutions. In 1992, he was the recipient of

USIS Visitorship to study American theatre and culture. He received British

Council grants in 1992 and 1998 to interact with UK theatre professionals.

Charles Wallace scholarship was awarded to him in 1997 to visit the

University of Kent as a writer-in-residence. Dattani is a visiting professor at

Portland State University in the US, where he has been conducting classes and

workshops on a regular basis.

Despite his hectic schedule, Dattani conducts theatre workshops on

acting, playwriting and directing to nurture new talents. In 1993, he was

invited by Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai as a Guest Faculty to

conduct a workshop in screenplay writing. The same year he conducted a

special communications programme on Dramatic Structure and Playwriting at

Media Centre in Bangalore. He conducted workshops for playwrights and

actors in the major cities in India in 1996. In 2000, he conducted weekend

classes on Dramatic Structure at Haystack, Canon Beach, Oregon, USA.

Dattani made his entry into the tinsel world through Mango Souffle

(2002), adapted from his highly successful play On a Muggy Night in Mumbai.

Even though it was his maiden attempt, the film won the best motion picture

award at the Barcelona film festival in 2003. The next film that he directed was

Morning Raga, which glorifies Indian heritage and classical culture. It also

mourns the loss of Indian culture and identity due to the advent of technology

and modernity. Pamela Rooks directed the film version of Dance Like a Man.
 30

Dattani wrote the screenplay for this film and it won the National Award for

the best feature film in 2004.

Dattani uses his plays as a platform to discuss issues and problems

confronting the middle class twentieth-century Indian. He lays bare the social

taboos and inhibitions in the Indian society. He deliberately brings the

marginalized sections to the center stage. He does not shy away from sensitive

issues and sensitizes the public in a subtle and gentle way to the complexities

surrounding the issues. Without being didactic, he quite artistically turns his

plays into catalysts of social change.

Why Mahesh Dattani?

Mahesh Dattani is a playwright with great potential. He has charted his

own course as far as theatre is concerned. He does not hark back to the past or

draw themes from a tradition that no longer sustains him or his audience. His

plays deal with gender disparity, communalism, sexuality and other socially

relevant issues. Through his characters, he highlights the dynamics of personal

and moral choices while focusing on human relationships.

Dattani’s perfect cueing into burning issues of social relevance, those

we have collectively stashed away in dusty closets for generations, is what sets

him apart from other contemporary Indian English playwrights. Fringe issues

that remain latent and suppressed or are pushed to the periphery occupy the

centre stage of his plays. He believes that much of the mainstream society lives

in a state of forced harmony out of a sense of helplessness or out of lack of

alternatives. His recurrent depiction of homosexual characters also sets him

 31

apart from other contemporary Indian playwrights. An analysis of select plays

of Dattani which address these “closet” issues throws light on gender and

sexuality.

In his introduction to Homographesis. Essays in Gay Literary and

CulturalTheory, Lee Edelman theorizes the radical potential of gay writing.

He shows the ways in which gay writing can deconstruct "the binary logic of

sexual difference on which symbolic identity is based, effectively disrupting]

the cognitive stability" of culture itself (12). For Edelman, gay identity is

something to be established in opposition to the rigorous heteronormativity.

Writing holds this radical potential, he argues, because it is only within

writing, or textuality, that homosexuality is culturally produced in the first

place. Through his plays, Dattani attempts to present gay identity as an

opposition to the heteronormative social order. He presents homosexuality as

a normal sexual orientation. In an essay titled "English Literature" in The

Encyclopedia of Gay Histories and Cultures, Barry Weller reminds us that:

Gay or queer criticism has signaled, from the outset, that its

project entails not the examination of a circumscribed canon of

gay-centered or gay-identified texts but a rereading of the way in

which the entire body of Anglo-American literature and beyond

delineates among other things the boundaries of sexual identity,

the norms of sexual behavior, the grotesque and classically

desirable body, and the terms of social inclusion and exile. (279)
Research Gap and Potential

The focus of research on Dattani so far

far has Been 1 feminist and

postcolonial. Researchers have worked on topics such as feminism in Tara,

communal issues in Final Solutions, stage craft in his plays and postcolonial

elements in his plays. The focus of this study is the theme of sexuality which is

a key issue in Dattani’s plays, and it is this theme that demarcates him from

other playwrights. This study is unique because no such study has so far been

conducted on issues relating to the homosexuals and transgenders in Indian

English drama and in Dattani’s plays in particular.

This study gains relevance in the context in which debates are going on

in India about decriminalizing homosexuality and the landmark judgment of

the Delhi High Court in the Naz Foundation case delivered on July 2, 2009

striking down the provision of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that

criminalizes even consensual sex between same-sex individuals. This ruling

has opened up public space for the queer movement in India.

Having done an extensive literature survey and a comprehensive study

of Dattani’s plays, the researcher identified an area waiting to be explored. The

research gap thus identified was Dattani’s pioneering effort in addressing the

issues of same-sex relationships and transgenders. Recognising this research

gap and the potential for an in-depth study in this area, the researcher has

attempted to examine the psycho-sexual dimensions in select plays of Dattani

based on the queer theory framework.

 33

Five plays of Dattani have been selected for the present study. They are:

Night Queen (1996), Bravely Fought the Queen (1991), Do the Needful (1997),

On a Muggy Night in Mumbai (1998) and Seven Steps Around the Fire (1999).

Out of the five, four {Night Queen, Bravely Fought the Queen, Do the Needful

and On a Muggy Night in Mumbai)) deal with the theme of homosexuality and

Seven Steps Around the Fire deals with transgenders. The researcher has

attempted to critique these plays using the queer theoretical framework.

Through these five plays, Dattani has articulated ideas that pose a

challenge to the binary sexual and gender categories, and to heteronormativity.

Realizing the potential of the theatre as an agent for social change, Dattani,

through these plays, has critiqued our society for the marginalization of the

homosexuals and transgenders. While the major Indian playwrights and

directors have not yet explored same-sex relationships, Dattani has taken a

bold step to address these issues in an explicit manner.

Sexual minorities are epistemologically constructed as the “other”; that

is, the construction of both hetero—and homosexuality is contingent upon a

binary relationship that upholds heterosexuality as the only way of knowing

the world. Dattani has used the medium of the theatre to dismantle the

hegemonic sexual tradition in the Indian scenario. The strong taboo against any

form of sexuality that is outside the limits of heterosexuality prevents writers

from addressing these issues. But the playwright has taken a bold step to bring

out the dormant realities and closet issues in the Indian society, and presents

sexual behaviours that breach the heteronormative social or symbolic

boundaries.
 34

The present study, titled “A Critique of the Psycho-Sexual Dimensions

in Select Plays of Mahesh Dattani—A Queer Approach,” examines Dattani’s

plays which address homosexuality and transgender issues. Out of the five

plays selected for the present study, four (.Bravely Fought the Queen, Do the

Needful, On a Muggy Night in Mumbai and Seven Steps Around the Fire) were

published in Dattani’s Collected Plays which came out in 2000. Night Queen

(1996) which deals with the topic of same-sex relationship, has not been

published so far but the playwright has provided a copy of the play (typescript)

to the researcher. (Please refer to the Appendix) Considering the relevance of

this play to this discussion, it has been included in this study.

The present study intends to take a close look at how the concept of

heteronormativity is contested in Dattani’s plays. The term

“heteronormativity” implies that human beings fall into two distinct and

complementary categories, namely, male and female; that sexual and marital

relations are normal only between two people of different sexes; and that

people should strictly follow roles determined by their gender.

In the present study, the term “queer” designates a range of acts,

identities, propensities, affectivities and sentiments which fissure

heteronormativity. Only the word “queer” can adequately capture the fluidity

and amazing plasticity of the labile categories of gendered identifications and

sexual identities.

Queer has generally meant "strange," "unusual" or "out of alignment".

It is a term that by its very use questions “conventional understandings of

 35

sexual identity by deconstructing the categories, oppositions and equations that

sustain them” (Annamarie Jagose, Queer Theory: An Introduction 97).

Queer theory emerged in the early 1990s out of gay and lesbian studies

and feminist studies. Queer theory's main aim is to explore the contestations of

the categorization of gender and sexuality. Queer theorists claim that identities

are not fixed because identities consist of varied components and to categorize

an individual on the basis of just one characteristic is, therefore, wrong. The

focus of queer theorists is the problem of classifying individuals on the basis of

gender; therefore, queer is less an identity than a critique of identity.

Methodology and Structure of the Thesis

The researcher has examined five plays of Dattani with the help of the

theoretical framework provided by queer theory. An analytical and

interpretative approach has been followed to critique the psycho-sexual

elements in each of the five plays selected for this study. The rules and

guidelines laid down by Joseph Gibaldi in MLA Handbook for Writers of

Research Papers (6th edition) have been followed as far as methodology is

concerned.

The thesis is divided into five chapters. The introductory chapter

presents a brief survey of the history of Indian English drama and locates

Mahesh Dattani within that history. This chapter presents a brief survey of

literature which leads to the identification of the research gap and its potential.

It also presents the thesis statement and includes a note on the structure of the

thesis.
 Chapter two presents an in-depth study of queer theory, highlighting the

development of the theory and the contribution of key queer theorists. Chapter

three presents a detailed interpretation of Dattani’s Night Queen and On a

Muggy Night in Mumbai which openly present homosexuality. Chapter four

continues the thread of the third chapter and investigates Dattani’s Do the

Needful and Bravely Fought the Queen which present homosexuality in the

Indian family context. This chapter also discusses Seven Steps Around the Fire

which deals with transgender issues. The concluding chapter brings together

the common elements found in all the five plays of Dattani selected for the

study within the framework of queer theory and sums up the main arguments

and major findings of this exploration.