Voice of the Dispossessed: A Study of Vijay Tendulkar’s play Kanyadaan
Ms Aliya Saba Mirza, PhD Scholar, Department of English, Aligarh Muslim University, Uttar Pradesh, India
Abstract:
Literature is the reflection of society. It mirrors its ills with a view to realise the mistakes and bring a change. Dalits are the dispossessed section of caste-based Indian society deeply rooted in Manu's codification. Tendulkar's involvement with Dalit Panther literature unraveled the stereotyped Dalit masculinity and questioned the social positioning of Dalits in Indian society in his play Kanyadaan. The intricate relationship between Dalit dispossession and mental deformity appeared closed and compact. Indian Constitution articles 17 and 18 have made it a punishable offense to exclude Dalits as 'untouchable' but uprising cases of atrocities made this dispossession breathing and surviving to date. From the 1970s, the term acquired the new meaning of self-identification that signified a new oppositional consciousness. The focus of the study will be on the stigma of the caste, the plight of Dalit women who lie at the bottom of hierarchical structure, and the Dalit politics . The present study will analyse Tendulkar's play Kanyadaan from the lens of a paradigmatic shift at the conflicting emotional level between the Dalit and Brahmin segments through language and behaviour. It will interrogate liberal reformism as experimentation in terms of inter-caste marriage.
Keywords: Politics of Caste, Dalit masculinity, Social Positioning of Dalit, Mental Deformity, Dalit language and behaviour, Reformation Process.