Vijay Tendulkar: A Voice Against Misogyny

Societies in the Third World have a deep connection with sadism. It seems as if these social structures - like in Pakistan and India - are bound to torture its inhabitants, especially women. I have often wondered how can one gender be so ruthless against its opposite. But I’ve never found the right answer, except the explanations given by social scientists in our textbooks. However one answer given by the late Indian playwright Vijay Tendulkar seems to be appropriate, I believe, and his play ‘Silence! The Court Is In Session’ is his answer’s true manifestation.

The play kicks off with Beenarey, a school teacher, and Samant, a basti wala entering a basement of a 'supposed' hall and waiting for other fellows, who are about to come from a far-off place. They are scheduled to stage a play, in which former American president will be tried for making this Earth a hell -- with the ever-growing threat of nuclear war hovering all over.

Surprisingly, the all-time ever-pleasing idea of trying an American president for his crimes shapes into a sinister conspiracy-within-the-play. In the name of rehearsal, the other fellows make a case against Beenaray. Her crime is that she fell in love with her uncle at an early age, probably 16, and 'lost her innocence'. He ran away leaving her to face the stigma. She once even tried to take her own life. As she grew older she fell in love once again, this time with a professor who fascinated her with his vision of the brave world of new morality, but proved to be just another rotten product of misogynist patriarchy. Beenaray is now carrying a baby in her from that man.

Beenaray's attempts to get married in order for her baby to be provided with the shelter of manly protection have come to naught. She feels passionately about her profession but has been thrown out of her workplace for her 'crime'. No one is willing to accept her socially, let alone marrying her. However, a one-night stand with her would suit them. When she resists that, they turn into sadist monsters whose egos are satisfied only when they humiliate her first and then get to enjoy the sight of her being abused and insulted by the society at large.

Their cynical game is well-rooted in their sick psyche that informs the verdict they pass on her, with the sort of pleasure that can be the envy of professional torturers. The verdict is that her baby should be killed because its existence negates the very idea of their moral values. The questions posed by the play call for a total overhauling of the society's entire moral code. Can Beenaray carry the child? Does she deserve to be respected by society? Should society shed its hidebound values? Or should Beenaray and her child be killed.

The situation is based on the tension characteristic of our times; the tension between the ages-old misogynist value system that is our " proud" inheritance and the very material changes in the real world that impose their own necessities and compulsions upon us without us embracing them as a value system. The result has been disastrous for families as well as individuals. This is the 'moral crisis' of our times.

Tendulkar’s argument through this play seems to be that the institution of marriage as it has been for centuries is fast losing its legitimacy. His emphasis is on the need to resolve "the moral tension" with a rational understanding and sympathy and compassion.

Like Sartre's 'authentic individual' Vijay Tendulkar seems to have an astonishingly clear understanding of the painful questions that society dares not ask itself, and if they are ever asked, answers to them remain vague and blank. The problems addressed in the play are borne of history and cannot be solved just by being penned or reviewed or depicted on stage. A call for a complete social overhauling is the need of this hour!