SRC Repertory Students presents Vijay Tendulkar's "Kanyadaan" Hindi Play, Directed by Rabojita Gogoyee

Event Details : Staging of Vijay Tendulkar's play 'Kanyadaan'.
Jyoti belongs to a politically active family and in the society presents herself as a progressive and liberal individual. Arun is a promising poet and for generations, a victim of socio-political and economic suppression at the hands of the superiors of the social hierarchy. So, unknowingly he becomes a part of class struggle. When Jyoti decides to marry Arun, her father Mr. D Nath readily accepts the decision since he himself is a believer of Socialist thought. But mother, Sewa, a social activist too and her brother Jayaprakash a science student, were not keen about the marriage at all. After marriage, Jyoti becomes the victim of domestic violence at the hands of Arun who himself had developed violent and aggressive tendencies after years of political and social oppression suffered by him. Jyoti decides not to take economic and social support from her parents and chooses to remain with Arun all her life, constantly struggling with poverty, domestic violence and Arun’s complex itself. Brought up well with her father’s socialist ideologies and beliefs besides her own strong social views and convictions, she faces the harsh reality that all of them has little meaning and expressions in her own life. In her father’s house, she was influenced by father’s ideology and while practicing the same ideologies in her life. Ultimately she becomes a mere commodity, surrendering herself to Arun’s cynicism.

Directed by : Rabojita Gogoyee
As a director, I have always felt the need to break the linear fashion of telling a story. This production is a polite aesthetic search for emphasizing background and reality of the characters. History has proven time and again that any human being , a Dalit or anybody, in any part of the world, who has undergone years of oppression, is bound to explode any day, with all the inner violence accumulated over the years and in this regard Arun is no exception.
For any individual, to bridge the gap between his ideologies and the practicality of life in itself becomes a challenge. Both Jyoti and Nath had to face this grim reality. Though Jaiprakash succeeds marginally, but his real motivation lay in politically and socially correcting his position in society. Whereas Arun , a product of society’s Violence and humiliation, in the process, finds himself a progressive individual, who wants to see himself and his community to be free from all the social barriers.
The text has imnence potenciality to find complexities of solving sociological problems through a progressive framework and conflict within the charecters in the process.. The text helps visualizing the texture of modernity and social change in India. The play is charged with an undercurrent of violence, uncertainties and anger, and concerns itself with questions that are crucial to all societies grappling with change and social barriers.
This is also a daughter's transformation into a wife and a mother. The play is charged with significant social questions, which are deeply thought provoking, and to which there are no easy answers.
It questions the moral and ethical value of the social institutions like Marriage.
Ban on marriage between different castes is still a important issue in India. But, while the character Nath went on working on the issue , he failed in a way. I think the play illustrated this conundrum perfectly without ever taking sides. The upper caste family tried to solve/diffuse the problems through their historical knowledge frame about drinking and violent behaviour while the Dalit youth tried to approach issues in marriage through his learnt/observed behaviour or cultural framework from his impoverished childhood. Both families had no recourse to a third knowledge framework to solve, mitigate, issues arising out of an inter-caste marriage, apart from a feel good, 'everyone is equal' kind of socialist approach.

Written by : Mr. Vijay Tendulkar