Wading through the tempestuous waters within which our society is drowning, is India’s first
Sahitya Akademi award winning dramatist, Mahesh Dattani. He is a humanist who uses his
multifaceted personae as a weapon in his fight against inhumanity. Dattani sees in society
what others wish to ignore. His works are a plea for humane treatment of homosexuals,
equality towards women and moreover equal rights for every small section of society
including the hijras. His plays question all kinds of discrimination, be it religious prejudice,
gender discrimination or even homosexuality. His plays not only bring up gender issues and
the space allotted to women in a patriarchal society, but also deal with gender prejudices
which affect the lives of the female child even amongst educated, urban families.
Mahesh Dattani is a name that guided the weakling Indian English Drama on the path of
reliability, steadfastness and distinct identity. He has an ability to amalgamate the traditional
beliefs with ultramodern disposition and conviction. His plays are heavily charged with socio
political, emotional, physiological and psychological issues. Many of his plays deal with
familial issues wherein the family members are trapped in social constraints and struggle to
wrestle out of societal pressures. Dattani’s plays expose the violence of our “private thoughts,
and the hypocrisy of our public morals” (Kumar,“Mahesh Dattani’s Collected Plays”). [...]
Table of Contents
1. Taming Tara: The story of one Tara, The reality of a million Tara’s
1.1 The Talons of Gender and Taste of Class in Tara
2. Citation
2.1 Primary Source
2.2 Secondary Sources
Objectives & Themes
This paper examines Mahesh Dattani’s play "Tara" to analyze how the work critiques gender discrimination, patriarchal constraints, and class struggles within Indian society, specifically focusing on the systemic devaluation of the female child.
- Critique of patriarchal norms and gender bias in India.
- The intersection of class struggle and gender discrimination.
- Symbolism of the conjoined twins as a metaphor for societal inequality.
- The impact of cultural superstitions on family dynamics and parental partiality.
- The role of drama as a social mirror to expose systemic violence.
Excerpt from the book
Tara is a story of a girl who wants to twinkle and shine, just like her name. It is the story of every girl child born in a society whether urban or rural. Tara revolves around the grave conventional matters of gender biasing. Two children delivered from same womb are divided by birth and preferentially treated not just by society but horrendously by the parents themselves, in the intoxication of superstition and ancestral beliefs. A pair of Siamese twins, a girl and a boy, joined together at the hip. The partiality and injustice starts here. One can say “woman beware woman” because it is the child’s mother who favours the boy child by giving him the leg. The leg that had survived only two days with Chandan could have been Tara’s forever. The play is relevant in the light of the escalating incidents of foeticide and widening the gap in the sex ratio of the male and female child.
In a poignant story of two Siamese twins, this play unearths the numerous disgraceful acts which exist in the underbelly of our society, even today when we have come around to fooling ourselves into believing that we celebrate womanhood. This play is enacted as a microcosm of the practices and psyche of the society. History has witnessed many cruel and inherent biases against woman for ages. Societies have come and gone, but the politics of gender has never been entirely erased from its face. The root problem of discriminatory treatment being meted out to the girl child lies in the status of women in society. Dattani presents this strange reality of women playing a secondary role to man.
Chapter Summaries
Taming Tara: The story of one Tara, The reality of a million Tara’s: This chapter provides an introduction to Mahesh Dattani's role as a social humanist and sets the critical framework for the play's exploration of gender and class.
The Talons of Gender and Taste of Class in Tara: This subsection delves into the specific narrative of the conjoined twins to illustrate the deep-seated prejudices and the tragic consequences of gender-based favoritism.
Citation: This section lists the primary text and the various secondary academic sources utilized to support the analysis of the play.
Primary Source: Provides the bibliographic details of Mahesh Dattani's collected plays.
Secondary Sources: Offers a comprehensive bibliography of critical studies and articles that address the themes of discrimination and gender consciousness in Dattani’s work.
Keywords
Mahesh Dattani, Tara, Gender Discrimination, Class Struggle, Patriarchal Society, Female Child, Indian Drama, Social Constraints, Inequality, Feminism, Humanism, Foeticide, Societal Bias, Identity, Human Rights
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this analysis?
The analysis explores how Mahesh Dattani's play "Tara" functions as a social critique of the gender discrimination and class-based biases that marginalize women in Indian society.
Which central themes are examined in the work?
The study focuses on the intersection of gender politics, the devaluation of the female child, the influence of patriarchal family structures, and the struggle for identity.
What is the primary research objective?
The objective is to reveal how Dattani uses the narrative of conjoined twins to highlight the "talons of gender" and the broader, systematic inequalities present in the Indian cultural milieu.
Which methodology is applied in this paper?
The author employs a qualitative literary analysis, utilizing socio-political perspectives and scholarly criticism to interpret the play's themes and symbolic depth.
What topics are covered in the main body?
The main body covers the dynamics of the family, the influence of superstition, the dialogue regarding cultural practices, and the symbolic representation of the twins' surgical separation.
Which keywords define this work?
The work is defined by terms such as Gender Discrimination, Patriarchal Society, Class Struggle, Humanism, and Social Constraints.
How does the play represent the "second position" of women?
The play uses the character of Tara to show how women are often secondary to men even within educated, urban family settings, reinforcing traditional power structures.
What significance do the conjoined twins hold in the narrative?
They serve as a metaphor for the equality inherent at birth, which is then forcibly altered by surgical and societal intervention to prioritize the male over the female.
Why does the character Chandan change his name?
Chandan assumes the name "Dan" to narrate Tara's story, reflecting the immense emotional turmoil and the burden of guilt he feels for having been the beneficiary of the parents' partiality.
How does the author interpret the concept of "taming" in the title?
The "taming" refers to the societal pressure and structural violence intended to force women into subordinate roles to satisfy the demands of a patriarchal system.
- Arbeit zitieren
- Noella Pereira (Autor:in), 2014, The story of one Tara, The reality of a million Taras, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/272507
