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Jyoti's Predicament
In the final lines of the play, Jyoti breaks all bonds with her natal home, announcing: 'I am not Jyoti Yadunath Devalikar now, I am Jyoti Arun Athavale, a scavenger... I am an untouch- able... I am one of them. Don't touch me. Fly from my shadow, otherwise my fire will scorch your comfortable values' (p 70). The act of marrying Arun, she realises, was a kind of compul- sion, shaped precisely by the reformist rhetoric that she grew up with. The act of staying with him is thus the only way of exposing its hollowness. In taking on Arun's caste identity, Jyoti is aligning herself with dalits, the ultimate victims of hypocritical reform. At the same time, though ironically, enacting the faith of the ideal Hindu wife, cutting her ties with her natal home and becoming one with her husband.
Dalit Panther's manifesto included women as one of the oppressed and dalit writers consistently make the point that upper-caste women are also exploited by brahminical patriarchy, that they have no caste status in themselves and are merely the means for the reproduction of caste. But of course, by choosing to become a dalit wife, Jyoti cannot become a dalit woman. Nor does she invoke such women, or express any desire to be part of their world. Indeed, not just dalit women, but a dalit community is missing from the world of the play.Jyoti's final act of defiance against the father is also the act of choosing a violent husband; her agency consists of willingly choosing the status of victim. Jyoti chooses a life in which, she says, she will 'have to stop thinking and learn to live' (p 69). Presumably, 'thinking' would make it impossible for her to stay in a relationship caught in an escalating spiral of violence. Feminist activists have been at pains to critique ideologies of wifely duty and allegiance that make it difficult for women to walk away from domestic violence. But because her husband is a dalit, in Jyoti's case, the same act simultaneously entrenches and subverts the ideals of a Hindu marriage. Thus, the play frames social relationships in a way that presents the audience with an impossible choice between Jyoti and Arun, both of whom are in some ways at the receiving end of the hypocrisy of the dominant order.
Tendulkar once confessed that, 'As a writer I feel fascinated by the violent exploited-exploiter relationship, and obsessively delve deep into it instead of taking a position against it. This takes me to a point where I feel the relationship is eternal, a fact of life however cruel and will never end.'50 In Sakharam Binder, he had explored the predatory violence of sexual rela- tionships. In KANYADAAN, Jyoti and Arun also become the central antagonists. But here, the framing is analogous to the one offered by texts dealing with race, such as Othello or indeed E M Forster's Passage to India. In Othello, if we sympathise with Othello, and understand his jealousies and anger as the effects of the racist structures of early modern Venice do we then necessarily undermine his violence against Desdemona, and the misogyny he ironically shares with Iago, his tormentor and manipulator? On the other hand, does any sympathy for Desdemona endorse the view, articulated by one of the characters in the play, that Othello is a 'gull, a dolt, a devil'?51 Here, it is racial politics that gives sexual relationships their meaning, and vice versa, just as in KANYADAAN, the caste politics is enacted in the crucible of gender relations.
A recent controversy captures some of the issues at stake in analysing or describing the thorny intersections of caste and patriarchy. Reviewing a book on violence and dalit women, V Geetha critiques it for offering 'a reading of dalit masculinity in terms of its forced complicity with the patriarchal caste order' and for suggesting that 'just as upper caste women are complicit in and earn their rewards from assenting to the persistence of caste differences and hierarchy, so do dalit men, choicelessly without social authority and power reproduce the violence that they endure in their own homes'. Geetha argues that
it does not seem enough to mark dalit male behaviour as being com-
plicit in an 'imposed' patriarchy. Patriarchy works with notions
of power and authority that are masculinised to the point of being avail-
able as a general resource to all who wish to wield them - and the
complicity of dalit men cannot only be seen as 'imposed'. Just as up-
per caste women must be made responsible for their casteism, irre-
spective of their embattled gender status, so must men from subal-
tern communities confront the violence that tears some of their
homes and families apart. 52
In reply, Anu Ramdas writes that 'A solution that rests solely on the reformative agenda of taming Dalit 'masculinity' ignores the reality of inter-operating oppressive cultures in a caste soci- ety. And this leads to the question of stereotyping subaltern men, which only offers more hostile repercussions for the Dalit woman and her family.'53 Ramdas points out that 'Dalit litera- ture names, shames and forces changes in gender relations', and that 'The absence of such a narrative in literature from up- per castes, does not imply absence of domestic violence in their castes; it only indicates an inability to confront that aspect by their conscience keepers - their writers, both men and women.'
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