Inter-Caste Marriage and the Liberal Imagination Vijay Tendulkar's KANYADAAN

Thus, to Ambedkar's caution that inter-caste marriages can- not in themselves achieve a dissolution of caste but must in a sense arise from a breaking of barriers, we must add an ad- denda: that if such marriages are premised on an intellectual commitment devoid of passion, then no barriers can be broken.⁵⁷ To the extent that this is what KANYADAAN wants to show - it is only if Jyoti acts, not out of love but because she has bought into Nath's philosophy, that the destructive logic of such liber- alism can be exposed. But the stultifying stalemate is exacer- bated by Tendulkar's inability to portray Arun's contradictions. In a play like Othello, which is of course not beyond controversy in its depiction of black masculinity, we see exactly how racism can engender or entrench patriarchal thinking. In KANYADAAN, there is no such process. The squalor and degradation faced by dalit men, it is suggested, will automatically brutalise them.

Tendulkar's Arun was the first depiction of dalit men on the Marathi stage. As such, his creator could hardly be unaware of the enormous symbolic significance of such a portrayal. If Tendulkar meant to critique the machismo among Dalit Panther, as in fact many dalit women have, he could have done so with- out also stripping the character of all radicalism, literary and political. Arun's poetry and the writing, which we hear about, but are not allowed to listen to, seem to have been produced simply for the manipulation of upper-caste guilt, and not in order to imagine an alternative world. The Tendulkar who read Golpitha had certainly read lines such as these:

Just a bit more time, my darling
Just a bit more time
Hold on somehow

Supplies may come, they may not
They have captured our bodies
They have captured our breath
But the lantern in our hearts - how can we blow it out?

Injustice does not fall with the harvest
Or come pouring down in season

These days will pass
Just as summers pass, rainy seasons pass

Hear - in the distance
Revolution rumbles everywhere
You hear it?⁵⁸

Commenting on Tendulkar's introduction to Golpitha, Eleanor Zelliot observes that 'Tendulkar's view through Namdeo Dhasal's eyes is more complete, more picturesque, less personal, than that of the true insider'. KANYADAAN reminds us that the other side of picturesque is the grotesque.