Decoding Caste and Power-Structure in Tendulkar’s Kanyadaan

Social structure is a power-structure where every social category reflects the power relations with other in hierarchy. Caste is one of the decisive derivatives in India to measure human relations. It is something which has defined the social hierarchy based on the birth of an individual. Caste has become the most striking method of discrimination of people in India with its maligned and fabricated interpretations. Indeed, it has been originated for distribution of people on the basis of their work for proper functioning of society. Vijay Tendulkar, a Marathi playwright and one of the founding pillars of Modern Indian Drama along with Mohan Rakesh, Badal Sircar and Girish Karnad, has discussed the problems of caste discrimination and general perspectives about inter-caste marriages in India in his play Kanyadaan. Through this play Vijay Tendulkar also tries to reflect his thoughts on contradictory relationship between imaginary idealism and harsh realism; and also on texture of modernity and social change in India through the marriage of two people of different castes and backgrounds. The present paper is an effort to analyse Tendulkar’s Kanyadaan, originally written in Marathi and later on translated into English, as social documentary on relationship between caste and social structure based on power-relations, caste-based discrimination, inter-caste marriage and pseudo-idealism prevalent in the course of social and cultural progress. The present paper also deals with decoding of the phenomenon of ‘violence’ employed in caste-based power relations in the society.