Analyse Tendulkar’s portrayal of Miss Benare as a challenger to

the contemporary societal norms.

A play, set in post-independence India, Shantata! Court Chalu Ahe, written
by Vijay Tendulkar is a play in which a group of amateur actors are set to
perform a play about placing President Johnson on trial as a suspect of
hoarding weapons. They have assembled where the play has to be
performed and have a lot of time to kill before it begins, they decide on to
pass their time by playing a game where they ‘unintentionally’ plan to
exploit the principal character Miss Benare who is a lively, brilliant,
rebellious and outspoken woman by dragging her personal life infront of
the imaginary court . In the play, characters like, Ponkshe, Balu and
Samant are against Miss Benare’s life choices and try to degrade her
character as a woman in the urban middle class society of the 1970s. They
basically humiliate her by discussing her personal life openly with their
own interpretations. Everything which goes on on this unstaged play
reflects the mentality of the different characters. In the play, aspects such
as hypocrisy, moral policing, male hegemony, and misogyny can be seen.

Tendulkar, through this play brought modernism in the theatre world

which was a time when nobody even thought upon this. It was an eye
opener to many.

In the play, we see that, Miss Benare, who unlike other women of that time
is not afraid of speaking up her mind. She is one person who says anything
and everything she feel and is pure from her heart. She feels emotions and
embraces them. She is somebody who is not afraid of the society and lives
her life as she wants to, unlike other women who are burdened with
patriarchy and have accepted this burden as their duty and have
normalised it. She does not let somebody else or the society direct her and
is proud of her choices. For the same reason, some characters insult her of
her choices. They label her as a disgrace to the society because she aborts
a child and got involved in a romantic relationship with an already married
man. On the other hand, the man she was with isn’t even an interest to
these characters.

The play shows the small mentalities of the people, some of them do not
even know her and can be seen commenting on her ‘un-ladylike’ character.
One of the characters, Mrs. Kashiker, who cannot even complete a
sentence without being interrupted by her husband, Mr. Kashiker, speaks
against Miss Benare and tells her how her outspoken nature is uncultured
and how she is a disgrace to the female community because she aborted a
child that too with a man she’s not married to. Here, I feel pity for Mrs.
Kashikar on how she needs to analyse herself and question herself being a
woman. Being belittled by her husband all the time seems normal to her
and a lady who speaks for herself degrades her as woman. Although she is
not the only person to be blamed for her mentality, its the society which
has molded it that way but the sad part is, she has accepted this as the
reality and does not want to question it and this is where the problem lies.
Well she is not the only one, almost all women of that period had the same
mind and ofcourse, men too.

Miss Benare has the guts to pursue what she likes and interests her. She is
capable enough to financially support herself which was rare in those
times. She is an educated, financially independent and a confident lady
who challenges all the societal norms. She is firm on her decisions of life
and defends whatever wrong judgements she faces about her professional
as well as her personal life. She is so passionate to work towards the
welfare of her students, she has put her heart and soul into teaching them.

The part where one usually questions Miss Benare’s character as a whole
is when she tries to commit suicide when everybody’s humiliating her by
putting up allegations by taking Tik-20 and also asks three men to marry
her and father the unborn child. She doesn’t defend herself here rather she
tries to escape the situation. She also belittle’s Mrs. Kashiker by labelling
her as a good ‘housewife’who’s life was incomplete because she couldn’t
bear a child. She, not for once accuses Damle of hurting her emotionally.
She also addresses her unborn child as her son, which shows her
patriarchal side. All these incidents degrades her character from what was
portrayed initially.

All of this shows that how even if her decisions in life were modern they
were just situational and didn’t define her as a person. She is someone who
just wants to win arguments and doesn’t think before speaking. Tendulkar
has subtly created a clever character who’s appearance is different than the
mentality.
In the play, towards the end, it is clear how Miss Benare is not at all a true
revolter of the harsh contemporary patriarchal norms of the society and
infact is a defender of her internalised patriarchy.

Submitted By
Nitya Singh
B.A. Programme
Semester 4