Gender discrimination and Hegemonic

Masculinity in Mahesh Dattani's select

plays "Dance like a man" and "Tara"
Abstract:

This dissertation paper highlights Gender discrimination and Hegemonic Masculinity , forced
by both men and women with reference to the Indian playwright Mahesh Dattani's select
plays "Dance like a man" (1989) and " Tara"(1990). "Dance like a man" and "Tara" have
expressed the social issues of Indian society. Mahesh Dattani's play dwells on certain
aspects of the modern era like homosexuality, gender discrimination, hegemonic
masculinity.The concept of masculinity and gender are very problematic. Because
masculinity cannot be a fixed definition under line. There has been a lot of confusion and
overlapping about which one to call male and which to call masculine and which feacher to
call masculine. Dance like a man is a power drama between traditional culture and modern
and conflict ideology between two generations and their notion of masculinity. This Play
deals with love, career, tradition,patriarchal society, and positions. In this drama another
main character Jairaj also dominates through masculinity in his parents and society. The
play revolves around Jairaj , Ratna , their daughter Lata and her fiance Viswas. The
character of Amritlal Dattani indicates through the typical Indian views that dance is only for
women not for men . Amritlal Parekh also dominated his son Jairaj through the Idea of
hegemonic masculinity of Indian patriarchal society. He dominates his son Jairaj through his
wife ratna. This paper deals with how dominant the Idea of masculinity is in Indian
patriarchal society of Jairaj and his wife ratna through the character of Amritalal .
In another play "Tara" , here Dattani also deals with gender dissemination and
Hegemonic Masculinity through the typical Indian society. This Play deals with physical,
emotional and psychological conjoined twins , Tara and Chandan . In our patriarchal society
,men think of women as a key in their hands. This Play deeply presents the patriarchal
Hegemonic Masculinity and system of society . Tara's father Mr. Patel also portrayed this
type of patriarchal dominant masculine character in the play. Here we see ,Mr Patel forces
Dr Thakkar to give the leg to Tara's brother Chanda, although the third leg is very suitable for
Tara , because Tara is a female person and her brother Chanda also a male person . This
paper also shows how his father imposes a dominant type of masculine thoughts on
Chandan and gender discrimination between Tara and Chandan. Now we see how
patriarchal society discriminates gender between a girl and a boy, and how it imposes a
concept of Harmonic Masculinity on both a man and a woman. And we see how Tara and
Chandan both lead their life in this dominant patriarchal masculinity type society.

Keywords: gender discrimination, hegemonic masculinity, Dattani, patriarchal society

, domination.