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"Ghashiram Kotwal" by Vijay Dhondo Tendulkar



                                                                         


             Ghashiram Kotwal is a Marathi play written by playwright Vijay Tendulkar in 1972 as a response to the rise of a local political party, Shiv Sena, in Maharashta. The play is a political satire, written as historical drama. Based on the life of Nana Phadnavis (1741–1800), one of the prominent ministers in the court of the Peshwa of Pune. Its theme is how men in power give rise to ideologies to serve their purposes, and later destroy them when they become useless.

             The play then made into a book has a historic context. The idea that most strikes the audience is Tendulkar’s ethical concern which is quite prominent throughout the book-from his understanding of relationships to effectively dealing with the social evils of those times that keeps us involved in the characters is their simplicity and realistic perception on the part of the writer. All the characters seem so much like the people we see or meet or have met sometime. Also Tendulkar is not a writer who is struck with the Bharatmata Syndrome and explains the bitter reality of the Indian society without sugarcoating anything.

               The story begins with Ghashiram a Kanauji Brahmin coming to the city of Pune to try his luck and gain some money from the then rich city. His first appearance is in Bavankhanni a red light area in Pune where he is dancing as a foil to Gulabi a lavani dancer. Beginnning as gulabi’s servant he graduates to becoming the servant of Nana Phadavnis the antagonist who is the chancellor of the Peshwa. Initially, Ghashiram is portrayed as an obedient servant to Nana but as time goes by due to the ill treatment he gets from Nana and the Brahmins in Pune he becomes power hungry. To the extent of sacrificing his teen daughter Lalitagouri to the old Nana only to get the respectable post of the Kotwal.

                 Its theme is how men in power give rise to ideologies to serve their purposes, and later destroy them when they become useless.It was first performed on 16 December 1972, by the Progressive Drama Association in Pune. Jabbar Patel’sJ's production of the play in 1973 is considered a classic in Modern Indian Theatre …The play stands out also for the use "Tamasha" Genre in the play so you have a lot of singing and dancing used here to good effect, here the "abhangas" (devotional songs) mixed in with the "Lavnis" (Love songs)…. This play caused a lot of controversy because some people believed that it hurt the feelings of the Brahmin community and that it showed the statesman Nana Phadnavis in a bad light. Hence it was temporarily banned in the state.

            All in all Ghashiram Kotwal is a timeless piece of writing. The issues that are primarily dealt with in the book still remain the same even after so many years. Women still continue to be the ruled ones and the caste conflict has now become the class conflict where the rich dominate the poor and the cycle continues. It highlights the harsh reality that even when times change human nature remains the same. Greed and lust for money were, are and will always exist in human nature…


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