Ghashiram Kotwal Vijay Tendulkar Book Review

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Today we are talking about this play written in 1972 by Vijay Tendulkar. It was performed and appreciated world over, and of course in India, before it was banned in the state of Maharashtra. The play was written in criticism of the erstwhile ruling party of the state. What is the play about? What was the reason for its ban? Let's look at the reasons what these political plays are trying to achieve and why they offend people. Let us first look at the facts and then at the fiction. 

Facts:

Ghashiram Kotwal is based on a novel written by social activist Moroba Kanhoba Vijaykar in 1863. Ghashiram Kotwal was a real person who was appointed as the police prefect in 1777 by Nana Phadnavis. The Peshwas ruled the Maratha empire under the titular leadership of Chatrapati Shahu Maharaj. This was the most powerful empire of the Deccan and Nana Phadnavis was one of the eight ministers of the court. His brand of politics was a  strange mix of threat and diplomacy which earned him the moniker "Maratha Machiavelli" from the British, since the British had gained a foothold in the politics of North India but found the Peshwas still largely inaccessible. Based on this fact one might assume that the Peshwas had their stuff sorted. But it was only superficially so because the entire clan was ridden with a lot of internal politics. These were the circumstances in which Ghashiram Kotwal was appointed as the police prefect. Ghashiram seemed to enjoy boundless power until his death when Nana Phadnavis ordered for him to be stoned to death. His crime was locking up about forty brahmins in a room where 21 of them suffocated and died. Given that Ghashiram had committed many such crimes (may be not to this degree,) it raises suspicion what might have transpired between the two that put Ghashiram out of Nana's favour.

This is what the play implores. Moroba Kanhoba on whose novel this play is based obviously mixes facts with fiction because that is what fiction does. Vijay Tendulkar does the same because that is how creative liberty works. Other such works of historical fiction are Girish Karnad's Tughlaq, which is sort of a criticism of the Nehruvian era. A more recent example of such work is Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, a novel about the rise of Thomas Cromwell.

The entire exercise of literature is to look at our past and examine it without prejudice. The same is the purpose of this play, to study the dynamics between powerful people. And isn't that right? Look at Maharashtra's politics right now. Look at the weird dynamics between the ministers and the police.

Fiction

So that being the intent, this is how Tendulkar uses the facts unknown to people to build his plot. Such as the fact that Nana Phadnavis was a much married man. The time he died, his last marriage was to a nine year old girl called Jiubai. Tendulkar uses these facts to etch out a character of the man that is not much known to the society. It would have been easier for a man like Ghashiram, an outsider to the Peshwa court, to offer his daughter to a man with such weakness, in exchange for a powerful position. 

The purpose of the play is not to defame a man or a community but to look at how powerful people in our society might be making their moves to achieve their own selfish motives instead of the larger good of the society. 

For instance, Ghashiram Kotwal issues a diktat that people cannot leave their homes after sunset. Given our society, we might deduce that this was to keep people safe and away from illegal activities. But instead we see that the Kotwal allows a lot of illegal activities to be carried out freely without any interference of the general society who might object to such activities if they ever saw it.

And Phadnavis who for his own selfish motives allows condones all of this while he remains blameless and orders for Ghashiram to be stoned. He says he does this to bring down a man drunk on power.

These are all universal machination of how the powerfully corrupt people run their show. Be it Saddam Hussein or Trump, when they are done with their power play, they first bring down those people who hoisted them. It is true that Tendulkar may have been commenting on the brahmin society that was assigned the social obligation of enlightening the society but instead they end up exploiting them. Bit overall, it intends to question the system that hands over power to a handful of men while the multitude has to move to their whims.

These are a few things that Tendulkar wants us to dwell on. This play had many other interesting factors. It revives older forms of play based mainly on music. Representing a society that was becoming culturally diverse, abhangas break into laavanis or qawwalis. The sutradhar narrates the happenings in the rhythm of the temple preacher.  

Our society is going through a change. At present it is not apparent but we will have to examine at the actions of the people whom we choose to be our leaders. Certainly then, plays like Ghashiram Kotwal are a good manual of how to look at these circumstances.