Vijay Tendulkar - 1970s and 1980s

1970s and 1980s

In his 1972 play, Sakhārām Binder (Sakhārām, the Binder), Tendulkar dealt with the topic of domination of the male gender over the female gender. The main character, Sakhārām, is a man devoid of ethics and morality, and professes not to believe in "outdated" social codes and conventional marriage. He accordingly uses the society for his own pleasure. He regularly gives "shelter" to abandoned wives, and uses them for his sexual gratification while remaining oblivious to the emotional and moral implications of his exploits. He justifies all his acts through claims of modern, unconventional thinking, and comes up with hollow arguments meant in fact to enslave women. Paradoxically, some of the women which Sakhārām had enslaved buy into his arguments and simultaneously also badly want freedom from their enslavement.

In 1972, Tendulkar wrote another, even much more acclaimed play, Ghāshirām Kotwāl ("Officer Ghāshirām"), which dealt with political violence. The play is a political satire created as a musical drama set in 18th century Pune. It combined traditional Marathi folk music and drama with contemporary theater techniques, creating a new paradigm for Marathi theater. The play demonstrates Tendulkar's deep study of group psychology, and it brought him a "Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship" (1974–75) for a project titled, "An Enquiry Into the Pattern of Growing Violence in Society and Its Relevance to Contemporary Theatre". With over six thousand performances thus far in its original and translated versions, "Ghāshirām Kotwāl" remains one of the longest-running plays in the history of Indian theater.

Tendulkar wrote screenplays for the movies Nishānt (1974), Ākrosh (The Cry) (1980), and Ardh Satya (The Half-Truth) (1984), established him as an important "Chronicler of Violence" of the present times. He has written eleven movies in Hindi and eight movies in Marathi. The latter include Sāmanā ("Confrontation") (1975), Simhāasan ("Throne") (1979), and Umbartha ("The Threshold") (1981). The last one is a groundbreaking feature film on women's activism in India. It was directed by Jabbar Patel, and stars Smitā Pātil and Girish Karnād.