Research Directions

Volume 1 , Issue 4 / Oct 2013 ISSN:-2321-5488

Research Article

IS INTER-CASTE MARRIAGE REALLY REMEDY FOR

CASTE EQUALITY?

PRAMILA M.PANHALKAR
Research Student, Dept. of English, Shivaji University, Kolhapur.

Abstract:

This paper seeks to present the history of casteism in India with the reference of
Vijay Tendulkar and Girish Karnad's play. Inter-caste marriage used as remedy for caste
equality in the play of Vijay Tendulkar's Kanyadaan and Girish Karnad's Tale-Danda.
Here inter-caste marriage is used as an experiment to eradicate casteism from Hindu
society but these marriages ended in violence and disaster because of class and caste
consciousness. Caste consciousness resists people in mingling freely in all castes. Caste
is deeply rooted in the psyche of Indian people. Could inter-caste marriage be a remedy
to eradicate caste? The paper with the contents of the two plays as above tries to
contemplate this question.
KEY WORDS:

Inter-caste Marriage , history , society , donations.

INTRODUCTION:

Caste system has a long history of its origin and now it is deeply rooted in the Indian Hindu
Society. It is an age old phenomenon. The so called upper caste Hindu treated the low caste people always in
inhuman ways. This continued for considerably longer period and it gradually became a social tradition. As
a result of this the low caste people lived miserable life. They suffered at the hand of upper caste people.
Caste became indispensable part of Hindu society. It is major cause of social deformity. Untouchables are
humiliated, oppressed and exploited. This is the most inhuman part of Hindu culture and so Gandhiji
considered it a great stigma on Hinduism.
Caste system is a curse on Hindu society. It is deeply rooted in the psyche of Indian people.
Therefore most of the social reformist took part in the movement of eradication of castism from Hindu
religion such as Mahatma Pule, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Rajarshi Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj, Saint
Kabir, Saint Mira and Mahatma Gandhi tried their best to remove caste barriers. Social reformers have
given thought to it from time to time and through a number of reform campaigns, donations, reservations,
meetings, seminars. They have tried to eliminate this bias, doubt and misunderstanding between the
classes. But all these big efforts had little effect on the real conditions of the people. All these are theoretical
task, no one does practical work to abolish casteism. When the caste became curse and an evil social
element, many thinkers advocated the need of inter-caste marriages of all types. The reformists like
Ambedkar and Mahatma Gandhi, they not advocated the need of inter-caste marriage but also put it into
practice. Himself a dalit Ambedkar married a Brahmin woman. In the heyday of dalit mobilization,
Ambedkar wrote that inter-caste marriage was the most important way of annihilating caste. The real
remedy is inter-caste marriage for killing the spirit of caste and the consciousness of caste.
Such movement finds its root in literature also. Mulk Raj Anand and Bhabani Bhattachrya are also
present the evil effects of caste system in the field of fiction. Similarly Vijay Tendulkar, Girish Karnad,
Badal Sircar and Mohan Rakesh also deal with the same age old problem in the field of drama.
Is inter-caste marriage really remedy for caste equality? It is a question posed by plays of Vijay
Tendulkar and Girish Karnad viz Vijay Tendulkar's Kanyadaan and Girish Karnad's Tale-Danda. Vijay
Tendulkar and Girish Karnad are prolific and stalwart dramatists of modern period. They are reformist and

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IS INTER-CASTE MARRIAGE REALLY REMEDY FOR CASTE EQUALITY?

advanced. They dramatize the evil aspect of the society and hold mirror in front of society to reflect its true
face. They presented harsh reality of Indian society and wanted to change it. The main idea of playwrights
was to unite people of various castes together and to create a new caste based on humanity. Therefore as a
reformist, they used drama as a means to give impetus to the wave of awakening among the people to bring
equality and reform it on humanistic basis.
Vijay Tendulkar and Girish Karnad in their plays Kanyadaan and Tale-Danda respectively used
inter-caste marriage as a remedy for caste equality. They used drama as a weapon to caste equality in Hindu
society. For that purpose they arrange inter-cast marriage between Brahmin girl and Dalit boy as an
experiment to eradicate evils of caste. But is it really successful? In Kanyadaan Nath a social reformer is
influenced by these social reformers, wanted to do practical work to eradicate social problem of castism.
The play naturally centers on inter-caste marriage between Jyoti, young Brahmin girl, who belongs to a
politically and socially active family and Arun, a dalit youth from village whom she has known only for two
months. Nath's ideal notions come to a test when his daughter Jyoti decides to marry a poor and socially
inferior young man Arun. He readily accepts his daughter's proposal and encourages her to marry a dalit
youth.
Nath becomes enthusiastic about this experiment. He faces all the opposition from his wife and
son and argues in favor of Jyoti. He says that this marriage will work as an experiment in his lifelong
campaign to mitigate the differences between high and lower caste people, differences between middle and
working class people and differences that separate man from man. Thus at the personal risk, he makes a
social experiment. But unfortunately this experiment ended in violence.
Arun turns out to be quite a different nature of person. He is very much critical of the sophisticated
and high caste people. Arun's violence is a central interest of the play and one of the reasons of inter-caste
marriage failure. The bitter experience of life has made Arun hard and violent. His childhood memory,
disillusionment and suppression in caste structured society make him to react violently against his wife and
her parents which give him sort of psychological relief from the suppressed feelings. His marriage with
Brahmin girl, he takes it as an opportunity to take revenge upon upper caste. Marriage becomes instrument
to release the suppressed Dalit voice to deconstruct caste identity. The hidden beast of Arun becomes active
when he feels secure as a husband of Jyoti. Marriage gave him an authorial right on Jyoti and he started to
beat and abuse her.
Vijay Tendulkar shows the same task of failure of eradication of caste and class system from
Hindu society, due to class and caste consciousness. His play Kanyadaan shows even after sixty years of
independence Dalits continues to suffer misery and ill treatment at the hands of the upper castes. Class and
caste consciousness is the main reason of failure of marriage between Jyoti, a Brahmin girl and Arun, a
Dalit. Nath Devlalikar, Seva, they fought for upliftment of untouchable, but they are unsuccessful in
eradicating cast consciousness. Seva, mother of Jyoti, is a socialist, also works for untouchable and
champion of women's rights. But she herself objects Jyoti's decision of marring a Dalit boy and tries her best
to warn her about the risk involved. She did her work only on theoretical way, but when the time of practical
work came caste consciousness resists her to do so. Dalit Arun is merely a subject of study for her, not
capable enough to be her son-in-law. Seva's interrogation regarding his education, job, income and
ownership of flat in Pune, shows her class and caste consciousness and authoritarian voice over dalit.
The problem starts arising when Aarun's lower class habits start shaking the middle class values of
Nath's family. 'Civilization' and 'culture' are the mirrors in which Nath's family members want to see their
faces. However, the difficulty is that their son-in-law is quite unaware of these two terms. He also always
remains conscious of his lower class origin. Arun, though he is a talented and creative writer, he does not try
to imbibe in himself the 'cultured' and 'civilized' manners of the middle class people. On the other hand he
beats Jyoti and abuses her parents for her caste status. When Arun is questioned by Seva about his
education, career and future plans he gets restless and shows his true colour by saying brewing illicit liquor
in a very bad language.
Nath gives impetus to Jyoti for marriage with Arun to break the caste system in real sense of the
term. But he did all these things from a distance. He sacrifices his daughter in order to make his social
experiment successful. But when he himself encounters the ugly reality and coarseness of Dalit Arun, he
gets enraged. This reforming zeal of Nath gets a shocking blow and comes under criticism when his own
daughter Jyoti breaks relations from his family and claims herself to be a member of dalit community.
Being fed up with the comfortable values of her Brahmin society, she prefers to be a straightforward
scavenger, an untouchable. The play ends with Jyotis statement suggesting that there is no possibility of
improving the people there by cleansing the society nor can she turn back from her chosen path. At the end
of the play we sympathize with Jyoti who is fighting all alone against society and morality.
Here Tendulkar in Kanyadaan seems to pose the question why did this gap remain wide between
higher and lower classes even after such a commitment and effort? It is not an easy question. The play

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IS INTER-CASTE MARRIAGE REALLY REMEDY FOR CASTE EQUALITY?

shows that the social reformers themselves are not free from their class and caste consciousness
Within the mythical or historical frame work Girish Karnad finds room to discuss contemporary
issue. In Tale-Danda Karnad exposes the ugly division of the Hindu society by depicting the 12th century
communal struggle in the city of Kalyan, when Bijjala was the king. The play Tale-Danda reveals reformist
attitude, uses inter-caste marriage as an experiment to cut off caste distinction and bring social equality on
humanistic basis. He thinks that the real remedy is inter-caste marriage for killing the spirit of caste and the
consciousness of caste. The conflict in the play is created when the marriage between Brahmin girl Kalavati
and untouchable boy Sheelavanta took place.
Under the leadership of Basavanna people form a reformist cult 'sharana'. Through the sharana
movement he fought against this orthodox practice of caste system. He wanted the entire world to be with
only one religion, where there will be no partiality among the people. Basavanna as a social reformer strived
to bring social equality by arranging inter-caste marriage as an experiment. But in the Vedic system and
Hindu religion inter-caste marriage is not encouraged. Through inter-caste marriage they wanted to prove
that they opposed the caste system not just in theory but also in practice.
Madhuvarasa, Brahmin sharana has offered his daughter in marriage to the son of Haralayya,
cobbler by birth to escape from the coils of caste and they are ready to face the consequences. Thus the
marriage takes place peacefully. While sharanas feel jubilant about their great achievement, the marriage
infuriates orthodox Hindus. The wedding ceremony proves too costly to the sharanas and King.
The evils of caste system cannot be eradicated even by taking some conscious effort because some seeds of
caste consciousness remain in the mind of people. Tale-Danda dramatizes this fact. Girish Karnad
through Bijjala, makes it clear that casteism is not simple skin-deep but blood deep. King Bijjala is still
aware of his low caste. Bijjala knows that the people of higher caste do not respect him properly. “One's
caste is like the skin on one's body. You can peel it off top to toe, but when the new skin forms, there you are
again: a barber- a shepherd- a scavenger! (Karnad,Girish,14-15)
Sharana was under the influence of caste conscious and their sole concern was the propagation of
their ideology. Thus it was not a marriage of individuals but of ideologies. They arrange this inter-caste
marriage not for to bridge the gap of casteism but for earning the name and fame. Lalitamba mother of bride
was not too happy for marriage, she is thinking about Sheela's low profession of stitching footwear and
asked to change it. Haralayya and Madhuvarasa are also not free from caste consciousness. Haralayya
thinks that if his son decides to change his profession, then the people of his caste would not accept him.
Initiation of Madhuvarasa as sharanas was not even complete, when he saw Sheela and decides he was right
for his daughter. But if Sheela had been a Brahmin boy he wouldn't even have sniffed at him. It is also one
question that Haralayya accepts the prospect of a fair Brahmin daughter-in-law. Would he be as keen on a
girl from a caste lower than his?
Jagadeva, a young Brahmin converted to sharana and his followers were fighting for equality, but
they themselves were not free from caste and class consciousness. Jagadeva, though he is converted into
sharana, observe the brahminical rituals at the death of his father, which is contrary to his new faith. He also
hankers for leadership and publicity, feel jealousy for his renowned Guru Basavanna.
The upper caste and Brahmins accept challenge of maintaining Vernashrama system which is
challenged by the act of inter-caste marriage. The old system has been challenged by inter-caste marriage,
thus unrest spread among Brahmin Nobles. So they form conspiracy against King Bijjala because of his
support to the marriage and protect sharanas. They first kill Bijjala's loyal servants and then imprison him in
his own palace. Later they begin butchering thousands of sharanas. Damodara Bhatta, Manchanna Kramita
and Prince Sovideva were succeed in their evil design of dethroning the king and grabbing power and also
succeed in destroying a new reformist movement.
As a result of the power-politickers decisions, the fathers of the bride and groom are caught, their
eyes are gouged out. Tied to elephant's feet, they are dragged through the streets of Kalyan. The whole city
burns. There are widespread riots, stampedes, fires, murders, rapes and looting. The whole city of Kalyan is
bathed in the blood of innocent people because the power-hungry rulers would not accept change. There is
terrible bloodshed at the end of the play in Kalyan, so that the whole city is drowned in a sea of blood.
Though the aim of the movement was to bring about a great social change by eradicating castism,
Karnad emphasizes that this change, though welcome, can be only superficial and theoretical. The
reformists lose a battle even before the action begins only because of cast and class consciousness.
Girish Karnad dramatized the monster of casteism of 12th century. And Vijay Tendulkar shows
evils of casteism of 20th century. So these plays show that after the changes and development in
globalization era the caste problem remains as it is. We are exactly back where we started. As a reformist
dramatist Tendular and Karnad want to reform the Indian society and build an ideal world where human
beings could be treated as human being with respect and grace.
The two plays pose the very question “is inter-caste marriage really remedy for caste equality?”

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IS INTER-CASTE MARRIAGE REALLY REMEDY FOR CASTE EQUALITY?

The marriage between a lower caste man and a higher caste woman is not tolerable at any cost. Inter-caste
marriage and its failure in its practical is the centre of both plays. However the real backdrop of both the
plays is the inter-caste marriage between Brahmin girl and Dalit boy. No doubt inter-caste marriages take
place in both the plays but fail in bridging the caste barriers instead it leads towards violence. Hindu people
cannot tolerate the mingling of castes. Caste system is deeply rooted in the mind of Hindu people it cannot
be washed out. It is deeply rooted in the psyche of the people. Both plays Kanyadaan and Tale-Danda
represent deeply the rooted casteism in Hindu society.
Inter-caste marriages failed in both the plays. The tragic part was that, the change is not that easy to
take place, due to class and caste consciousness. The vital reason for this situation is that the caste system is
believed to be divinely ordained. Both Tendulkar and Karnad throw light on how deep are the layers of
Indian castes psychology in presenting us the complicated, conflicting and tense relationship between
Indian middle and socially outcaste and untouchable community. Class and caste consciousness deeply
rooted in the psyche of people, therefore man cannot change and he cannot behave freely out of his caste
structure. Caste and class consciousness is one of the most important reasons of failure of inter-caste
marriage and destruction of reformist movement. Tendulkar and Karnad realistically present how a caste
consciousness resists people to mingle freely in all caste. it is caste consciousness, which is alive in the mind
of all characters in both plays, which resists them to do any practical work for eradicating casteism. There is
difference between their behavior and thinking.
Despite the great work of social reformer and in the wake of various constitutional steps and legal
measures, the devil of casteism is difficult to fight. As a matter of fact social evils are deeply rooted, they
have so far been dug up for some period but have not been cut off. Grate personalities have fought for the
abolitions of caste system, but most of them have failed only because of caste consciousness. Suggested
inter-caste marriage as one solution to eradicate caste, but how it is a question. Hence before taking some
conscious effort we should eradicate our caste consciousness, we should uproot the seeds of caste
consciousness and then take some conscious efforts for eradicating casteism. Both the playwrights are
successful in conveying the spectators that the major cause of failure of marriage is class and caste
consciousness.
Kanyadaan and Tale-Danda show that the eradication of the class and caste system in Indian
society is possible theoretically but not practically. It can be eradicated outwardly but the seeds of caste
discrimination are sprouting at inner level. So the efforts taken by us only work on superficial level, it is a
matter of psyche. External social change is easier but inner change to stop certain bad traditional practices is
difficult. The impact of traditional practices is more deeper. Change is not that easy to take place.
Untouchability even after 60 years of constitutional and legal protection and state support is still prevalent
and the discrimination against Dalit in many parts of our country. These plays pose the question why did this
gap remain wide between higher and lower classes even after such a commitment and effort? These plays
show the obstacles that stand in the way of social change and modernization.
These plays also show that such type of marriage is itself a misalliance. It cannot bring harmony,
instead it creates anarchy. Both plays shatter the idealistic notions about eradicating caste system through
inter-caste marriage. The plays highlight the complexities of solving sociological problems through a
progressive framework. These plays state that the caste system continues to be at its rigid. But the mentality
has to change Gandhiji acknowledged that the caste system in India is spiritually blinded but this did not
mean that every Indian blindly followed the caste system. Though plays show hard, brutal and violent
consequence of inter-caste marriage, these plays call upon us to seriously rethink as why we fail in our
objective to bring about social equality and awaken essential consciousness of caste equality in the mind of
the people. First we should change our traditional psychological mind setup and then we should take some
conscious efforts which will uproot the seeds of casteism. To sum up it could be said that both the
playwrights keep caste issue at the center in their plays and call upon the audience to think over it for
possible solution. The two plays looks forward for the annihilation of caste system through inter-caste
marriage as it was done by the social reformers and thinkers like Dr. B.R. Ambedkar.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1.Tendulkar, Vijay (1996) Kanyadaan Translated into English by Gowri Ramnarayan, Oxford University
Press, Delhi.
2. Karnad, Girish(1993) Tale-Danda, Translated from the original Kannada by the author, Ravi Dayal
Publisher, Delhi.
3.Dodiya, Jaydipsinh and Surendran K.V Ed. (200) Indian English Drama The Critical Perspectives, Sarup
and Sons, New Delhi.
4.Dodiya, Jaydipsinh Ed. (1999) The Plays of Girish Karnad Critical Perspective, Prestige Books, New
Delhi.

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IS INTER-CASTE MARRIAGE REALLY REMEDY FOR CASTE EQUALITY?

5.Pandey Sudhakar and Taraporewala Freya Ed. (1990) Contemporary Indian Drama, Prestige Books, New
Delhi.

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