2 hours ago
2
It was refreshing that Naseeruddin Shah work Dastaan-e-Bhanwar, connected the beingness of Bhanwari Devi and different hapless victims of patriarchy, connected the opening time of the yearly Prithvi Festival successful Mumbai, and not his woman Ratna Pathak Shah. The second would person been the predictable choice.
In elemental terms, dastaan means a story. But this was nary grandma’s bedtime tale. Nor was it similar accepted Persian dastaans, afloat of swashbuckling heroes. “There are nary bees and butterflies successful the communicative I volition narrate,” disclaimed the histrion earlier mounting distant to picture an indomitable colony woman, a unfortunate of a brutal pack rape, who stood up to a strategy loaded successful favour of men. Older generations successful the assemblage mightiness person heard astir the uneducated Bhanwari Devi’s combat against kid matrimony successful agrarian Rajasthan and the unspeakable terms she had to wage for it. But nationalist representation is abbreviated and today’s procreation whitethorn not cognize who she is. So her dastaan merits reiteration.
In a 45-minute monologue, Shah traced Bhanwari’s beingness and however it changed the people of women’s agitations successful galore ways. As was the norm then, Bhanwari was lone astir six years aged erstwhile she was joined disconnected to nine-year-old Mohanlal Prajapat from a potter’s family, and implicit the years, became a parent to 4 children. However, what was uncommon and antithetic was her becoming a grassroots idiosyncratic for a women’s improvement task tally by the Government of Rajasthan. Known arsenic a saathin, Bhanwari took her occupation of promoting government-introduced wellness and societal measures seriously, making her colony proud.
But erstwhile she dared to discourage a Gurjar household from marrying their nine-month aged girl to a 12-month aged boy, she antagonised a almighty conception of her village. Undaunted, she complained to applicable authorities who stopped the wedding from happening connected Akha Teej, considered an auspicious day. To circumvent the law, the household simply shifted to different location and conducted the marriage.
Thereafter, furious that Bhanwari had dared to bring the constabulary to their doorstep to halt an age-old tradition, the Gurjar household caused her household to beryllium ostracised, preventing anybody from buying the pots they made and disallowing anybody to merchantability beverage to them. Bhanwari was forced to adjacent springiness up her authorities job. Worse, connected September 22, 1992, portion she and her hubby were moving successful the field, 5 men descended connected them astatine dusk, bushed up her hubby till helium fell unconscious, and gang-raped her.
Shah narrates however a lone, lower-caste, traumatised pistillate had to past tally from pillar to station to person the perpetrators punished. Did she succeed? Initially, the accused were enactment down bars but arsenic the lawsuit against them proceeded, they were capable to wriggle their mode out, with the Jaipur District and Sessions Court acquitting each 5 accused connected absurd grounds. The justice pronounced that it was not imaginable for her to beryllium raped erstwhile her hubby was present. Surely, helium would not person stood by arsenic a passive observer. Secondly, men don’t person carnal relationships with lower-caste women. And thirdly, the men were excessively aged to perpetrate specified a crime. That a judgement could beryllium fixed connected the ground of axenic assumptions showed however heavy the rot was and what Bhanwari Devi was up against.
What is adjacent much disconcerting, pointed retired a visibly aggravated Shah, is that Bhanwari’s was not an exceptional case. Similar incidents hap connected a regular ground crossed the magnitude and breadth of the country: Mathura, a tribal woman, was raped astatine a constabulary presumption successful Gadchiroli, Nirbhaya was gang-raped successful a Delhi autobus and Bilkis Bano gang-raped successful Gujarat. Even six-month aged babies are brutalised by antheral lust. The papers study specified horrific incidents each the clip (Shah’s narration had a glaring omission. There was nary notation of the caller rape of a doc successful R G Kar Hospital successful Kolkata, which showed however unsafe women proceed to beryllium astatine the workplace, contempt the Vishaka guidelines that were framed aft the Bhanwari Devi rape case).
Most times, the communal antheral shrugs disconnected incidents similar these with a “Such things happen” attitude, said Shah. “But it could hap to idiosyncratic successful your household too,” helium warned. Yes, it could but that is not the lone crushed wherefore we indispensable ne'er enactment these issues connected the backmost burner. Bhanwari Devi did not springiness up her combat against an all-powerful constitution simply to get justness for herself, but to forestall different women from being subjected to akin ordeals.
Unfortunately, though, the Ashok Lal-written Dastaan-e-Bhanwar someway fails to marque for a gripping dastaan. The communicative sounds jaded contempt being bolstered with poems by Faiz Ahmad Faiz and different activist-poets. When you constitute astir pressing issues for the signifier you cannot dependable similar a columnist for the edit leafage of a newspaper. The benignant of penning needs a definite benignant and flair suitable for a monologue connected stage.
I person marvelled astatine Shah’s quality to enthral viewers successful monologues earlier, sat mesmerised done his speechmaking of Khalil Gibran, but this peculiar amusement near maine unmoved.
Chowdhury is the writer of Dev Anand: Dashing, Debonair (2004)
.png "indianexpress.")
.png "khaleejtimes")
.png "arabnews")
.png "gulfnews"){kind=logo}
English (US) · 
Hindi (IN) ·