Speech and Silence as Means of Violence against Women: A Critical Study of Vijay Tendulkar’s Silence! The Court is in Session and Manjula Padmanabhan’s Lights out
Abstract:
Violence against women is a prevalent social reality and so long as women would be deemed as ‘the second sex’- as physically, socially and psychologically inferior-, violence against women would go on unabated in its varied ramifications- specifically in two broad forms namely physical and psychological. Whereas the males from the lower sections of the society, more often, resort to the former, the most crucial ideological weapon that the members of the so-called intellectual patriarchy make use of, is certainly the later i.e., the psychological violence. Speech or word is one form of adding to the psychological trauma of women and no less formidable and more lenient mode is its counterpart i.e., silence that often stems from social indifference and thereby aggravates the plight of women through enforced reticence. Vijay Tendulkar’s Silence! The Court is in Session is the first case in point where the protagonist Miss Benare is traumatized and marginalized to the point of social ostracization by the aggressive stance and acerbic speech of patriarchy. Benare’s voice of protest against the hypocritical, oppressive notions of patriarchy is stifled and silenced awfully by verbose patriarchal idioms. In Manjula Padmanabhan’s Lights Out, the male characters passively observe from a distance the physical atrocities of ‘rape’ being perpetrated against a woman. Representatives of apathetic urban mindset, steeped in overwhelming self-interest resulting from a sense of postmodern fragmentation, isolated identity, individualism and psychological egoism, they prefer to remain silent on the issue of violence against a woman. This is voluntary, enforced silence which is tantamount to another form of psychological violence where the lack of words only intensifies the oppression and subjugation of women. This paper therefore aims to show, through a comparative study of the plays afore-mentioned, how both speech and silence serve as operative tools in the execution of violence against women.
Keywords: Speech, silence, violence, women subjugation, postmodern social indifference, individualism.
Violence is a primordial human instinct and since women are generally considered to be socially, physically and psychologically inferior, they are more prone to be the victim of violence. Violence against women therefore is a prevalent social reality which would go on unabated so long as the women would be deemed as the ‘weaker’ or the ‘second’ sex. Research has shown that violent behavior is generally a response to the perception that the ‘self’ or one’s sense of identity is somewhat threatened. In common parlance, violence is thought to be the extreme form of aggression. There are as many forms of violence as there are different tools for inflicting it. So far as varied ramifications of violence are concerned, it ranges from physical, sexual to psychological as also from individual to collective. What is important to note is that according to class division, the manifestations of violence changes as from the lower class to middle class, violence against women also acquires some degree of sophistication. The lower section of the society, more often than not, resort to physical violence including sexual to be unleashed on women whereas the middle class or the upper middle class makes use of a more sophisticated and a more perverse form of violence namely the psychological. The tools by which the psychological violence is imposed on women are sometimes just antithetical- speech or verbal assault and enforced reticence or silence- both of which exact excruciating trauma on women's psyche. Vijay Tendulkar’s Silence! The Court is in Session is the first case in point where under the façade of maintaining the court conduct of a mock trial, a group of middle-class people pounce upon the opportunity of stifling and violently dismissing the freedom of an independent woman through speech i.e., verbose, high-sounding patriarchal idioms. How silence may add to the psychological trauma of women is implicitly exemplified by Manjula Padmanabhan’s Lights Out where the two male characters passively watch from a distance the physical atrocities of rape being perpetrated against a woman with absolute indifference. Moreover, let alone coming to the rescue of that woman, they while away the time concocting several imaginary explanations for the possible cause of that physical violence. In other words, they prefer to remain silent against the violence committed against a woman and this enforced silence which is necessarily a concomitant of postmodern alienation, indifference and individualism, amounts to another form of psychological violence as it denies a woman necessary support and help. The paper therefore tries to show how two contrary aspects namely speech and silence serve as operative tools for furthering the same end i.e., subjecting the women to inhuman oppression and violence.
Vijay Tendulkar is one of the most important playwrights of Indian theatre who dwells upon the theme of different dimensions of violence in his plays. Tendulkar who himself asserts that violence is always already there in human nature and hence a fundamental aspect of human existence, uses violence as a strategic theatrical tool to serve as a shock therapy to the audience. Ashutosh Narendra Mhaskar in his thesis entitled “Depiction of Sex and Violence in Vijay Tendulkar’s Plays in the Context of the Prevailing Social, Economical and Political Conditions of India”, comments : “ Presenting a vast number of matters fundamental to many aspects of postmodern life and holding up as a mirror to the question of violence which characterizes postmodern condition, Tendulkar’s plays confront people with its experimental theatrics that focus on violence beneath the civilized people of the society” (15). The vicious, odious face of aggressive violence lurks under the otherwise benevolent veneer of the so-called civilized, middle class people and Tendulkar leaves his distinct signature in exposing that vital truth of life. G. P. Deshpande therefore cogently comments in his article “Remembering Tendulkar” that “There has been no greater philosopher of violence in Indian theatre or literature for that matter than Tendulkar” (20).
In Silence! The Court is in Session, an amateur theatre group, comprising some middle-class people, before performing their final show in the evening, holds a rehearsal of mock trial with a new, different sort of accused altogether- a female accused namely Benare. While Miss Benare is away, some of her co-actors choose her as the accused in the mock trial which they describe as a simple ‘game’ meant for fun and amusement. The imaginary offence imposed on Benare is thought to be of an extreme.ly grave socio-moral nature- that of the infanticide. The offence, though is supposed to be an imaginary one, proves odious to Benare and when she vents out her discontentment regarding this, she is at once silenced by the tactful use of the word ‘game’ which was of course an alibi for her hypocritical co-actors to tear her apart with their verbose, hypocritical patriarchal notions, the main offence of Benare being, according to them, her independent, self-willed life style. Apart from the ‘game’ of mock trial, the conventional words and speech of court and law serve as another important tool in their hands for subjugating and oppressing Benare to the point of social ostracization. The improvised mock trial starts haltingly and comically in the spirit of a ‘game’ before it takes a serious turn and gets transmogrified into a cruel, atrocious hunting game with Benare as their victim. Though they call it a ‘game’, based on an imaginary accusation, the witnesses become brazenly personal in their references to the accused. When Benare, utterly distraught and disconcerted, tries to speak out against this hypocritical, biased attitude, they silence her and psychologically traumatize her either by reiterating the conventional idioms of law or by taking recourse to the excuse of game or simply by counter-attacking her with high-flown patriarchal jargons. The first is the case in the conversation among Sukhatme, Ponkshe and Benare:
… Mr. Ponkshe, how would you describe your view of the moral conduct of the accused? On the whole like that of a normal married woman?
Benare: But how should he know what the moral conduct of a normal unmarried woman is like?
Ponkshe (paying no attention to her): It is different.
Sukhatme: For example?
Ponkshe: The accused is a bit too much.
Sukhatme: A bit too much-what does that mean?
Ponkshe: It means that on the whole, she runs after men too much.
Benare (provoking him): Tut! tut! tut! Poor man!
Sukhatme: Miss Benare you are committing contempt of court! (35)
Sukhatme, the brief-less lawyer forgets that one’s personal life is outside the pale of this game and straightforwardly asks whether the accused has a particularly close relationship with any man. Later Rokde says that he has seen the accused in a compromising situation with Prof. Damle in his room. Hearing this, Benare, thoroughly exasperated, when bursts out in fury- “There’s no need at all to drag my private life into this”, Sukhatme at once counters her saying “Miss Benare, listen to me. Don’t spoil the mood of the trial. The game’s great fun…” (39). Samant however puts the final nail in her coffin when in his imaginary evidence he theatrically reveals Prof. Damle’s abandoning Benare in her state of pregnancy. When Benare wants to convince them that these are but complete, barefaced lies, Karnik cuts her short saying “Even if it’s a lie, it’s an effective one!” (46). As Benare accuses these middle-class hypocrites of having deliberately ganged up against her, they scarcely pay any heed to her allegation. On the contrary, they set on at once with all their violence to inflict torment upon Benare with their biased, judgmental speech. The self-proclaimed social worker, Mr. Kashikar with his zeal for social guardianship waking up in him suddenly, makes his observation: “… the whole fabric of society is soiled these days, Sukhatme. Nothing is undefiled anymore” (47). In order to traumatize Benare with their loquacious, grandiose speech, Sukhatme extravagantly harps on the significance and glorification of motherhood in Indian culture and tradition to which Kashikar adds with some shlokas from Sanskrit. In the third act where the demarcating line between fiction and reality is obliterated totally, Benare is literally silenced by their verbal assaults as she remains silent to any of the queries directed at her. More violence is inflicted on her through speech as Ponkshe and Karnik perversely blurt out some other secrets of her personal life. As an accused when she is asked to speak in her defence, she speaks her heart out in her monologue but all her words fall on deaf ears and frozen hearts as the character- assassinators and scandal-mongers pass a verdict depending on the half -truths and fictitious stories of her co-actors. Kashikar passes the verdict that the sin must be expiated and the child in her womb should be destroyed. In this way, Silence! The Court is in Session represents an emblematic instance of how psychological violence is imposed on a woman through the vicious application of verbose speech.
C. S. Lakshmi, in her introduction to the book Body Blows entitled “And Kannagi Plucked Out a Breast”, comments that the violence against women which is a predominant reality everywhere, seems to have a pathological existence in our lives. She further insightfully comments that the first step in eradicating this violence “would be to give it a tongue- a tongue that would boldly express its occurrence and nature; a tongue that would rise from a choked throat like a snake with its hood spread to strike and to defend.” In the introduction to the book of poems entitled Family Violence- Poems on the Pathology, Joy Harjo also talks about the need to voice and express. It is this lack of voice, of tongue that intensifies the trauma of psychological violence of woman as is implicitly evinced in Manjula Padmanabhan’s Lights Out. Manjula Padmanabhan is one of the major contemporary dramatists who has made significant contribution to the canon of Feminist Theatre as her plays encapsulate what Helen Keyssar describes as “Production of scripts characterized by the consciousness of women as women; dramaturgy in which art is inseparable from the condition of women; performance (written and acted) that deconstructs sexual difference and thus undermines patriarchal power…” (Keyssar, 1996, 1). Lights Out focuses on violence through its symbolic significance of the title which suggests activities associated with darkness as violence happens to be a necessary concomitant of forces of darkness. In this play, two forms of violence go on simultaneously- that of the physical and psychological. The first one is evinced in the physical assaults of rape perpetrated almost every day supposedly on different women in a building under construction in the locality where Bhasker and Leela live while the second one is reflected in the attitude of the two male characters- Bhasker and his friend Mohan Ram towards this horrible crime as they remain mute spectators deriving voyeuristic pleasure by passively gazing upon it. Even if Leela consistently insists that by watching it they are making themselves responsible, Mohan Ram blankly comments – “After all what’s the harm in simply watching something?” (16). What is significant is that Mohan comes to Bhasker’s apartment only to ‘see’ the gang rape. His desire for scopophilic pleasure by looking at the spectacle of gang rape becomes manifestly clear which nevertheless leaves Leela- Bhasker’s wife- dumbfounded:
(turning to Mohan) Why did you come knowing something horrible would happen?
Mohan: Oh-but I insisted.
Bhasker: He wanted to see it-
Leela: You wanted to see it!
Mohan (unrepentant): Sure! Why not!
Leela: But why! Why see such awful things unless you must!
Mohan: Well, I was curious. (15)
The very word ‘curious’ is enough to establish Mohan as a scopophilic gazer. Sanchaita Paul Chakraborty and Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha in their article “Resistance Through Theatrical Communication: Two Women’s Texts and A Critique of Violence” comment: “Throughout the play, his scopophilia continues to exist as the erotic basis for pleasure in looking at the sexual violation of women and in this process, she is objectified” (5). The play therefore necessarily underscores the response of the male gaze to the spectacle of gang rape in an urban social set up. Laura Mulvey puts this inclination so clearly in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”: “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on the female figure which is styled accordingly” (837). As a resultant outcome, what is also seen in this offensive male gaze is a typical postmodern alienation which refuses to take the responsibility of any active participation. The preference for enforced silence becomes clear when in response to Leela’s unrelenting demand to call the police to take hold of the situation, Bhasker comments with absolute indifference: “I don’t want to stick my neck out, that’s all” (7). Dramnescu Marin in the abstract of his article “Postmodern Society and Individual Alienation” cogently comments: “Postmodernism is a real ideological and individualistic explosion that determines dispersion, leading to differentiation which pushes the world into indifference. Therefore, we witness an exacerbation of subjective expression and an attempt of self-retrieval…” Therefore, this social apathy is necessarily a consequence of postmodern spiritual alienation between man to man, an overwhelming sense of fragmentation that denies any commitment towards society. It is this denial of commitment, of the active verbal speech that acts as a triggering force for the continuity of violence against women in an unabated pace. Moreover, this enforced silence itself becomes tantamount to a form of psychological violence against women as they are denied the support of speech. In Lights Out when Naina- Bhasker and Leela’s friend- comes to accost this terrible incident accompanied by anguished cry and asserts that “It sounded like someone calling for help!” Mohan apathetically dismisses the idea claiming “It’s some sort of religious ceremony…” (33). Therefore, the height of indifference on the part of Bhasker and Mohan towards the pitiful condition of the gang-raped woman is shown in the way they try to shun their responsibility of coming to the rescue of the woman by fabricating different imaginary explanations. In a desperate bid to evade being involved, they summon their wild conjectures where their concocted versions of explanations range from dubbing it as a specific domestic problem to calling her a ‘whore’ and finally to the ludicrous assumption of deeming it as a specific rite of a religious ceremony. Mohan, at one instance, states that he does not want to get involved unless it is a murder. They therefore tell Leela point blank that to get involved in this incident would be to impose some restriction on religious freedom which in a secular country they are not allowed to. So, the implication was that they would remain silent on the issue:
(quite distressed) No, no! It’s too awful!
Mohan: But- don’t you see? That would explain why no one goes to the help of the victims- because, of course, if it’s something religious, no one can interfere, not even the police.
Bhasker (considering the point): That’s true of course. If it’s religious, then there’s no stopping the thing. Restriction of religious freedom and all that.
Mohan: Everyone would be up in arms.
Leela: But- even when it’s not a nice religion?
Bhasker: No one can say what’s nice or not nice any more. Someone else’s religion is someone else’s business. (25)
Throughout the play Bhasker and Mohan remain astoundingly indifferent. In response to Naina’s desperate demand that they need to do something for that woman is not merely raped but brutalized as well, Bhasker replies with absolute nonchalance – “These things go on all the time, all over the city-who are we to interfere?” (41). The only male character who wants to take some actions against this brutal torture over the woman is Surinder- Naina’s husband, but his penchant for taking action is purely informed by his desire for flaunting male charisma and chauvinism over the gang-rapists rather than any genuine concern for that woman. What is significant is that even Leela’s persistent claim for calling the police is solely motivated by her own interest for she herself says time and again that the brutal sounds wreak havoc on her sensitive nerves and hence such incidents are being outright intolerable to her:
Tell them we’re being tortured by some goondas!
Bhasker: That’s hardly true now Leela, is it? I mean who would believe such a complaint?
Leela: I don’t care what they believe. The sounds torture me. Tell the police I can’t sleep at nights… tell the police the goondas must go away and take their dirty whores somewhere else! I don’t care what they do, or who they are or what they are- I just want them far away, out of hearing-out of my life… (44)
These attitudes seem to give a glimpse of postmodern individualism where the interests of the individual take precedence over the interest of the social group. The question of individualism then necessarily brings the question of morality and ethics. Postmodern ethics is certainly not based on unchanging universal principles but on atheism and relativism. According to Richard Rorty, there is no universal moral reality or objective moral basis to which our moral judgments might hope to correspond as our physical science supposedly corresponds to physical reality. So, in the absence of any absolute or universal standard, the concept of morality also becomes situational and relative. For Lyotard, in the absence of the ‘grand narrative’ of universal truth and reality, each community develops its own ‘little narratives’ to fulfill its own needs. The absence of any normative values somehow corresponds to Nietzsche’s prediction of the collapse of values or transvaluation of the values. It is this postmodern sense of alienation, fragmentation, morality and ethics that in part explains the behavior and attitudes of Leela, Bhasker and Mohan in Padmanabhan’s Lights Out.
It, therefore, becomes evident that violence has many faces and forms and the ways violence is inflicted on women are numerous. C. S. Lakshmi is right when she comments in the introduction to Body Blows that “The violence in a woman’s life often has no outward signs, like a gash on the body or a bullet in its crevices. It can seem bloodless.” It is always bloodless apparently when it concerns the outward impact of psychological violence against women and hence the most favoured form of violence in the hands of the middle class. It is an unseen wound “that’s born to bleed” and that “bleeds forever faithfully”, to quote the Marathi poet Mrs. Shirish Pai. The easiest and most practiced way of administering the wound is certainly the sarcastic, acerbic speech, the incisive verbal assaults while not to speak at all corresponds to another form of violence. The conscious avoidance of responsibility leading to enforced silence is tantamount to involuntary violence which can aptly be rephrased as ‘silence is violence’. Thus, speech furthers violence, so is silence.
Works Cited