The Representation of Marginalised Voices in Mahesh Dattani's Plays with Specific References to Seven Steps Around the Fire, On a Muggy Night in Mumbai, Ek Alag Mausam and Tara

Abstract

Dattani's plays are peopled by the ostracised people of the Indian society. He uses theatre as a significant space to give voice to the silenced suffering of those hurled to the subservient position of the secondary citizen or a non-entity status. Five major marginalised sections of our society–eunuchs, gays/lesbians, HIV positives, physically handicapped persons and women–are given elaborate representations in four of his plays–Seven Steps Around the Fire, On a Muggy Night in Mumbai, Ek Alag Mausam and Tara. Dattani's literary motto, as he himself says, is to "understand the marginalized, including the gays" (Mee 21). His plays put forth a fervent plea for the social ratification of the differences by pointing to the harms involved in thinking in terms of rigid categories. In short, Dattani seems to be doing exactly what the postmodernist thinker Jean-Francois Lyotard has proposed to do: "Let us wage war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable; let us activate the differences and save the honor of the name" (Lyotard 82).