“Ghashiram Kotwal” - By Vijay Tendulkar

About  Play writer:

Vijay Dhondopant Tendulkar was born on January 6, 1928 in a Bhalavalikar Saraswat brahmin family in Kolhapur, Maharashtra. Vijay Tendulkar was a leading Indian playwright, movie and television writer, literary essayist, political journalist, and social commentator primarily in Marāthi. Some of Tendulkar’s most famous plays include Shantata! Court Chalu Ahe (1967; “Silence! The Court Is in Session”) and Sakharam Binder (1971). Ghashiram Kotwal (1972; “Ghashiram the Constable”) was recognized as one of the longest-running plays in the world, with more than 6,000 performances staged internationally. In addition to his plays, Tendulkar wrote screenplays in both Marathi and Hindi. In 1998 he won the lifetime contribution award from the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship.

About The Play:

list of characters:

    Ghashiram Kotwal

    Nana Phadnavis

    Lalita Gauri

    Sutradhar(Narrator)

    Gulabi

Brahmans (chorus)

Ghashiram Kotwal is a landmark in the history of Indian Drama in English Translation. It deals with power politics, ambition, sexual hunger and revenge. It exposes the latent savagery of human being e.g., treachery, violence, sexuality and power-politics between Nana Phadnavis and Ghashiram Kotwal- the former is hungry for sex and the latter, for power. Ghashiram progresses from a common man to more than a beast in order to grab the power of state. 

This play is satire on city or powerful people who are cheating with poor people for their own benefit. The lower classes are kind and honest but they change their attitude after the interaction with upper class (authority). The story is raise and fall of Kanaujian Brahmin. Ghashiram is a protagonist but yet he becomes antagonist in a way.

The Peshwa empire was run by the ageing, but extremely ruthless debauchee, Nana Phadnavis, on behalf of the minor Sawai Madhorao. The Brahmins who have the run of the city were a licentious lot, their days are equally divided between bhajans and lascivious tamashas, temples and gambling dens, pious wives and dancing girls. Into this city, fabled for its prosperity and its powerful Brahmins, comes a poor Kannauj Brahmin from Aurangabad, Ghashiram Kotwal. Ghashiram tries to make a living in the city when he is victimised by its xenophobic Brahmins. He is insulted and thrown out of Pune on false charges. Ghashiram vows revenge and returns with his daughter. He sets her on Nana, who is so besotted with her that he appoints Nana his kotwal, or city magistrate. Ghashiram gets a work force mostly from the Ramoshi tribe and lets loose a regime of terrifyingly rigorous moral policing over Pune. He cracks down on the brothels, raids homes to catch out adulterers, stops all the money-spinning rackets and punishes the smallest crime of corruption with torture and death. Some poor Telengana Brahmins he jails on flimsy charges die a painful death in prison. The Brahmins of Pune rise up against the kotwal. By now Nana has no use for Ghashiram and he has had his fill of the kotwal’s daughter. The two are put to a painful death.