Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug – Comparative Indian Drama
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23 Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug

Abu Saleh

AndhaYug the title and the narrative present an age of blindness or Kali Yuga. An age that is devoid of dharma, reason and peace. Similar were the situations and incidents after the partition of India. The play was a representation of the modern times the degeneration of human values. Since the partition of the Indian subcontinent resulted in uprooting and displacing humans from their place of origin, butchery and savage atrocities on fellow human beings, disrespect to the modesty of women and so on and so forth. One finds the similar conditions prevalent in the play and the usage of words also direct towards it. For example the words like half-truths, inertia, blindness, barbaric, deformed and suicidal and so on. The freedom for which people sacrificed their lives suddenly turned out to be disillusioned for the residents of both the countries.

Further, the playwright uses the two guards as a metaphor to represents the predicament of the common man. Let us see a discussion.

Guard 1: Honour!

Guard 2: Disbelief!

Guard 1: Sorrow at the death of one’s sons!

Guard 2: The future that is waiting to be born!

Guard 1: All these grace the lives of Kings!

Guard 2: And the one they worship as their Lord takes the responsibility for all of them!

Guard 1: But what about the lives the two of us have spent in these desolate corridors?

Guard 2: Who shall take responsibility for us?

Guard 1: We did not violate honour

because we did not have any.

Guard 2: We were never tormented by disbelief because we never had any faith

Guard 1: We never experienced any sorrow

Guard 1: nor felt any pain.

Guard 2: We spent our desolate lives in these desolate corridors

Guard 1: because we were only slaves

Guard 2: We merely followed the orders of a blind king.

Guard 1: We had no opinions of our own. We made no choices.

The figure of Krishna is very complex to understand. He is human with whom one can relate with and at the other end he is the God. His earthly presence makes humans to ask for his support to the actions of our contemporary times or desires. If he fails to respond to it we turn away from him feeling as if he is the sole responsible authority for our wrong deeds.

For example like the Kauravas.

Vidura is correct in emphasizing that one cannot take virtue for granted used it as per one desires as a commodity or service whenever it is required and forgotten in other times (06). Alok Bhalla writes “A moral life demands perpetual attention. And those, like Dhritarashtra, who fail to understand this, cannot hope to escape the consequences. In the balance of things, then, it is right that, at the end of all the carnage which he had failed to prevent, Dhritarashtra is consumed by a relentless forest fire, a manifestation of the desolation and the affliction of his soul .

Summary :

In this module we have discussed about Dharamvir Bharati, the playwright. We came to know about his personal life. We also learnt about Bharati’s literary works and his style of writing. Further, we have discussed the play Andha Yug. We came to know about the background and setting of the play. We have discussed the plot and summary of the play. Then we have also discussed the characters in it. After then we have focused on various themes and other relevant issues discussed in the play. Hope these are useful to you. For more on this module, please find the e-text, learn more and self-assessment tabs. Thank you.

you can view video on Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug

References