NEW ACADEMIA: An International Journal of English Language, Literature and Literary Theory Online ISSN 2347-2073 Vol. VIII, Issue II, April 2019 U.G.C. Journal No. 44829 http://interactionsforum.com/new-academia 183 READING VIJAY TENDULKAR’S KANYADAAN IN/FOR OUR TIMES: SOME REFLECTIONS Umesh Kumar Assistant Professor Department of English Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. umeshkumareng@bhu.ac.in Abstract It is now almost, more than three decades, that Vijay Tendulkar’s Marathi play Kanyadaan was first performed and published. But, the controversy and the discussion around the play have stood the test of times. Rather, it refuses to settle down, in all probability because of its controversial and explosive depiction of an inter-caste marriage, its sheer violence (read gendered violence) on stage, its (un)conscious depiction of historiography of repressive caste system. The play being further cited as an example –iterating the problems of liberal reforms, which are not only the problems structured in the context of the play but have a much larger bearing for the Indian society in particular and the Indian state in general. Foregrounding a literary work, the article makes critical reflections on the ideologies of caste and that of liberal reforms in contemporary India. Key Words: Caste, violence, gender, liberal reforms Introduction Though originally written and performed in Marathi in 1983, Kanyadaan took off as a play once an authorized English translation came out by Gowri Ramnarayan in 2005. 1 The „success‟ of Kanyadaan as a play also accounts for the potential of Indian regional literatures, whose potential has long been undermined. Barring a few acclaimed writers (Tendulkar is one of them) among the regional writers whose writings are now available in multiple languages, the academic discourse at the national level, by and large, remains pessimistic towards the cause of regional Indian literatures. 2 The larger debate, in the end, is about our (non)acquaintance with the ongoing debates and discourses in the regional languages which actually debates the fabric of our society. Kanyadaan is one such literary expression which acquaints us with the contentious issue of inter-caste marriage, caste relations per se and the hypocrisy of liberal imagination as