A Comparative Study of Tendulkar's Silence! the Court is in Session and Janam's Aurat

The emergence of critical Indian theatre in the post-Independence era served as a vital cultural platform for scrutinising the nation’s social and political structures, particularly concerning the status of women. The decades spanning the late 1960s through the 1970s marked a period of intense social realignment, setting the stage for two seminal works of feminist critique: Vijay Tendulkar’s proscenium play, Silence! The Court Is in Session (1967), and Jana Natya Manch’s (Janam) street play, Aurat (1979). While separated by only a little over a decade, these works represent fundamentally divergent strategies for voicing protest and effecting social change, encapsulating the ideological split within Indian feminist and political discourse of the time. Vijay Tendulkar is a pioneer author of "Theatre of Cruelty” in the Marathi theatre. He is one of the outstanding Indian playwrights, screen and television writers, literary essayists, political journalists, and social commentators. He has been the most prolific Indian playwright and theatre personality in Marathi, the principal language of the state of Maharashtra, which had a continuous literary history since the end of the classical period of India.