Postcolonial Female Subalternity in Mahesh Dattani’s Tara

Abstract

Mahesh Dattani, one of the greatest dramatists of the contemporary age, focuses especially on the suppressed or the less-privileged people. He is not only a dramatist but also an actor and director. He deals with sensational issues like homosexuality, gay relationship, taboos, the position of women, and the hijra community. In Tara, Dattani has vehemently attacked the prevailing socio-cultural system in India, which poses several kinds of limitations, confinement, compulsions, and coercion to female children. They are not permitted either to act freely or to think freely. Tara is also the victim of such a sociocultural system. Being a disabled girl she faces prolonged suffering, humiliation, and subsequently death. Dattani wants to uphold the rights and dignity of women and to bring about equality between men and women.