“Prisoner Miss Benare, under section No. 302 of the Indian Penal Code you are accused of the crime of infanticide. Are you guilty or not guilty of the aforementioned crime?”
Mr. Kashikar is the presiding judge over the mock trial of a supposedly fictional charge of infanticide, which is leveled against the character played by Leela Benare. The group claims this is an issue of "social significance" but makes their attacks quite pointed. To all external appearances, Benare is chosen to play the defendant simply by a mere tweak of fate—she wasn’t in the room when the role was assigned—but as the persecution ramps up, it almost seems as if most of them were gunning for her from the start.
“What I say is, our society should revive the old custom of child marriage. Marry off the girls before puberty. All this promiscuity will come to a full stop.”
Over the course of the trial, truth and fiction intermingle, producing a mock trial for made-up allegations leveled against a real woman for actual perceived transgressions. Miss Benare is a free-spirited, independent, unmarried pregnant woman—an offense which Judge Kashikar, in the convention-defying role of witness for the prosecution which he also briefly indulges, sees as far greater than the fictional crime attributed to the fictional construct of Miss Benare’s character. This is a trial putting traditional values and culture against the inexorable tide of progress which many people simply cannot abide. Kashikar is the play’s preeminent representative of the patriarchy, so ingrained into the status quo he cannot see beyond the past to recognize the present or the future.
“Motherhood is pure. Moreover, there is a great—er—a great nobility in our concept of motherhood. We have acknowledged woman as the mother of mankind. Our culture enjoins us to perpetual worship of her.”
The concept of motherhood is discussed quite a bit in the play. However, most of that discussion is philosophical, and most of those speaking are men. Motherhood is presented as the natural state which women are born to inhabit. It is a farcically misogynistic and patriarchal perspective that is couched in the cloak of philosophical respect. What is being respected is the ideal of a woman, a pure form that does not exist in blood and flesh. Sukhatme does not know what it is like to be a mother. He does not care about flesh-and-blood mothers. All he cares about is mothers/wives/women knowing their place, and he uses language that is difficult to dispute in order to prop up his ideas.
Samant: You are quite right. The great sage Tukaram said…at least I think it was him…
Benare: Forget about the sage Tukaram. I say it—I, Leela Benare, a living woman, I say it from my own experience.
Samant is not really a part of the performance group, as he is put to work in a sort of caretaker position for the facility in which the association holds its performances. Two of the regular performers have not shown up for the LBJ mock trial, however, and Samant has been chosen to take the place of one of them as a witness.
Prior to the improvised trial even beginning, Samant and Benare are having a conversation, and Samant—a man—is prepared to quote the wisdom of another man in response to an expression of life philosophy just voiced by Benare. Benare’s philosophical musing is grounded in her thirty-plus years of life experience; her cutting off a man about to quote another man as a response to that first-person female assertion serves to quickly delineate her fundamental character, even before that character is put on trial.
"I'm not married yet. No particular reason. I earn enough to keep body and soul together. But I never got married."
Samant is unmarried, has chosen to be, and has fully escaped censure. No one hounds him for being unmarried, nor does anyone suggest that he is the reason for the downfall of society. He is allowed freedom of choice with no repercussions, whereas Benare has everything scrutinized, judged, and commented upon. Tendulkar suggests that there is no way that any of the unmarried men of the play would be subject to what Benare endures.
"She can't get among a few people without wanting to show off! Shows off all the time!"
Mrs. Kashikar is pushy and cruel towards Benare, forcing her to take the oath (rather, taking it for her), pulling her back to the stand after she tries to run away, and psychologically manipulating her by telling her she's making a big deal out of things and the trial is just a game. She is also full of opinions on Benare's behavior, becoming heated and emotional about how "free" Benare is. While we should not excuse Mrs. Kashikar's behavior, we can at least understand it better from such quotes as the above from Kashikar. He is a bullying, mean husband, carelessly insulting his wife in front of everyone else. He does this multiple times throughout the play, and it is clear that such comments embarrass Mrs. Kashikar. She, like Benare, is brutalized by patriarchy, but she has chosen to focus her ire on the other woman rather than on her husband.
"Milord, the occurrence as it has been related speaks so vividly for itself that there is hardly any need to add anything to it. The entire statement should be noted down as part of our evidence against the accused."
It is telling that Sukhatme manages to distinguish himself among all the players for sheer, unfettered cruelty and sadism. He seems gleeful at what they are doing to Benare, and he takes any opportunity he can to subvert the workings of justice to pursue his condemnation of her. Here he is referring to Samant's "testimony," which was mostly fabrication designed to appease the others and effect a sense of pride in his ability as an "actor." Regardless of the completely flagrant prevarications Samant gave, Sukhatme here orders the testimony to be entered into the record. It is so egregious and absurd that Sukhatme damns himself in the audience's eye as being, as stated above, perhaps the worst of them all.
"I must put aside the practice of the court, and give evidence."
Kashikar has been far from a perfect judge at this point, allowing opinion and lie to infiltrate the testimony, criticizing his wife, limiting due process for the accused, and failing to maintain a sense of fairness or order. However, it is at this moment that he truly reveals the depths of his depravity, callousness, and unprofessionalism. He chooses to give testimony himself, something that would never be allowed in a real courtroom (although, Tendulkar implies, maybe such elisions of ethics do indeed happen frequently in the justice system, if not exactly like this), and proceeds to give spurious testimony as to Benare's behavior. Kashikar is a hypocrite and a bully; he does not see how his behavior undermines the troupe's "Prime Objective" that he purports to be so committed to.
"I despise this body—and yet I love it! I hate it—but—it's all you have, in the end, isn't it?"
The mind/body dichotomy has long been of concern to both Eastern and Western philosophers and scholars, and Tendulkar alludes to it through the character of Benare. In her monologue, she rues how she was attracted the Damle's mind but he only wanted her body, which, at first, seems to fill her with despair; however, she is not willing to fully renounce the body either (especially after trying to destroy both body and mind in her suicide attempt). Her true rage and despair seem to be that she cannot desire and be desired for both, which is commonly the plight of the modern woman. She may have to suppress her intellect to be with a man, offering only her body, or maintain friendships and nothing more, ignoring her natural sexual desires.
"Has the show started? The Living Courtroom?"
The villagers begin to peek in innocently, wondering if the show has started and prompting the players to rapidly disassemble their "mock" trial. It is bittersweet that this happens so far into the persecution of Benare, and it is ironic as well: the show hasn't officially started, but this is indeed a Living Courtroom because a living, breathing woman is on trial before her peers.
