Mricchakatika as an Allegory of the Emergency

THE AGELESS APPEAL of Shudraka’s Mricchakatika (The Little Clay Cart) has a vulgarised confirmation in its soft-porn cinematic incarnation filmed by the substandard playwright, the late Girish Karnad’s Utsav. 

Authored in the fifth century CE, this immortal Sanskrit play has been translated into almost all languages on earth. For more than a century, it has been performed on tribunes across the world to great acclaim. It still reigns majestically as a classic in the annals of dramatic literature. It has also been subjected to innumerable analyses and expositions as well as literary slander by cultural nihilists of the colonial period.

Yet, the durability of its glory remains undimmed because like all classical works, it has an intrinsic capacity to grill the hypocrisies, foibles and grids of every age and it inevitably triumphs because the regnant power of Mricchakatika is the interplay of human impulses. Every character and scene is a metaphor and every metaphor is a slice of some intimate truth that has proof in universal human experiences, which in turn form the raw material for universal values and ethical ideals or lack thereof.  

In contemporary literary idiom, Mricchakatika is described as a socio-political drama. This is partially true but this essay is not an analysis of the play. That task has been accomplished by more brilliant minds. In chronological order, the following are some of the most learned expositions of the play. 

1. Arthur W. Ryder, the English translator of Mricchakatika, has written a comprehensive introduction, which, despite its biases, is rather fair. 

2. Prof. A.R. Krishna Sastri’s masterly Kannada exposition of the play in his Samskruta Nataka, is hugely valuable. 

3. Shatavadhani Dr. Ganesh’s multipart lecture series on Mricchakatika is another superlative performance that dissects it threadbare and leaves us gasping for more. 

 These apart, Dr. R.G. Basak’s splendid essay titled Indian Society as Pictured in Mricchakatika is a cultural historian’s delight.  

THE STORY IN Mricchakatika is set in the city of Ujjaini about 1600 years ago but it could be set in any city or in any period preceding or succeeding it. It is thus a story of our own age; it is also a retrospective mirror held to our age and what we see therein is ugly and repulsive. 

Mricchakatika unravels the lives, trials, tribulations and triumphs of two principal characters — Charudatta and Vasantasena — in the regime of Pālaka, a king whose tyranny is fed and sustained by an evil cabal helmed by his brother-in-law Shakāra.

Shudraka reveals the full, dastardly consequences of such a regime through events but keeps out explicit political overtones in the mainstay of the play. His mastery over craft, storytelling and characterisation is truly exemplary.  

Charudatta is a virtuous and cultured Brahmana businessman who has fallen into penury but poverty is no impediment to his natural state of contentment and generous spirit. Vasantasena, the wealthy courtesan of Ujjaini, is drawn to Charudatta precisely owing to these noble traits. The play uncurtains the train of occurences that begin when their paths cross. 

THE UJJAINI OF PĀLAKA is directly connected to Indira Gandhi’s autocratic democracy by an invisible historical autobahn; the parallels are surreal at every level and on every plane. 

In Mricchakatika, Pālaka, the tyrannical monarch is actually a weakling and a puppet in Shakāra’s fist. Shakāra is evil incarnate, endowed with every imaginable villainy. He is fat, ugly, base, loathsome, cruel, cowardly, deceitful, perverted, wicked and vulgar; he is also the abode of all vices. The judge who tries the case of Shakāra’s false accusation against Charudatta is a coward who fears both the king and Shakāra.  

Indira Gandhi was a rancid concoction of both Pālaka and Shakāra. She had cultivated Pālaka’s fervour for nonchalant tyranny sans his fear of Shakāra. She also exhibited Shakāra’s unscrupulousness when she first split the Congress in 1969 — her first and most public exhibition of the preface to her total murder of democracy. In Mricchakatika, Shakāra orders his lackey to murder Vasantasena in a public garden. Stricken with the pangs of conscience, the lackey refuses. Shakāra repeatedly tempts him but he is steadfast. He says: 

“The Ten Regions, the forest gods, the sky,

The wind, the moon, the sun whose rays are light,

Virtue, my conscience — these I cannot escape,

Nor earth, that witnesses to wrong and right.” 

 Shakāra’s hardened evil has a straightforward rebuttal: “Well then, put your cloak over her and murder her.”

But when the lackey remains unbudged, Shakāra enlists the help of another lackey named Sthāvaraka. And when even Sthāvaraka refuses, Shakāra takes matters into his own hands — literally — and strangles Vasantasena. 

When Indira Gandhi decided to split the “original” Congress to remain in power forever, she did exactly what Shakāra had done. Except that she had the support of a substantial number of opportunistic parasites who aided and abetted her murder of democracy. Shakāra’s slaves were at least conscientious enough to display the courage to defy him.   

And Sanjay Gandhi was the incarnation of Shakāra in our times. The scale and spread of atrocities inflicted under his direct watch and by his tacit approval is almost Stalinist. In that sense, Sanjay Gandhi is several notches worse than Shakāra. 

But unlike Pālaka or Shakāra, Indira Gandhi’s cruelty was of a different magnitude. It was almost Biblical where Satan and his minions wear the most appropriate disguise as merits the occasion. Shudraka explicitly makes Shakāra’s physical appearance repulsive. Indira, Sanjay and their sickening clique were anything but ugly; they were “highly educated,” well-groomed, slick and smooth-talking, which only made their evil harder to detect and therefore fatal.   

In Mricchakatika, Shakāra murders Vasantasena with his own hands. In our time, both Indira and Sanjay Gandhi unleashed state institutions to carry out similar crimes. In his autobiography Bhitti, Dr. S.L. Bhyrappa offers a memorable assessment of the damage she inflicted upon India.

In Mricchakatika, Shakāra falsely implicates Charudatta for Vasantasena’s murder and the weakling judge succumbs to his pressure and convicts Charudatta. But an even worse fate awaits Charudatta. Pālaka increases the judge’s sentence by ordering Charudatta’s public impalement. The implication is clear: the king has not only overridden the judge but has usurped his office; this fact is revealed in an aside by the judge himself: 

The Ninth Act

IN FACT, the Ninth Act of Mricchakatika is a grim case study in how Indira Gandhi superceded the judges of the Supreme Court years before she imposed the Emergency. 

Former Chief Justice of India, Ajit Nath Ray, whose infamy has been immortalised in our judicial history, comes across as a greater craven compared to Pālaka’s judge who shows some basic scruples and humanity when he repeatedly extols Charudatta’s noble character: 

1. “Go, summon Charudatta, but do it gently without giving him cause for anxiety. Do it respectfully.” 

2. “This is Charudatta. A countenance like his, with clear-cut nose, whose great, wide-opened eye frank candor shows, is not the home of wantonness.” 

3. “Take the Himalayan hills within your hand, and swim from ocean strand to ocean strand, and hold within your grasp the fleeting wind: Then may you think that Charudatta sinned.” 

In fact, till the very end, the judge intuitively believes in Charudatta’s innocence, in the very impossibility that he could ever act wrongly, let alone commit a crime. He nevertheless convicts him owing to contrived proofs and cowardice. 

However, Indira Gandhi’s “committed judges” prior to and during the Emergency suffered from none of these qualms. They spotted an opportunity, grabbed it and became accomplices to her tyranny. 

The original Sanskrit title of the Ninth Act of Mricchakatika is Vyavahaara — The Trial. It can more explicitly be termed as The Inquisition of Charudatta befitting our context.

In the play, the entire action takes place in one city, in one courtroom where a single, virtuous citizen is harassed and unfairly sentenced to death. Charudatta thus symbolises the plight of all virtuous men living in such a stifling regime. 

In Indira’s India — I mean it literally given the fact that D.K. Barooah equated her with India — the whole country was transformed into a farcical court where hushed verdicts were delivered at street corners and on unhygenic surgical tables. The Shah Commission Report reveals the lurid sagas of how she and her beloved son hounded individuals and institutions merely perceived to be critical of her spotless regime. 

The most infamous instance of targetted harassment was endured by Ramnath Goenka. It was not only deeply humiliating to him but was clinically vengeful, intensely personal and deliberately prolonged. 

Charudatta and Ramnath Goenka

PURELY AS CHARACTER STUDY, we detect several equivalences between Charudatta and Goenka. Both were humane, generous and cultured men. Both were fervently patriotic. 

Charudatta provides unconditional support to Aryaka, a patriotic citizen who wants to end Pālaka’s despotism. 

Ramnath Goenka spent millions and offered safe sanctuaries to our freedom fighters during the independence movement; he similarly poured millions and endured tremendous personal hardship in his sustained crusade against Indira Gandhi’s dictatorship. 

Both men won in the end. 

Charudatta’s victory is fictional; Goenka’s is “real.” 

But the high ideal and noble sentiment that motivated both was the same. 

This message is also the triumph of Mricchakatika. 

Ramnath Goenka’s persecution by Sanjay Gandhi’s evil caucus by men old enough to be his grandsons is well-documented and makes for painful reading. It is the real-life instance of one man against the whole government; it is indeed a photocopy of Charudatta’s ordeal. Charudatta curses Pālaka at his unjust conviction; Ramnath Goenka not only wrested control of his business empire but led the 1977 elections from the front and ensured Indira Gandhi’s defeat. 

In the climax of Mricchakatika, Charudatta is saved from impalement by the testimony of a Buddhist monk and by Vasantasena who appears in person. Meanwhile, Aryaka overthrows Pālaka and becomes the new king who inaugurates a regime of justice and compassion. Likewise, the Indian voter decisively punished Indira Gandhi by voting her out. In Mricchakatika, Charudatta forgives Shakāra who is then spared of punishment.  

Former Chief Justice A.N. Ray spent thirty-two years of his post-retirement life in disgrace, shunned and ostracised by his own legal fraternity. His name still evokes disgust in those circles. 

Sanjay Gandhi, the 20^th century Shakāra, was roasted in the entrails of a plane that crashed being unable to bear the mountain of the sin it carried. 

The parallels simply don’t end. 

If history is philosophy teaching through examples, classical literature is its storified sibling and Mricchakatika undoubtedly belongs to this rarefied pedestal. 

This essay picked a small fraction from this immortal classic and look at what all emerged. 

|| Satyameva Jayate || 

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