Humanistic Approach In Mahesh Dattani’s “Seven Steps Around The Fire”

Abstract

Mahesh Dattani, the first Sahitya Academy awardee is a distinguished playwright who has dealt with the most touching and most ignored theme in his plays. He penned his plays with the theme of gender discrimination, social exclusion, eunuch’s struggle for equality and justice etc. etc. “Seven Steps Around the Fire” is one of the famous radio plays of Mahesh Dattani, which is an appeal to treat hijra community like human beings. It depicts the indifferent mindset of the people towards them. Uma Rao, the protagonist of the play, a Ph. D. scholar while studying about hijra community, she goes to eunuchs personally, treats them with great humanity and tries to understand their problems and the mental trauma they undergo with. In this process, she feels that eunuchs also have thirst of love, compassion and equality.

          The objective of the paper is to throw light on the theme of inhumanity towards hijra community which touches our heart and compels us to contemplate over their deplorable condition which is the consequence of our indifferent and harsh behavior towards them which causes them to be under constant mental trauma. Hence, there is need of humanistic approach towards them.

Keywords: Hijra community, inequality, injustice, deplorable condition, mental trauma, humanistic approach.