Andha Yug Questions and Answers

 

Short Essay Type Questions with Answers

 

1.Write a note on the plot construction of Bharati’s Andha Yug.

 

Ans. The plot of the play does not need any surgical innovation; it is a high pitched drama based on the mythical wars. The entire dimension of the stage is used to portray the tension of the situation. The characters’ speeches are frequently in the form of direct statements as monologues, soliloquies, and semi soliloquies. 

 

Andha Yug is based on the last day of the Mahabharata war. It is a profound meditation on the politics of violence and aggressive selfhood. Girish Karnad has made an appraisal on the play:”Andha Yugis one of the great Indian plays of the last millennium, and in AlokBhalla it has found an ideal translator…Bhalla’s Andha Yug is a model in the fraught field of translation”.

 

The play has a prologue, five acts, an interlude and an epilogue. The prologue begins with an ‘Invocation’ addressed to Narayana, Saraswati and Vyasa. It is followed by the ‘Proclamation’ explaining how Vishnu Purana mentions the age of darkness that will follow ‘the great war,’ the strong reason behind the decline of prosperity, dharma and honour from the earth.

 

In the first act, ‘The Kaurava Kingdom,’ Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Vidura along with all the citizens of Hastinapur apprehensively wait for Sanjaya who is neutral in the war for what happened in the battlefield in the eighteenth day. Dhritarashtra, though somewhat reluctantly, acknowledges that because of his too much indulgence his sons have brought destruction to their clan. Gandhari shows deep dissatisfaction towards the ethical concepts of the world. Meanwhile, Vidura unsuccessfully tries to pacify them.

 

The second act, ‘The Making of the Beast, concentrates on the character of Ashwatthama, one of the three survivors from the Kaurava side, the other two being Kritavarma and Kripacharya. He is enraged because Duryodhana gets shamefully defeated in the war. Victory in the war matters the most to Ashwatthama because of his father’s unlawful murder in the same war. He behaves like a beast justifying his actions reasoning that even persons like Yudhishthira chose the side of untruth by speaking half-truths to get advantage in the war. Blinded by anger, he attacks Sanjaya and a Mendicant. Kripacharya and Kritavarma save the former but the latter is strangled to death by Ashwatthama.

 

The third act entitled as ‘The Half-Truth of Ashwatthama,’ deals with how from the fight of an owl and a crow Ashwatthama gets the idea to destroy the Pandava army while the soldiers are sleeping. Duryodhana gives his consent to make Ashwatthama the new commander. Meanwhile, Yuyutsu, the only Kaurava who sided with the Pandavas considering their side virtuous, is humiliated in Hastinapur by the citizens and his mother for fighting against his own relatives. Vidura, again unsuccessfully, tries to console Yuyutsu. The next section, ‘Interlude: Feathers, Wheels and Bandages,’ explores the ideas of honour, Karma and blindness chosen willingly. This part does not affect the main narrative but as the Mendicant comments it is there to understand the “inner contradictions” of some of the characters who appear as specters in this section (Bharati 90).

 

The fourth act, ‘Gandhari’s Curse,’ chronicles the destruction of Pandava camp by furious trio of Ashwatthama, Kripacharya and Kritavarma. Gandhari along with Dhritarashtra, Sanjaya and Vidura visits Kurukshetra. Greatly disturbed at the sight of the corpses of his sons and relatives, especially after seeing the carcass of the halfeaten Duryodhana, Gandhari alleges that Krishna is responsible for the war and curses with an ordinary death following the destruction of his clan. Krishna accepts the curse and thus making Gandhari even more remorseful.

 

The fifth act, ‘Victory and a Series of Suicides,’ is an account of the suicides of Yuyutsu, Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and some others. Krishna also goes to the forest even after knowing that he would be killed by a hunter in that forest. The suicide of Pandava brothers and Draupadi is hinted upon as Yudhishthira, disillusioned after war and disappointed by the disrespectful behavior of his brothers, decides to go on a pilgrimage on the higher crests of Himalayas.

 

In ‘Epilogue: Death of the Lord,’ another invocation is devoted to the Christ-like sacrificial death of Krishna. Sanjaya and Ashwatthama witness Krishna’s death by Jara who is reincarnation of wrongfully killed Mendicant. In the end, Chorus comments that with the death of the Lord began the age of darkness that will be full of half-truth and some more great wars.

 

The theatrical success of the play lies in its structural flexibility that adapts to diverse dramatic acumen. Andha Yug, therefore, proved for the first time in the history of Hindi literature that poetry can be successfully and meaningfully presented in a dramatic form enhancing the theatricality of the play.

 

2. 2. Discuss Andha Yug is a modern tragedy based on The Mahabharata.

 

. Ans. Andha Yug was translated into English by Alok Bhalla. The Mahabharata, the longest epic of the world is full of variety of characters and their ways of perceiving things. The great war of Mahabharata and the deep darkness that accompanies it are the central issue in Andha Yug. The play provides a select slice of this epic drama which is full of hatred, self-centeredness, treacheries, sacrifices, massacres, fraud, falsity, disbelief, diseases and unending darkness and blindness The play captures the mood in Hastinapur after the seventeen day long battle. The Pandavas are on the verge of victory and the Kaurava clan is about to extinguish. This war is referred as ‘the dharmayudha’ that is a war upholding the principles of thought and action. Paradoxically the experience of the Great War tells a different story. It is not just a story of the on-field violence but it is a saga of abyssal darkness inside the human mind. It is this inner darkness that makes one blind in spite of the physical sight. Everyone in this cyclorama is carrying this darkness inside himself or herself. The play presents the ‘inner’ darkness with all its shades and its gradual scission towards total decadence. Discourse in such cases operates through subtleties of the mind. Everyone seems to carry the load of selfcenteredness and ‘will to dominate’. Hence every character tries to create a way for him in order to establish his presence. War is an occasion for everyone to settle their accounts. Therefore it is on this occasion the darkness inside everyone’s heart is projected vividly. Andha Yug as a mythical play presents an opportunity to analyse every ancient character from the perceptive of the postmodernist discourse lenses in this manner. It is through the social conditions the discursive and ideological practices get formed. Hence at the beginning the degrading social conditions are elaborated in Vishnupurana. The great of war Mahabharata is the starting point of the age of darkness’. It is the condition where everything good and pious would degrade. The virtuous rulers would be replaced by powerful and wealthy. The very thinking of man would be corrupt. The good and conscious have to retreat back from all fields and Hide in real caves orin the caverns of their souls Thus the darkness outside and blindness inside the human being would prevail throughout. The condition of the present era would be horrible in every sense. Blind fear and blind love blind power and blind justice shall prevail in the end. The life in this condition for any sensible individual is meaningless and absurd. The city is ruled by the king, who is blind from the birth i.e. Dhritarashtra. His wife, Gandhari has accepted blindness voluntarily. The king is unable to guess the forthcoming dangers of the war. He is narrow-minded and visionless. The empire is ruled by the blind and therefore there is no possibility of any hope. The common feeling about the ruler goes like this, has he ever been able to see anything thus far. The conditions are really horrified. They are suggested by the presence of the ‘thousands and thousands of vultures with their wings outspread.’ The houses are deserted. The people have left the town. The Kaurava clan is wiped out. Every face is cursed and everybody is diseased. In the defeated condition the entire city has ‘lost its sense of honour’.

 

To conclude, Andha Yug tells the modern human tragedy symbolically and metaphorically using the characters from the great Indian epic. Through these characters, Bharati has commented upon tragedy of our times. The play is a perfect balance between drama and poetry, where the theatricality is further expounded by the playwright adapting the classical structure of Indian drama with Greek chorus.

 

3. 3. Critically evaluate Bharati’s Andha Yug as an anti-war play.

 

Ans. Andha Yug is based on the last day of the Mahabharata war. It is a profound meditation on the politics of violence and aggressive selfhood. One of the most significant plays of post-Independence India, Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug takes place on the last day of the Great Mahabharata War. The once-beautiful city of Hastinapur is burning, the battlefield beyond the walls is piled with corpses, and the few survivors huddle together in grief and rage, blaming the destruction on their adversaries, divine capriciousness-anyone or our anything except their own moral choices. Andha Yug explores capacity for moral action, reconciliation, and goodness in times atrocity and reveals what happens when individuals succumb to the cruelty and cynicism of a blind, dispirited age.

 

The Mahabharata, the longest epic of the world is full of variety of characters and their ways of perceiving things.Discourse, as in social sciences, is understood as strategies to propagate different ideological positions. Ideological positions decide the perceptions and actions of individuals, who are the vehicles as well as the victim of the same ideology. In myths, the characters represent the cultural and ideological positions. Once these positions are institutionalized they turn into discursive practices. Myths, thus not only provide a range of events and characters, they are the repository of cultural and ideological positions. 

 

This magnificent verse play is set on the last, the 18th day of the Mahabharata war and features the ‘less important’ characters from the epic, such as Ashwatthama, Gandhari and Yuyutsu. Though the war is over, it has left a trail of devastation and destruction – almost everyone is dead and there are but a few survivors. Who is responsible for all this death? Who is to blame? A profound and thought-provoking play, it is acknowledged as a modern Indian classic, and has been performed by every major theatre group in the country. Many great theatre directors have interpreted it as a strong anti-war play.

 

Andha Yug highlights the perils of self-enchantment in an antiwar allegory. It explores human capacity for moral action, reconciliation, and goodness in times of atrocity and reveals what happens when individuals succumb to the cruelty and cynicism of a blind, dispirited age. The moral and political issues depicted in Andha Yug are relevant even in the twenty-first century. This technocratic age is perhaps the eponymous age of blindness surrounded in the sinister forces of terrorism, corruption, religious fundamentalism, and bloodshed over the issues of community, caste and honour.

 

Q.4. Write a note on the significance of the title of Bharati’sAndha Yug.

 

Ans. Andha Yug is based on the last day of the Mahabharata war. It is a profound meditation on the politics of violence and aggressive selfhood. Girish Karnad has made an appraisal on the play:”Andha Yugis one of the great Indian plays of the last millennium, and in AlokBhalla it has found an ideal translator… Bhalla’s Andha Yug is a model in the fraught field of translation”.

 

The play has a prologue, five acts, an interlude and an epilogue. The prologue begins with an ‘Invocation’ addressed to Narayana, Saraswati and Vyasa. It is followed by the ‘Proclamation’ explaining how Vishnu Purana mentions the age of darkness that will follow ‘the great war,’ the strong reason behind the decline of prosperity, dharma and honour from the earth.

 

In the first act, ‘The Kaurava Kingdom,’ Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Vidura along with all the citizens of Hastinapur apprehensively wait for Sanjaya who is neutral in the war for what happened in the battlefield in the eighteenth day. Dhritarashtra, though somewhat reluctantly, acknowledges that because of his too much indulgence his sons have brought destruction to their clan. Gandhari shows deep dissatisfaction towards the ethical concepts of the world. Meanwhile, Vidura unsuccessfully tries to pacify them.

 

The second act, ‘The Making of the Beast,’ concentrates on the character of Ashwatthama, one of the three survivors from the Kaurava side, the other two being Kritavarma and Kripacharya. He is enraged because Duryodhana gets shamefully defeated in the war. Victory in the war matters the most to Ashwatthama because of his father’s unlawful murder in the same war. He behaves like a beast justifying his actions reasoning that even persons like Yudhishthira chose the side of untruth by speaking half-truths to get advantage in the war. Blinded by anger, he attacks Sanjaya and a Mendicant. Kripacharya and Kritavarma save the former but the latter is strangled to death by Ashwatthama.

 

The third act entitled as ‘The Half-Truth of Ashwatthama,’ deals with how from the fight of an owl and a crow Ashwatthama gets the idea to destroy the Pandava army while the soldiers are sleeping. Duryodhana gives his consent to make Ashwatthama the new commander. Meanwhile, Yuyutsu, the only Kaurava who sided with the Pandavas considering their side virtuous, is humiliated in Hastinapur by the citizens and his mother for fighting against his own relatives. Vidura, again unsuccessfully, tries to console Yuyutsu. The next section, ‘Interlude: Feathers, Wheels and Bandages,’ explores the ideas of honour, Karma and blindness chosen willingly. This part does not affect the main narrative but as the Mendicant comments it is there to understand the “inner contradictions” of some of the characters who appear as specters in this section (Bharati 90).

 

The fourth act, ‘Gandhari’s Curse,’ chronicles the destruction of Pandava camp by furious trio of Ashwatthama, Kripacharya and Kritavarma. Gandhari along with Dhritarashtra, Sanjaya and Vidura visits Kurukshetra. Greatly disturbed at the sight of the corpses of his sons and relatives, especially after seeing the carcass of the halfeaten Duryodhana, Gandhari alleges that Krishna is responsible for the war and curses with an ordinary death following the destruction of his clan. Krishna accepts the curse and thus making Gandhari even more remorseful.

 

The fifth act, ‘Victory and a Series of Suicides,’ is an account of the suicides of Yuyutsu, Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and some others. Krishna also goes to the forest even after knowing that he would be killed by a hunter in that forest. The suicide of Pandava brothers and Draupadi is hinted upon as Yudhishthira, disillusioned after war and disappointed by the disrespectful behavior of his brothers, decides to go on a pilgrimage on the higher crests of Himalayas.

 

In ‘Epilogue: Death of the Lord,’ another invocation is devoted to the Christ-like sacrificial death of Krishna. Sanjaya and Ashwatthama witness Krishna’s death by Jara who is reincarnation of wrongfully killed Mendicant. In the end, Chorus comments that with the death of the Lord began the age of darkness that will be full of half-truth and some more great wars.

 

Short Questions with Answers

 

1. 1. Who is Dharamvir Bharati? Name his famous novels.

 

Ans. Dharamvir Bharati (1926- 1997) was a renowned Hindi novelist, poet, and playwright. His novels, Gunahaon Ka Deata (The God of Sins) and Suraj Ka Satvan Ghoda (The Seventh Horse of the Sun), are classics of Hindi literature.

 

2. 2. What is the time of action in Andha Yug?

 

Ans. The play begins on the evening of the eighteenth day of the war and ends with theinal pilgrimage and death of Lord Krishna. Krishna leans against the tree. Ashwatthama enters and sees Krishna in that pose. He curses Krishna for being responsible for destruction.

 

3. 3. What type of play is Andha Yug?

 

Ans. Andha Yug is a tragedy that happens because the Kauravas, in their greed, stupidity, and blindness, so disfigure and deny Krishna as to blot out from their social and political vision very possibility of creating cities of virtue and hope. The translated version of the play makes the anguish of Ashwatthama and the sorrow of Gandhari the primary concern of the play.

 

4. 4. Who is Gandhari?what role does she play?

 

Ans. Wife of Dhritarashtra, the blind king of Hastinapura, Gandhari was a mother of a hundred children known as the Kauravas. The Kauravas were the opponents of the Pandavas who were primarily supported and guided by Krishna throughout the battle. This was clarified in Andha Yugwhere she is shown conversing with Krishna.

 

5. 5. What is the significance of the prologue in Andha Yug?

 

Ans. The play has a prologue, five acts, an interlude and an epilogue. The prologue begins with an ‘Invocation’ addressed to Narayana, Saraswati and Vyasa. It is followed by the ‘Proclamation’ explaining how Vishnu Purana mentions the age of darkness that will follow ‘the great war,’ the strong reason behind the decline of prosperity, dharma and honour from the earth.

 

6. 6. What is the significance of the epilogue in Andha Yug? 

 

Ans. The play ends with the death of Lord Krishna. Krishna leans against the tree. Ashwatthama enters and sees Krishna in that pose. He curses Krishna for being responsible for destruction. Sanjaya too enters without arms and legs. He is even not able to see. In the meantime, a hunter mistakes Krishna’s foot for deer and aims at it. The hunter releases the bow and there is a flash of lightening. Ashwatthama laughs and Sanjaya screams. A bad smell of blue blood from Krishna’s foot feels the atmosphere and Ashwatthama’s wounds stop soaring. The old mendicant is the hunter who killed Lord Krishna. Yuyutsu says that the death of Lord Krishna is full of cowardice. Such death is not going to secure the future of human race.

 

7. 7. What is the theme of the play Andha Yug? 

 

Ans. Andha Yug highlights the perils of self-enchantment in an antiwar allegory. It explores human capacity for moral action, reconciliation, and goodness in times of atrocity and reveals what happens when individuals succumb to the cruelty and cynicism of a blind, dispirited age. The moral and political issues depicted in Andha Yug are relevant even in the twentyfirst century. This technocratic age is perhaps the eponymous age of blindness surrounded in the sinister forces of terrorism, corruption, religious fundamentalism, and bloodshed over the issues of community, caste and honour.

 

8. 8.What role does Krishna play in Andha Yug?

 

Ans. There is only one shadowy appearance of Krishna and only once he directly speaks for himself in the whole play. If we judge him by his talk to Gandhari, he seems benevolent, loving, sincere, sensitive and caring. He not only accepts the wrongfully inflicted curse by Gandhari but also takes responsibility of all the good and evil deeds, the only person to take some kind of responsibility for his own and others’ actions.

 

9. 9. Comment on the title of Andha Yug.

 

Ans. The title of the play is Andha Yug or The Age of Darkness. It could be translated as The Blind Age for the profound questions of darkness, blindness, complicity, and ignorance that resonate at the core of the play. The title also hints at the futility of war.

 

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