Deconstructing Gender Binaries in Dattani's Indian

Abstract

This paper examines how Mahesh Dattani dismantles rigid gender categories through his radio play Seven Steps Around the Fire, a work that thrust hijra lives into the consciousness of mainstream Indian English theatre. Dattani does not simply portray hijras as exotic curiosities or pitiable victims—he constructs a dramatic architecture where their erasure from legal, medical, and social discourse becomes the very engine of the plot. Drawing on Judith Butler's ideas on gender performativity alongside South Asian scholarship on third-gender traditions (particularly Gayatri Reddy and Serena Nanda), a close reading is undertaken that attends to what the play refuses to show as much as what it reveals. The murder mystery format, this paper argues, is not incidental but essential: it mirrors the investigative labor required to make visible what dominant society has rendered systematically invisible. The paper also engages with K. Prabha's recent work on feminist interventions in Dattani's drama, extending her analysis into territory she does not fully explore—namely, the specifically transgender and non-binary dimensions of the playwright's vision.