Mahesh Dattani’s Do the Needful: A Tussle Between Innate Sexuality and Imposed Identity

Abstract Although the issues related to sexuality are of prime importance in the contemporary world, in the Indian society they are closeted and ignored even today. Several social injunctions are conceptualized against men with alternative sexualities. To avoid social stigma, men refrain from coming out of the closet and accepting their natural sexual identity and orientation. However, there are certain playwrights who have addressed this otherwise taboo subject of sexuality on the Indian Stage. Mahesh Dattani is one amongst them. His plays firmly assert that gender and sexuality are concepts that are not confined to one’s biological orientation, but rather go beyond it. They are conditioned by socio-cultural norms and hegemonic practices. He elucidates how the socio-cultural determinants of gender and sexuality contradict one’s own individual instincts, sexual preferences and lived experiences. With reference to his famous play Do the Needful, this paper gives a brief account of the condition of Indian theatre pre- and post-colonization and projects the camouflaging techniques adopted by the discursive identities of gay people, for example, in order to conspicuously feature as straight and normal. It outlines the social constructions associated with gays in India and how these formations compel Indian men to internalize and succumb to the conventional norms of heterosexuality as the only acceptable norms.