Asiaweek.com | Silenced Cries

NOVEMBER 10, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 44 | SEARCH ASIAWEEK

Silenced Cries
Why a women's play is blocked
By SANTHA OORJITHAM

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As detentions go, S. Thenmoli's was relatively brief. Singapore police arrested the theater company president after a standoff with officials who closed the drama center she had booked for the evening. She was released within five hours, after posting the $1,100 bail. It was a feeble denouement to Thenmoli's repeated attempts to stage Talaq, a play about an Indian Muslim woman caught in a miserable marriage. Thenmoli, 35, says she has abandoned her struggle.

Why is Singapore so sensitive to a play about marital violence and other forms of abuse against Muslim women? On the surface, the city is racially harmonious. But the government maintains a delicate balance between the mainly Buddhist Chinese majority and the Muslim Malay and Hindu Indian minorities, and officials are ultra-conscious of Muslim sensitivities. Muslim clerics offended by Talaq's themes last month protested loudly against the play, which they said mocked Islam. Police refused to issue a permit for a public performance, citing the strong objections.

Talaq, meaning divorce, was performed three times in the Tamil language, each time to packed houses. The National Arts Council even supported one production. But Thenmoli quickly ran into a bureaucratic brick wall when she tried to put on a performance in English and Malay. The multilingual performance meant the play, which raises sensitive issues, would reach much broader audiences. Written by playwright P. Elangovan, Thenmoli's husband, Talaq sums up the real lives of a dozen Indian Muslim women through one character. It tells the harrowing tale of Nisha, whose husband beats and rapes her before taking up with another woman. Her cries for help, however, draw only hostility from relatives and religious officials.

Some clerics objected even to the name of the play. Thenmoli's company, Theater of Fire, is simply not competent to interpret problems within Muslim marriages [since the members are non-believers], says Indian Muslim theologian Ebrahim Marican. All references to Islam should be removed, he insists. "Non-Muslims would think Islamic law is cruel."

But to Constance Singam, whose group AWARE promotes women's rights, the play's point is about domestic violence — not race or religion. "This play empowers women," says Singam. She saw Talaq in 1998, and recalls how it moved the audience of mainly Indian women to tears. "It resonated and had meaning for them." By raising awareness, she says, Talaq educated women. "They realized they were not the only ones in situations like that and did not need to accept it."

AWARE receives about 200 calls each month from distressed women, often because of abuse. "Domestic violence is not just an Indian Muslim problem but a problem in any community," says Singam. While a Muslim council may be working to resolve marital conflicts, these issues need to reach a wider audience. By blocking the play, officials have let through the conservatives' message. Whisper the unpalatable truths, don't say them out loud.

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