Vijay Tendulkar endured having one of his plays howled off the stage by an unappreciative audience; another about man-woman relationships in South Asia was banned by the Indian Government; and he was once lashed by a furious theatregoer with a bamboo rod. Such were the passions aroused by one of India’s most influential dramatists.

He went on, nevertheless, to win a host of awards and to write one of the longest-running plays in the world, Ghasiram Kotwal (Ghasiram the Constable), which was performed 6,000 times in India and abroad in the original Marathi and in translation. He wrote 30 full-length plays, collections of short stories and film scripts, although he never took up offers to write screenplays for mainstream popular cinema. That, he asserted, was work for hacks.

The dominant theme of his writings was violence, a subject that fascinated and repelled him. He opposed the death penalty and attended three hangings inside prisons for research material. His disgust with the spectacle found its way into much of his work. Hanging people was primitive and pointless, he believed. He hated the prisoners’ last-minute repentances, and described the victims as vegetables already “three quarters dead” in the hours before execution.

He challenged the notion that India was a pacifist society, asserting that violence was an inherent part of its nature. In his research he met hangmen, prostitutes, drug addicts and violent men, and interviewed the rich and powerful. Practically everything that he wrote explored violence, cruelty and perversion.

Journalists often sought his views on social issues, and he rarely disappointed them. He captured headlines throughout India after Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujurat in 2002, which he blamed on the hardline Hindu chief minister and said he wished he had a pistol with which to shoot him. This did not square with his hatred of violence and he tacitly apologised by blaming his remarks on “spontaneous anger”.

His disdain for political and religious extremism provided the theme for his most controversial play, Ghashiram Kotwal. It explored the use of political power to exploit and abuse people. Although set during Peshwa’s empire, which ruled much of India in the 18th century, its relevance to modern India was clear. Hindu zealots used to accuse him of being a “pseudo secularist,” which he dismissed, saying he did not understand the expression.

He portrayed human relationships as power relationships, and to him all abuse of power — within a family, a marriage or sexual relationship — meant violence. In younger days he was often found at the head of protest marches on a range of social issues.

For all his romps through controversial social issues, Tendulkar never linked himself to any cause or ideology, and demonstrated no religious affinity. He wrote in his native Marathi and carried theatre into areas of political radicalism that would inevitably bring him into conflict with politicians and censors.

He was predeceased by his wife and by his two children.

Vijay Tendulkar, Indian playwright, was born on January 6, 1928. He died on May 19, 2008, aged 80