The Representation Of Social And Moral Crisis In Mahmudkhoja Behbudiy's Padarkush: The Role Of Ignorance In Leading To Patricide

Abstract

This article analyzes Mahmudkhoja Behbudiy's drama Padarkush, or The State of an Unschooled Boy (1911) through the lens of social and moral crisis. The study's central aim is to demonstrate that the tragedy of patricide staged in the play is not the outcome of an individual's moral failing, but the structural consequence of a merchant class that systematically devalues learning. Using close reading and socio-historical criticism, the article examines the relationships among the Boy, the Domulla, the Ziyoli (reformist intellectual), and Toshmurod. The findings show that the drama methodically stages the pedagogical vacuum created by the father's rejection of both religious and secular paths to knowledge, and traces how that vacuum becomes crime. The Ziyoli's closing monologue functions as the play's explicit thesis, naming ignorance and neglected upbringing as the direct cause of both the murder and the family's ruin. The article repositions Padarkush as a deliberate pedagogical instrument of Jadid reform.