Ghashiram Kotwal is a Marathi play written by playwright Vijay Tendulkar in 1972 as a response to the rise of a local political party, in Maharashtra.

It is based on the life of Nana Phadnavis (1741–1800), one of the prominent ministers in the court of the Peshwa of Pune and Ghashiram Kotwal, the police chief of the city.

Its theme is how men in power give rise to ideologies to serve their purposes, and later destroy them when they become useless.Jayant Karve and an American professor Eleanor Zelliot jointly translated Ghashiram Kotwal from the Marathi into English (Calcutta, 1984).

Ghashiram barters his own daughter Gauri to get the post of Kotwal (police chief) of Pune from Nana.

The situation goes out of hand when a few brahmins visitors to the city are put in jail, and die from suffocation due to inadequate ventilation in their custody.

[8] Shiv Sena leader Manohar Joshi, also a Brahmin, was in the forefront of the anti-Ghasiram agitation in Mumbai, and the party stopped the staging of the play in the metropolis in 1971-72.

[10] Ghashiram was a North Indian Brahmin, a resident of Aurangabad, who was appointed as the Police prefect of Poona on 8 February 1777 and continued to hold officer till his death which took place on 31 August 1791 under violent circumstances.

He had earned Nana's confidence by his faithful service during the critical times that followed the Peshwa Narayan Rao's murder.

He was the man who had been appointed to watch the movements and plans of Raghunath Rao and his family and he reported to Nana whatever suited his purpose.

He had under him a large body of unscrupulous spies, everyone possessing ample means of harassing people in consequence of which the word Ghashiram has become a permanent synonym for oppression and tyranny.