International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research

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The Dramaturgy of Dissent: Social and Cultural Critique in the Select Plays of Girish Karnad

Author(s) G. Yadagiri
Country India
Abstract Girish Karnad (1938–2019) occupies a central place in postcolonial Indian theatre for his sustained use of myth, folklore, and history as instruments of social and political critique. This paper examines the dramaturgy of dissent across four representative plays—Tughlaq (1964), Hayavadana (1971), Naga-Mandala (1988), and Tale-Danda (1990)—arguing that Karnad's recourse to pre-modern narrative forms functions not as escapist antiquarianism but as a strategic distancing device through which contemporary anxieties surrounding political authority, caste, and gender are refracted and interrogated. Drawing on Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker's account of the post-independence Indian dramatic canon and Erin B. Mee's analysis of the “Theatre of Roots” movement, the study situates Karnad's dramaturgical choices within the broader project of decolonizing Indian theatrical form while resisting straightforward cultural nationalism. Close readings of Tughlaq's historical allegory of failed idealism, Tale-Danda's staging of caste violence and religious reform, and the gendered subjectivities dramatized in Hayavadana and Naga-Mandala reveal a consistent authorial strategy: the deployment of inherited narrative material to expose the instabilities of modern Indian nationhood. The paper concludes that Karnad's theatre constitutes a coherent dramaturgy of dissent in which myth and history become durable instruments of contemporary social critique.
Keywords Girish Karnad; Indian theatre; dramaturgy of dissent; postcolonial drama; myth and history; caste and gender critique.
Published In Volume 6, Issue 3, May-June 2024
Published On 2024-06-11
DOI https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2024.v06i03.85088
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