History, Myths and Literature in the Plays of Girish Karnad: A Critical Exploration

Abstract

Girish Karnad is a modern Indian English dramatist who is renowned with his stunning skills of integrating native myths with history in such a way that appeals to modern sensibility. His play serves as a good example of how classical themes could be re-contextualised and adjusted to the realities of the contemporary theatre, thus making the cultural discourse of the present enriched. The modern man is forced to wander through a maze of economic, political, and ideological problems in the dominant materialistic environment. This is the situation in the oeuvre of Karnad, which indicates that even with external growth, there are still those who are deprived of spiritual illumination. His dramatics thus ask the question of what follows the progress and inner satisfaction, placing the existential crisis of the person at the centre of the story. Thematically, the plays of Karnad are in a spherical arrangement around the complex interaction of the past, history, myth and legend. Having condensed these stories within the aggregate memory of India, he reforms them in a way that they are relevant to the predicaments of the contemporary humankind. This approach will enable him to ask questions of how far historical and mythological paradigms can shed some light on the modern social and ethical dilemmas. The current essay critically evaluates how Karnad employs history, myth and literature in his stock of drama. It is also prefigurative of the similarities between his practice and the statements by T.S. Eliot, who said that the past should be re-done by the present just to a degree that the present is also informed by the past. In this sense, the essay places Karnad in a wider intertextual culture of negotiating the time. Such works as "Tughlaq," in which historical events are used to unveil the ups and downs of power and government; or the mythically charged works "Hayavadana" and "Nagamandala," measuring human desire, identity and social mores through folklore, are illustrative of such a technique. Combining the ancient narration forms with the modern political awareness, Karnad manages to craft a type of the theatre, which feels both Indian and instantly relevant to the viewers. In the end, this paper has shown how the dramaturgy of Karnad is a cultural reflection and how it helps us question our identity and the social frameworks by deliberately blurring the boundaries between history, myth, and literature. His plays thus do not just add to the canon of aesthetics, but also the socio-cultural mirror of contemporary India.