When Girish Karnad was 35, he folded a love letter he had received from his cook and shoved it into a draw before hurrying off for a film shoot. On his return, he was shocked to find the note missing.
“There was a letter here. Did you see it?” Karnad asked his mother. “I have torn it and thrown it out. What were you planning to blackmail the poor girl?” his mother yelled at him. His mother Krishnabai Mankikar was not a stickler for conservative ideals, Karnad had noted in a documentary made by the Sahitya Akademi, where he acknowledges the colossal influence she had on the ideologies he grew to hold dear, which are aptly portrayed in his works.
Popularly known as a renaissance man, Karnad became one of the torch bearers to Indian playwrights in the realm of contemporary drama. From Yayati his first play, to Nagamandala, The Fire and The Rain, Tale-Danda, Rakshasa Thangadi and Tughlaq, Girish Karnad used classical fables as talismans to explore the modern, existential questions plaguing Indian society.
As Mariya Latif notes, Karnad had delved into myths and folklore, harnessing the hidden sources of shared meaning relevant to contemporary social structures, whilst shaking up the prevailing perceptions held by various communities, thereby identifying the problems plaguing them. “The energy of folk theatre comes from the fact that although it seems to uphold traditional values, it also has the means of questioning those values, of making them literally stand on their heads,” Karnad had said in an interview to The Tribune in 1999.
His childhood exposure to street plays in Karnataka’s Sirsi and his familiarity with western dramas staged in Bombay induced him to pen stories of secularism and equality to suit modern India, according to the documentary. In his renowned 1988 play Nagamandala, Karnad explores the patriarchal establishments of marriage and relationships and the stigma carried by women who dared to explore their sensuality.
By delineating the woman’s position in the context of the contemporary post-colonial Indian society, Karnad draws parallels with the past reality and folkloristic presentation in Nagamandala. “Aren‘t you ashamed to admit it? I locked you in, and yet you managed to find a lover! Tell me who it is. Who did you go to, with your sari off?” a burley Appanna speaks to his captive wife Rani. In just a line, Karnad weaves a societal truth of a male-dominated society, where only the woman has to observe and prove her chastity, while the man remains unquestioned about his own loyalty to his wife.
A crucial feature of Karnad’s plays is the creation of female protagonists, who are forced to adhere to their societal roles women and struggle to take care of their desires and to achieve them by finding their own ways as PD Nimdarkar notes. In ‘Yayati’ it is the relationship that is torn between the King, Devayani and Sharmistha; in ‘Hayavadana’, it is between Padmini, Devadutta and Kapila; in ‘Nagamandala’ it is between Rani, the Naga and Appanna; in ‘Broken Images it is between Pramod, Manjula and Malini; in ‘The Fire and the Rain’ it is between Vishakha and Yavakri and Parvasu and between Nittilai, her husband and Arvasu, where Karnad weaves a tale of women in society and the demand to be selfless and helpless.
For a post-colonial playwright, Girish Karnad has made several breakthroughs in establishing his idea of a secular India through his plays. In his 2018 play Rakhsasa Tangadi, Karnad portrays the life of Aliya Rama Raya (1485-1565), the last ruler of Vijayanagara. Rama Raya, a man who managed one of the most powerful kingdoms in south India, was never coronated, despite his Machiavellian wiles, because he was an Aruvuri, a member of a so-called lower caste.
“A certain megalomania had set in Rama Raya. Is that contemporary? You decide. But I am not interested in deliberately echoing the present. If I am relevant, if my consciousness is relevant, then the play will be too,” Karnad had told Indian Express in 2018.
The famous dialogue between two sentries in his play Tughlaq hint at the threat posed by authoritarian regimes. It’s a scene of Tughlaq, where the dreams of an idealistic and visionary king have dragged his armies through suffering. “No army could take this,” the younger sentry says, to which the wiser one replies, “Invariably, forts crumble from the inside.” The play connotes the regime of Indira Gandhi and compares the Emergency to the despair brought about by Tughlaq’s idea of a perfect nation.
In Rakshasa Tangadi and Tughlaq, Karnad brings to his ideas of modern India to the forefront, including communalism, societal divide and the megalomania he sees surrounding the heads of state. “We were, as young men, proud of India. We were the only newly democratic country where illiterate people had the vote and where everyone — Hindu, Muslim or Christian — was an Indian. It has been transformed into this utterly futile and dangerous game in this dream of becoming a Hindu rashtra. We already had Pakistan and this way we are creating another one. It is dangerous because Hindutvawadis never tell you how this Hindu rashtra will accommodate untouchables, tribals, women,” Karnad had said in a 2018 interview.