Karnad, Girish (1938–2019)

The origin of modernism, though highly contested, is generally assumed to be in the West. Such terms as ‘alternative modernities’ have come forth in the postcolonial countries in their attempt to decolonise themselves from the ‘neo-colonialism’. By means of a study of the existential modernity in the theatrical praxis of Girish Karnad, this article proposes to analyse the subversion of the ‘Western Modernity’. The plays of Girish Karnad are rooted in the cultural ethos of India and evolve out of the Indian knowledge systems. The plays dramatise Indian mythology and dramatise these myths by amalgamating the Western and the Indian dramatic conventions, thereby producing an ‘alternative modernity’, creating a kind of distinction implicated in the dialogic between the good and the bad modernity that is reversible depending on one’s stance and sensibility. This article proposes to study the dramatisation of this kind of an amalgamation that is the crux of the theatrical praxis of Girish Karnad.