The treatment of history in Girish Karnad’s Taledanda highlights the socio-political conflicts of contemporary Indian society

Abstract

Girish Karnad, one of the foremost Indian modern playwrights, gets the country’s highest literary recognition for his contributions to modern Indian drama. Tale-danda deals with the two decades ending in AD 1168; in the city of Kalyan, a man called Basavanna gathered an assembly of poets, mystics, philosophers and social revolutionaries. The caste system is presented as a bloodshed policy in this play. Sovideva made intrigue to create a rift between his father, Bijjali and Basavanna to become a king and to oust Basavanna from the court by accusing him of misuse of the treasury. The inter-caste marriage between a Brahmin bride and a cobbler bridegroom draws the bloodshed and disaster in the lives of sharanas in Kalyan. By fusing these two different stories into one, Karnad tries to highlight the contemporary socio-political conflicts of our society, like the Mandir and Mandal conflict. This paper attempts to study the social and political conflicts to highlight the present time issues.