Historico-mythical analysis of girish karnad's tugh laqhlaq and swarajbir's krishna

Abstract

The present study proposes to do the comparative analysis of two plays- Tughlaq by Girish Karnad and Krishna by Swarajbir. Both the playwrights go back to ancient sources to conceive their plays. Karnad exploits the history of intelligent, sharp but unsuccessful Muslim ruler Tughlaq who is popularly known as "mad Muhammad". Swarajbir has used the mythical and historical character of Krishna to construct his play. The thread that unites both the plays is the negotiation of mythical and historical personages used in the plays with the contemporary reality. Both the plays transcend the periods they belong to and emerge as examples of metaphoric depiction of modern times. This study explores how these plays are charged with a contemporary flavour and to analyse these texts from a poststructuralist perspective comprising of various streams of thought such as archetypal criticism, Marxism, Historicity, Discourse analysis, Culture Studies and Gender Studies that further allow the texts to unravel and allow for a multifaceted research.