Thematic Analysis of the Sociocultural Decapitation in Karnad’s Play: ‘Tale-danda’

Abstract

Drama is a source of entertainment as well as enlightenment. Girish Karnad uses this audio-visual medium to bring to light a social vice of India, namely, casteism and its age-old impact on its victims. Its sway on society and the resultant retaliation by its sufferers is highlighted by the dramatist using the legendary figure of Mahatma Basaveshwara as a reformer in one of his English plays entitled Tale-danda (The Beheading) in English. Karnad’s approach in this play is full of censure against the oppression of the underprivileged. For ages, they were the victims of social persecution which once resulted in an anti-elitist uprising in south India. The movement later culminated in a kind of sociocultural decapitation of the underprivileged in twelfth-century Karnataka. The present paper attempts to focus on this historical event and its aftermath as dramatized in the play on the avenging individuals.