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Feminism in Girish Karnad’s “Nagamandala”

G. Sunitha &
Dr. M. Ravichand
Sree Vidyanikethan Engineering College
Tirupathi
Abstract

Gender issues seem to be suffused in most of the plays of Girish Karnad. In his plays, Karnad
very dexterously pictures the condition of a typical Indian female, ruled by the patriarchal
order bounded by tradition, but whose spirit remains unbounded. Although the playwright is
not an out and out feminist like Henrik Ibsen, the playwright of The Doll’s House, but the
problems of a female in a prejudiced, biased patriarchal society are referred to in most plays
by the playwright. The issue of the gender-bias in society and the oppression of women by
the patriarchal order happen to form an important part of Karnad’s plays. At the same time,
Karnad depicts women enthused with feminism, fighting the unjust norms of the patriarchal
order.

Keywords: feminist, patriarchal, gender-bias, feminism.

Nagamandala is a folktale transformed into the metaphor of the married woman. It is a

Chinese box story with two folktales transformed into one fabric where, myth and
superstition, fact and fantasy, instinct and reason, the particular and the general blend to
produce a drama with universal evocations. The predicament of Rani as opposed to the name
is deplorable than that of a maid. Rani’s latent power as a wife and mother also remains
unrealized. In the shackles of social conventions and bitterness she gets habituated to act like
a doll. Rani, if translated in English is termed as “Queen” dominant power but all of a sudden
she is thrashed in the tears and fears of Appanna.

Krishanamayi quotes “In the dramatic world of Karnad, women, within and without wedlock,
are subjected to various forms of deprivation, humiliation, violence and torture in almost
every walk of life in one way or the other. The playwright not only exposes the arbitrariness
of the system where women are considered as “second sex,” “other,” “non-persona” but also
questions the way women are socialized to internalize the reigning hegemonic ideology and
degrade their own position to perpetuate the on-going subordination and subjugation. Man
who is ruled by the mastery-motive has imposed her limits on her. She accepts it because of
biosocial reasons”. 1

In the play, Rani, a naive and submissive girl, falls prey to the unjust social order through the
institution of marriage which impedes all the channels that can provide her with opportunities
to have self-discovery, self-growth and self-actualization as a human being. The patriarchal
order uses marriage as a coercive tool to exploit and oppress women on various planes -
physical, emotional, intellectual, sexual and social.
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Rani is a creation of patriarchal social order which ignores the existence of women as human
beings. In the tight noose of traditional marriage, Rani finds it very hard to have healthy
marital and social interaction and articulate her grievances and grudges, as Appanna keeps
her “locked up like a caged bird”. Rani longs to have flight and freedom from the cruel
clutches of Appanna. On the sexual plane, she is neglected; on the physical she is bullied and
beaten; on the emotional she is crushed; on the intellectual she is hushed up, and on the social
she is almost ex-communicated. As a result, she is left with no voice and choice as a dignified
member of human society. “Marriage is not only an honourable career and one less tiring
than many others: it alone permits a woman to keep her social dignity intact and at the same
time to find sexual fulfillment as lived one and mother”. 2 But here, in a patriarchal society
Rani is always subordinated and treated as a ‘second sex’ by Appanna.

The woman is portrayed as dependant in all three phases of her life - as a daughter (Rani's
dependence on her parents), as a wife (Rani's reliance on Appanna) and, as a mother
(Kurudavva's handicap without Kappanna). In Indian society, the woman is said to be
complete only after marriage. However, paradoxically she neither belongs to this world or
that: her parental home or her husband's abode. For the woman, the home is said be an
expression of her freedom: it is her domain. However, Rani is imprisoned in her own house
by her spouse in a routine manner that baffles others with the door locked from the outside
but God opens a door for her in the form of a King Cobra. The king cobra gets seduced by the
love potion provided by Kurudavva to Rani to lure, pathetically, her own husband who turns
a blind eye to her. The snake assumes the form of a loving Appanna in contrast to the
atrocious husband at day. The climax is reached when Rani becomes pregnant and Appanna
questions her chastity. Her innocence is proved by virtue of the snake ordeal that the village
elders put before her, and she is eventually proclaimed a Goddess incarnate.

Appanna literally means “any man” and points to the metaphor of man in general, his
chauvinistic stance and towering dominance to the extent of suppressing a woman's
individuality. Rani endeavours to discover her individuality by seeking refuge in dreams,
fairy tales and fantasies to escape the sordid reality of her existence. At an age where the
typical fantasy would be a Sultan or prince coming on horseback, Rani's flight of the
imagination transports her to a seventh heaven where her parents wait for her. Critics show
her body as a site of “confinement, violence, regulation and communication of the victimized
gender-self”. And they also point out how she later uses the same body to rebel, to subvert
and to negotiate her space in society. Appanna poses her as an adulterous woman whereas he
himself has an illicit relationship with a concubine. He and his hypocritical society questions
Rani's chastity and side-steps the validity of Appanna's principles. This is just a miniscule
cross-section of the patriarchal society that we live in. In Indian myth, a miracle has been
mandatory to establish the purity of a woman, while a man's mere word is taken for the truth;
whether it be Sita, Shakuntala or Rani in this instance.

In a patriarchal social order, “masculinity is associated with superiority; whereas 'feminity' is

linked with inferiority,” and while “masculinity implies strength, action, self-assertion and
domination, feminity implies weakness, passivity, docility, obedience and self-negation”.3
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Leaving a life without any future and identity, she is in search of her love and identity as a
wife. Being thrown in the storm of isolation, she gets into the squall of Naga’s love that
comes to her in the form of her husband. Getting away from remoteness and breaking her
silence with the questions of Naga she starts feeling comfortable and her fear and tear takes
the form of ecstasy.

“Let it. I don’t feel afraid any more, with you beside me.” (Pg.: 273)

Naga makes up all that Rani had missed out in her married life. It is only society to judge the
things and according to it the situation through which Rani passes is against the laws and
orders of the society as well as tradition. All of a sudden when she gets into problem and her
love making becomes a pain for her as she tells Naga:

“Yes, there is. Give me poison instead. Kill me right here. At least I’ll be spared the
humiliation. Won’t the cobra bite me the moment I touch it? I’ll lie like your dog and
your mangoose.” (Pg.: 286).

In Kiranth’s words, “… an Indian woman knows that motherhood confers upon her a purpose
and identity that nothing else in her culture can”. 4 As a mother, Rani is seen in the last part of
the story to be in command of the household with some authority and decision making power.
Appanna even agrees to her rather strange demand that their son should perform an annual
“pinda-daan” in the memory of the dead snake.

The woman in her might have experienced the difference between the love of Naga and
authority of Appanna. A. Jaganmohana Chari expresses views in this context: “The
dichotomy of lover and husband is in the tradition she has inherited. When she discovers in
her experience in the end the difference between Naga’s love and that of her husband the
feeling of experience hardly crosses the threshold of her consciousness because her
experience of her head or her conscience hardly matters in the world of patriarchal
hegemony”.5

Folk tales in a patriarchal society represent primarily the male unconscious fears and wishes
and is male-oriented. In these stories the women’s experiences and inner feelings are not
given importance. They do not probe much light on women’s fears, anxieties and
psychological problems. It is a remarkable achievement of Karnad that he adapts this male-
oriented folk tale in such a manner that it becomes a representation of the experience of man
and woman in the psychologically transitional phase.

The author also remarks of the identity of tales in general, about their reality of being and
their continuance only on being passed on. The objectivity leads us to perceive the story as a
concept with its own existence and identity; and to emphasize its individuality it is
personified in the form of a woman. V. Rangan says, “A story is born and grows; it has life.
Each story has an independent existence, and a distinctive character. All story tellers are
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ancient mariners cursed to keep the story alive.” 6 The Story seems to echo that in order to
live, a story has to be “told” and “re-told” .i.e. the story has no role without the listener or
perceiver. And cannot help thinking that whether the author is stressing the reader's role in
constructing meaning or phenomenology. The reader-response theory questions the
endurance of the author's viewpoint that has no existence without the reader's perception.
Being “told” and “re-told” is nothing but “interpretation” and “re-interpretation”. Therefore,
any literary piece is only an object without the reader breathing meaning into it. So for the
story to survive, it must be ultimately “passed on”. The backdrop of the flames emphasizes
the idea of ‘passing on’.

Again the playwright is a man, and the story is personified as a woman. So does Man create
Woman? However the playwright echoes that the story has an autonomous existence and
lives by virtue of interpretation and re-interpretation. Likewise, a woman has her own
existence and lives by virtue of meaningful procreation. Thus, the gist of the framework of
the story runs parallel to the theme of the main story. As Rani’s role gets inverted at the end
of the story and Appanna turns into a mere “instrument to prove her divinity”, likewise roles
get reversed as the playwright (a man who tells stories) “listens” to the Story (a woman).

References:

Primary Source:
Karnad, Girish. “Naga-Mandala: A Play with a Cobra”, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Secondary Resources:
1. Krishanamayi. “Redefining the Insurgent Female Psyche in an Androcentric Milieu,” The Indian
Journal of English Studies. Vol. XLI, 2003-04.
2. Beauvoir, Simon de. “The Second Sexed Trans.”, H. M. Parshley. 1949; rpt New York: Vintage
Books, 1997.
3. Kaur, Iqbal. “Gender and Literature”, Delhi: BR Publishing Cooperation, 1992.
4. Kiranth B.V., “Translation of Hayavadana into Hindi”, Delhi: Radhakrishna Prakashan, 1975,
p.57.
5. Chari, A. Jaganmohana. “Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana and Nagamandala: A Study in
Postcolonial Dialectics” The Commonwealth Review 7.2 (1995-96). P.148-153.
6. Rangan, V. “Myth and Romance in Naga-Mandala or their Subversion?” Girish Karnad’s Plays:
Performance and Critical Perspectives. Ed.Tutun Mukherjee. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2006,
p.201.