Also well known is Nagamandala (1988), written during the year Karnad spent at the University of Chicago as visiting professor. In perhaps his best-known work, Agni Mattu Male (The Fire and the Rain, 1995), Karnad took a tale from the Mahabharata and placed it as a play within the play to explore the very Indian clash between individualism and the common good. In these works, radical for their time, Karnad captured the feelings of a disillusioned middle-class, who so recently had been united in their fight for freedom from the British but were questioning what independence meant for India now. Tughlaq (1964) captured the disappointment of early independent India and Hayavadana (1971) looked at issues around personal identity and female emancipation. Yayati (1961), written while Karnad was a student at Oxford, dealt with the expectations of the Indian family against personal freedom.
The first three were an immediate success. Written in the south Indian language of Kannada, many of his plays were translated into English by Oxford University Press as well as into several other Indian languages. Strongly influenced by the philosopher Krishnamurti, who questioned traditional Indian devotion to caste, religion and duty, Karnad worked from the position that the individual was the maker of his own existence – rather than subject to Hindu notions of fate and karma. India’s obsession with cinema means Karnad was best known for his acting roles, but it is for his plays, in which he often used myths, folklore and historical events to examine the cultural, economic and social changes in post-independence India, that he will be remembered.
Girish Karnad, who has died aged 81, was India’s foremost playwright, as well as a successful film director and popular actor, appearing in arthouse films as well as hit Bollywood movies such as Ek Tha Tiger.
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