Prof. Avinash T, Principal, Sahyadri Commerce and Management College, Shivamogga
Introduction:
What constitutes truth and reality is always a problematic and highly contested area of study. During the period of enlightenment modernity in Europe, truth and reality were categories which could be produced and analysed with the tools of rationality and empirical science. That is why they thought that everything in this universe was ‘explainable’ with the help of tools of modernity. However, this notion of universal meaning and truth are conveniently challenged by postmodernists and new historicists. They argue that these constructions of solid truth and reality are artificial and they don’t stand the logical scrutiny. Further, they argue that the construction of historiography and the formation literary cannon are loaded with paradoxes, deliberate exclusions, silences, gaps and absences.
The traditional historians were interested in genealogical linear nature of history. They considered history as ‘objectively’ recorded events. However, the new historicists believe that we can at best only have access to facts of the past. How it is interpreted is loaded with subjectivity and depends upon lot of external pressures including the ideology of the interpreter. The ‘facts’ serve only as reference points and interpretation of these ‘facts’ are largely in the domain of author’s understanding of these given facts. New historicism is interested in history-as –text i.e. history is also like fiction and largely depends upon subjective interpretation of events. In turn, this interpretation is also related to power politics and other contemporary socio-political pressures. As Michael Foucault puts it, “in every society, the production of discourse is controlled, organised and redistributed by certain number of procedures whose role is to construct number of possibilities. While forming discourses there are always exclusions, selection and domination.” (Foucault, 1966, p42).
The above argument can be summed in another way. The new historicists deconstruct the traditional distinction between history which is thought to be factual and literature which is thought to be fictional. For them, history is another text or as Hayden White calls it, it is a meta text. They look at both the historicity of the text and textuality of history (White, 1973).
It can safely be argued that for post modernists and new historicists, reality, truth or meaning is a matter of subjective interpretation. They also argue that reality and truth are neither objective nor are they universal. For them, past and present are both artificial constructs.
With this background, this essay attempts to analyse a contemporary Kannada play which interrogates and reconstructs our notion of truth, meaning and reality. Pampa Bharatha by K Y Narayana Swamy (2005) deals with how truth and reality are quite subjective and there is always a gap between ‘intension’ of the author and the perception of the reader.
The literary world of K Y Narayana Swamy articulates the paradoxes of contemporary society by breaking many accepted codes of literary narration. He is a young playwright who has employed unique dramatic techniques to articulate the complexities of contemporary society. He is a multi- faceted writer who has experimented in multiple mediums. He has translated Kuvempu’s play ‘Shudra Tapaswi’ into Telugu, and is credited with adapting Kuvempu’s magnum opus novel ‘Malegalalli Madumagalu’ into a 9-hour play. Though theatre is his major area of specialisation, he has written poetry as well as literary criticism. His plays Pampa Bharatha (2005), Anabhijna Shakuntala (2009), Chakraratna (2010), display some of the major features of postmodernism by breaking the linear narration of myths, history and legends. All these plays are based on mythology, legends and history but considerably deviate from the ‘original’ storyline. They are the retellings of the epics like Mahabharatha. In this way, K Y Narayanaswamy continues the tradition of Girish Karnad who has employed history, myths and legends for exploring the complexities of contemporary society. His plays reject the notion of concrete history, truth and reality and prove that all these categories are the convenient constructions rather than hard realities. Searching for any solid evidence becomes a futile exercise in his plays. His narratives try to explore the silences and gaps in the narration of history and literature.
Writing an introduction to his first play ‘Pampa Bharatha’, the theatres activist Lingadevaru Halemane states that this indeed is a post-modern play (Introduction, p5). It is a play which deconstructs many accepted notions of history, time, and reality and thrives on retelling the known stories to gain new perspective. As the title suggests, the play is not based on Adikavi (first poet) Pampa’s famous epic poem ‘Vikramarjuna Vijaya’. Rather, the play is a retelling of Pampa’s notion of Mahabharatha- an epic which has enthralled the readers for thousands of years.
Interestingly, the epic poem ‘Vikramarjuna Vijaya’ itself is a reconstruction of Valmiki’s ‘Mahabharatha’. K Y Naraya Swamy breaks the story of Pampa’s construction of Mahabharath and reconstructs his own vision of epic characters like Draupadi, Kunthi, Arjuna, Karna and the like. In this way, it can be said that the text is a reconstruction of a reconstruction.
The author explores the anxieties of present world by experimenting in the area of narration. The text is an amalgamation of episodes and incidents. There are stories within stories in this play. In other words, the play ‘Pampabharatha’ adopts a very complicated narration of using three different stories in a single design. The past and the present merge and submerge there by the author transcends the rigid notion of time and space. On the one hand, there is past where the relationship between the tenth century history of King Arikesari and the poet laureate Pampa is retold. The historical events show the ambition of Arikesari who wanted to become a monarch. The gaps left in the epic ‘Vikramarjuna Vijaya’ are exposed to highlight the essential transitory nature of history and reality. The characters created by Adikavi Pampa appear in this play and confess their dissatisfaction about the way the “original” author Pampa has represented them in his epic poem. There is confession of series of characters continually, who talk about the ‘real’ story behind the ‘constructed’ story. In this way, K Y Narayana Swamy complicates our notion of truth, originality, singular history and reality. The entire play exposes the politics of representation of the characters by showing the difference between how a particular character is represented and how it should have been narrated.
This gap between the real and the imaginary is exploited by the playwright to indicate the essential transitory nature of truth and reality. Representation is always intricately associated with subjectivity, power politics and is controlled by the author’s personal ideology as well as the pulls and pressures of contemporary politics. For example, in this text the characterisation of the tragic hero Karna by Adikavi Pampa becomes an object of heated debate between the poet Pampa and the character Karna. Karna appears in this play on the stage in person and accuses the poet Pampa of bias and prejudice. According to his version of reality, the real story of the Draupadi’s Swayamavara was that he was distracted by the sensual eyes of Draupadi. In the course of hitting the eyes of the hanging fish he saw it through the glittering attractive eyes of Draupadi and succeeded. According to Karna, this real aspect is missed by everybody including the great poet Pampa.
This play is complicated for one more reason. The epic Vikramarjuna Vijaya itself is a reconstruction of the epic Valmiki’s Mahabharath. The poet Pampa has attempted to explore the silences and the gaps in the epic Mahabharatha in his mammoth text. In particular, he was unhappy about the representation of the character of Karna in the ‘original’ text. The poet felt that injustice was meted out the character of Karna in Mahabharath because of his low caste/Kula. Pampa felt that it was his duty as a creative poet to ‘correct’ the historical wrongs and he wanted to make Karna the real hero of his poem Vikramarjuna Vijaya. But there was one more complication in this endeavour of Pampa. He was under the patronage of king Arikesari. Equating the character of royal Arikesari along with lowly born Karna was impossible during Pampa’s time. Moreover, Karna was a ‘Samantha’ king (i.e. inferior ranked King). During that time, king Arikesari was trying to become a grand emperor of Chalukya dynasty. Therefore, equating a royal king with inferiorly ranked king was impossible during that time. Therefore, out of sheer necessity, and according to political compulsions, the poet Pampa equated Arikesari’s character with another royal prince Arjuna. The playwright correctly shows how power equation controls the representation of a character. As stated above, there is always power politics associated with the style of representation.
The technique of distancing is subtly used in this play. In the context of this play, there is already one way distancing in the epic Mahabharatha. Pampa’s poem Vikramarjuna Vijaya attempts to fill the gap present in the epic Mahabharatha and tries to provide ‘true’ representation of characters and incidents. K Y Narayana Swamy’s play Pampa Bharatha becomes a reconstruction of a reconstruction. Thus, there is three-way distancing of characters, stories, history and representations. The entire play mocks at the idea of truth, authenticity, logical linear concept of history and the concept of authentic story. It rejects the very idea of originality, authenticity and truth by showing how there are deviations/gaps in every story narrated.
The play ‘Pampabharatha’ exhibits characteristic postmodern techniques in its narration. The real characters king Arikesari, the poet Pampa, the tragic hero Karna and the victim of patriarchal system Draupadi appear in this play and talk about how their characters were not understood properly. Karna for example accuses the poet Pampa saying that what really happened in the war with Pandava’s was not really represented correctly. He also speaks about the ‘real’ conversation he held with his real mother Kunthi just before the beginning of the War. He said that Pampa did not do justice to his character because he was unaware of the ‘real’ conversation he had with Kunthi. Now, the character Karna demands historical course correction in the representation of his character. Interestingly this play deals with the historical relationship between king Arikesari and the poet Pampa. It is stated that during his old age the poet Pampa in his disappointment left the royal court of the king Aarikesari and went to live in Agrahara. What happened to him after this incident is not recorded in ‘real’ history. Here in this text the character of Pampa appears on the stage and confesses the ‘real’ story behind his death. According to his version of reality, the Vaidic Brahmins had a violent relationship with the followers of rising Jain religion. Pampa was burnt by Brahmins in Agrahara because he had sympathy for the Jains. Similarly, king Arikesari confesses that because of pressures of Agrahara Brahmins that he had to leave Pampa unprotected. It is the power politics which destroys the personal harmonious relationship between king Arikesari and the poet Pampa. This murderous incident reminds us of Girish Karnad’s play Tughaluk (1964) where every relationship is related to power politics. Tughaluk goes to the extent of murdering his step mother, friends and innocent subjects for protecting his Kingship. Ironically, he pardons two petty thieves Ajam and Aziz out of sheer necessity of safeguarding his position and power consolidation. During Pampa’s period, the contemporary society witnessed tremendous violence between the traditional Brahmin groups and the upcoming influential Jain faith. This sectarian violence and power politics is cleverly recorded by Pampa. Continuing the true tradition of rebellion, K Y Narayana Swamy records the paradoxes of the present-day society by exposing the politics of power.
The post global society has witnessed the rise of right-wing communal forces creating disharmony in society. The intermixing of religion, politics and culture to gain political advantage is one of the hall marks of present day political and social set up. The consolidation of society on hard core communal forces has destroyed the harmonious social fabric of our society. The foundations of secular peaceful constitutional fabric of society are firmly shaken by the onset of communalism in India. Globalisation has brought glittering economic opportunities in the form of huge malls, gigantic apartments, multinational companies, big economic zones in the form of share market, and so on. It also has brought communal politics to the forefront of the society. The resultant violence as a result of communal consolidation is strongly visible in contemporary society. The loss of autonomy and the private sphere of the citizens are strongly felt by the writers. The writers are also aware of this fragmentation and state control. As a creative writer, K Y Narayana Swamy records the process of the onset of communalism in Karnataka and the censorship imposed by fringe communal groups in this text. For example, the play opens with two researchers searching for the ancient Gangadhara Shasana (stone carving) in a remote densely forested village. They were not able to recognise the old shasana because a new poster stating that conversion is legally punishable was pasted on the stone. This artificial pasting on a very important historical document is loaded with political overtones. The self-righteous groups who protect Hindu religion and culture are unaware of the historical significance of the ancient document in the form of a Shasana. Along with their ignorance is their arrogance backed up by political parties. For the fringe right wing groups, conversion is an assault on Hindu culture by the foreign invaders. i.e. the Muslims and the Christians. They also threaten the researchers to chant ‘Jai Shreeram’ as confirmation of their Hindu identity. Here, the author reflects many political anxieties of post global India and records the great violence and the loss of freedom of the individuals. K Y Narayana Swamy continues the tradition of constructing resistance to the communal forces by exposing their arrogance, ignorance and unconstitutional possession of power. In the confusion created by right wing groups, the researcher’s attempt to find truth about historical incident remains unfulfilled in this play.
It is not that communal politics is limited to post global India only. This text also exposes the political tussle on the lines of caste hierarchy during Pampa’s period. The conflict between Brahmins and the upcoming Jains during tenth century leading to the burning of the whole Agrahara is retold. It is stated that the poet Pampa died as a result of this communal divide and caste superiority. Whether there is concrete historical evidence to come to such a conclusion is an unwanted question. This is because, as evident in the text, there are multiple realities and multiple truths. Every character think that its version of history is correct and true. It must be understood that there is no singular concept of history. As the new historicist Stephen Greenblatt has correctly put it, history is just like meta fiction (Greenblatt, 1982). In this play there are many characters who question the notion of other’s understanding of history. Draupadi for example at the end of this play, forces Arjuna to kill Karna not because she hated him but because she loved him too much. This unstated ‘fact’ is narrated with lot of vigour in this play. The entire narrative interrogates our notion of truth, history and authentic realities. The very vision of the play treats these categories as inconsistent, subjective, a-rational and transitory.
To sum up, K Y Narayana Swamy’s play Pampa Bharatha forces us to understand historiography in a new light.
References
Greenblatt, Stephen, The Power of Forms in English Renaissance. Yale University Press, 1982.
Huliyar, Nataraj. Shakespeare Manege Banda. Pallava Prakashana, 2012.
Malpas, Simon. The Postmodern. Routledge, 2005.
Narayana Swamy K Y. Pampa Bharatha, Bhava Madhyama Prakashana, 2005.
---------------------------, Anabhijna Shakuntala. Aviratha Books, 2009.
---------------------------, Chakra Rathna, Ankita Books, 2010
Sardar, Ziauddin. ‘Postmodernism’ in The Future of Knowledge and Culture: A Dictionary for 20th Century. eds.Vinay Lal & Ashish Nandy, Viking-Penguin, 2005.
White, Hayden. Meta History: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe. The John Hopkins University Press, 1973.
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