The Myth of ‘Sita’ and Gender in Post-Independence Indian Theatre: A Comparative Analysis of Vijay Tendulkar’s Silence! The Court is in Session (1967) and Girish Karnad’s Nāga-Mandala: Play with a Cobra (1988)

This paper proposes to examine two plays by the leading playwrights of post-independence India—Vijay Tendulkar and Girish Karnad, to analyse how key questions surrounding gender in the contemporary Indian society were prised open via the appropriation of popular depictions/retellings of the female protagonist Sita from the ancient Indian epic poem Ramayana. The paper examines Sita not as a textual character but as a myth generated out of pervasive depictions in the sociocultural landscape of India; as a site reconstituted within the social structure reshaped by colonial contact. Through a critical reading of the two plays using the myth of ‘Sita’ as an analytical category, the paper argues how post-independence Indian theatre foregrounded the issue of gender using pervasive and popular mythology, and staked a critical voice in contemporary gender debates.