"Tughlaq" as a political allegory

GIRISH KARNAD'S TUGHLAQ AS A POLITICAL ALLEGORY

                                                                   Submitted by,

                                                                             J. Greeshma Jose.

          Girish Karnad's second play Tughlaq was published in 1964. Tughlaq was an immediate success on the stage. It was first produced in Kannada in 1965 and by the same time in Hindi by the National School of Drama. Bengali and Marathi productions followed and in 1970 there was a major success. The reason or the immediate response for the play is the interesting story, intricate plot, and the scope for spectacle. Another reason is that it is a play of the 1960s and pictures the political mood of disillusionment which followed the Nehru era of idealism in the country.

          A political allegory is a story, fiction, drama or a painting that, on the surface, tells one tale, but has a hidden political meaning underneath. An allegory becomes political if it covers a political event or situation by producing a subtle commentary using other symbols.

          Muhammad Bin- Tughlaq, the protagonist and the title bearer o the play Tughlaq is one of the most controversial and eccentric rulers of India. He is a brilliant but spectacularly unsuccessful fourteenth-century Islamic Sultan and is nicknamed as the 'Mad Muhammad' by his citizens. Karnad's primary historical source is the Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi (1357), a chronicle history whose author, Zia-ud-din-Barani, spent seventeen years at Tughlaq's court. Using Barani's narrative, his attitudes and portions of his text, Karnad arranged the thirteen scenes of Tughlaq as a sequence that articulate both political and psychological ironies. Karnad in his own words says that, "What struck me absolutely about Tughlaq's history was hat it was contemporary. The act that here was the most idealistic, the most intelligent king ever to come on the throne of Delhi... and one of the greatest failures also. And within a span of twenty years this tremendously capable man had gone to pieces...."

          The opening of the play is set in front o the Chief Court of Justice in Delhi and there is a crowd o Muslims and Hindus. The drama sets into action with an exclamation, "God what's this country coming to!" Though the exclamation is addressed by an individual it is the one in every Indian minds today seeing the present scenarios. Hence the play has a significant opening and further on readers can come across a sound discussion of a Sultan, Tughlaq, the central figure of the play. Tughlaq's uncompromising idealism is strongly critiqued by the citizens and they seem to talk about a Brahmin, Vishnu Prasad whose suit against the Sultan is claimed just and he is returned not only his confiscated land but also given a job in "the civil service to ensure him a regular adequate income." This decision o the Sultan baffles the citizens and an old man reacts, "What folly is this! May Heaven guide our Sultan."

          In the beginning of Tughlaq's rein, when he is in Delhi, he is a man of high ideals. He tries to introduce policies that would benefit his citizens but it earned him only the nickname "Muhammad the mad". Karnad depicts Tughlaq as one who sought to put aside religious differences in the hope of embracing secularism is a powerful issue in the drama. Tughlaq wishes for the unity between the Hindus and the Muslims stating, "Daulatabad is a city of Hindus and as the capital, it will symbolize the bond between Muslims and Hindus..." Tughlaq's vision fails here which has a sense of analogy of the time the play has written. In 1964, India had been less than two decades removed from Partition and Independence which led to a notion where direction and transformative vision was hard to establish. A nation born from Gandhian principles was tangled amongst secretarian violence and communal hatred which are the very elements that Karnad's Tughlaq desires to overcome in the drama. The theme of political aspiration being limited by temporal reality is significant both in the drama and the historical condition in which it was written.

          Tughlaq's initial judgement upon a Brahmin and his emancipation o Hindus praying the 'jiziya tax' is misunderstood by the citizens and they oppose such moves. Tughlaq's policies and methods o political action are formulated with far-sighted vision of establishing a secular kingdom, but are instant failures as they fail to the relate to the immediate reality of the subjects.

          Tughlaq is a historical play but while writing it Karnad himself was struck by the parallelism between the reign of Tughlaq and contemporary history. The political chaos, which Karnad depicts in Tughlaq reminds many readers of the Nehru era in the Indian history. Karnad finds this similarity a coincidence. At every step the play reflects the chaos, disillusionment and corruption that followed the Nehru era and this is one of  the most important reasons or the popularity of the play. Tughlaq ruled in the fourteenth century and Nehru in the 1950s and 1960s. Striking parallels can be drawn between the two ages and this makes Tughlaq a great political allegory.