Subjugation of Women through Mythepistemic Concepts in Girish Karnad’s Play Naga Mandala

Abstract

The concept of the “epistemic,” as articulated by Michel Foucault, refers to the historical construction and codification of knowledge within specific epochs. Building on this foundation, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak introduced the notion of “epistemic violence” to describe the marginalization and silencing of subaltern voices within dominant discourses of knowledge, particularly in postcolonial contexts. In a related vein, the term mythepistemic violence designates the instrumentalization of myth and folklore as a legitimizing apparatus to perpetuate structural inequalities and the subjugation of marginalized groups—especially women—by positioning their inferiority as culturally or cosmologically ordained. This form of violence not only shapes epistemic hierarchies but also reinforces patriarchal norms that delimit women’s agency and identity. Girish Karnad’s Naga Mandala serves as a compelling literary case study of mythepistemic violence. Through the character of Rani, the play interrogates how traditional mythic narratives function as tools of gendered oppression in a patriarchal society. Rani’s enforced passivity, her symbolic trial by ordeal, and her subjection to societal suspicion echo mythological precedents that encode and reproduce patriarchal authority. The play critiques the cultural and epistemological systems that sustain such oppression while simultaneously imagining avenues for female empowerment and epistemic reclamation. This paper examines Naga Mandala through the lens of mythepistemic theory to highlight how knowledge, when embedded in mythic discourse, becomes a mechanism of control and subjugation, particularly of women, within patriarchal structures.