Vol. 9, Issue 3, Part C (2023)

The Scholarly endeavour in this research paper shall be, for content and subject matter, drafted critically in line with Girish Karnad’s play Hayavadana (1972) since there is multitude and abundance of material to be found in the play in accordance with the different thematic aspects like psychological imbalance, loss of identity, search for personality perfection, etc. Essentially, the play, though circumvents the traditional, religious and mythological ethos of India as a society, it in a dormant scheme is vibrated with multi-fundamentals that have bearing on culture, religion, myth and other fields of humanity cosmically. The play highlights human nature as a driving force for the quest of good and bad which together in Freudian psychology make human personality. This play spotlights Girish Karnad as a great moralist without the tinge of artistic inferiority trying to expose greed, sense of unnatural attitude in human longings, carnal pleasures, jealousy, the tussle between intelligence and foolishness and emotions versus witticism. However, the more dominant tire of substance that promotes disharmony in seeking perfection and order in the self-identity is in the plot the concept of womanhood and womanly grace. The in-depth study of the play unfurls the secrets of perfection and the maintenance of self-identity in the fundamentals of religion which is the source of goodness. The play pictures the loss of identity and the search for its maintenance on three planes which are Devadatta’s psychological search for Kapila’s bodily grace which makes him fall in the abyss of abnormality called jealousy, Padmini’s search for all human qualities in Devadatta for his intellectuality impresses her less than the bodily charisma of Kapila and more importantly Hayavadana’s longing for complete human personality. This character of Hayavadana inwardly unearths the third gender people, their problems and issues in living, their disapproval as complete beings by the society they live in. This paper shall come up with the theme mentioned very critically in light of all those resources that verify it as the plot of the play. It shall highlight the chaos in maintaining the self-identity according to the characterisation of Devadatta, Padmini and Hayavadana and in the process the religious elements shall be touched according to its need since religion has been viewed as the source of human perfection, a way of shunning of all evil and attaining all goodness which alone generates order in human personality.