The interplay of myth and modern identity in T. P. Kailasam’s 'The Curse or Karna'

Abstract

This essay reads T. P. Kailasam’s The Curse (or Karna) as a modern reworking of a mythic figure whose public identity is formed at the crossroads of epic tradition and the social realities of modern India. Kailasam adapts Karna’s Mahābhārata narrative to interrogate caste, legitimacy, and the making of modern subjectivity: Karna’s mythic attributes (heroism, generosity, curses) are reframed to expose the social mechanisms that produce marginality and a fragmented identity. Reading the play against theoretical accounts of myth and modern identity, and against scholarship on Kailasam’s dramatisation of epic figures, the essay argues that Kailasam uses myth not to recuperate a golden past but to stage a critique of modern social hierarchies and identity formation. (Internet Archive+1)

Introduction—myth reclaimed for modern critique 

T. P. Kailasam’s The Curse (or Karna) (published 1946) retells episodes from the Mahābhārata—Karna’s origin, his relationship with Parashurama, his loyalty to Duryodhana, and his death—while treating Karna not merely as an epic hero but as a social subject shaped (and devalued) by caste prejudice and modern anxieties about identity. Kailasam’s play is explicitly subtitled “An impression of Sophocles in five acts,” signalling both a classical tragic frame and a modern, critical staging of myth. Reading Kailasam’s Karna alongside scholarship on his plays shows the playwright’s recurring interest in mythic material as a vehicle for social reformist critique. (Internet Archive+1)

Theoretical framework: myth, modernity and identity

Two theoretical clusters guide the reading.

1. Myth and modern identity.

Modern thinkers and literary scholars have argued that myth persists within modern identity formation — it is neither simply pre-modern residue nor anachronistic ornament, but an active resource with political and psychological force (see work collected and discussed in Taylor & Francis volumes on myth and identity and on modernity and myth). Myths are mobilised in modern narratives to create, contest or legitimate social identities. (Taylor & Francis+1)

2. Subalternity and the politics of voice. 

Postcolonial and subaltern studies alert us to how social categories (caste, class, gender) shape who can speak, who is heard, and what counts as legitimate subjecthood. Re-telling a mythic life from the perspective of an outcaste or marginal figure is thus a political act: it can expose exclusions built into canonical narratives. Kailasam’s Karna performs exactly this re-centering. (For literary readings of Karna-as-marginal figure, see contemporary essays collected in regional journals and critical volumes on modern Indian dramatists.) (Literary Cognizance+1)

These two frames—myth as symbolic resource and subaltern critique of voice—allow us to see how Kailasam’s play stages a dialectic between inherited epic meaning and the demands of modern identity.

Kailasam’s Karna: summary 

Kailasam’s play follows Karna through formative episodes: his training with Parashurama (and the curse that costs him martial mastery at a crucial moment), his public humiliation and the refusal of recognition when contesting the princes, his acceptance by Duryodhana and subsequent loyalty, Kunti’s late revelation, and the path to Karna’s death on the battlefield. Kailasam dwells on scenes that expose caste prejudice (denial of instruction, social insult) and on the social consequences of Karna’s ambiguous origin. The play thus foregrounds identity as the product of social recognition/non-recognition rather than as purely metaphysical fate. (Internet Archive+1)

Mythic elements reworked into social critique

1. Heroic attributes as social testimony 

Epic Karna is known for dāna (generosity), martial prowess, and tragic dignity. Kailasam preserves these traits but reframes them so they indicate social injury rather than metaphysical grandeur. Karna’s generosity becomes a performative mark of social honor that coexists with exclusion; his heroism acquires a bitter edge because society continually refuses him the recognition due to a prince. This inversion makes mythic attributes evidence of modern grievances: the heroic code doesn’t insulate a subject from the strictures of caste and birth. Scholars reading Kailasam’s Karna observe that the dramatist emphasises the social mechanics—ritual snubs, refusals of instruction, and public shaming—as constitutive of the tragic condition. (Literary Cognizance+1)

2. Curse motifs: fate versus social causality

Parashurama’s curse in the epic is a decisive supernatural cause for Karna’s failures. Kailasam stages the curse, but within the modern play it becomes a symbolic condensation of social injuries: the curse stands in for systemic blocks (denied education, ritual impurity) that make Karna’s failure predictable. Several critics note that Kailasam transforms epic causality into social causality; fate isn’t merely cosmic retribution but an outcome entangled with human institutions and prejudices. Thus, mythic curses are not metaphysical absolutes but metonyms for social exclusion. (Scribd+1)

3. Identity revelation and the failure of recognition

The trope of the late maternal revelation (Kunti telling Karna of his royal birth) is a standard epic moment. Kailasam retains this but stages it with acute modern irony: the revelation comes too late to recover identity because social recognition (education, status, legal privileges) has already been denied. Critics have commented on how Kailasam’s chronicle-like structure makes the play a study of recognition’s social economy—identity depends less on inner truth than on public validation. The play thereby aligns mythic disclosure with modern concerns about documentation, pedigree and legal/social legitimacy. (Internet Archive+1)

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Close reading: three pivotal scenes

A. The school/ashram scene (Parashurama and the curse)

Kailasam’s depiction of Parashurama’s anger and the consequent curse foreground the humiliation of being discovered as non-Brahmin within a ritualised educational sphere. The verbal dynamics—insult, denial, and the imposition of the curse—convert an epic supernatural moment into a dramatisation of institutional gatekeeping. Karna’s subsequent loss of technical skill at a moment of trial becomes emblematic of how social exclusion disables potential. This reading aligns with criticism that sees Kailasam as recoding epic plot points into sociological commentary. (Scribd+1)

B. The public contest scene (Draupadi’s swayamvara / public humiliation)

When Karna is barred from contesting for Draupadi, the play makes visible the ritual performance of caste boundaries. Kailasam turns the swayamvara—an ancient aristocratic ritual—into a stage where modern anxieties about birth and merit are theatrically resolved against the aspirant. The scene demonstrates how mythic ritual operates as modern social policing and how identity claims are adjudicated in public. Secondary presentations and class notes on the play repeatedly point to this scene as central to Kailasam’s critique.

C. Kunti’s revelation and the aftermath (identity too late)

Kunti’s confession—meant to restore Karna’s identity—fails to undo the damage. Kailasam emphasises the public’s inability (or unwillingness) to reconceive Karna’s status. The play thus stages modernity’s paradox: factual truth does not automatically translate into social reincorporation. The tragedy here is epistemic and social rather than purely metaphysical—Karna’s identity remains fractured because social structures (ritual, law, public memory) do not change with a private confession. Critics have used the term “chronicle play” to describe this sustained focus on the life of a single individual as a lens on social history. (Internet Archive+1)

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Kailasam’s method: classical tragic form for modern questions 

By subtitling the play an “impression of Sophocles”, Kailasam borrows a tragic paradigm (fate, recognition, reversal) and relocates its engine from mythic destiny to social structures. The play’s five-act chronology resembles classical tragedy’s unity of a tragic life, but the moral quandaries are resolutely modern: public legitimacy, caste-based exclusion, the ethics of political patronage (Duryodhana’s use of Karna), and the limits of individual agency in a stratified society. Scholars of modern Indian drama place Kailasam among playwrights who used epic materials to critique contemporary social life, rather than to celebrate a romanticised past. (Wisdom Library+1)

Conclusion — myth as diagnostic instrument

Kailasam’s The Curse (or Karna) demonstrates how mythic narratives can be instrumentalised to diagnose modern identity problems. Rather than offering a nostalgic return to epic values, Kailasam uses Karna’s life to show how social recognition, institutional gatekeeping, and the politics of birth shape the modern subject. The play thereby models a modern dramaturgy of myth: it keeps the epic’s symbolic weight while converting mythic causality into a commentary on contemporary social order. Kailasam’s Karna remains relevant for studies that interrogate how canonical stories are reworked to probe questions of marginality and legitimacy in modernity. 

References:

Abbs, Peter, editor. The Symbolic Order: A Contemporary Reader on the Arts Debate. 1st ed., Routledge, 1989. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203975343.

Connor, Steven. “Modernity and Myth.” The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature, edited by Laura Marcus and Peter Nicholls, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 251–268. The New Cambridge History of English Literature.

de Bruin, Hanne M., and Clara Brakel-Papenyzen. “The Death of Karna: Two Sides of a Story.” Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 9, no. 1, 1992, pp. 38–70. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1124249. Accessed 5 Nov. 2025.

Kailasam, T. P. The Curse or Karna. 1946. Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/unset0000unse_h8e3/page/n33/mode/2up?utm_source=chatgpt.com. Accessed 5 Nov. 2025.

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