Cultural Conflicts and Individualism in the works of Vijay Tendulkar and Badal Sircar

Abstract

This study investigates the nuanced relationship between cultural conflict and the affirmation of individualism in the dramatic oeuvre of Vijay Tendulkar and Badal Sircar, two pivotal architects of modern Indian theatre. Adopting a comparative framework, the research traces how both playwrights expose the contradictions of prevailing socio-political orders, subvert patriarchal dictates, and interrogate inherited cultural precepts, all while championing the emergence of the self. The study explores Tendulkar's psychological realism and Sircar's experimental approach to comprehend their distinctive methods of presenting existential crises, ethical ruptures, and public sphere hypocrisy. Employing a combination of thematic inquiry and close reading, the analysis situates their production within expansive postcolonial and socio-cultural discourses. The results reveal that, although each dramatist frames individualism as a force of insubordination, the techniques they deploy diverge in relation to the specific regional, ideological, and performance traditions they engage. The research thus advances ongoing scholarship in Indian theatre and offers refined understandings of the cultural narratives that have conditioned post-independence processes of identity constitution.