Looking at the Past: Refiguration of History in Girish Karnad’s The Dreams of Tipu Sultan

To review and revise history and to present it in an imaginative form is one of the challenges taken up by South-Asian historical theatre. However writing back to the empire poses many problems, the foremost of the danger of hegemonic re-construction which ultimately leads to an inversion of the power structure (through replacement or substitution) without making a genuine effort to engage with the colonial/western perspective along with its tools of erasure and overwriting. Such a text, ultimately written as a rebuttal, without trying to delve into the very process by which the colonial version of history is created, indirectly legitimizes its perspective. Taking Girish Karnad's The Dreams of Tipu Sultan I explore how South-Asian theatre not only deals with the politics of representation questioning euro-centric conceptions of objectivity and authenticity by decentering colonial version of history but also deconstructs historiography by challenging the dichotomy between fact and fiction and most importantly questioning the nature of historical truth itself.