This book deals with the interface between identity, culture and
literature. It aims at studying questions of cultural identity and
gender in Hindi plays of the 19th- and 20th- centuries and the interplay
of poetics and politics, as revealed in the work of several influential
playwrights. The book explores questions related to the ways in which
seven representative playwrights imagine India and its identity and the
ways, in which this concept is revealed in the "narratives of the
nation", its postcolonial contentions and the politics of identity, as
revealed in the production of various cultural discourses. The chapters
explore various aspects of the ongoing process of constructing and
narrating culture, gender, the nation and identity. There has been no
monograph on the questions of cultural identity in Hindi drama. This is
a pioneering project and a desideratum in the field of Hindi literature,
South Asian Studies, and broadly, in the study of theatre of India and
of South
Asian cultures and literatures.