Literature, Law, And the Politics of Space: Property, Body, And Cultural Rights in Contemporary Indian Drama

Abstract

Law and literature are regarded as separate subjects; one orders behaviour while the other speaks about human experience by means of narrative and dramatic images. But modern Indian drama regularly illustrates that law too has a spatial, bodily, cultural and affective aspect as well. This conceptual paper discusses the politics of space in Silence! The Court in Session by Vijay Tendulkar. Arguing the opposite, the Court Is in Session, Tara by Mahesh Dattani and Harvest by Manjula Padmanabhan have laid claim to bodies, identities, relationship and rights in the theatrical space. The study draws on existing theoretical engagements of Henri Lefebvre in his theory of the production of space, Michel Foucault in his investigation of discipline and biopower, Edward W. Soja in his notion of spatial justice, Homi K. Bhabha in his analysis of cultural negotiation, and recent research on vernacular rights cultures in the development of spatial jurisprudence as an interpretive framework. The paper compares these three institutional spaces—courtroom, domestic-medical room and the technologized apartment—and suggests that they constitute three regimes of power: institutional judgment, familial-medical regulation, and corporate commodification. The analysis also reveals an argument that goes beyond the material act of owning property, in terms of claims made over bodies, mobility, identity, and cultural belonging. Indian drama is a battleground that becomes crucial for formal law and lived rights to meet one another and for revealing the geographies of injustice, dignity and cultural identity.