Theatre functioned as an archive of South Asia’s inter-lingual fluidity, with itinerant troupes bridging urban and rural audiences, print and oral traditions, and elite and subaltern aesthetics. By tracing the entangled histories of Marathi and Kannada professional theatre (1840s–1930s), I argue that theatre was a critical site for redefining cultural authority, linguistic identity, and social power in a caste-segmented, polyglot society adapting to print’s normative influence.
Marathi and Kannada theatre evolved in interconnected yet distinct ways. From the 1840s, itinerant natak mandalis institutionalized “bookish” drama, marginalizing pauranik khel and farce while appropriating lower-caste oral traditions to align Marathi performance with emerging cultural elites. In contrast, Kannada theatre—developing across Belgaum, Dharwad, and Bijapur (Bombay Presidency) and Bellary (Madras Presidency)—drew on Brahmin learning and subaltern traditions to challenge Marathi dominance. Figures like Shantakavi played a key role, even as caste and intra-community struggles shaped Kannada theatre’s role in linguistic nationalism. However, unlike Marathi theatre, which became emblematic of middle-class identity, Kannada theatre did not attain similar centrality.
By analyzing play texts, memoirs, and theatre journals, I show how debates on music, “realism,” and women’s presence onstage became markers of caste and class respectability. This talk challenges postcolonial narratives of linguistic modernity, foregrounding theatre’s contested role in shaping South Asia’s overlapping cultural geographies.
