The first section offers links between history, gender and culture; the second discusses the narrative vis-a-vis the Mahabharata and the last deals with how, in time, the various commentaries (10th to 16th C) chose to interpret the theme and how four popular versions in Bengali, Brajbhasha, Kashmiri and a Dravidian language came to be. These versions reflected popular tastes and the dominant social norms. Thus, in the early 18th century version (ordained by the Mughal emperor Farrukhsiyar and rendered in Brajbhasha by poet Nawaz Kavishwar), it takes on a form which braids poetry with prose. Brajbhasha and Urdu are sister tongues of the Doab. So, when around 1806, one Mirza Qasim Ali translated the narrative into Urdu, its idiom, like the Braj version, also endorsed the social mores of the day - that of the Brahminical high culture, which since Kalidasa's time had viewed women as simple and docile creatures, indispensable as lovers and mothers of legitimate heirs. To this end, the Mahabharata version, in which Sakuntala sparkled as a free, forthright woman, was mutated. To destigmatise the errant king Dushyanta 'the divine curse' was resorted to. It was this that led to the loss of the signet ring and the king's memory. Divine intervention restores the king's memory and all ends well.
Thus the Sakuntala of Mahabharata, who gave the King a piece of her mind, went back to her apsara mother and brought up a hero of a son, gets lost in a maze of patriarchal and Brahminical ethics which sanction promiscuity in caste males but denies women selfhood. This Sakuntala of Kalidasa, who was further softened and feminised by the Braj, Avadhi and Urdu poets to suit an increasingly isolationist caste-system of the middle ages, proved to be an ideal icon of the 19th century romantics in Europe. In 1789 William Jones further purged the play of its erotic overtones and published a translation in English. It immediately won accolades from all those in Europe who, by then, were trying to understand the culture of the colonised in European terms. Later in the 19th century with the rise of imperialism and racism, the soft romantic play was to lose some of its appeal. But by then, the Indian nationalists and their European supporters (Sister Nivedita and Annie Besant) who opposed the colonial rule, but continued to support women's subordination by men in the name of tradition, were ready to hug the myth for building morals in the society.
The mutation of the Sakuntala narrative is an intriguing tale of a young girl's reduction, betrayal and subsequent rehabilitation as the mother of the only legitimate heir to the throne. This mirrors Indian women's gradual loss of freedom and equality over the centuries. All those who wish to go to the spiritual nerve-centre of the new conservatism would do well to read this essay. Its premonition of a death of liberal values as we have known it in India, may seem a bit exaggerated to many, but can we forget those recent images of ultra-right-wing goons vandalising cinema halls and burning paintings for restoring the purity of Indian womanhood?
