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@article{202349,
        author = {Sri Panchadarla Appala Konda},
        title = {The Fragmented Goddess: Female Identity and Embodied Resistance in Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {12},
        pages = {6997-6999},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=202349},
        abstract = {Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana (1971) employs Indian myth and folk theatre to interrogate the Cartesian mind-body binary through the figure of Padmini. This article argues that Padmini’s pursuit of “completeness” constitutes an embodied form of resistance against the patriarchal regulation of female desire. Drawing on Indian feminist thought and performance theory, the study examines how Karnad’s dramaturgy — masks, dolls, the Bhagavata — creates a critical distance that enables transgressive female agency to be staged. Padmini’s choices, including her final act of sati, are reinterpreted not as moral failure but as a radical refusal to inhabit a culturally mandated fragmented self. The paper concludes that Karnad transforms the pativrata discourse from within, positioning female identity as performative, desiring, and ultimately uncontainable by traditional mythic structures.},
        keywords = {Girish Karnad; Hayavadana; Padmini; Female Identity; Resistance; Body Politics; Indian Feminism; Folk Theatre; Myth},
        month = {May},
        }