. A Dive into the Past through New Historicist Perspective: Reading Habib Tanvir’s Agra Bazaar

Abstract

Habib Tanvir’s Agra Bazaar is a pioneer text that revolutionized Indian theatre, taking it towards People’s theatre, where commoners were given prominence. This paper aims to foreground the milieu of the text and compare the laymen image of the Mughal Agra bazaars to the marketplace conditions in the declining phase of the Mughal Empire, as presented by Tanvir. The corruption, poverty, lawlessness and an overall decaying social framework of the then society has been discussed. The reforms aimed at, are two-dimensional, the text’s content aims to reform the society, while the form of the play aims to reform Indian theatre.The linguistic transitions in society, as mentioned in the play, have also been discussed.The paper also attempts to re-read the text in the light of New Historicism, which aims at parallel reading of Literature and History and gives prominence to the context.