রবীন্দ্রনাথের ‘রক্তকরবী’ : মার্কসীয় শ্রেণিচেতনা, গ্রামসীয় হেজিমনি ও রণজিৎ গুহর সাবঅল্টার্ন ইতিহাস চেতনার আলোকে নিন্মবর্গীয় পুনঃপাঠ / Rabindranath Tagore's 'Raktakarabi': A Rereading of the Lower Class in the Light of Marxist Class Consciousness, Gramscian

Abstract

This study offers a subaltern reinterpretation of Rabindranath Tagore’s Raktakarabi (Red Oleanders, 1916) by employing the theoretical frameworks of Marxist class consciousness, Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony, and Ranajit Guha’s subaltern historiography. The central objective of the research is to re-examine the dramatic space of Yakshapuri as a hierarchically organized production regime in which the mine-centered economic structure regulates the relationships between labour, capital, and political authority. The paper argues that the play should not be read merely as an aesthetic critique of mechanized modernity; rather, it constructs a complex dramatic discourse that reveals the dynamics of exploitative domination, ideological control, and the suppressed resistance of subordinate social groups.

           Drawing upon Karl Marx’s theories of the alienation of labour and commodity fetishism, the study interprets the mining economy of Yakshapuri as a system that estranges workers from the process and meaning of production while simultaneously transforming gold into a fetishized object that legitimizes authoritarian power. At the same time, Antonio Gramsci’s notion of cultural hegemony provides a critical framework for understanding how ideological and cultural institutions normalize domination and inhibit the emergence of collective class consciousness among the oppressed. Within such a hegemonic order, subaltern voices remain largely marginalized, reflecting Ranajit Guha’s argument that elite-centered historical narratives frequently obscure the political agency and experiential realities of subordinate groups.

           Within this framework, the character of Nandini appears as a disruptive and transformative presence within the dramatic structure. Interpreted as a Gramscian “organic intellectual,” she articulates an alternative ethical and affective language grounded in life, love, and freedom, gradually awakening latent subaltern consciousness and exposing the moral crisis embedded in the king’s authoritarian regime. Moreover, the play’s symbolic devices - its songs, silences, and dramatic imagery - are interpreted as coded forms of subaltern expression and resistance. Ultimately, the study demonstrates that Raktakarabi operates simultaneously on aesthetic and political planes, dramatizing tensions between capital and labour, power and resistance, and the persistent human aspiration for liberation within modernity.