The prince, the king and the queen of hearts: desire versus discipline in Tagore’s Land of Cards

Tasher Desh (Land of Cards), a popular serio-comic burlesque of Rabindranath Tagore, was written and staged in 1933 –a critical political moment of colonial history. The play opens with the overseas adventure of a heroic prince who swims to a dystopian wonderland after an accidental shipwreck. The inhabitants of this strange island wear no faces, only masks, serving as minions of a rigid card kingdom—Clubs, Spades, Hearts, and Diamonds. This paper explores the tussle between the unyielding discipline (niyam) of the card-land and the boisterous desire (icche) of the outlandish prince who emerges as a catalyst for change, sparking a collective uprising against the oppressive order. A psychedelic fantasy, Tasher Desh critiques the caste rules of Hinduism, embedded in myriad intricacies of its ritual purity and ranked order. Moving forward in time, this paper examines two choreographies (1991 and 1999) by feminist choreographer, Manjusri Chaki-Sircar who staged it as a performance of resistance against the Brahminic patriarchy. The paper concludes with a reading of the 2013 cinematic adaptation of Tasher Desh by Q, a visually charged fantasy steeped in erotic imagery that constructs a counter-narrative to the dominant cultural and sexual politics of the nation.