© The Indian Express (P) Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna, and Species
By Ruth Vanita
Oxford University Press
268 pages
Rs 1,795
There is a certain constriction of vision, perhaps natural to the human condition, which makes it difficult to imagine that the questions that exercise us today may have also occupied those who lived a long time ago. To misquote L P Hartley, it often feels like the past is a foreign country, where they thought entirely differently from us.
Yet, as Ruth Vanita demonstrates in her new book, The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna and Species, a scrupulous reading of India’s ancient texts can reveal that there is a greater continuity in our moral and ethical preoccupations than many of us suspect.
In this book, Vanita, who also co-authored a seminal text on Indian queer history with Saleem Kidwai, Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History, tackles the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and how they debate questions of justice. She argues in the book that “the epics equip characters within the text, as well as readers or listeners, with intellectual tools to dismantle conventional ideas of difference”.
This is done through the copious quoting from the tales and tales-within-tales that populate the Indian epics, many aspects of which usually receive only the most perfunctory attention. For example, the well-known story of Amba/ Shikhandini and Bhishma is examined not only through the lens of revenge, gender, and sexuality, but is also used to raise questions about masculinity in the context of fatherhood, with the specific example of Draupada whose rage has a formative influence in shaping Shikhandini’s thirst for revenge.
Another example is the story of Ashtavakra and Disha: the former, a young ascetic, is sent to learn from Disha, an old woman, who sexually propositions him only to be rejected. By the end of the tale, however, Ashtavakra finds himself desiring her and the reader is left with questions about what drives desire and whether age and gender can determine who experiences it and who doesn’t.
It muddles certain stereotypes or values, such as old women cannot desire young men, but, at the same time, Vanita points out, it seemingly upholds others, such as Disha’s description of women as “innately disordered”, who “will destroy the family in their search fo sexual union”. Vanita’s approach ensures that rather than projecting feminist, anti-caste, or other “modern” values on to the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which they may or may not espouse, the book teases out their many complications — in character, plot, and philosophy. This gives fresh relevance to the ancient epics, bringing them intellectually closer to our contemporary era.
Explained Books appears every Saturday. It summarises the core argument of an important work of non-fiction.
