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Journalism of Courage
In “the history and literature of religions, few stories have been told as many different times in as many different ways as the story of Rama,” says Frank E. Reynolds of the Yale Divinity School in his comprehensive but controversial account of the various Ramayanas.
Along the same lines, Robert Goldman, in conversation with indianexpress.com, compares the epic to tales of folklore like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Goldman, a professor of Sanskrit at University of Berkley, who is credited with the foremost English translation of the Ramayana, says that unlike Homer’s works, which are mostly only studied as classics, the story of Ram “lives in the mind of every Indian”.
According to Reynolds, for at least 2,000 years, various versions of the Ramayana have been told in India and Sri Lanka; for over 1,000 years in Central and Southeast Asia; and now increasingly in the West as well.
Elaborating on its significance, he writes that “segments of the story have been presented in order to evoke religious devotion, to glorify royal sponsors (often in direct opposition to other royal competitors), to inculcate moral values, to express and cultivate aesthetic sensitivities, and perhaps most of all simply to provide popular entertainment”.
The earliest recorded version of the Ramayana is believed to be a poem written by the sage Valmiki in the eighth century BC. However, as Goldman points out, most sources say Valmiki himself never claimed to be the primary source of the text, instead writing that he was told the story by another sage, Narada.
Goldman, however, adds that for most people, the version written by the saint Tulsidas in the 16th century is the real Ramayana, a text that significantly varies from Valmiki’s.
Tulsidas’s Ramayana, written in Awadhi long with Kambar’s 12th century Tamil version and Krittibasa’s 15th century Bengali text, enjoy greater popularity, primarily because those languages, unlike Sanskrit, were and continue to be widely spoken in India.
The Ramayana has also been retold in over a dozen other languages, a sign of the differing value sets and historical contexts they are read in.
For example, as Reynolds points out, the version of the Ramayana in Jain scriptures written in the Prakrit and Sanskrit language, says Brahmins maligned Ravan, turning him into a villain. In folk traditions of Kannada and Telugu, Sita is portrayed as Ravan’s daughter and is the epic’s central character.
The Ramayana, according to Anand Neelakantan, author of Asura and the newly released Nala Damayanti, has long been appropriated in politics across South Asia. Neelakantan told indianexpress.com, that while the epic was initially conceived as a darshana or a worldview, it was politicised over time to suit the interests of the individual leaders.
One of the earliest kings to co-opt the epic was King Bhoja, who ruled the kingdom of Dhar from 1010 to 1055. Bhoja identified himself with Ram. His version of Ramayana, called Bhojaprabandh, said he was an incarnation of Ram and his kingdom the site of Ayodhya. This allowed him to project his legitimacy before the people.
Another royal family that used Ramayana to increase their political influence was the Chola dynasty (907–1279), also renowned for supporting the arts and literature. According to some accounts, the Cholas commissioned a different version of the Ramayana, written by Tamil poet Kampan (or Kambar) known as the Kampa Ramayana.
Another dynasty to use the Ramayana to support its rule in India was the Mughal Empire. The story resonated particularly with the Mughal emperor Akbar, who even constructed a temple devoted to Ram in Ajmer as a sign of his adoration of the tale. To the more critical historians, Akbar’s construction of the Ram temple was a political ploy, designed to evoke the support of his Hindu subjects. For example, Sheldon Pollock, a professor at the University of Columbia, wrote in his paper The Ramayana and Political Imagination in India, that while Indian political leaders such as Shivaji used the Ramayana to portray Muslims as “demons in the guise of men,” the Mughals too tried to “neutralize by appropriation,” projecting Akbar as Ram.
The most distinct difference between the Brahmanical interpretations of the Ramayana of the Hindi heartland of North India on the one hand and that of certain other communities lies in their portrayals of Ram and Ravan. Neelakantan, who grew up in Kerala, says that in temples he frequented as a child, Ravan was always portrayed as a grey character, a noble leader and wizened intellectual, who possessed many redeeming qualities that were omitted from his north Indian characterisation.
Dinesh Chandra Sen, a researcher of Bengali folklore, goes a step further. He wrote that Ravan’s acts of meditative discipline “show his high character and a majestic command over passions, worthy of a sage, which unmistakably prove him to be the real hero of the Dravidian legend”.
These different depictions of Ravan were heavily influenced by ancient Tamil and Jain versions of the story, but their uses in modern north-south politics arguably begin with E V Ramasami (EVR), the father of Dravidian movement.
In August 1956, EVR led his followers in burning images of Ram at the Madras Marina. According to Paula Richman’s The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia, this symbolic act would be the opposite of the conclusion of North Indian Ramayana performances, in which images of the epic’s villain, Ravan, are set ablaze as delighted onlookers watch.
EVR dismissed Ram as “weak and hypocritical, deserving only of scorn”, and believed Ravan to be the true protagonist of the epic. But EVR’s iconoclastic reading was more than just another interpretation of a sacred book. It served as the focal point of his crusade against Brahmanical Hinduism.
“The Ramayana is a symbol of the oppression of the South by the North. The story of Rama and Ravana is a metaphor for the conflict between the two regions,” he wrote.
This “championing of fervent Dravidian separatism,” according to Richman, must be understood in the pan-Indian context of the time, wherein various regional and religious groups were clamouring to define themselves as separate entities, deserving of their own unique political recognition.
Thus, Richman says, “in much the same way that other South Asians sought, for example, the creation of a separate Islamic state (Pakistan), EVR desired a separate Tamil state and identity for South Indians, linking the articulation of that identity with a critique of the Ramayana.”
Like EVR, politicians and political parties across India have often invoked the Ramayana for political gains. Arguably, the one party that has made the biggest claim to Ram’s legacy is the BJP.
In 1990, the BJP organised the wildly controversial Rath Yatra, a march to Ayodhya intended to build a temple dedicated to Ram. The mood of the march was evident at Mandasaur, a small town in Madhya Pradesh, where late BJP leaders Pramod Mahajan and LK Advani asked the Muslims of the area to “either have faith in Lord Ram or leave the country”.
In Religious Symbols and Political Mobilisation: The Agitation for a Mandir at Ayodhya, historian K N Panikkar says the BJP’s strategy in using Ramayana for political gains was by “a sustained ideological propaganda through print and visual media to implant the image of an angry Ram in popular mind.”
Unlike more traditional depictions, the BJP’s Ram is a martial figure, “pulling his bow string, the arrow poised to annihilate”.
According to Panikkar, the suggestion inherent in this transformation was clear: “Rama is responding to the specific moment, the loss of the janmabhoomi and involved in a fight to retain it.”
The strategy was immensely successful. In the 1991 general elections, the BJP doubled its vote percentage from 1989, making significant gains in even states like Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Assam.
However, despite electoral gains, the BJP’s version of Ram as a just leader and loyal husband has been questioned by politicians, academics and artists alike, often triggering controversy.
The most prevalent criticism of Tulsidas’s Ramayana is its depiction of women, particularly Sita and Ravan’s sister Surpanakha.
The main point of contention, according to such critiques, is Ram taunting and subsequently mutilating Surpanakha in a forest, leading Ravan to abduct Sita in retaliation. Moreover, Ram’s eventual decision to banish Sita from Ayodhya, despite knowing that she had remained faithful to him in captivity, is seen as an act of misogyny and a dismissal of her rights. As BR Ambedkar wrote in Riddles in Hinduism, “the life of Sita simply did not count. What counted was his (Ram’s) own personal name and fame.”
That being said, according to Goldman, it must also be noted that in several versions of the Ramayana, Sita was not banished, with the story ending after the couple’s return to Ayodhya. However, according to the Valmiki and Tulsidas versions that serve as the basis for most contemporary retellings of the epic, Sita’s expulsion from Ayodhya is a part of the narrative, justified by the people’s suspicions of her sexual purity.
Kumar’s article, much like a film called Sita Sings the Blues, was widely criticised for its unfavourable portrayal of Ram. In The Mutilation of Surpanakha, Kathleen M Erndl writes that criticism or satire involving religious figures is just as inflammatory in Hinduism as it is in Christianity and Islam. Referring to the public outrage against Kumar, she wrote that Rama’s “status as a moral exemplar is so central to Indian culture that to impugn his motives has become essentially an act of heresy”.
Erndl further notes that the entire tradition of Ramayana – even if one were to excuse Ram’s treatment of Sita – fortifies notions of “good” and “bad” women. This classification, she argues, is best represented by the portrayal of Surpanakha. Unlike Sita, who is seen as an exemplar of the “good” (pure, auspicious, and subordinate), Surpanakha is portrayed as being deserving of her grisly fate, largely because of her status as a freely wandering woman of the jungle, unconstrained by any loyalty to a husband, father or son.
Towards that end, Erndl writes it is “revealing that Rama uses Sita as the excuse for Surpanakha’s mutilation: the “bad woman” is punished in order to protect the “good woman”, or perhaps to serve as an example of what would happen to the ”good woman” if she decided to go “bad” for the division of women into two types in fact reflects a basic mistrust of all women.”
However, Sita’s depiction in Ramayana is not absolute. In some texts, according to Neelakantan, she has more agency, with her choices driving the unfolding of the story. For example, he states that it was Sita’s decision to follow Ram into the jungle, her decision to cross the line drawn by Lakshman, and, in some versions of the story, she is the one to have killed Ravan.
Additionally, Goldman justifies Ram’s decision to banish Sita, noting that although it may seem hard to comprehend by today’s moral standards, it was befitting of his characterisation as a “very human hero”, who adhered completely to the rules of dharma. He states that unlike in the Mahabharata, which depicted a battle for succession, Ram was not interested in the politics of kingship, and banished Sita not for personal gain but for the good of the kingdom.
In Forest of Enchantments, a sweeping narrative of the Ramayana from Sita’s perspective, author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni even refers to the anguish Ram felt at having to send Sita away, writing that he ruled with a statue of her by his side and never took another wife. The book does not completely justify his actions though, with Sita asking him what message they would send to other men whose wives committed retractions, real or otherwise.
In Divakaruni’s account of the tale’s ending, Sita, who didn’t want to set impossible standards for the women of Ayodhya, refused to endure another trial by fire, choosing instead to be swallowed by the earth. Explaining her decision, Sita, according to Divakaruni, says, “…because if I do what you demand, society will use my action forever to judge other women. Even when they aren’t guilty, the burden of proving their innocence will fall on them. And society will say, why not? Even Queen Sita went through it. I can’t do that to them.”
Indian poet A K Ramanujan once famously said that no one in India ever reads the Ramayana for the first time. One can perhaps add to that sentiment by claiming that no one in India reads the Ramayana – passed down for centuries by grandparents, teachers, authors, kings and politicians – the same way.
