Kitne Ramayan?

The decision of Delhi University to withdraw the essay ‘300 Ramayans’ from the list of prescribed history texts have yet again raised the hackles of many, who see the act as succumbing to the rabid right wing, hell bent on shoving down the myth of one people, one culture, to us diverse Indians.

Interestingly, the same people who otherwise had no sympathy to folk tales and traditions are swearing by their multiplicity and insist that those telling, writings, tales are equally, if not more, important than the Upper Casteist Valmiki Ramayana.

A side thread to this contrived fracas is the upliftment of the late author AK Ramanujan’s profile. While Ramanujan, who died in 1993, had made his career as a translator of works on Indian literature and culture for an American audience, the controversy has ensured that the defenders of plurality now hail this scholar – translator as the best thing to have happened to Indian culture, a litterateur par excellence, with some wires calling him an acclaimed historian!

Leaving the credentials of Ramanujan behind, while some apologists have claimed that Ramanujan deeply revered Ramayana, Ramanujan was a declared atheist. Even his relatively celebrated poem on the demise of River Vaigai dwelt on the socioeconomic importance of the River for Madurai rather than its religious significance.  The essay itself begins by introducing Hanuman as Rama’s henchman, something which is not used to denote the position of even the slave Bilal, to Muhammad, the Prophet.

Even if we disregard AKR’s intents as being immaterial to the present controversy, one cannot be indifferent to the impropriety of this essay being part of the History curriculum. 

Beginning with a relatively minor point on Ramayana itself being part of the History curriculum. While for us believers, there may nothing be out of place in reading essays on our epics as a part of History, it is indeed surprising that the brigades who have shrilly denounced these very epics as myths, now more shrilly declare their support for this essay as a part of history! Since when did a myth become history for these people?

Coming to the more important point of there being no original Ramayana: Valmiki has been introduced in our cultural records as being the first poet with the introductory lines of the Ramayana being the first poem and the Ramayana being the Adi-Grantha. While there have been numerous poets who have retold Rama’s story in their own tongues, all of them have singularly paid homage to Valmiki and most critically, none of them have claimed to be the Drishta, (one who saw as things were). Valmiki was the contemporary of Rama while others could only claim to be blessed with His divine Grace. So much so for the absence of original!

Different creations have different sensibilities. Well, none of them have Rama kidnapping Mandodari and Ravana attacking Ayodhya to save her! Of course, narratives and subtle details have changed. The story of Shabari’s berries, who we all delight in, wasn’t simply there in Valmiki’s Ramayana, having been introduced later in Padma Purana. Likewise, the story of Ahalya has been treated differently at different times. The base facts remain the same, Gautama cursed Ahalya and she was salvaged by His Grace. But the difference lies in presumption of her guilt. While in one version, Sita was simply kidnapped, in another version, she was not touched but taken with the soil beneath her feet while one other says that it was not Sita but her shadow which was kidnapped. But all of them do say that Sita was kidnapped. Otherwise, while Valmiki treated Rama as a super human with divine qualities, Tulsidas clearly saw Rama as God himself. 

The moot point is that while poets over the ages altered and embellished the narrative basis their own sensibilities and the prevailing social mores, the broad facts of the Ramayana remained the same. And rather than some obscure tribe having its own Sitayana, it was Valmiki himself who declares in his Ramayana, that the tale should have been more aptly named Sitayana.

Funnily, when there is so much congruence in the telling, the author seems to have concentrated on the divergences. So much so for those who proclaim: ‘We must learn to include rather than to exclude’.

While the well-meaning may really want to search for unity in diversity, the attempt to showcase fringe and obscure tellings as equivalent to the prime telling cannot be anything but mischievous. To say that Sita was Rama’s sister and that this version of the tale is as important as the works of Valmiki, Tulsi or Kamban is ridiculous and should be dismissed as a juvenile attempt to befool people. It is no accident that at their height of Ram Janmabhoomi Liberation Movement, the Marxist SAHMAT, wanted to hold enactments of the play ‘Kitne Ramayan’ across cities and towns in Uttar Pradesh. The motive of SAHMAT was not to educate the Indian populace on the plurality of Indian culture, it was simply to attack the premise of Rama as God. After all, seeing those Ramayanas, where Sita was Rama’s sister or Ravana’s wife or Lakshmana’s paramour, treated at par with the Manas or Ramayana could not have strengthened the faith of the common man in his God. 

Granted that there are numerous tellings of the Ramayana but each of them, written with belief in the God King has its base facts the same. Adherents to each of these versions are most of the time blissfully unaware that there are subtle differences in texts being followed and worshipped in other parts of the country or the country. Go to any part of India and within a 100 km radius, you will find a place where either Sita-Ram or the Pandavas are believed to have visited in course of their forest stay. Is it than any wonder that each part of the country has its own set of folk tales associated with Rama? Only, each of these people revere both the tale unlike what our progressives do.

For those who would claim that the beliefs are not that fragile to be shaken by a mere essay, should remember that over the centuries, singular texts have changed the course of religion – an outstanding poem Geeta Govinda became the cornerstone for worship at Krishna temples and the movie Jai Santoshi Maa, gave huge impetus to the worship of the Goddess all across North India. One would not be accused of hyperbole if he claims that introduction of such essays as prescribed texts, would only serve to further the secular agenda of questioning and weakening the position of Rama and Ramayana in the Hindu psyche. Of course, the Thai and Balinese versions treat Ramayana more differently. Thankfully, for them too, Rama and not Ravana is the God. More importantly yet again, like most of my fellow countrymen are oblivious of the Thai Ramayana, the common Thai believes that her Ramkien (of the 3 existing tellings) is her land's own tale, of her own Ayuthya and is not aware of any Indian Ramayana. That there are many tellings of Rama's story is not something which has been unknown to the devout, so why this sensationalism? Till the time these re-tellings are meant for and discussed with devotion, no one shall have any problem with any version. After all:

हरी अनंत हरी कथा अनंता, कही सुनाही बहु विधि सब संता (God is Infinte. So is His story. The pious speak and listen (to His story) in many different ways)

No University in its right mind anywhere in the world will use a text which talks about the life of Muhammad with reference to Rangila Rasool nor will it declare 'The Da Vinci Code' as a scholarly work. If these fringe works are treated for what they are, why should we Indians be apologetic about our prime cultural mores and look for authentication certificates for our beliefs and our tales from others, more so, from those Indians who write for foreign audiences? So why should we start bothering and questioning our epic simply because AKR or some other person for that matter decided to compare, say, Nina Paley's 'work' with the Valmiki Ramayana and claimed that it was the 301st Ramayana?

Na-Re Modi

That Modi is a polarizing figure is a self evident truth. What is not so clear is the reason this man has been demonized so much. Gujarat has had a history of ghastly communal riots and the carnage of 2002 still pales when compared to the 1969 Ahmedabad riots which were triggered by massacre of cows and temple priest’s alongwith attack on Rath Yatra. Even otherwise, more than a quarter of casualties in the riots were Hindus, clearly indicating that it was far, far from a much abused word ‘pogrom’ and with due respect to the unfortunate dead, our intelligentsia should study Rwanda, Cambodia, Yugoslavia or our own medieval and modern history (partition) to understand what the genocide or a pogrom means.

Still, the image of Modi as the ‘Hindu Hriday Samrat’ was justified to the extent that he was aggressive with regards to the cause of the riots and even otherwise, the aggressive campaign of the NGO –ECI brigade resulted in a consolidation of Nationalist forces behind Modi, so much so that even the Congress did not fight the election on the plank of riots. Very soon, however, it became amply clear that Modi had little sympathies for Hindutva, in spite of his life long career in the RSS. Not only were the VHP office bearers marginalized, very soon, people started finding themselves behind bars in riot related cases. Not only were the likes of Keshubhai Patel and Rana pushed to margins, erstwhile foot soldiers like Gordhan Zadaphia became sworn enemies of Modi. Modi’s impatience with a Hindutva agenda became all the more clear when, on his orders, municipal authorities demolished scores of temples but left mosques and dargahs untouched, after outbreak of Muslim violence in Vadodara. It is indeed a miracle, that the VHP, which had active units in each of Gujarat’s 10,000 odd towns and villages till a decade back, seems like a spent force today.

Yet, in spite of having marginalized the RSS and its affiliates, including the powerful Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, Modi won a spectacular mandate once again in 2007. This mandate indicated that the mass’s adoration of Modi had moved beyond his macho image to his development mantra. Today, with almost everyone signing paeans to Modi’s commitment to development, it would be churlish to deny that Modi has emerged as a formidable champion of developmental politics. To say that Gujaratis’ have always been industrious and that Modi has no role to play in development simply indicates an envious mindset for if nothing else, the ever-conscious of profits Gujarati would be more aware than you and me if Modi had indeed made a difference to their pursuit of prosperity.

Interestingly, in we look at the 2007 elections dispassionately, we will find that the elections were considered tough for him on account of the strident anti Modi position taken by the VHP, formation of the rebel BJP, by the dissents led by Gordhan Zadaphia and the presence of Uma Bharti’s Lok Janshakti, which managed to attract a significant number of sitting MLAs as candidates for the coming polls. However, as elections neared, Ashok Singhal declared that he had no differences with Modi and said VHP would campaign for Hindutva leaning candidates, Uma Bharti withdrew her candidates (though some still fought as independents) and silently, the RSS volunteers campaigned for Modi and Modi alone. Why did it happen? After suffering marginalization and insults for 4 years, it was probably a right time for the Sangh to show Modi that the latter was not indispensable and his dreams of ruling Gujarat hinged on the support of those he had been dismissing as the rustic cousins. However, nothing of this sort happened and Modi was blessed with Sangh support yet again. In all likelihood, the Sangh would have calculated that for a party demoralized with loss of power in 2004 General Elections and facing ideological confusion post Advani’s attempts to turn secular, the loss of Gujarat would have been a body blow to the morale of its activists. Maybe, there was some other commitment of Modi to ‘mend’ his way which became the deciding factor for Sangh to throw its weight behind the son who had wandered, rather than attempting a ‘cutting the nose to spite the face’ act.

To be fair to Modi, while the RSS, the VHP and numerous other Sangh Parivar affiliates continue to be marginalized in Gujarat, there had not been any open confrontation between his Government and others. That an open dissident like Dr Kanubhai Kalsaria still continues as a BJP MLA, probably would indicate that some sort of arrangement between Modi and the Sangh had been in place.

However, Modi’s antics in the last few weeks seem to indicate the limitations of such truces. Frankly, for an ambitious man like Modi, anything less than the Prime Ministership would be an affront to his own perception of his capabilities and indispensability and like his one time mentor LK Advani, Modi has attempted to turn a new leaf and be seen as a moderate, capable of winning acceptability from all sections of society. While this may or this may not fit in the Sangh’s scheme of things, which pushed the arch moderate Vajpayee to the center stage when he had been languishing on the margins for years, knowing well his proclivity to moderation, what certainly may not fit the Sangh’s worldview is his open defiance of the BJP Leadership. Ironically, it Modi becomes aggressively intolerant of the Sangh and more open in his defiance, he may still achieve what his Sadbhavna fast failed to – endorsement of the chattering classes. 

The media would like us to believe that Modi is immensely popular among the cadre while having limited appeal to voters outside Gujarat. While the latter may be true, considering that the BJP’s performance hasn’t really peaked where he campaigned, one wonders if the cadres will really be as enamored of Modi if more and more of them become aware that the Hindu Nationalist Modi took birth and died in 2002. The Modi we have today would probably be closest to a refined male version of Mrs Indira Gandhi – insecure, scheming, autocratic but resolute and strong – seen as a leader who delivers! For a Nation plagued with vapid leaders, a strong leader has its attractions. At the same time, one cannot discount the fact that for all her positive contributions, Indira stands heads and shoulders above all others in having succeeded in subverting the system and compromising our Constitution. Yet, for all her faults, Indira did not ditch the people she claimed she stood for. Till the very end, she remained steadfast to the people who stood by her and for those who stood for her. Here in Modi, we may be faced with a leader who cares little for those who adore him and certainly one, who has left those behind who stood for him, when it mattered the most.