Sreemoyee Mukherjee, Roll No. 05.
“There is no evidence of a perfect world, a perfect man or a perfect family anywhere on earth. Perfection, be it Ram Rajya or Camelot, exists only in mythology. Yet everyone craves for it. This craving inspires art, establishes empires, sparks revolutions and motivates leaders.” Devdutt Pattanaik.
That myth influences culture is but obvious, but culture too influences mythology. Pattanaik points out how people outgrow mythology when it fails to respond to their cultural needs. So long as the Greeks believed in Charon, they placed copper coins for him in the mouth of the dead, today there are different funeral ceremonies spouted by new belief systems and new mythologies.
“Ever since colonial times, Hinduism has felt under siege, forced to explain itself using European templates, make itself more tangible, more concrete, more structured, more homogeneous, more historical, more geographical, less psychological, less emotional, to render itself as valid as the major religions of the Eurocentric world like Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The fallout of this pressure is the need to locate matters of faith in a particular spot. The timeless thus becomes time-bound and the universal becomes particular. What used to once be a matter of faith becomes a territorial war zone where courts now have to intervene.”
The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are the greatest epics of the Hindu belief system. While both have innumerous regional variants and folk retellings, Valmiki’s Ramayana is an epic poem of some 24,000 verses. There are numerous regional retellings of this text, which all together once formed an incoherent ‘Hindu itihasa’ or narrative of the past. Using a few selected portions, these epics have been used extensively in the creation of the Hindu promised land- The Ram Rajya, that is often at odds with the modern Indian State.
The idea of ram-rajya, ironically was first defined by Mahatma Gandhi who said, ‘By Ram Rajya I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean by Ram Rajya divine Raj or the Kingdom of God. For me, Rama and Rahim are one and the same deity. I acknowledge no other God but one God of truth and righteousness.’ Problematic in itself, this definition of a Ram Rajya is not what the BJP means. . Today, the top echelons of BJP espouses a Ram Rajya once described by Narendra Modi in an inauguration of a Hindu statue at Kanyakumari “Shri Ram was an ideal son, brother, husband friend and was a great king. Ayodhya was an ideal city and Ram Rajya was an ideal system.”
The concept of Ram Rajya like Ramayana is open to interpretation, but the Sangh Parivar, in a bid to bring coherence and unity to the nation of India promotes Ramayana, or their version of Ramayana all over India.
In the modern state of India, the idea of the Ram Rajya therefore is to historicise a certain version of hindu mythology, to look at it as actual verifiable precedence to today’s culture and thereby a ‘Golden Age’ to learn from and aspire to.
The Deputy Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Dinesh Sharma recently claimed:
“All of us know that Lord Ram returned from Lanka in Pushpak Vimaan. This proves that vimaan (aircaft) existed then. It is said Goddess Sita was born in a ghada (pitcher). At that point of time, some project of test tube baby existed,”
There is a constant need to establish the time of the epics as actual lived history of the ‘Hindu’ people, one uniform history that has been constructed through repeated cultural hegemony. This history-building began much before the construction of the two nation states in 1947, and in many ways has been the foundation of Hindu extremism, (as much as our prime minister claims it doesnt exist.)
While there are many aspects of this ram rajya that can be studied, I am in particular interested in something Partha Chatterjee, in his book The Nation and its Fragments, writes as the ‘Woman Question.’ and the role of women as keepers of the hearth or home versus the world, or Bahir. They become, in the material vs spiritual debate between the west and the east, the keepers of the spiritual and preservers of tradition and culture. However, given that there never was a homogenous India or its culture, what was the national ideal of the Indian woman?
While the RSS refuses to let women into their organisation, they did allow the formation of a women’s wing under Laxmibai Kelkar that draws up three fundamental roles women have under:
- Matrutva- universal motherhood
- Kartrutva- efficiency and social activism
- Netrutiva- Leadership
RSS’ in their manifesto and resources write of
Woman as [sic] a common bond of affection and attachment in a family, in her capacity as a daughter, a sister, a wife and a mother. ..she can get correct and coordinating outlook regarding her duties towards the family and society and create a deep sense of devotion and pride for nation, religion and culture. With this motive in mind Rashtra Sevika Samiti started functioning.
Enlightened motherhood is a cherished ideal of Hindu woman […]A Hindu woman is an eternal mother a symbol of love, sacrifice, dedication, fearlessness, sanctity and devotion.
The epic, in any culture, stands in for a template for the ideal. The characters of the epic embody qualities one must emulate, vices one must wash away, roles one must aspire to. Would Sita, the goddess of earth, the wife of Rama and the central heroine of the Ramayana therefore have been the ideal indian woman according to these requisites? What I found was, the representation and interpretation of her character has changed so drastically over time, that what ‘Sita-like’ once meant, necessarily would not in the modern context, but she still would symbolise the ideal Indian woman.
In a way, this paper attempts to trace how one particular narrative of Ramayana persists in the Indian psyche, and in this, certain ideas have been emphasised, while others deleted to create a hegemonic idea of the ideal nation. In this ideal nation, the ‘Sita’ figure stands for the ideal Indian woman.
This is actually seen in national manifestos and the rhetoric of thinkers espousing one homogenous Indian identity on the basis of a homogenised version of the Ramayana/ Mahabharata. This tendency of preferring one retelling of mythology to another to create a template for one kind of Indian woman- is reflective ofcourse of the erasure and assimilation of the many opposing and heterogenous identities of an ‘ideal’ woman found in different parts of the subcontinent.
How we give precedence to one identity or retelling, thereby create one template of who ‘Sita’ ergo, an ideal woman is how we essentially have constructed a national identity of the Indian woman, by erasing the amalgamation of all regional, diverse identities
Who is Sita then?
Swami Vivekananda once wrote:
“This is the great, ancient epic of India. Rama and Sita are the ideals of the Indian nation. All children, especially girls, worship Sita. The height of a woman’s ambition is to be like Sita, the pure, the devoted, the all-suffering! When you study these characters, you can at once find out how different is the ideal in India from that of the West. For the race, Sita stands as the ideal of suffering…Sita is typical of India — the idealised India…Sita is the name in India for everything that is good, pure and holy — everything that in woman we call womanly. If a priest has to bless a woman he says, “Be Sita!” If he blesses a child, he says “Be Sita!” They are all children of Sita, and are struggling to be Sita, the patient, the all-suffering, the ever-faithful, the ever-pure wife. Through all this suffering she experiences, there is not one harsh word against Rama. She takes it as her own duty, and performs her own part in it. Think of the terrible injustice of her being exiled to the forest! But Sita knows no bitterness. That is, again, the Indian ideal.”
This homogenised retelling also erases all that is inconvenient in the narrative of nation building, aspects that hold men to account for their chastity as strongly as women, aspects that demonstrate that marriage-tests were not tests for strength but equality.
For instance, Sita is known as the ideal wife and everyone knows of her Gandharva marriage ritual of a Swayamvar where Ram picked up and strung a bow that was meant to be impossible to lift. This is seen as a demonstration of Ram’s strength and worthiness over other men- thereby a testament to his masculine strength and worthiness.
The Valmiki retelling of the Ramayana doesn’t include a certain incident that helps one completely reorient the purpose of the Swayamvar and bow-trial.
In a few folk versions, Sita casually lifts the bow that no-one else could move with her left hand while cleaning the armory. On seeing that, her father Janaka, declared that only someone who could match her feat could deserve her hand in marriage. It is a test of equality with his wife-to-be, not a match against other men’s strength.
Likewise, the idea of female chastity is over-emphasises repeatedly in the epic retellings that have dominated the majoritarian narrative. However, male chastity too were held in great account in regional interpretations and retellings.
The Lakshmanrekha has received great attention as a boundary that restricts female chastity. There is however, the Vibhandaka Rekha, that was drawn around Vibhandaka’s son to prevent any woman from entering in his absence. Rishyashringa is seduced by Dasharatha’s first daughter Shanta and he steps out of the boundary- thereby triggering a chain of events that ultimately gave Dasharatha his four sons and heir to Ayodhya’s throne.
Male celibacy was seen as a disruption of culture and social norm in itself, therefore to break it would be ideal. This is the thought process that ultimately leads to the importance the Lakshman Rekha has in the popular Ramayana narrative.
However, male chastity was once seen of equal import, and infact, Lakshman is said to have done the first chastity-test by fire. This story is found in the Bagiya Ramayana, a folk version of the Baiga tribes of central India:
During their exile, an apsara called Indrakamini is attracted by Lakshman’s beauty and tries to malign him when he rejects her. She leaves a hair of her head on his shoulder, which Sita on finding taunts his vow of chastity. Lakshman, affronted, jumps into the bonfire they had made to prove that he was still true to his wife.
To imagine that men should have to give a test of chastity however is uncomfortable to the patriarchal narration, which is why Sita’s agnipariksha gets more popularity than Lakshman’s- which is only seen in a few folk tribal recollections that hold male and female chastity in equal regard.
There is therefore, a deliberate deletion and preference of certain types of behaviours and ideas that uphold a certain patriarchal notion of the ideal womanhood. These hegemonic narratives delete the very fluid notion of mythology that allows multiple cultures and stories to exist side by side, as with different belief systems.
The figure of Sita is ofcourse polymorphous in the regional retellings- but even the hegemonic master-text, the Valmiki’s Ramayana, has been reinterpreted overtime to denote a Sita that kept up with the expectations from women over time.
For example, the interpretation of Sita’s ‘Agnipariksha’ or trial by fire and what it signified has changed over time pretty radically. What was once seen as just, righteous began to be seen as terribly sexist with the rise of feminist discourse. The obedient sita figure became more authoritative- but only the means changed- not the end.
Manisha Roy, in a rather disturbing account of how Bengali women were expected to function, once wrote:
“In fact in Bengal when a Sita, who is considered one of the most ideal of Indian women because she was a faithful tolerant and sacrificing wife, was a princess married to Rama the great hero of the epic the Ramayana. Sita was beautiful, pious and devoted to her husband. Her love and devotion to Rama was tested many times. After she was abducted by the demon king Ravana, Rama did not wish to accept her back as his wife until she proved her chastity by standing in fire. The fire could not burn her because a chaste woman has supernatural power. Later, when the pregnant Sita had been exiled to the forest because Rama had succumbed to his subjects suspicions about her chastity, she withstood all such false allegations without protest. Although she grew old in banishment she continued to love her husband and abide by his judgement. Thus Sita was the ideal wife who was supposed to have reached the heights of conjugal love consisting of unconditional obedience, self sacrificing love and tolerance. The ideal wife must accept her husband wishes and remain faithful and devoted to him irrespective of his behaviour.”
In contrast, a paper titled ‘Reimagining Sita as a woman of substance’ the author interprets the standing in fire differently. She sees it as a form of defiance against the injustice Ram has done in not believing in her chastity.
“The agnipravesha is an act of fiery protest – of defiance. The act of a woman of dignity refusing to be humiliated and forced to live her life on others’ terms, of a woman who refuses to be shamed for being a woman, a woman who refuses to see herself as just a female body – a female body that could be defiled by the mere touch of a man other than her husband.
Narada makes it absolutely clear that she entered fire because she was furious – amrshyamānā. “Tam uvāca tato ramah parusham janasamsadi, amrshyamānā sa sītā viveśa jvalanam satī.” “Rama told such cruel words to Sita in the presence of all those people and she, in fury, entered the burning fire,” Narada tells Valmiki.”
While the earlier narratives of the Ramayana saw Sita as helpless, victimised and in need of saving, the later interpretations started creating this wilfully subjugated figure.
In Devdutt Pattanaik’s edition, Sita could have escaped Ravana’s clutches long ago- but did not because it was Ram’s duty to save her- and she wished for nothing more than Ram’s fulfilment of his roles.
Patriarchy once claimed that women were not strong enough to save themselves, now it claims that women are powerful but benevolent. They choose to let the men struggle and attain victories in their name because their husband’s glory is their glory.
It somehow makes women compliant with their subjugation using a strange rhetoric of there being wisdom in defeat.
In short, now we are so strong that we do not need to save ourselves.
Like all epics that were originally orally transmitted, infact, in line with the very idea of a myth- the Ramayana is not a single text, or even multiple texts. It is a belief, a tradition, a subjective truth, a thought materialized, ritualized and celebrated through narrations, songs, dances, sculptures, plays, paintings and puppets across South Asia.
This paper seeks to be one such retelling that studies the power of mythology to be interpreted and wielded as history. Especially on a piece as fragmentary and diverse as the Ramayana, where there is a clear hegemony of one narrative that overrides all others. It tries to bring out this hegemonic telling of Ramayana, one that seeks archaeological proof of the Ram Janma Bhoomi, that insists on the existence of a historical king called Ram creates an implausible female figure called Sita. Upholding the femininity embodied by Sita is the ultimate purpose of the woman in Ramrajya.
As I write, we are collectively careening towards a hindu rashtra envisioned by a few myopic upper-caste hindu brahmins from the nation’s cowbelt. To study mythmaking and history now becomes more important than ever.
There has been a profusion of work done on the field of understanding hindu mythology, I will not presume to claim any of my thoughts to be a hundred percent original, neither is my research thorough enough to stand alone without pillars of research done by scholars over ages.
I only have attempted to find one pattern among many- to observe one trend in the mythological web that constantly resists attempts to be pinned down as history.
Bibliography
Chatterjee, Partha Nation and Its Fragments, (New Jersey, Princeton University Press 1993, ) Chapter 6.
Lal, Manjula In Search Of Ram Rajya (Delhi, Redomania 2017)
Pattanaik, Devdutt Myth=Mythia, Decoding Hindu Mythology (Delhi, Penguin 2006)
Pattanaik Devdutt Sita:An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana (Delhi, Penguin 2009)
Roy, Manisha Bengali Women (University of Chicago Press, 2010)
Wikisource contributors, “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 4/Lectures and Discourses/The Ramayana,” Wikisource ,
History, Literature, Criticism 