Ramayana is a curiously modern book, because it deals with consent. Both male and female. Shurpanakha, a ‘demon’ woman, wants to have intimacy with Ram, against his consent, but she is shoved away, unfortunately with resort to violence.
Ravan, Shurpanakha’s brother, wants to have intimacy with Sita against her consent. A curse prevents him from having his way, so he seeks to compel her consent by abduction and intimidation.
In both cases, the consequences of these actions are devastating: The end of Ram’s conjugal bliss and the destruction of the golden city of Lanka. Thus the dangers of desire (Buddhist doctrine), and the consequences of actions (karmic doctrine) were presented to the common folk by storytellers and sages.
In modern times, there is a popular trend to see both Shurpanakha and Ravana is a sympathetic light. This is the result of modern thinking, which always finds fault with traditional thinking, as well as the result of postmodern thinking, which always finds fault with those in power. Since Ramayana extols the virtues of Ram, protector of sages, he is power, and so the privileged elite, and so the problem!
Ever since Ram became the mascot of hardline Hindutva political ideology, its opponents feel the urge to find faults in Ram, like lawyers in a courtroom. He has been transformed into everything from an Aryan imperialist to a patron of Brahmin patriarchy. Such is the power of the Ramayana, an epic that has shaped Indian culture for 2,000 years.
How we view Ram has changed over time
In traditional narratives, however, Ram was seen differently. For Hindus, he was the ‘avatar’ of Vishnu, who restores dharma on earth, by following the rules even at cost of personal happiness, which earns him the title of maryada purushottam (man of honour).
Later, in the Bhakti period, he embodied God itself, one who is so perfect that even his violence bestows grace. For Buddhists, he was a ‘bodhisattva’, which is why Buddhist monarchs of Myanmar and Thailand retold his tale in their courts.
For Jains, he was a ‘baladeva’, one of 63 great heroes who appear in every age, known for his pacificism and his love for his brother, Lakshmana, the ‘vasudeva’. The unsavoury or problematic episodes of the Ramayana were never denied. They evoked confusion and wonder, not condemnation – a mystery that defied simple explanation.
Like the story of Buddha, the story of Ram took the idea of dharma to every corner of India and beyond. Buddhist dharma (dhamma ) was more monastic. Hindu dharma, embodied in Ram, was more worldly. Ram had to function as a responsible and accountable householder, but had to function emotionally as a detached hermit.
Where in India did Ramayana take place?
The oldest manuscripts of the Ramayana reveal a very North Indian ecosystem – stretching from the Ganga river basin to the Sal forests of Central India, not even crossing the Vindhyas. Ravana’s Lanka is full of Sal trees, found only in Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Odisha, where tribes still retains memory of Ravana.
Our popular understanding of Ramayana, which locates Kishkinda in the Deccan and Lanka in Sri Lanka emerged later, as the epic fired the imagination of Chalukyan and Chola kings, between the 8th and 10th centuries.
Ramayana art, carved on temple walls, sponsored by kings appears only after 5th century – first north of the Vindhyas, in the Malwa region, and then later in Deccan regions.
After this period, we increasingly find the retelling of Ramayana in local languages – Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Odia, Bengali, Assamese. This gives rise to paintings, puppetry, songs and theatre based on the epic, an indicator of its popularity as well as the desire to make it accessible to all.
Simultaneously, pilgrim sites linked to the Ramayana began appearing across India, right from the Himalayan foothills, where Ram went to atone for the crime of killing a Brahmin (Ravana), to the city of Mumbai, where Ram shot an arrow into the earth and created the Banganga tank to quench Sita’s thirst.
Today, while the site of Ram’s birth is undisputedly located in Ayodhya, the site of Hanuman’s birth and Jatayu’s death is heavily contested. Is it in Maharashtra, Karnataka, or further south? Matters of faith cannot be resolved rationally – they are enforced through power and violence.
Why do we have many versions of the Ramayana?
The Hindi Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, composed by the 16th century, much later than southern and eastern regional retellings, dominates the Ramayana scene today. This is the result of the highly popular TV series by Ramanand Sagar on Doordarshan in the 1980s, and its adoption by Hindutva politicians who know that 50% of India’s vote bank is located in the Hindi belt.
Eclipsed non-Hindi Ramayanas remain popular only in certain regional pockets.
In Gujarat, for example, the Hindi Ramayana is more known than the local creation of Giridhara. In Maharashtra, the Geeta Ramayan composed at the launch of the All India Radio has much traction. In Tamil Nadu, Kamban continues to be popular, as does Krittibasa in Bengal. In Kerala, since the last four decades, a month is dedicated to retelling of the Malayalam retelling of the Ramayana.
