Reasserting the Ramayana

As we move into 2014, Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: An Alternative History, has been added to the list of books, films, paintings and archives, that must – as Penguin will do – be “pulped.”

More than two decades ago, on 6 December 1992, we watched the dome of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya crumble while kar sevaks hammered it down with whatever was close at hand.

As the dust settled, the text had taken on new dimensions and become part of a larger political agenda, which removed almost entirely the poetry of the Ramayana and the meanings and words between the lines.

But the demolition of the 16th century mosque had thrown up a question that needed to be addressed: What is the Ramayana?

In 1993, the Sahmat Trust organised an exhibition on the many Ramayanas titled Hum Sab Ayodhya; it depicted the historical, geographical, religious, architectural and cultural evolution of the Babri Masjid. The exhibition also contained panels, among which were Buddhist representations of the Ramayana, where Rama and Sita are siblings. Within three days the panels and the exhibition were destroyed.

Towards the end of the 1990s, M. F. Husain caused a stir with his depiction of a naked Hanuman carrying away a naked Sita on his tail, a symbol too graphic for right-wing groups. Later, following protests over his work and his representation of a naked Saraswati, Husain left India in 2006; he died in London five years later.

In 2004, Nina Paley created Sita Sings the Blues, a triptych of Ramayana narratives. Three Sitas, or three versions of Sita, took over the screen, tied together with a meta-narrative by shadow puppets who remained as much in the dark about the Ramayana as many of us sometimes are.

In 2009, right-wing groups began a campaign against this “offensive” portrayal of the Ramayana, claiming that it was created by “a Christian woman who hated Hindus.” Nina Paley is Jewish and evidently loves Hinduism.

In 2011, A. K. Ramanujan’s essay Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translations (1987) became the target of unrest. In October that year, following pressure from activists of the Bharatiya Janata Party-backed Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, Delhi University’s Academic Council decided to drop Ramanujan’s essay from the university’s BA syllabus.

The opposing parties questioned the “scientific” truth of the narrative, particularly the Kannada folk version where Sita is conceived by Ravana, who gives birth to her by sneezing. The Thai Ramakien, with its references to Hanuman as a ladies’ man peeping into the bedrooms of Ravana’s palace, was, they felt, an insult to “Hindu sentiments.” Non-Hindu teachers would have difficulty putting across its excesses to students or worse still, as they put it, would expose students to “alternative ways of thinking.”

Now, when Doniger’s The Hindus, has been accused of being “shallow,” it is time again to remember the importance of what Ramanujan called “the pool of signifiers” – narratives that have through time been borrowed, dropped and recreated as the story has passed from teller to listener to teller again.

Thus, in India and elsewhere, we have recreated the Ramayana in art, cinema, literature, poetry, dance, theatre, under banyan trees, at the feet of our grandparents, through comic books, in song, at bedtime and sometimes in our dreams. What is, in fact, not the norm is to have to tell it as someone says you must.

The Mallipas, who are Muslims, do not tell it the same way as the panels in Ellora; the Gond artists of Odisha do not represent it like the temple panels of Andhra Pradesh; the Wadia film production of Sampoorna Ramayana did not say it like G. Aravindan’s film Kanchanasita did.

To investigate the vast array of Ramayana traditions and present a repository of Ramayana stories, critical and performative interpretations, and visual representations, we started Kiski Kahani: The Ramayana Project in 2011, soon after the withdrawal of Ramanujan’s essay from Delhi University.

We wanted to provide a forum for dialogue and debate. We began looking at our workshops on writing and theatre through the lens of the Ramayana, re-imagining the narrative in innovative ways. A lecture-series we organised that year explored the idea of the Ramayana in the realm of bhakti, temple restorations, and characters in popular culture. We documented the works of Pattachitra and Kalamkari artists and their retellings of the Ram Katha. Our film, Bheetar Lagi: Ramayana Songs from the Desert, explored the relationship the Manganiyars, who are Muslims, and their retellings of the Ramayana. We worked with dancers, performers, writers and artists, all of whom felt the need to go back to the Ramayana.

Our aim at the broadest level was to encourage curiosity and intellectual engagement, to foster critical enquiry, and to support the questioning of dogmatic and monolithic narratives. At a more specific level, our aim was to document and archive lesser-known, regional and folk narrative traditions.

Sometimes, we lived in fear that our little project, curated by an “outsider,” may attract the ire of right-wing groups. But, like the 15th century poet-saint Kabir, we armed ourselves with just songs and a loom. The narrative thus woven has drawn in people from diverse backgrounds and it remains a resource on the internet.

The force of the Ramayana makes us all return, again and again, to this symbol of India’s diversity and plurality – a plurality that continues to be slowly chipped away by intolerance. But the Ramayana’s many retelling and re-imaginings will continue to inform and inspire.

Imran Ali Khan curated ‘Kiski Kahani: The Ramayana Project’, which was created by the Centre of Communication and Development Studies, Pune, and supported by Hivos, a Dutch funding agency. He lives in Mumbai, where he teaches literature and mythology at ISDI-Parsons, and designs and promotes Indian craft.

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