With Sri Ram constantly in the news, let us take the bull by the horns this week and examine some of the issues that critics have had with him. One, that he killed Vali from behind. But in the root Ramayan, which is Valmiki’s, the dying Vali himself admits that Ram was right to do so and commends his son Angad to Ram’s care. Vali’s wife, Tara, rushes to Vali’s side after his fall. Tara is depicted as a bold, intelligent woman by Valmiki. She is not afraid to speak her mind. She arrives full of anger but when she sees Ram, something happens to her. He radiates such a calm, steady aura that she starts praising him, not cursing him.
This happens in Lanka, too, after the battle. Mandodari rushes to where Ravana’s body lies on the battlefield, furious with grief. But when she sees Ram, she too, undergoes a change of heart and praises him. Mandodari, in her heart of hearts, knows that Ram is in the right. She urged Ravana many times to return Sita to Ram, arguing that Ram was no ordinary person if he was able to rout the demon hordes of Khara and Dushana single-handedly and, though penniless in the forest, still managed to raise an army and achieve the impossible by crossing the sea to Lanka.
A third ‘enemy woman’ is moved by Ram’s personality and deeds. This is none but Kaikesi, Ravana’s mother, called Nikasha in the Bengali Ramayana. I learned from a parable by Sri Ramkrishna that Nikasha flees the palace after Ravana’s defeat. She is caught by the Vanaras and brought to Ram, Lakshmana and Vibhishana. When questioned, she says that she marvels at Ram’s marvelous deeds, at the loyalty he commands, and wanted to live longer to see what else he would do. Despite a snort from disbelieving Lakshmana who does not trust senior queens after Kaikeyi, Ram courteously entrusts her to Vibhishana’s care and sends her back with honour, promising to stay in touch.
The other and even bigger issue that has tormented our culture for millennia is Ram’s banishment of Sita. Narayana Bhattadri of Kerala, composer of the Narayaneeyam in the 16th century, which is still hugely popular today, describes the Dashavataram in his work. In fact, it is a potted Srimad Bhagavatam in poetry. About Sita, even he reportedly cries, “Shiva, Shiva! What an injustice!”
The banishment occurs in the seventh and last book of the Valmiki Ramayan, the Uttara Kandam. But scholars say that this is a prakshipta or add-on by someone else. For one, the sixth book, Yuddha Kandam, ends with Ram’s homecoming and coronation, followed by the phalashruti. A phalashruti or ‘benefits of listening to the work’ always comes at the end of a composition, it is the traditional conclusion. Secondly, the contents of the Uttara Kandam do not fit the character of Ram as described by Valmiki in the first six books.
But since the Uttara Kandam is too well known to ignore, let us examine what really happens, enlightened by both knowledgeable grandparents and modern discoursers. First of all, Valmiki was visited by Ram, Sita and Lakshmana during their exile, so they knew him.
Valmiki had meditated for so long that a termite mound, called ‘valmik’ in Sanskrit, grew to enclose him. So, when he emerged from it, he was called Valmiki, ‘of the mound’. It was like a new birth. The Vedas say that such termite mounds are “the ears of Mother Earth”. Since Valmiki was ‘reborn’ from the ear of Mother Earth, he was figuratively her son.
Now we know that Sita, too, was found on the ground by Janaka, that she was a daughter of Mother Earth. That is why she has names like Bhumija and Avanija, both meaning ‘Earth’s daughter’. It’s the custom even today for a woman to go to her mother’s house or brother’s, to have her babies. Since Valmiki and Sita were both children of Mother Earth, they were technically siblings. So, Ram ordered Lakshmana to leave Sita near Valmiki’s hermitage and Valmiki took her home exactly as set up. Valmiki was about sixty-two then and Sita thirty-five. He was a very fatherly brother to her.
We have to cull and join these points to console ourselves that Ram, a very correctly behaved person, was being proper in this as well. He did not abandon her just anywhere in the wild, nor did Valmiki find her by chance as popular TV serials may depict. She was sent where he would find her. It does not lessen our sorrow but at least gives us something to consider.
The religion teaches believers not to flinch from the truth, which is what opened the door to reforms. But you have to know where critiques are coming from. A case in point is the 19th century Bengali epic Meghnad Badh Kavya in nine cantos, by Michael Madhusudan Dutt. My Bengali friends tell me that it’s a brilliant read. In it, Dutt valorises Ravana’s son Indrajit or Meghnad, and negatively portrays Ram and Lakshmana. We cannot really blame him for it because our religion was not doing well in the 19th century. Dutt was a learned, sensitive person.
However, instead of fighting for reforms as so many Hindus did from within, he took the quickest shortcut to modernity available in his day, the English church. In his new persona, he spurned Ram as a foundational figure of the faith, although it was not God’s fault but man’s that Hindu society then mistreated its people. Broke in England, he was repeatedly bailed out by his benevolent reformer friend, Pandit Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar.
Dutt wrote reams in English but literary magazines in England refused to publish him. Finally, it was by writing in his mother tongue, Bengali, about the Ramayan, that he became famous. Interesting, is it not? Epic grace touched him even though a critic, demonstrating the belief of devotees that just thinking about Ram works its own miracles.
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