00:00 I am Pragya and I bring to you excerpts from the current issue of Outlook that looks at two cover
00:05 stories, two narratives of war, one mythical, one real, Ramayana and that between Israel and Hamas.
00:14 In the issue titled Epic Sisterhood, Outlook sketches out the women of Ramayana
00:20 in an epic full of dominant male characters. In the introduction, retelling the epic,
00:26 editor Chinke Sinha writes, "In the story of men at war and all the violence that's in the Ramayana,
00:33 there are stories of women characters that haven't been elaborated or articulated. In the stories
00:40 that we have come across in popular culture, it is Ram's story, his exile, his heroism, his sacrifice.
00:48 For some time now, there have been many retellings of the epic such as the Ramayana, which remain
00:55 faithful to the culture of storytelling where each iteration of myths adds or creates a new version,
01:01 a new protagonist, changes the lens, changes the plot too. Women like me have wondered about
01:09 main and minor characters, their positions, their stories in such mythologies and have asked about
01:16 them and sometimes have created a greater space for them in the narrow space marked for them
01:23 as pushers of the plot to then go into the shadows as characters who are never whole but only parts
01:31 which are then perpetuated and promoted. A different treatment of the politics of body
01:37 and caste and class and beliefs about chastity and gender roles is important as epics like the Ramayana
01:45 have been instrumental in shaping new histories and perhaps sealing marginalization in the larger
01:53 politics of differentiation. Retelling, an interventionist approach is to bring out these
01:59 other voices, these other stories. In this issue of Outlook, we look at the women of Ramayana
02:06 as an interrogation of dominant narratives. For this and more, read the current issue of Outlook.
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