The Other Ramayan by Azeez Tharuvana

OutlookIndia

Listen to excerpts from Outlook's All is Well issue by Pragya Vats  #Ramayana #Sita #Mahabharata #Women #Feminism #Sita #Ram #IndianEpics #Masculinity #WomenOfRamayana

Transcript

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, Ramayan and that between Israel and Hamas.

00:14 In the issue titled Epic Sisterhood, Outlook sketches out the women of Ramayan

00:20 in an epic full of dominant male characters.

00:24 The Other Ramayans by Ajiz Daruwana, an assistant professor at Farooq College, Kozhikode.

00:30 A.K. Ramanujan in his essay, 300 Ramayans, 5 examples and 3 thoughts on translation,

00:39 cites a folk narrative. This story revolves around Hanuman's quest to find the lost gem ring of Lord

00:46 Ram in the netherworld. Hanuman encounters the chieftain of the demi-world and the king of the

00:52 ghostly beings who presents him numerous rings in a vessel, claiming all those rings belong to Lord

01:00 Ram. The king of the ghostly beings explained to the beveled Hanuman, this vessel contains

01:06 variegated rings that are pertinent to various incarnations of Ram. As soon as one avatar

01:13 accomplishes its objective and expires, that ring is being dropped down. I collected all the rings

01:20 and kept them intact. Then the king asks Hanuman to identify the ring which he reckoned as his

01:28 lord's. The king also informs Hanuman that his lord Ram had designated Love and Kush to be the heirs

01:36 and immersed himself in the river Saryu. There are umpteen social and cultural makeovers of Ram

01:43 and Sita, similar to the multiple accumulations of rings mentioned in the above story. Texts and

01:51 subtexts differ from author to author, akin to the oral traditions. All major characters,

01:57 including both Ram and Sita, are portrayed as kaleidoscopic incarnations in various texts,

02:04 oral narratives with rewound colours and characteristics. As a matter of fact,

02:11 all such oral-verbal narratives are nothing but tiny tributaries destined to merge into the larger

02:20 river called the literature of the Ramayana. Chandravati's Ramayana

02:25 The Ramayana is like the large tree that never stops growing. There are many instances of

02:31 construing the grand narratives of the epic, including Valmiki's Ramayana, and bringing about

02:38 novel interpretations and distinct subtexts. Among them, the Ramayans portrayed by the women,

02:45 or portraying the womanhood that rebelled and refuted the male-dominant mainstream versions

02:50 of the epic, deserve special mention. They substantiate that the Ramayana is not only the

02:58 ayana of Rama, but also of Sita. Chandravati's Ramayana, penned by a rural woman named Chandravati

03:06 during the 16th century who lived in Mimensing village in East Bengal, is an illuminating

03:12 illustration of this. It is in the form of a private diary, jotted down as if for her own

03:19 personal delectation. Even though the masculinity of the scholarship of that period completely

03:26 neglected it, Chandravati's Ramayana survived the test of time through oral traditions.

03:32 It is a spectacular endeavour to deconstruct the Ramayan from the women's perspective.

03:38 Bangla folk songs used to commence with an appeal, "Shuno shorba jono", as per the normal folk

03:45 conventions, where this book opening appeal, "Shuno shoki jono", exclusively addresses the

03:52 women folk. Sita is a stout symbol of womanhood, repressed and neglected by the male imperium.

04:01 In Chandravati's Ramayana, to the dismay of the dominant gender, she speaks like a modern

04:07 feminist and ferocious guts. For this and more, read the current issue of Outlook.

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