Faith narrows down, while reason opens up, the vistas
G.V.K.Aasaan
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The students and the youth are the hope of the future. We shudder to see the way they grow up intolerant and impatient, unthinking and dogmatic, looking back to the greatness of the imaginary past rather than marching forward to meet the challenges and needs of the coming days. Instead of being guided by knowledge and reason, they are bogged down in narrow faith in religion. These thoughts come to our mind when we come to know of the violence caused by the Delhi University students belonging to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a part of the Sang Parivar.
The students turned their ire against Dr.Jafri, Head of the Department of History and the course instructor, Upinder Singh, the daughter of the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. A bunch of ABVP students rushed into the office of the history department on the 25th of February, roughed up the Professor, broke the windowpanes and toppled the furniture before leaving the place.
Ramanujan
The cause of the violence in the University campus was an essay prescribed in a course called ‘Culture of India: Ancient’. The essay, Three Hundred Ramayanas by A.K.Ramanujan documents alternative tellings of the story in several languages of India as well as other south-Asian countries. He was a scholar in ancient Indian literature and an enjoyable and perceptive poet in English. He taught language and literature in Mysore and American universities.
He was well-read in Kannada, Tamil, Sanskrit etc. He had translated into English a collection of poems from ancient Tamil literature of Sangam Age. He was honoured with the Padma Shri award and the MacArthur Genius Fellowship. He passed away some fifteen years ago.
Different tellings
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The ABVP activists find Ramanujan’s essay on Ramayana offensive. The weekly, Tehelka (15 March 2008) lists the points that seem to give them offence:
Hanuman is described as Ram’s “trusty henchman.” When he shrinks himself to enter a small hole, a handmaiden exclaims, “Look! A tiny monkey!”
Later, in the Ramayana of the Tamil poet Kampan, Indra is cursed with a thousand vaginas all over his body after seducing Ahalya.
A Kannada folksong sung by dalit bards says Ravana became pregnant, and gave birth - to Sita - with a sneeze.
In Southeast Asian texts, Hanuman is not celibate but actually rather ‘a ladies man’.
The oral traditions of the Santals “even conceive of Sita as unfaithful - to the shock and horror of any Hindu bred on Valmiki or Kampan, she is seduced both by Ravana and Laxmana.
Fanatic faith fatal to creativity
Commenting on the essay a 27 year old law graduate belonging to ABVP says: “These academics don’t understand that they are toying with our faith. They have this idea that it’s a written story, a literary text, so it doesn’t matter if you say there are 3000 versions of it.” Apart from striking Ramanujan’s text from the syllabus, he proposes that every deviant telling, mostly tribal and dalit, be erased. “They should be banned. There is no debate on this.”
The same activist, without knowing that Ramanujan is dead and gone, asserts, “ I have got nothing but abuse for him. He deserves to be shot. If he is such a great man about questioning religions, why doesn’t he stand up for Taslima Nasreen (the Bangladesh writer) when the Muslim goondas go after her?”
Ramanujan’s essay is a fine example of wide scholarship and perspective presentation. The various tellings of Rama’s story which he explores indicates the complex nature of life and how folk literature and classical works respond to it. That his essay is not frivolous, destructive or damaging but serious, constructive and realistic may be known from the following passages from the same:
“Obviously, these hundreds of tellings differ from one another I have come to prefer the word tellings to the usual terms versions or variants because the latter terms can and typically do imply that there is an invariant, an original or Ur-text, usually Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana, the earliest and most prestigious of them all. But it is not always Valmiki’s narrative that is carried from one language to another. We have a variety of Rama tales told by others, with radical differences among them.
“The motif of Sita as Rama’s daughter, for example, occurs in one tradition of the Jain stories (for example Vasudevahimdi) and in folk traditions of Kannada and Telugu, as well as in several Southeast Asian Ramayanas. In some, Rama in his lusty youth molests a young woman, who vows vengeance and is born as his daughter to destroy him.”
Renaissant poets
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Lives of people in various regions and times throw up different issues and challenges with all their complexities. Naturally creative writers present their views and thoughts afresh, treating a popular story and its main characters in radically different ways to suit their understanding of and response to the new situation.
The great 19th century renaissance poet of Bengal, Michael Madhusudan Duttar presented Rama and Laxmana as invaders of the native land in his famous epic, Megnath Vad, that deals with the killing of Ravana’s son Meganatha who is also known as Indrajit.
The first great renaissance poet of Malayalam, Kumaaran Aasaan, wrote Chinatavista yaya Seeta (Seeta immersed in thought) in 1915. Seeta lives in banishment with her twin sons. Valmiki has invited her to accompany him to Rama’s Court the next day. Seeta contemplates whether to go and be reunited with her husband or not. Humans, along with birds and animals, can endure the pain of the wounds on their bodies, but they cannot endure any insult to their honour as it hurts the mind. Seeta feels that Rama is helpless as he has to rule according to Manu Dharma that orders to keep women and Sudras degraded. Finally she decides not to rejoin her husband and perishes in flames. Now, will the Hindutva elements dare to ban this great poem of Kumaran Aasaan?
Pulavar Kuzhandai, the great Tamil scholar and poet, wrote the epic Ravana Kavya in 1946. He has depicted Rama and Laxmana as villains who provoked Ravana by mutilating and putting to shame his innocent sister, Surpanaka.
Centres of learning are meant to inform and enlighten the learners of how great minds have responded to great issues. Religious zealots would be doing a lot of harm in interfering with such activities. They should know that Faith narrows down, whereas Reason open up the vistas of the world. |
