LASTRADO DE TUBERÍA UNIDAD: Metro cubico (M3)

This thesis demonstrates that narrative is fundamental to the construction of national identity. In the case of many nation-states and communities, this is based in ways of

51 recording history and historical narratives. The methodological approach I am employing highlights narratives like the Ramayana as structures that make collective meaning, in this case for the Indian nation.204 These mythic narratives have the power to support prevailing hierarchies and threaten the birth of new models of what India could become. Mythic narratives have particular force because they are tied in with the divine, sometimes

contributing to very rigid, seemingly unquestionable, power structures that gain a life of their own beyond the narrative.

The key features of effective narratives for creating communities are the selective use of past events, key characters, and an overarching structure linking events and characters together in a temporally linear way. In doing so, narratives become filters for reality and in turn create their own realities, which evolve into a collective, or community, memory.205 This means that facts themselves become subordinate to the narrative constructions. In this way, narrative becomes a backbone for the development of religion and state as unifying and communal forces.

Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of

Nationalism makes a vital point in linking this kind of community narrative to nationalism.

Anderson posits that the construction of an imagined community in large-scale society is necessary because “…the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”206 _{Thus, regional differences and deep-rooted issues of social inequality}

and class exploitation are put aside in favour of a common understanding of identity.

Applying Anderson’s model of the ‘imagined community’ to India and nation-building, is not

204 _{Ranjan Ghosh, ed., “Reality of Representation, Reality behind Representation: History and Memory,” in A}

Lover’s Quarrel with the Past: Romance, Representation, Reading, 1st ed. (New York: Berghahn Books,

2012), 30.

205 _{Narayan, Fascinating Hindutva, 36.} 206 _{Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6.}

52 a simple matter, as Western constructs are rooted in contextual history and therefore do not necessarily mesh with Indian identity. Stephan Schlensog posits that understanding India and its political tensions requires an understanding of Hinduism.207 Shortly after, he states that “…Hinduism has no founder to whom it traces its institution as a religion and as a culture with a religious message; it knows no binding dogmas and recognizes no binding teaching office.”208 _{This presents a clear problem: Independence leaders relied upon the rhetoric of}

Hinduism as an all-encompassing religious tradition rooted in India, but accepting of other faiths. However, the lack of a defined canon of authoritative texts means that there is no singular pillar of belief to support these claims as part of one cohesive Hindu narrative. There was, therefore, a lack of a strong centre point for establishing a unifying story of India around which a community could be imagined.

Anderson points to the “old-fashioned novel” as a key device for imagining a nation, where millions of people may be connected by print and story, so that individuals “…can even be described as passing each other on the street, without ever becoming acquainted, and still be connected.”209 _{While the Ramayana as a tradition is widespread and varied, the}

Valmiki Ramayana is a rich written text in its own right. Therefore, it became a useful tool for establishing an imagined community, even though the majority of Indians in the early 1900s were illiterate and would likely have interacted with Valmiki’s Ramayana through truncated oral, dance, or musical interpretations. The mythic origins of Valmiki himself, however – he writes himself into the narrative, claiming that he narrated it to Rama’s sons after Sita is abandoned by Rama in his care – mean that the Valmiki Ramayana is reinforced as a grand narrative not only by the existence of the text, but also by the very existence of its author.

207 _{Schlensog, “Hinduism and Politics,” 159.} 208 _{Schlensog, 160.}

53 The strength of the traditionalist Hindu narrative, espoused and encouraged by the BJP, means it can easily step into the power vacuum left by the ambiguity of postcolonial secular India. The BJP have thus been able to rely on elements of this traditionalist narrative to maintain popular support and in the same breath attack political opponents. Part of this involves reframing the standard approach to secularism, which is built largely upon western patterns of the development of secular society and ideology. In considering Anderson’s work, this thesis focuses on the BJP’s construction of a narrative based on the Ramayana as an oral text, which is validated by the Valmiki Ramayana’s place in the Hindu scriptural canon. The ‘authenticity’ of this text is further underscored by the fact that it is written in Sanskrit, which is associated with the Hindu philosophical and scriptural canon, and with purely ritual and literary practice.210

Anderson uses the term ‘narrative’ to refer to several different classes of narrative, such as the public, the institutional, and the mythic/religious. The Ramayana most closely fits the mould of the mythic narrative, defined by Steven Walker as institutional narratives mostly found in religious contexts. These myths almost always incorporate some element of the supernatural, and are powerful vehicles for embodied meaning. Additionally, they evoke strong emotion through character and story, which is cemented through repetition, thereby engaging the audience in discourse to which they might not otherwise be exposed.211

Charlotte Linde employs the term ‘tacit knowledge’, which refers to knowledge which is non- quantifiable, particularly to those who hold it.212 According to Linde:

210 _{Gita Dharampal-Frick and Sudha Sitharaman, “Caste,” in Key Concepts in Modern Indian Studies (New} York: NYU Press, 2015), 38; Sirpa Tenhunen and Minna Säävälä, eds., “Caste and Kinship: The Keys of Interaction,” in An Introduction to Changing India: Culture, Politics and Development (London: Anthem Press, 2012), 34; Adi Hastings, “Licked by the Mother Tongue: Imagining Everyday Sanskrit at Home and in the World,” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 18, no. 1 (2008): 25.

211 _{Leon Burnett, Sanja Bahun, and Roderick Main, Myth, Literature and the Unconscious (London: Karnac} Books, 2013), 3.

212 _{Charlotte Linde, “Narrative and Social Tacit Knowledge,” Journal of Knowledge Management 5, no. 2 (June} 1, 2001): 161.

54 Stories provide a bridge between the tacit and the explicit, allowing tacit social knowledge to be demonstrated and learned, without the need to

propositionalize ethics, specify in detail appropriate behaviour, or demonstrate why particular heroes of the past are relevant today. The reason for this is that stories do not only recount past events. They also convey the speaker’s moral attitude towards these events: the protagonist of the story acted well, acted badly, is to be praised or blamed, can be taken as a model for the hearer’s own behaviour.213

In the context of nation-building and the imagined community, mythic narratives provide a model of moral behaviour through the positive portrayal or deification of certain characters. Positive and negative behaviour is cemented through compelling storylines, thus internalising ethics and social structures, and characters may become archetypes for the ‘ideal’ mother, son, ruler, or community member. Linde states that these narratives are reinforced by events (festivals or holy days), places (ritual sites or temples), and artefacts (religious objects, iconography in the form of art or jewellery, or personal shrines).214 The

Ramayana is deeply embedded in classical Indian music and dance traditions, there are

numerous temples and shrines to the gods it depicts, and festivals such as Navaratri celebrate Rama’s victory over the demon king Ravana.215 _{These features all mean that the Ramayana is}

a powerful mythic narrative and vehicle for the conveyance of tacit social knowledge.

213 _{Linde, 165.}

214 _{Linde, 169.}

215 _{Christopher John Fuller, The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India (Princeton: Princeton} University Press, 1992), 108.

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