Opposition and problematising of the Ramayana is not actually a new development. Indeed, the highlighting of the Valmiki Ramayana at the expense of the others is a method by which oppositional narratives and tellings of the Ramayana are sidelined and dismissed. Part of this is due to the fact that Sanskrit has been elevated as the language of Hinduism and of scholarship, meaning that other tellings are restricted to certain groups without pan-Indian significance and limited dissemination.602 There are exceptions to this; the final book, where
Rama banishes Sita from the kingdom, is left out by both Kamban and Tulsidas, who end their works with the triumphant return from Lanka and the coronation of Rama and Sita.603 Moreover, cultural and ethnic differences mean that concepts of class and gender have evolved and shifted in the treatment of the Ramayana.604
The opening of English schools and colleges in the colonial period, furthermore, led to a generation of students trained to question key elements of the story. Whether these were issues with the narrative (how there could have existed a complex civilisation of monkeys able to communicate with humans), or thematic issues such as those of Brahminic elitism and patriarchal structures, by the start of the twentieth century a tradition of questioning the
Ramayana had begun to develop.605 In doing so, the social issues explored in earlier chapters
602 Richman, Questioning Ramayanas, 11. 603 Hess, “Rejecting Sita.”
604 Hess, 4.
152 which has persisted due to the norms established and emphasised by conservative readings of the Ramayana have also come to face strong opposition.
The reclamation of womanhood and the process of separating female life and identity from its relation to men has been an ongoing process since the advent of early feminism in India. Part of this has involved a need to distinguish Indian feminism from Western
feminism, and to develop an understanding of feminism and gender equality moulded to the internal framework of India and Hinduism as distinct from an enforced by-product of colonialism. Therefore, rather than simply discarding elements of culture and history generally viewed as ‘native’ to India – namely, those embedded and represented in the canonical philosophies and narratives of Hinduism – there has been a strong history of reimagining these narratives.
In 1993, part of the Indian Independence Day celebrations included an exhibit centred on a traditional Pali narrative, Dasaratha Jataka, which tells a Buddhist version of the
Ramayana where Rama is an incarnation of the Buddha.606 In response, fifteen members of the VHP destroyed this part of the exhibit, and BJP members later attempted to charge the organizers of the festival for misrepresenting the Ramayana. In doing so, both the VHP and BJP expressed the notion of the Ramayana as inherently “Hindu”, and this “Hinduness” as being intrinsically wound with ideas of Indian nativeness.607
Their actions also reflected a dislike of associations between the Ramayana and other countries; the Hindu nationalist agenda relies heavily on the exclusivity of the narrative to the mythic history of Hindu India. A sometimes-neglected aspect of the study of gender and religion in India is the way in which it feeds into and is in turn fed by its impact on the diaspora community and Hindus with limited ties to the ‘homeland’ of India. A long history
606 Richman, Questioning Ramayanas, 1. 607 Richman, 2.
153 of Indians in England and a growing presence in Western countries (especially Australia, the USA, and Canada) has resulted in the rise of Hindu communities where a significant number may not have been born in, or even ever been to, India. Nevertheless, their lives are still impacted by practices and gender constructs at work in India.608
This chapter focuses upon three specific endeavours to represent the Ramayana in consideration of its rich multi-narratival history, and their results. Each of these has been chosen for their reflections of different aspects of the Ramayana tradition in unconventional and non-normative settings.
The first is the 2008 film Sita Sings the Blues by the American animator Nina Paley in collaboration with Indian actors and artists, which received international attention after premiering at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival. The second is the late A.K. Ramanujan’s 1987 essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation”, an academic contribution to the field of Ramayana studies which was placed on the University of Delhi’s history syllabus in 2006. Finally, I will outline and reflect upon the 2014 play Fire
to Earth: A Story of Rama and Sita which I wrote and directed in conjunction with the
University of New South Wales Indian society after struggling to do the same with the organisation Chinmaya Mission Australia (established by VHP founder Swami
Chinmayananda). The play was a one-off performance to an audience of approximately four hundred and fifty Australians, most of whom were members of the Sydney Indian-Australian community. Here, I will apply an auto-ethnographic lens to analyse the production of this play within the context of the diaspora and how it demonstrates the reverberations of Hindutva and Hindu nationalist ideology across national borders.
608 Marian Aguiar, “‘Forced Marriage’ and a Culture of Consent,” in Arranging Marriage, Conjugal Agency in the South Asian Diaspora (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 70.
154 Each of these works and their reception indicate the multiple ways in which the
Ramayana can be – and has been – read and interpreted, the reception that they receive in the
longer term, and the difficulties presented by conservative Hindus. I will explore the microcosmic experience of Hindu nationalism and prevailing gender paradigms as
perpetuated by the conservative reading of the Ramayana, what these reflect in parallel with the wider social actions of Hindu nationalists, and the difficulty that single oppositional voices face in making meaningful change.