The current controversy doing the rounds in Delhi is that the Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University, supported by the spineless and acquiescent Academic Council, has withdrawn a celebrated essay by A. K. Ramanujan, Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five examples and three thoughts on translation [1] from the curriculum.
The strongest complaint against the essay is not its irrelevance to the academic program but that it hurts the sentiments of the religious. Nothing is new there. However, the genesis of this post lies in a few of the weaker points of protest, like “There are 300 versions of the Ramayana, but A. K. Ramanujan chooses to quote five examples that are bound to hurt our [my emphasis] sentiments,” said Mr. Rohit Chagal, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad State secretary, adding that “some parts of the of the essay contained pornographic content that was not fit to be taught in the university.” [2]
Prof. Inder Kapathy (member of the Academic Council but departmental affiliation unstated) chimes in with the commercial perspective: “If the text is not easily available in the market and the subject matter is controversial, then our decision to scrap the essay is not at all problematic that it should trouble other academicians.” One simple observation – the essay is readily available on the Net [3].
I had read this essay a few years ago, most probably traced through The Little Magazine. But, this was decades after I heard the story at the laps of family elders, my grandmothers and my mother’s eldest sister. I have read a portion of the Tamil epic Kamba Ramayanam (Lord Raman, along with Lakshmanan and Visvamitrar, entering Mithilai) in school. I had also read a serialized Ramayana in a Tamil weekly (the name skips me just now).
And, let me tell you, Ramanujan’s essay felt raw, and I was in the early part of my sixth decade of existence. But, I was not reading it under the expert guidance of a teacher in a class room; I was not reading it as an exercise in exegesis; I was not reading it as a religious tract. I was free to read it, read it and felt raw about it. That is that.
The essay, even while discomfiting me, imposed new vistas in my field of vision on an epic that I had last heard four decades earlier. It showed how the story had weaved itself through the global firmament along land routes and across seas. It showed how the story, poem and oral traditions have distinct characteristics, each not violating the internal consistency of the narrative. The power of the essay lay in its ability to teach all these so condensed. This is what came to my mind when this controversy erupted a few years back. I thought the students reading the essay will benefit.
When the controversy erupted, I remembered the documentary hypothesis of the Old Testament, about which I had read in a book by Richard Elliott Freidman [4] and recognized that trick as a possible solution to this dispute on the teaching of Ramayana. What we need is an improved, consolidated epic, all tellings, types of narratives included.
The first five books of the Hebrew Bible are from the mix-n-match wardrobe, at least two and possibly as many as four distinct styles and tellings. Yet, this style had persisted without being identified for what it is for more than two millennia, a commendable and comprehensive editing job of a number of traditions. What this unification has done is to subsume the differences of more than two thousand years ago that gave rise to the various tellings.
It is this palliative feature of the Hebrew Bible, I think, carries relevance to our current controversy. For Jains, Ravana can be a hero and for the Hindus, Rama, all between the covers of one book. So what?
It is this approach I would like for the New and Improved Ramayana, take all the traditions, 300 or 3,000, and weave them together as seamlessly as possible. The aim is to have a single unified The Ramayana – no Tulsidas, no Valmiki, no Kamban, no Bengali, No Kannada, no Thai, no anybody, no nobody. The universal Ramayana, anodyne it may be.
Anodyne. That is the word. A universal and special kind. Rather than soothing, it will smother the pain of everyone. The charge that the author of the tract was selective in his choice of stories will be effectively nullified. The “our” in Chagal’s comment (emphasized earlier) will be a universal “our”. The hurt shared universally is no hurt at all. The controversies will be uncontroversized. The Hindu Ravana will be effectively counterpoised by the Jain Ravana. The lilting oral traditions, accommodated within the pages of the book, will balance the prosaic style of the story. The pornographic contents will be offset by the devotional rhythms of Tulsidas. Both can be taught side by side in the university. It will be a universal and an all accommodating ethos. The market will be enhanced by going global with the book. And, so on.
I have only one concern. To acknowledge the source of this solution, I would prefer this project, publishing the New and Improved Ramayana, to be finished in six days. Then, on the seventh day, we can look over the landscape and pronounce everything to be good and take rest, just as the god of Semitic traditions did!
Raghuram Ekambaram
References
1. History Dept. demands re-introduction of Ramanujan’s essay on Ramayana, Vijetha S.N, The Hindu, October 25, 2011
2. ABVP justifies scrapping of essay, The Hindu, October 25, 2011
3. http://www.sacw.net/IMG/pdf/AKRamanujan_ThreeHundredRamayanas.pdf
4. Who Wrote The Bible? Richard Elliott Friedman, Harper Row, (ISBN 0 06 097214 9)
1. History Dept. demands re-introduction of Ramanujan’s essay on Ramayana, Vijetha S.N, The Hindu, October 25, 2011
2. ABVP justifies scrapping of essay, The Hindu, October 25, 2011
3. http://www.sacw.net/IMG/pdf/AKRamanujan_ThreeHundredRamayanas.pdf
4. Who Wrote The Bible? Richard Elliott Friedman, Harper Row, (ISBN 0 06 097214 9)
9 comments:
Don't you think this is yet another attempt by one powerful group to assert its position as the right one? This is one way of strengthening a religion: unify people belonging to different traditions with one accepted version of scriptures. Eliminate dissension. One truth. Eventually one god, one set of the faithful, one pope, etc.
My suggestion will handle that concern effectively, Matehikal. A universal scripture, subsuming all the differences by explicitly accommodating them will be toothless to create disturbances among the people. From the referred book, this is the idea I got.
Let the scripture be tossed around in the sea of differences.
RE
Raghuram,
Thanks a lot for the link to that essay. I look forward to reading it.
I was actually waiting for you to write about this issue!
Any literary work is read and interpreted differently by every single reader (the writer probably has couple of interpretations)...well, what's the fun in reading fiction if I am allowed only one type of thought...(well, that's also one reason why I prefer fiction to non-fiction)...
I can't understand this type of academics - the type who prefer to scrap a line of thought...I always thought academics' main job is to preserve the most non-traditional lines of thought...
Ah! Socrates is probably rolling in his grave...
Raghuram,
I have just read (or rather, browsed real fast) the essay.
(1) Why do you say it is raw?
(2) What is objectionable about it? Now, I am sure that those academics don't deserve to have their job.
(3) Where is the pornography? (Well, I do believe that pornography is highly subjective and it is best if it is allowed without second thought.)
In school, in one of the Malayalam texts (second language textbooks), we had to study Ahalya's story. Well, I can't remember whether it followed the Valmiki or the Kampan version or whether it chose to omit/censor the points about Ahalya's choice or Indra's punishment. Anyway, we students were too lazy to read the text and we realized that there is only one way to "master" the story and that was to act it out. And, of course, our version was definitely very objectionable, not exam-worthy but truly memorable. Till date, I can only remember our own interpretation about what really happened between Ahalaya, Indra and Gautama.
Well, in brief, that was the 3001 version of the story, I suppose...:)))
This has been going on for quite some time but it gets worse and worse. Romila Thapar’s essays on many ramayanas were criticized a lot but no ‘ action ‘ had been taken. I dislike any bans. Moreover I respect A.K.Ramanujan a lot.. I happened to go to Sulekha yesterday ( thought I would wish happy deepavali) and saw a blog about this and not surprisingly some members had agreed that it should be banned. I am just plain worried about where we are all going
As you know, I have, at times, tried to go off the beaten track in some of my stories I wrote in Sulekha. Several such attempts have been criticized , some less and some more. Today is Bali Padyami – I had written Bali;s story from the asura’s point of view called THE DISPOSESSED DEMONS. Some people called it an unhealthy trend. My stories on PArvati and Ganesha were vilified by the venerable man in Sulekha..
For Arjun: ths Ahalya story has also been cleaned up in some accounts. I guess we don’t want to portray Indra in a bad manner. He was a playboy, like Zeus was in Greek mythology. It was fun reading his explits. But we will slowly have a clean Indra
Arjun,
Even as recent as only five years ago, I was still carrying much cultural baggage though I had shed much of the religious load long time ago. It was not easy to ignore the tales I had heard at my elders' laps. And, I heard the story of Indra being covererd with vulvas for the first time (even as an imagery of undiluted lusting, it was hard for me to take). This is why I found it raw, at first read.
This post went through a few revisions in my mind; I started it as a rant against Acedmeic Freedom, as corrupted as it is. My base line was when some years ago an art student at a university in MP, put up some work as an academic exercise that were deemed as causing "religious hurt", I had heard the issue of academic freedom raised only once and that too only cursorily. Sure, there were enough noises made about "Freedom of Expression". I wanted to wonder in the post why this issue flew so below the radar then and why it is prominent now.
The other idea I had for the post was how to sterilize every single one of the 300 Ramayanas, but without going into details. That almost became a non-starter, as you can understand.
Hope you understand my ideas, compulsions and inadequacies that give rise to such rambling stuff :)))
RE
But I switched my focus. My thrust here was that the only way to avoid "reliigous hurt" is to make that hurt universal. This is why I brought in Jain's ravana vis-a-vis Hindu Rama!
Then, to justify that this was not a radical suggestion, I took recourse to the documentary hypothesis of how the Bible (Old Testament) came to be written.
Thank you so much pala ... I will get to your post in that other place and notice the prudes and the unreformed.
pala, what is wrong in looking at an event through the eyes of the loser? It is truly hard for me to accept without question the logic of the victors.
Thanks again,
RE
Writing impartial history is near impossible,for all claims to objectivity, the writer will bring in his own persuation and preference, however subtle.
The study of different versions of an epic itself is so fascinating. I read the essay after the controversy, and was shocked that an 'Academic' Council could ban such an informative essay.How and why a political outfit like ABVP could hold an Academic Council to ransom just reflects the degeneration in governance and nothing else.
My take is that there is no need to re-write any epic even for 'neutralising'/evenly distributing sense of hurt. It is just that the people in charge of governance need to be firm with lumpen elements of all religions/non religion,no appeasement.
[But I hold that Hussain's work on Ramayana (and other Hindu Gods and Goddesses) in the name of creative freedom was vicious, because he was selective. He never painted any religious icon from any other religion, including his own religion Islam and Christianity similarly. If he had, I would have given him benefit of doubt].
That is great Aditi, your condemnation of this type of censorship of things that have over the years become part and parcel of one's culture.
On Hussain, I sense a level of defensivenss (perhaps I am wrong) in your explanation which is unncessary. The crucial difference is, what he painted has not been absorbed within the extant culture and the reaction is pro-active, to ensure that it never does.
There is no parallel between jain Ramayana and Hussain's paintings.
Somehow I do not believe the government can do anything in this matter because the power of mobs cannot be controlled.
RE
Post a Comment