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6.6 Many Ramayanas: the story continues
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From the course by The University of Melbourne
Contemporary India
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From the lesson
The Ramayan
This week we will discuss one of India's ancient epics - The Ramayana. Here you will not just be introduced to the text but the various Ramayana traditions, which include a wide range of performance traditions, be it in folk theatre, women's Ramayana songs or shadow puppetry. At the core of these traditions is the idea of morality or dharma, which continues to find resonance in contemporary India even though it was written around 500BC. Because there are innumerable interpretations of the Ramayana, often the sacred becomes the source of controversy. But these disagreements often reinforce the relevance of the epic in the daily lives of Indian society.
Meet the Instructors
Anthony D'CostaProfessor
School of Social and Political Sciences
Welcome back to this final portion of,
of a lecture on Ramayana performance traditions in modern India.
You've heard four different four different songs.
Each of them tell us something different about multi-voice responses to
their Ramayana tradition in a single village in North India.
You heard Nirmala Devi song about Sita's suffering in the forest.
You heard village women sing about how we can't, we can't replicate the riches of
Ram's divine wedding in Ayodhya we can't do that in the village today.
You've heard a joker use the Ramayana tradition to
critique hierarchical structures in his village.
And you've heard another performance that focuses on the contributions of
the small and the weak in their devotion to Ram.
These are multi-varied responses to the Ramayana tradition.
After Ram rescues Sita from the demon king Robin, Ram and
Sita return to Ayodhya and Ram rules as a model of a just and
righteous king, but the story doesn't end there.
So we focused on Ramayans traditions of a single village in North India and
seen how the kind of questions that are asked there,
we've looked at the kind of questions.
These questions are asked across India, all across India and for generations.
One much-discussed episode, for example, is Sita's trial by fire.
In some versions of the Ramayana,
including Valmiki's Sanskrit text, Ram becomes worried.
He becomes worried that the city folk are spreading rumours about Sita and
her time with Ram.
How can Ram take her back?
The people gossip.
When she spent so much time with another man.
So Ram subjects her to a trial by fire from which she
emerges there by proving her virtue.
I mean, this episode has been debated for generations.
How does Ram's treatment of his wife Sita fit within the definition
of just morality that Ram is opposed to embody.
And many answers have been provided by different
devotees and scholars of the Ramayanas tradition.
The road to Ayodhya.
The Road to Ayodhya.
This is another 17th century Rajasthani illustration by Sahabdin.
This one depicts Ram's triumphant return home to Ayodhya after rescuing Sita.
They take a road often that is often traveled in Indian politicians.
Ayodhya, you'll remember is today home to a disputed site.
The now destroyed Babri masjid in which some Ram devotees insist
was built on the ruin of an important Ram temple at Ram's birthplace.
During election time, some leaders raise the issue of Ayodha,
they raise this issue.
Hindu nationalist politicians have often promised it built a Ram temple on
the disputed site, which is now a, a destroyed Mosque.
India's current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi is a member of the BJP,
whose leaders have often raised the Ayodha issue.
There were actually prominent BJP leaders present at the 1992 Mosque destruction,
but during his recent national campaign successful
campaign to become Prime Minister of India in 2014.
Modi tried to distance himself, at least rhetorically,
at least rhetorically, from the situation.
One of his campaign slogans was toilets not temples.
That is we should be seeing to people's basic sanitation needs before worrying
about government intervention at temple sites.
Modi likely distances himself in the Ayodhya temple rhetoric, because he's
well aware of public exhaustion over the Ayodhya issue election time.
This exhaustion is not new.
A 2001 political cartoon by something Joshi declared
that at election time, all roads lead to Ayodhya.
At election time, politicians are always talking about Ayodhya and nothing else.
Inspired by Sudershan Rao's, Sudershan Rao, the,
the Chair of the Indian Council for Historical Research.
So, inspired by his somewhat dubious claim that the proof as the Ramayanas
accuracy as an historical document can be found in modern day village life.
And also by its contention that we can never unearth material evidence for,
for the historicity of the Ramayanas tradition.
In this section we've done a bit of digging,
we've done a bit of digging around a single village tradition.
In doing so, we found that all roads do not lead to Ayodhya.
When the women sing that their wedding can never be like Ram's wedding in Ayodhya,
they are in fact directly challenging the usefulness of the road to Ayodhya.
Men and women are well of each other's performance genres.
These are photos taken while the women were
singing under the wedding tent at Saresha's wedding.
It may seem like some of them are not paying attention, but
even those men whose backs are turned or who are lying down.
When I asked them later about these songs, they showed great familiarity with
the women's Rayamanas song tradition of their village.
Likewise, women too know of men's genres.
These are all shared traditions.
So Nirmala Devi, who sang of Sita's suffering in the forest, of her pain,
her hunger, and her thirst, Nirmala sings many Ramayana devotional songs and one
of them repeated the well known refrain, recite the names of Ram and Lakshman.
This is common practice in Ramayana tradition that repeating Ram's name,
you can achieve salvation.
You recall that is sage Valmiki, the low born sage Valmiki,
who wrote the Sanskrit Ramayana, who gained salvation by reciting Ram's name.
On the night that Ramsager and his group performed the song about a small
squirrel's devotion to Ram, they also performed a series of hari kirtan.
Hari kirtan have only a single line of text that is repeated again and again and
again, sort of faster and faster as they go along.
Jai Siya Ram, Jai Siya Ram, Jai Siya Ram.
Victory to Sita and Ram.
Victory to Sita and Ram.
Again and again.
And this,
this was broadcast on the loud speaker across a neighbourhood well into the night.
And one of the performers at night, Bindu Singh.
Bindu Singh explained it to me as follows.
This singing is for God, he said.
Bagwan.
This singing is for Bagwan for God.
By repeating the name of God over and over again,
something happens in our mind and this is happiness.
As we packed up that night, Ram Sagar explained to me never mind.
Never mind he said.
Never mind that we've sung until 2 o'clock in the morning.
This speaker is on the roof, so everyone can hear.
Never mind even if they are sleeping.
He starts laughing that never mind even if they're sleeping.
By hearing these Hari kirtan, they will find some benefit,
even though they do not sing them.
This sentiment was shared by many, both men and women.
And even though Hari Kirtan and are performed by men,
women could participate in their own way, as I found out one night.
There was a dog that hung around Ram Sagar's home.
And for my first few weeks in the village,
I actually just thought he was like a village street dog with no permanent home.
But soon I learned that the family loved him and took care of him.
And I learned this when I went to take family pictures and
they insisted that he be in them and this this dog's name was Sando.
And Sando vanished.
He vanished during one of my later visits to the village.
I learned this late at night.
The little baby, baby Aman was crying with a fever and his grandmother held him and
she sang to him, sort of chanted him a little lullaby.
[FOREIGN] Come on, little, come on, little Baba.
Come on, little Babu.
And then she sang Jai Siya Ram, Jai Siya Ram, Jai Siya Ram.
Victory to Sita and Ram.
Victory to Sita and Ram.
And finished with [FOREIGN].
Oh, doggie, doggie, where did the little doggie go?
And then the grandmother turned to me.
She turned to me while Aman was still crying and said, Sando, Sando the dog,
Sando is vanished.
He must be out wandering around and she looked quite worried.
And the next day five year old Kriti told me that she thought Sando had died choking
on one of the chickens.
And she, we never saw him again.
On first glance, many of the performance elements in Banpur
seemed plucked right out of old Ramayana text.
But when we do a bit of digging, because we can and we must do some digging.
We can't let stand a contention that, that the village is somehow off limits
outside of, outside of, of historical reality.
We find the situation much more complicated.
The same text for example, in this lullaby, Jai Siya Ram.
Victory to Sita and Ram.
It's once a village-wide devotional sonic backdrop
broadcast from a loudspeaker on a roof.
It's a lullaby for a sick infant with a fever and
it's a vehicle for worrying about a loved family pet.
So, even if there are superficial similarities between
ancient Ramayana text and modern Ramayana tradition, we find that when we listen,
when we listen to that modern tradition, even in just a single village,
even in just a single home.
We hear multiple voices that sometimes challenge those ancient texts.
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