Keeping the Ramayana Alive
Recently, Hindu groups in San Jose protested the San Jose Museum of Art‘s screening of Nina Paley’s film Sita Sings the Blues and display of a M.F. Husain painting that features an abstract representation of Sita. This isn’t the first time protests like these have happened, and it probably won’t be the last. Janaki playwright Virali Gokaldas and author Anirvan Chatterjee respond to attempts by conservative religious groups to censor diverse interpretations of The Ramayana in an editorial in India-West:
In the early 1400s, the classical Kannada poet Kumara Vyasa joked that the serpent Adiesa, who supports the earth on its head, must be straining under the weight of all the poets writing their own tellings of the Ramayana. The Ramayana is a vital piece of world literature, but what makes it different from Shakespeare or the Illiad is the way it has spread and evolved around the world, with thousands of variant written and oral versions.
We are saddened by the recent attack on the San Jose Museum of Art for including diverse representations of the Ramayana by M.F. Husain and Nina Paley in their recent exhibit on Indian art. Our ability to recontextualize the Ramayana is precisely what makes it a living story, instead of a dead one. Filipinos celebrate the story of the “Maharadia Lawana” (Maharaja Ravana), in which he prays to the angel Gabriel for boons, and later transforms into the golden deer. In some versions from rural Tamil Nadu, Ravana is the hero and Rama the villain. In Jain tellings, Rama never kills Ravana; it’s Lakshmana who does the deed. In Chandrabati’s 16th century proto-feminist Bengali Ramayana, the story is told from Sita’s point of view; while Sita never criticizes Rama, Chandrabati, as the narrator, speaks out on behalf of the pregnant queen as she is exiled by her husband. The Ramayana is as rich and diverse as India. If our Indian traditions allow even a 180 degree twist like Ravana being the hero, then what right do protestors have to censors new ways of expressing the story?
As Bay Area writers who have our own visions of the Ramayana to share, we take the attack on the tradition of diverse Ramayanas personally. The Ramayana speaks to us, just as it did to those creators whose works were being protested in San Jose. When American filmmaker Nina Paley compares her pining for the husband who left her to that of Sita’s pining for Rama, it shows us that the Ramayana still conveys real emotions that cut across cultures. And when India’s great painter MF Husain depicted an abstract blue Sita, it reminds us once again that the Ramayana isn’t limited to Hindus; indeed, observers remember the popularity of Ramanand Sagar’s 1980s TV serial even in Muslim neighborhoods like Mohammed Ali Road in Mumbai. We’re delighted that the San Jose Museum of Art chose to highlight the continuing relevance of the Ramayan to contemporary artists, rather than treating it as a dead text. We hope that would-be Ramayana censors will respect our traditions, and do the same.
Anirvan Chatterjee is the author of “Lanka is Drowning,” a short story using the Ramayana to explore the politics of climate change, which won second place in the 2011 Katha fiction contest.
Virali Gokaldas is the playwright of “Janaki: Daughter of the Dirt,” a new play about Sita’s struggle, woven together with a story of ecology and power from modern India, premiering in San Francisco September 16-18.
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Kudos to the San Jose Museum of Art for screening Sita Sings The Blues (which I bought from Amazon.com). What Nina Paley did was in not offensive. Ms. Paley introduced the human experience into the equation and what that does is make people think about their faith.
Hinduism like Judaism is a religion that is based on having people “question”. No doubt the Hindus that protested Ms. Paley’s movie would be up in arms to hear one of my lectures on how one’s cultural upbringing affects how they perceive and follow their own faith, and I include Hinduism in that discourse.
Again Sita Sings The blues is a great movie and my hat goes off to the San Jose Museum of Art for screening the movie.
You seriously believe these are the kinds of questions that have kept Hinduism alive for millennia? Your ego is only as great as your ignorance if you think that Hinduism needs people like Paley to thrive! And why bring Jews into this mix? Comparing Judaism to Hinduism another clear indication of your ignorance! You can fool yourself if it helps, but know this, Hindus do not need your endorsement nor your ‘creative questioning’ to survive and thrive. The very fact that you cannot find any mainstream Indian organization, like the ICC in Milpitas for example, to support these events is a clear indicator of the fringes you live in.
B.K., have you seen Oakland animator Sanjay Patel’s new Ramayana graphic novel “Divine Loophole”? The Japanese anime movie “Prince of Light: The Legend of Ramayana”? The play “Ramayana!” staged by the students at Mount Madonna school in Watsonville every year?
While all these tell the story of the Ramayana in their own unique way, none are intended only for a narrowly Indian audience. I’m sorry that you’re offended to see non-Hindus interested in and inspired by the Ramayana. Is Hinduism really so weak that our mythological stories, our great works of literature, can’t bear to be shared and retold outside our community?
I’m also terribly confused why you’d expect this play to be staged at the ICC. Other local theater companies like Naatak don’t stage their plays at the ICC; the last Naatak play I saw was held at a mainstream theater space in San Francisco, just like this one.
I am glad that progressive South Asians are taking a stance. It is quite a dismal situation if we can’t poke fun of ourselves or re-interpret these texts creatively or with a critical feminist or other lens.
Epic stories like the Mahabharatha or Ramayana are ripe with interpretive possibilities so am glad you are calling on the right wingers’ narrow ideals of these texts. The ultimate source texts are all our memories of the millions of drops of stories and sub-plots that make up these epic oceans….
Please show me a single instance all of the history of literature anywhere in the world when an epic has been ‘interpreted’ and has been granted as great a status as the original.
Worse yet, your ideas of interpretation are nothing more dragging down great characters into the mud and calling it your interpretation!
When Shakespeare wrote Julius Caesar he did not ‘interpret’ Plutarch. He actually studied the historical facts and faithfully wrote them into the play but created the immortal characters we know today.
But on the other hand, Nina Paley took her own pathetic life story and changed her name to Sita and called it an ‘interpretation’. The fools that you are for white people’s adulation – even if it means demeaning yourselves – are eager to lap it up.
B.K., would you attack Tulsidas’ interpretation of the Ramayana because it’s not as great as Valmiki’s? Every version of the Ramayana reflects the author’s ideas, and the ideas that people are thinking about at the time. I don’t understand why this fact seems to enrage you so much.
For example, in Valmiki’s Ramayana, Vali questions Rama for his unjust attack upon him, but Tulsidas, a Rama devotee, whitewashes the incident, presumably so as not to tarnish Rama’s image. Valmiki is also very clear about how the sage Gautama cursed his wife Ahalya because she had consensual sex with Indra, but Tulsidas mysteriously omits the whole incident, presumably because he felt he could not even bear to acknowledge the very existence of consensual adultery under the sexual morality of his time. These are interpretive choices which help tell the story, but with an alternative spin.
Would you also condemn Tulsidas for daring to rewrite Valmiki’s story, and call him a fool for the adulation of sexually conservative 16th century Rama worshipers who felt like Rama could do no wrong?
B.K., you claim that Shakespeare was faithful to Plutarch, but he actually took many liberties to make for a better story, frequently altering dates, changing locations, etc. Most dramatically, Shakespeare has Caesar say “Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!” at the time of his death, while Plutarch actually reports that Caesar was silent. I read that as an interpretation of Plutarch, rather than a mechanical staging.
(Of course Shakespeare was infinitely more faithful to Plutarch than were the screenwriters of nonfiction-book-to-movie adaptations like “He’s Just Not That Into You” or “Fast Food Nation” — but that’s really not saying very much.)
Anirvan,
Thank you for taking the trouble to reply.
Again, I am stunned that you guys think you are in the same league as Tulsidas, Kumaravyasa and Valmiki.
Not because I am offended, but because it seems so incredibly foolish a stand to take! It is like some aspiring writer came up to me and said ‘hey have you read my interpretation of Macbeth? I have managed to do it better than Shakespeare ever dreamt of doing it!’ What would I say to him or her? I would quietly walk away.
I have not read Tulsidas Ramayana and have no idea of the sex act you seem to have latched on to, that has gone missing! What else did you learn from Tulsidas Ramayana that may be worth sharing? Would you care to enlighten us?
Assuming you are right about it, omitting uncomfortable sexual references does not offend anyone. Adding them where it does not exist in the original, does offend. If Valmiki was more courageous, that is his prerogative. But for you or anyone you are defending, to take a character such as Rama or Sita and either smear them with your own emotions or giving them ‘attitude’ to suit your liking, is not the same as Tulsidas or Kumaravyasa writing their version of Ramayana or Mahabharata. They did not re-cast any character to suit their life experiences as all of you are doing. That is my opinion and the opinion of the world at large.
But if you and your tiny cohort of admirers have convinced yourselves that your ‘version’ of Sita will reign supreme over the next few centuries because you have ‘adapted’ her to the modern era, that also is your prerogative. Everyone is free to think whatever they want.
As I said before, what would have been admirable if any of you had the creativity to write a story of your own, create characters of your own and weave the story of your frustrations into them instead of banking on notoriety you knew you would get by besmirching revered figures, to give you the leverage to vent your frustrations with life.
Challenge yourselves to be original, it is far more rewarding. Your feeble attempts at ‘interpreting’ revered figures by dragging them down to human levels is no better than pathetic electronic re-mixes of wonderful original musical creations. As we all know, these re-mixes are universally disliked. Your ‘interpretations’ will fall in the same dust-bins to which we consign re-mixes (‘trash cans’, if you are an unimaginative American who gets befuddled by the slightest departure from the slang you are used to).
All you are doing is hurting gentle people who want to be left alone and cause rifts in society where none existed before.
(1) You say that “I am stunned that you guys think you are in the same league as Tulsidas, Kumaravyasa and Valmiki.” Nobody implied anything of the sort. There are thousands of variations of the Ramayana in the world, and that there will continue to be thousands of more versions created. The arts are not a winner-take-all competition. Nobody’s trying to overshadow Valmiki’s Ramayana, any more than the California Shakespeare Company is trying to overshadow Shakespeare when they omitted a few lines and had the characters staged in contemporary urban clothing in their 2010 production of Macbeth.
And why does one need to be Tulsidas to tackle the Ramayana? Per your logic nobody should ever engage in the arts unless they’re a grandmaster. Should nobody hum classical songs except for Pt. Bhimsen Joshi? Should nobody simplify and retell classic stories to their children, unless they’re world-class authors? By your logic, we should all be robots, afraid to engage in creative arts, afraid to build on the shoulders of giants.
(2) The story from Valmiki Ramayana that Tulsidas chose to censor is the story of Ahalya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahalya). I’m puzzled why you seem to approve of censoring Valmiki’s story to suit the mood of the author and the mood of the times. Are you suggesting that Tulsidas’ writing his discomfort with adultery into his Ramayana *wasn’t* a recasting of the original story to suit his opinions and life experiences?
(3) You act as if “remixes” are a modern phenomenon. In fact, our entire culture is built on the continuous process of transmission, editing, and interpretation. Copyright is a modern western concept, and higher literacy rates are a very recent arrival in India. Would you censor every gharana, because each has its own unauthorized interpretation of the ragas? Would you shut down every village Ramayana play because they deviate from Valmiki’s original text?
The movie made me angry. In ways I did not know I would be. Somehow it felt that Ramayana got trivialized. Not that I am a fan of Ram. Quite the opposite. But still – as a born Hindu – I do hold it sacred. Go figure!
First off – your name is rather intriguing. Roke means ‘Let us stop’ in Hindi. Noir means ‘Darkness’ in french. Combine the two and you have a great name that says ‘let us stop darkness’, or the corollary ‘spread light’. Was that the intent?
In Sanskrit we have an equivalent for that ‘thamasoma jyotirgamaya’ meaning ‘take me from darkness unto light’.
Having made peace, let me launch my diatribe! I know everyone here dislikes me because I am the curmudgeon who wants things to be left alone and you are all the young Turks who want to shake things up.
The trouble you are having with the film can be easily understood by going to its raison d’etre.
Whenever an author attempts to rewrite a text, he she will have to answer a simple question: Do I want to make it better, or tear it down?
The answer clearly in case of Nina Paley and Virali Gokhaldas is that they thought Sita ‘was too good to be true’. So the answer to my question above is ‘we want to tear her down; and why stop there? While we’re at it, let’s do a number on Rama too!’
Your comment ‘Somehow it felt that Ramayana got trivialized.’ is very telling. The reason why these attempts at ‘reinterpreting’ end up so badly is that at the heart of the issue is the desire of the author to cut everyone they don’t agree with, down to size.
In other words, the very reason for writing these so-called ‘works’ is to trivialize the originals. In that sense they have indeed succeeded as you correctly observed.
B.K., my friend, you confuse the heck out of me. Why is every rewrite or response an attempt to improve or destroy an original work? Isn’t there room for literary dialogue?
I worry that you’re extrapolating from very limited reading experience, so here are some great works you may want to try:
- The novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” by Gregory Maguire, a lovely prequel to Frank L. Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz,” which breathes new life into the original.
- Shashi Tharoor’s “The Great Indian Novel” is a retelling of the Mahabharata in the context of the Indian freedom movement. This is very cleverly written, and while some of his choices may offend Congress Party supporters, I recommend it very highly.
- Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” retells “Hamlet” from the point of view of two minor characters.
- Jean Rhys’ “Wide Sargasso Sea” is a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre,” and has been called on the best novels of all time.
- Bharati Mukherjee’s “Holder of the World” is an Indian response to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”; this is fascinating, but may also be a more difficult read
- Dionys Burger’s “Sphereland” is a perfect sequel to Edwin Abbott’s “Flatland.” Both books are very highly recommended if you enjoy math or science.
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