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wundermonk
17 November 2011, 04:55 AM
So, there has been this controversy over A.K. Ramanujam's "300 Ramayanas (http://www.sacw.net/IMG/pdf/AKRamanujan_ThreeHundredRamayanas.pdf)" essay.

I am not a scriptural prude. I am ok if folks in different countries seek to extrapolate Hindu stories to suit their own culture/society. Thats what, IMO, makes Hinduism such a diverse, popular, rich, organic, living and breathing religion when compared with the straitjacket Abrahamic varieties.

However, the hypocrisy of the Indian Left which masquerades as "eminent" historians and intellectuals needs to be exposed. There was this (http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/50486-left-finds-merit-in-teaching-many-ramayanas.html?tmpl=component&print=1) article in the Daily Pioneer yesterday which does a nice job of summarizing Hindu frustration about the entire episode.


Left finds merit in teaching many Ramayanas!
Till now Left-wing academics were loath to admit either the existence of Rama or the relevance of Ramayana. Suddenly, they are insistent on forcing students of history to read AK Ramanujan’s essay on 300 Ramayanas. Inder Kapahy asks them some tough questions



A question begs itself to be asked. All those ‘eminent’ historians, self-admittedly Left-wingers, who used to debunk Rama and Ramayana as figments of imagination, with no historicity, why are they so keen to teach, and that too compulsorily, ‘300 Ramayanas’ by AK Ramanujan? Have they forgotten their mocking questions: Where is the birth certificate of Rama? Where is his engineering degree, etc?

The answer is simple. AK Ramanujan’s essay purportedly lays claim to informing the reader of diverse tellings of the Ramayana. But the basic purpose of his essay is revealed in his concluding remarks. “Now is there a common core to the Rama’s stories, except the most skeletal set of relations like that of Rama, his brother, his wife, and the antagonist Ravana who abducts her?” he asks. His message is clear. The characters of Rama, Sita, Laksmana, Hanuman, Ravana do not leave any universally accepted moral message.

Ramanujan casts doubts even over the sanctity of the diverse tellings of Rama’s stories being labeled as ‘Ramayana’. “Some shadow of a relational structure claims the name of Ramayana for all these tellings, but on a closer look one is not all that like another. Like a collection of people with the same proper name, they make a class in name alone,” he informs. Now, can this conclusion be considered as the celebration of the diversity of Ramayana as some Left-wingers want us to believe Ramanujan’s essay portrays !

Those who are clamouring for reinduction of Ramanujan’s essay as a compulsory prescribed text make clever attempts to divert attention from the actual contents of the essay. Strategically and tactically they keep the focus on the eminence of AK Ramanujan, the need for intellectual freedom, education encouraging questioning minds, autonomy of university systems and teachers, aversion to hooliganism in the domain of academics, existence of diverse cultural beliefs, existence of hundreds of Ramayana tellings, etc. Nobody in his right mind will disagree with this. But making one essay compulsory reading is antithetical to all tenets of academic freedom. It amounts to Talibanisation, albeit of the Left variety, of cultural history and historiography.

A Left-oriented professorial coterie is wielding enormous power in our university systems, particularly in the departments of History and Political Science. The induction in the late-1960s of Nurul Hassan, an otherwise political lightweight who drew no adverse attention towards himself, began the process of appointing committed Marxists and communists to positions of power in the institutions of higher learning and in the state-funding agencies like the UGC. This process continued unhindered for nearly a decade. Liberal academics feel stifled but choose to remain silent owing to the inordinate power of appointments and promotions exercised by the coterie. The mortal fear of being dubbed Right reactionaries, fascists, Hindutavawallahs, etc, force many into a suppressed silence. Leftists have developed political abuse into an art form. That is why most remain aloof even though they are convinced that Left-led forces are keen to weaken the faith of our youth in our cultural beliefs and in our religious icons.

AK Ramanujan was undoubtedly an eminent literatteur and translator of folklore. But his essay, ‘300 Ramayanas: Five examples and Three thoughts on translation’, is eminently unsuitable to be prescribed as an essential text for any section of students of history. All examples are chosen to lampoon the icons and articles of faith respected by crores of Indians. The diversity of many tellings of Ramayana is only an external facade. Take for example the Ahalya episode. Any person who has read Valmiki or Kampan or Tulsidas Ramayana would know that the moral conclusion of the episode is the redemption of the sinning Ahalya by Rama. But the celebrated essay details only the seduction of Ahalya by Indra. Is it fair and appropriate? Similarly the essay pits Jainas against Hindus; “Jainas consider themselves rationalists — unlike the Hindus, who, according to them, are given to exorbitant and bloodthirsty fancies and rituals.”

The essay ascribes popularity of Hanuman in Thailand not because he is a devout celebate Rambhakt but because “here Hanuman is quite a ladies man, who doesn’t at all mind looking into the bedrooms of Lanka and doesn’t consider seeing another man’s sleeping wife anything immoral, as Valmiki’s or Kampan’s Hanuman does.” Are our students required to be compulsorily taught that in South-East Asia Ramayana owes its popularity to the voyeuristic propensities of Hanuman? The essay further informs us that, according to a Santhal telling of Ramayana, “Sita is seduced both by Ravana and Laksmana”.

This brings us back to the original question. Why this insistence upon the induction of this essay as a compulsory (the singularly suggested) reading. The preface by Paula Richman, who edited the book Many Ramayanas (OUP), of which Ramanujan’s essay is a part, provides the answer. EV Ramaswamy was a well-known anti-North India (read anti-Rama because he maintained that Rama and Ramayana are the principle tools of North India’s hegemony) founder of the Dravida movement. Paula admits that “when I actively analysed his (Ramasami’s) reading of the story of Rama, however I found much of it strikingly compelling and coherent if viewed in light of his anti-north Indian ideology”. Further she takes pride in the fact that essays collected by her in the book “grew in the direction of a study of tellings of the Ramayana that refashion or contest Valmiki’s text”. In the preface to Ramanujan’s essay she says that Doordarshan’s rendering of Ramayana, viewed and appreciated by unprecedented numbers of viewers in the late- 1980s, “possessed a dangerous and unprecedented authority”. It is thus obvious that the purpose of including the essay was only to lessen the impact of Ramayana and not to celebrate its diversity.

It is necessary to mention that Ramanujan’s essay has not been 'banned', as is propagated by the uninformed cacophony raised by a section, but is only excluded from compulsory reading. Any student is free to read and quote from the essay. The Academic Council of Delhi University, comprising learned Deans, Heads, Professors, elected teachers and renowned academic administrators, took this sagacious decision after a detailed discussion and debate. The evenly divided opinion of the ‘experts’ was also before the Academic Council. Only eight members out of more than a hundred present dissented with the majority decision. The Council was under direction of the Supreme Court to formulate its collective view on the issue. The court did not want only the History Department's view but the view of the Council which is the highest statutory body to take decisions on syllabi and readings. The Supreme Court has been informed of the Council's decision.

The insistence of a well-entrenched coterie to reinduct the disputed essay only reflects its desire to maintain its hegemonic control over history syllabi and readings. The collective mind of this coterie is colonised by anti-Hinduism. Even though it is the beneficiary of huge official patronage, and even though it camouflages into communal biases in 'progressive' jargons, this coterie has complete disconnect with the sentiments of the common people. Suppressed volcanic anger at their stranglehold over some social science disciplines constitutes the biggest threat to academic freedom and intellectual autonomy.

It must be emphasised that for centuries it is known, and accepted, that there are hundreds of tellings of the Ramayana. But the epic has a permanent place in the collective psyche of people throughout the world for the moral message it conveys. The Hindi phrase ‘Apni Apni Ram Kahani’ aptly describes the universality of the epic. Ramayana should be spared the protection of our divisive ‘eminent’ historians.

In summary:


Why should this essay be made *compulsory* reading for students of history?

If Ramayana/Mahabharatha are myths [as the Left holds] why even teach anything about them under history?

Can the Left in India please grow a pair and support the revoking of the ban on Satanic Verses?

sm78
17 November 2011, 05:29 AM
Why should this essay be made *compulsory* reading for students of history?Well probably because, no one has written such a summary survey of the available renditions of ramayana from different points of time in Indian and South Asian history? Probably those hindus who object to left leaning biases in ramayana essays should study and contribute meaningful scholarly essays on the topics - instead of spending all their energy on writing books on conspiracy to break India.

If Ramayana/Mahabharatha are myths [as the Left holds] why even teach anything about them under history?Even if they are myths, a story written at certain points in time carries anthropological information of the society of the time. Any literature is a mine of cultural history. The 300 ramayanas in question were not written at one time, thus giving a good scope in time and geography of studing how stories about the King of Ayodhya influenced people at the time. What were their beliefs etc..

Can the Left in India please grow a pair and support the revoking of the ban on Satanic Verses?Yes, left should do that. But the point here is not what left had done, is doing or will do. The point here is on contrary what Hindus have done, are doing or will do. Will Hindus continue to be a reactionary matchine always opposing what left, west and anti-hindus say or do? Or they want to grow up intellectually and morally, act on self defined priorities?

A.K. Ramanujam was not a hinduphiliac for sure. But does one has to be a hindutva activist to write about ramayana, particularly when it is amly clear that hindutva guys have no ability to write anything meaningful on any of Indic scriptures? History is a secular course, why should its contents be subverted to religious zealousness of some people? Has A.K Ramanujam misquoted stuff, fabricated evidence and willfully tried to attack hindus without any other purpose?

Hindus stop getting frustrated at your own inabilities. Stop treating society and secular subjects as slave of religious sentiments. Stop defining your actions on the compass of what what your percieved enimies say or do. What you say or do is your own responsibility. Grow up please.

Yes, history should also contain lessons on medieval moslem barbarism, the truth about real application of the concept of jehad in India, truth about jehad. Please start movements for that. But don't use it as excuse to cover your own misconducts.

wundermonk
17 November 2011, 05:50 AM
Why should this essay be made *compulsory* reading for students of history?

Well probably because, no one has written such a summary survey of the available renditions of ramayana from different points of time in Indian and South Asian history? Probably those hindus who object to left leaning biases in ramayana essays should study and contribute meaningful scholarly essays on the topics - instead of spending all their energy on writing books on conspiracy to break India.

The emphasis was on *compulsory*. The Left insisted on it. Why not make it an elective? This is the current decision and I think sanity prevailed.



If Ramayana/Mahabharatha are myths [as the Left holds] why even teach anything about them under history?

Even if they are myths, a story written at certain points in time carries anthropological information of the society of the time.

You should read Ramanujan's essay. There is a link in my OP. There is no anthropological information whatsoever in his essay.



Can the Left in India please grow a pair and support the revoking of the ban on Satanic Verses?

Yes, left should do that.

Good. We agree on something. The intellectual bankruptcy of the Left is quite stunning, actually.

sm78
17 November 2011, 07:45 AM
The emphasis was on *compulsory*. The Left insisted on it. Why not make it an elective? This is the current decision and I think sanity prevailed.

But why demand for its removal in the first place? Left hawked down on this issue only after the self righteous right made a issue out of it.


You should read Ramanujan's essay. There is a link in my OP. There is no anthropological information whatsoever in his essay.

I have read it much before you posted it. I had posted it also before in this forum. Ramanujam himself doesn't speculate on the society but merely shows the diversity in which the story was interpreted by different cultures at different time points, sometimes contemporary. That itself is good pointer for someone interested in evolution cultural and religious beliefs in the subcontinent to then put his own effort and study the various versions of the epic. It is interesting for anybody who has interest in culture to know that there exists buddhists version of Ramayana which makes Ravan a tragic hero.

From religious point of view, I hardly understand the issue. His essay is not about religion at all. Just literature.


Good. We agree on something. The intellectual bankruptcy of the Left is quite stunning, actually.

But you conviniently ignore the equal if not more intellectual bankruptcy of the self-righeous right. Its worse since its always the right who have to benchmark their actions against what the left has done or is doing. Its much more childish. Left's are unscrupulous at times, but at least they suffer less from inferiority complex and intellectual dependence.

kallol
17 November 2011, 08:55 AM
How do we view Ramayana ? As a history ?

Then I can understand that there can be many interpretations of the history.

However if the Ramayana and Mahabharata are primarily meant for building societies, building values, building the way of life, then it would be quite imprudent to dilute the purpose and create confusion.

One is for literary sake but another is for creating confusion.

Already too secular urban Bengal has been moving towards no roots and are quite anti God. The way of life (life quality) also has detoriated and with that the discipline of life and performance.

North has been ravaged by mix of culture from different invading cultures.

Now the question is do we want further detoriation of the way of life ?