184 Part III: South Asia
take food to feed the gods and then eat the leftovers. She may fast on Tuesdays
to ensure his long life. While he is alive, her life is filled with auspiciousness
and good things; when he dies, she is plunged into an ascetic widowhood.
A young girl’s life is a time of joyous freedom in her father’s house and vil-
lage. She does not have to cover her head and she may well be free of the
household tasks that will be her lot in adulthood. Eventually her father will
begin to worry about settling her future; he will have to arrange her marriage.
Previously this had to be done before puberty, as it was a sin for a father to let
his daughter reach sexual maturity in his household, but legislation now for-
bids (without exactly having stopped) marriage before age 16.
A father will begin by making cautious inquiries among men of his caste,
seeking a prestigious marital connection in a distant village. Far more attentionThey return in triumph to Ayodhya, only to face another round of suspicion from the
populace. This time Rama unceremoniously abandons her to the forest, unaware she
is pregnant with twin sons—whom she raises to love and respect their father.
Though Sita has long been considered “the noblest flower of Indian womanhood,
devoted to her lord in thought, word and deed,” and the story of Rama and Sita is
held to be the best “text-book of morals which can be safely placed in the hands of
youths to inspire them to higher and nobler ideals of conduct and character” (K. R. S.
Iyengar, quoted in Hess 1999), many are not so sure. Why did the “ideal man,” Rama,
treat Sita so badly? Should Sita have meekly accepted this cruelty and submitted to
the fire ordeal and then to banishment? In the original version by Valmiki (ca. second
century B.C.E.), Rama has a change of heart and goes in search of her, demanding
that she once again go through the fire ordeal and then return with him to Ayodhya.
This time Sita has had enough. She calls on mother earth to open up and receive her.
Young women idealize Sita’s romantic love for her husband, the handsome prince
(and god) Rama, happily enduring hardship just to be with him. Her devotion
became, in medieval poetry, a metaphor for human love for the divine. Sita-like char-
acters—long-suffering heroines who never lose faith in their beloved—often appear in
Bollywood films, and Ramayana themes can often be discerned.
But if you talk to young women, you frequently hear another view. The following is
from a conversation with a young Brahman wife in the North Indian region of Mithila,
where Sita herself was born:
I tell you, Sita is not a model. But what was her fault? Why shouldn’t I take her as
a model? Her fault was nothing. If Ravan took her away, she was a weak girl! She
was a weak girl. If her husband and brother-in-law couldn’t protect her, the peo-
ple of Ayodhya should be blamed. Why should a girl of Mithila be blamed? I am
telling you, Mithila seems to be scared of Sita. I tell you, if there is some misun-
derstanding between wife and husband, the girl will be blamed. Every time. Even
the parents, knowing that my girl hasn’t done anything wrong, you can interview
my mother in this case, I think she’ll give you quite a lot of information. Even sup-
pose I have a difference with my husband... my mother, she is going to be on
the son-in-law’s side. Her son-in-laws are always perfect outside, you know?