68 "Presenting" the Past
"when the Prime Minister spoke in its favor the wheels started moving."
He also said that the minister of state for broadcasting, Ajit Panja, "backed
the project with all his strength."^67 Answering a question on why the serial
was not telecast in 1986 as originally planned and the reasons for the delay,
Sagar said, "The delay, I guess, could be because they were trying to find
a proper atmosphere for its telecast."^68
When the Ramayan was approved for telecast, the Doordarshan had sanc-
tioned only 52 episodes, which would wind up with the return of Rama to
Ayodhya. But Sagar dragged his "holy task" and "spiritual commitment"
so much that he applied for another 26 episodes. And it was approved. The
Doordarshan director had given Sagar an ultimatum, asking to wind up
the Ramayan in 72 episodes, and there was also a ban on giving extensions
to any of the sponsored programs on national TV. However, the Ramayan
was given another extension, and many doubted the government's hand to
appease the electorate in view of the coming elections.^69
Most important of all, the serial fit the bill of the Hindutva forces per-
fectly, as they were bent more upon instigating nostalgia among the peo-
ple rather than instilling any ideological vigor or political program for the
future. The right-wing reasoning goes like this: as Rama is "our national
hero," the Ramayana becomes an account of "our ancient national strug-
gle" against the rakshasas, and this revived "Ramayanic patriotism" alone
could possibly take us to progress and prosperity. Making the Ramayana
a contested terrain of modern Indian national identity, a Hindutva com-
mentator quotes another saying, "To be Indian, or simply to live in India,
is to open oneself to the benign moral influence of the two epics, and that
their moral influence 'determines the quality of the affected person's Indi-
anness whatever that very large word means.'"^70
Addressing an RSS convention in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, L. K. Advani
narrated an incident. He had witnessed some 25 to 30 years ago an Indone-
sian ballet group perform a dance drama on the Ramayana in New Delhi.
Almost all of the artists were Muslims, and when a journalist asked them
how come they were performing the Ramayana, one of them allegedly said
that the epic was considered a part of their cultural heritage. Advani got
to his point immediately: "It is pertinent to ask, if Indonesia can accept the
Ramayana as part of its cultural heritage, why not the Indian Muslim sim-
ilarly accept [sic] the Ramayana as part of his own cultural heritage?"^71
Condoning to Advani's point and quoting some Muslim authorities on
the Ramayana, Saeed Naqvi argued that Muslims are an overwhelming
majority in Indonesia, unlike in India, where they are an insecure minor-
ity. He suggested removing that insecurity by having more Muslims sing
the glory of Rama and Krishna. Naqvi's response was distributed by the
DRI among intellectuals for more discussion. A senior journalist from
Bombay was ready to support Naqvi, but wanted to deal with the present
leadership of the Muslims very firmly. His advice was "Let us not forget