a ramayana on air. 145
the Tulsi Manas, Sagar claims to have been involved for some twenty-five years in
a group that met regularly to recite and discuss the Hindi epic. His proposal was for
a detailed treatment in fifty-two episodes, to be based primarily on the Tulsidas ver-
sion but also drawing on the Sanskrit Ramayana, the Tamil and Bengali versions of
Kamban and Krittibas, and other regional retellings. Initially vetoed by Mandi
House, the proposal was revived and resubmitted, but its approval was apparently
delayed by concern that the airing of such a serial would arouse communal senti-
ments.^6 Even when the project was finally given the go-ahead in 1986, it is certain
that neither the bureaucrats nor Sagar himself had an inkling of the response it
would generate. Significantly, it was assigned a languid time slot at the start of the
weekly holiday, when prior network experience indicated few viewers would be
watching.
Sagar assembled a cast that combined relatively unknown principals (such as
Arun Govil as Ram, Sunil Lahri as Lakshman, and the twenty-year-old Dipika
Chikhlia as Sita) with veteran character actors (former wrestler Dara Singh—the
serial’s monkey-hero Hanuman—had appeared in some two hundred action-
adventures). At the secluded hamlet of Umbergaon, on the Gujarat coast some
three hours north of Bombay, Sagar laid out “Vrindavan Studios,” where the entire
crew lived for two weeks each month for the duration of the project.
The serial premiered with a framing narration that situated it in the long tradi-
tion ofRamayana stories in various languages and thus introduced the theme (to be
reiterated many times) of the Ramayana as a symbol of national unity and integra-
tion. The story itself opened with a parliament of frightened gods petitioning
Vishnu, recumbent on his serpent-couch on the Milky Ocean, to take human form
and put a stop to Ravan’s depredations; this in turn led to scenes of King Dashrath’s
fire sacrifice and the birth of Ram and his brothers. Early episodes, while not exactly
hurried, moved at a moderate pace through the first of the epic’s seven books, show-
ing scenes of Ram and his brothers’ childhood, some highly original interpretations
of their education in a spartan ashram, and the familiar story of Ram and Laksh-
man’s adventures with the sage Vishvamitra, culminating in the young hero’s win-
ning of Sita as his bride.
The rest, as they say, is history. Despite mostly acerbic reviews in the English-
language media, condemning the serial as a crude commercialization and decrying
its production values and sluggish pace,^7 and a few equally harsh critiques in the
Hindi press,^8 the popularity of the serial rose steadily throughout its first six months
on the air. In the absence of anything like Nielsen ratings for India, the most telling
statistics come from advertising revenues. During its first month, Ramayan lagged