56 "Presenting" the Past
Kavya of Michael Madhusudan Dutt. Sympathizing with Ravana and the
rakshasas, this Bengali story sings the glory of little-known characters such
as Virbahu and Meghnad (Indrajit), the valiant sons of Ravana; Virbahu's
mother, Chitrangada; Meghnad's mother, Mandodari; his wife, Promila;
Lakshmana; and others.
Taking an astute position, Jawaharlal Nehru interprets the Ramayana
and the Mahabharata as the conquests and civil wars of the Indo-Aryans
when they were expanding and consolidating themselves. He says he
never "attached very much importance to these stories as factually true"
and even "criticized the magical and supernatural element in them."
However, he "would hate to destroy or throw away all the beauty and
imaginative symbolism" that these stories contain.^31 The Ramayana has
traditionally been a book of ethics for men and women and young and
old, and has taught moral values in daily life, ethical concerns in relation-
ships, and so forth. There are lessons for everyone in the society from the
common citizen to the king, descriptions of an ideal city and afterlife, and
depictions of earthly conflicts and heavenly peace. As V S. Srinivasa Sastri
puts it: "Of the countless benefits—one may even call them blessings—
that the Ramayana can confer, the highest is the training of the emotions
and of the spirit Of the lessons it teaches, the highest seems to me to be
the exaltation of Dharma. On its altar everything must be sacrificed, rever-
ently and cheerfully."^32
The Ramayana, however, is not a religious book full of scriptural stipula-
tions or preachings of the providence. Pointing out to its other potentials,
C. Rajagopalachari writes, "On one occasion Gandhiji and I were talking
about a girl very dear to both of us. I said: 'How did she get all these
ideas and phrases of love without having read any of present-day love
stories?' Gandhiji said in answer: 'But has she not read the Raamaayana?
Is the Raamaayana not a love story too?' This struck me as profound."^33
In sum, the story as such has its own beauty and flaws, lessons to learn
and lesions to leave out (for those who take it seriously), and has been
retold often with specific purposes. Just as much as its ancient histori-
cal roles, the recent sociocultural and political roles of the Ramayana have
been many and varied. The contemporary Ramayana that has come to be
presented in a pseudonationalistic light now has an altogether different
emphasis and agenda. Before we turn to the actual discourse, let us dis-
cern the historical context.
RAM-BOW TO RAMBO(W): THE STORY OF THE 1980s
As Ved Mehta contends, "There are moments in politics that reverberate
in time like a perpetually tolling bell, and when that happens the signifi-
cance of the moment often cannot be assessed until long after the tolling
has begun."^34 For India, the tolling of the 1980s was a series of nation-