You are on page 1of 4

Why RAM is called purushottam, or ideal maan, even after gave up his queen becaus e people gossip about

her faithfulness... ans SITA a sage ifshe broke the rules... by devdatta... I once asked my sister if, given a choice, she would marry Ram or Krishna. Her r eply was predictable: Krishna, of course! But he would not be faithful to you, I warned her, reminding her about Radha and Satyabhama and Rukmini. But I don't want to marry a man who throws his wife out of the house because people gossip about her faithfulness, she snapped. But what if he never married again, remaining resolutely faithful to her despite family pressure, I asked. Is he not the only heroic god to be given the title o f ekam-patni-vrata, `faithful to a single wife'? This made my sister pause and think . Finally, irritated by my championing of Ram, she said, I don't think he is the id eal man at all. Who said he is ideal, I asked. Well, everyone, she replied. That got me thinking. Ram is called maryada purushottam, which means `he who follo ws the rules perfectly'. He is not merely purushottam, or ideal man. That qualific ation of maryada is important to distinguish him from another purushottam, leela purushottam Krishna, he who ideally plays games, referring to Krishna's ability t o bend and even break rules with a smile. To try and understand Ram without Krishna is like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzl e without all the critical pieces. In fact, to understand any god or goddess in Hinduism, we need the rest of the pantheon. The idea of God, for example, cannot be explained without the Goddess. They embody not masculinity and femininity as is popularly imagined, but rather the mind and the world outside the mind in ot her words, humanity and nature. Each complements the other. Every character and plot is a metaphor, and this web of metaphors creates a narrative fabric that re veals what we call today Vedic or Hindu or Indic thought. Most people, like my sister, prefer the rakish and distant Ram. But to me, as a mythologist, ot two different people. They are both avatars rent contexts behaving differently in response and charming Krishna to the stoic this seems odd because they are n of Vishnu, two forms in two diffe to two different situations.

Ram belongs to the Treta Yuga and is the eldest son of a royal clan, obliged to uphold the rules of the kingdom. Krishna, however, belongs to Dvapara Yuga, a la ter, more corrupt era, and is a younger son of a clan that is cursed never to we ar the crown. So we find Krishna defending kingdoms and serving as kingmaker, bu t in temples we rarely see him as a warrior: he is worshipped as cowherd and cha rioteer, lowly servant roles that, considering the caste hierarchy in India, are neither accidental nor insignificant. If Ram stands as champion of the varna-ashrama-dharma (code of civilized conduct determined by social station and stage of life) that defines Vedic social engin eering, Krishna challenges it from within, subversively, without openly confront ing it (open confrontation is left to another avatar). Thus Vishnu is prescribin g a system and at the same time warning one against it. This escapes the eye of those who are too busy worshipping Ram and Krishna, but it does not escape the e ye of those who seek patterns in the many plots of the epics and the chronicles. Vishnu is described as preserver of social order the order that Brahma creates a

nd Shiva destroys. All orders are based on human rules and values, and Shiva as hermit mocks human rules as unnatural, since he prefers nature's way. But in natur e's way, only the fit survive, and the unfit have no hope. Social order is about t he human attempt to create resources, to help the helpless and to create a world that does not favour only the strong. Hence, rules. But rules have a dark side. And the Ramayana reveals it. Rules force Ram to go i nto exile so that his father, the king, can keep his word to his junior queen. T his is best brought out in the line from Tulsidas' Ram-charitra-manas where the fa ther says, Do not forget the great tradition of the Raghu clan, son: better to lo se your life than go back on your word. This tradition weighs heavily throughout the epic. Later in the forest, Lakshman draws a line around the hut where Sita resides. This line, which is mentioned i n later regional retellings of the Ramayana and not in Valmiki's Ramayana, is a po werful metaphor for rules. Within the Lakshman-rekha, social rules apply, and Si ta is the wife of Ram. Outside it, she is just a woman for the taking. Within, S ita is safe. But then comes a hermit asking for food, and the rules of hospitali ty demand that the guest's wishes be fully satisfied. So should Sita worry about h er own security and stay within the line, or should she do what is expected of a royal princess and feed the guest? Sita chooses the latter and pays the price f or it. She is abducted. Later, the rules come to haunt Sita again. She may be pure of mind and body, but her reputation has been tarnished. Can she still be queen of Ayodhya? No, say t he people. And so Ram abandons her. Rules that made Ram the ideal prince, the id eal king and even the ideal son, fail to make him the ideal husband. Or so we th ink. The plot is even more complex. The rules demand that a king must have a wife nex t to him during the ritual of yagna. The people ask Ram to remarry; he refuses. He abandoned the queen, not the wife. He would rather have a golden effigy of Si ta beside him than marry another woman. So he demonstrates his love for his wife , in a way, and becomes the ideal husband too, one who never looks at another wo man except his wife while being true to his position as the rule-upholding king. Such fidelity for a wife is unseen in mythology. Krishna breaks the rules. When he plays the flute, wives of other men flock to d ance with him at night outside the village. And yet, this is pure. Why? Because it is all about others, and not the self. He does not seek them for his personal pleasure; he seeks to make others aware of their ability, and freedom, to have pleasure, despite the burden of rules. His focus is not tangible action that can be misunderstood, as in case of Ram, but of intangible intention. In the Mahabharata, the kings of the land abuse the rules by upholding them more in letter than in spirit, and so not a single nobleman raises a voice in protes t when a woman is being publicly disrobed not Dhritarashtra, Bhishma, Drona, Kar na, or the Pandavas. Everybody hides behind rules. This is what makes Krishna br eak the rules, for they fail in the primary objective of society to help the hel pless. A society that favours the mighty is no society at all. It is worse than the jungle a warning given by Shiva in the earliest stories of the Puranas, when he attacks and opposes Brahma. Hindu philosophy is all about outgrowing the animal within us. We can civilize t he world around, but dharma is about civilizing the beast within, that predatory instinct that makes humans territorial and dominating. Ravana displays this an imal nature when he breaks rules and claims rights over another man's wife, despit e her protests. Duryodhana displays it when he upholds rules to gain access to t he body of Draupadi. Ravana is a rule-breaker like Krishna, yet he is not worshi pped as God, for he submits to the animal within him and is unable to show compa

ssion for the weak and helpless Sita. Duryodhana is no Ram even though he uphold s rules, because he is a pretender who upholds the law that benefits him and ena bles him to exploit and abuse Draupadi. These complex narrative structures tend to be ignored, or even denied, in the pursuit of simplistic explanations about G od and religion that were popular in the 19th and 20th centuries. We valorise Draupadi as she screams for blood and demands vengeance, and not the quiet Sita who bears the brunt of Ram's rule-following and decision-making. Draup adi makes sense to us, not Sita, for we live in a society where we want to be he ard but forget that we also have to hear. So we scream our point of view and ref use to listen to anyone else, like the wounded Draupadi. (In the end she gets he r justice but loses all her children.) Sita does not do that. We forget that she is the daughter of the sage-king Janak a, patron of the Upanishads. This relationship is not accidental: Valmiki is tel ling us something important. Sita is no ordinary woman. She is not just daughter , wife and mother. She is also a sage. She quietly watches the toll that cultura l rules and values take on her husband. She watches how Lakshman expects his eld er brother to follow what he considers to be ideal conduct. She watches how Surp anakha cannot handle rejection and crosses the line of propriety, and ends up pl aying the ultimate victim. She watches how Ravana turns his sister's humiliation i nto an excuse to satisfy his own lust. She observes how people judge her silence as weakness, not the patient and affectionate acceptance of people's shortcomings that stems from her confidence that they need her, while she does not really ne ed them. Sita hears her husband and herself and realizes Ram is Vishnu, the dependable Go d, while she is Lakshmi, the independent Goddess. She dutifully follows Ram when he goes to the forest, patiently waits for him in Lanka, and finally, quietly a ccepts her fate when he kicks her out of the palace. She has the capacity to bea r the burden of all consequences. She is like the earth from which Janaka plough ed her out. Culture, by default, is not fair. It feeds on nature, destroying ecosystems to n ourish itself. Cultural delusion prevents us from recognizing this truth. No mat ter how hard we try, every society will have rules, and rules will create a hier archy, and hierarchy will have its oppressor and its oppressed. To imagine a soc iety without this hierarchy is like imagining a forest without a pecking order o r a food chain. Brahma struggles to create a perfect society but eventually succumbs to his anim al side, provoking Shiva, who destroys his creation. Between the creator and des troyer stands the preserver, Vishnu, as Ram and Krishna upholding and breaking r ules, fighting wars with Ravana and Duryodhana, hoping that people realize that if they act too smart, disrespect Sita and Draupadi, fail to recognize the power of nature represented by the female characters of Hindu mythology, the demure G oddess will turn into Kali, spread out her tongue and consume the world whole. Ramayana is not the story of Ram. It is the story of Ram's relationship with Sita and, through her, his relationship with the humans of Ayodhya, the monkeys of Ki shkinda and the demons of Lanka. Take away Sita and there is no Ramayana. It is when she follows Ram into the forest that the gravity of the situation eme rges. Sita reveals that actions can be provoked not just by desires or rules, bu t also by affection. She wants to be with Ram so that Ram is never alone. She re minds him that he is part of an ecosystem. His actions impact this ecosystem and all the events in this ecosystem impact him. Without her, he cannot demonstrate his dependability. Without her, he cannot demonstrate his sacrifice. Without he r, he cannot demonstrate his love. It is she who completes him, makes him God. T hat is why she is the Goddess.

Devdutt Pattanaik is a Mumbai-based author and illustrator with 25 books on myth ology to his credit. He consults Star TV on shows such as `Devon Ke Dev Mahadev' and `M ahabharat', and serves as Chief Belief Officer at the Future Group (Big Bazaar). P attanaik's new book `Sita', an illustrated retelling of the Ramayana, will be released by Penguin India on October 22nd. More information and book trailer here.

You might also like