Let me start with a caveat. Many folk I have met have picked holes in the current blockbuster: Ramayana. Little tidbits not included. Some minor deviations from the original poem. Ravan has been unduly glorified, etc etc. I frankly don’t care. The movie worked for me. Bigly. It was Odyssey all over again. That damn good. So go take a chill pill if you disagree.
Again, just because you watch and like Ramayana and try pondering over the life lessons that the epic proffers, it doesn’t make you a Hindutva meat-head.
And that is the nub of my piece today.
Just as The Iliad and Odyssey are classic Greek texts, long before Greece became Orthodox Christian, and which every Greek worth his feta cheese reveres and studies and quotes ad nauseam, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are India’s priceless and timeless cultural heritage. No question. They are brilliant. They give you a moral compass. They define good and evil unambiguously.
And most importantly, you can question, interpret, and reject parts of it without fear of being stoned as an apostate or burnt at the stake.
The biggest disservice that Hindutva potheads and hotheads do to our nation, particularly the political class, is to try and make these two epics into a straitjacket of religion.
A kind of counter-force to Christian and particularly Islamic theology. To my mind, it ain’t. It was never meant to be.
True, the Hindu civilisation and most of its poetry, literature, philosophy, and some of its architectural heritage were brave and resilient enough to survive waves of Christian and Islamic invasions over the centuries and not get completely obliterated—like the Aztec, Inca, Native American and Aboriginal civilisations of yore, and thank heavens for that.
But this is now the new millennium. It simply doesn’t run on ideas of old millennia and the resentment of earlier times to be parachuted onto modern society.
The modern version of BJP Hindutva, which relentlessly targets innocent Muslims and Christians going about their daily lives, is a repudiation of every single fibre of the teachings of our ancient civilisation.
Innocent is the operative word. Please haul over the coals all those ghastly preachers and mullahs who prescribe a toxic dose of their own shallow teaching. That: My God is the True God; the rest of the gods are bullshit. Prosecute them. Proscribe them. Let them rot in jail.
And when you are at it, please smash the toxic Hindutva mobs who go hammer and tongs against innocents, all in the name of Ram.
In sum, then, please go see Ramayana in the theatres. Not on your silly, and not-so-smart, phones. It is mind-blowingly epic. No question. But don’t just go for the spectacle. See if you can figure out life’s lessons, interpreted your own way, long after you head home.
Understanding, cherishing and celebrating the Ramayana is not endorsing Hindutva, as my frothing left-wing friends would have me believe.
It is the essence of a civilisation that we must uphold at all costs. Because we are multicultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and our civilisation is our civilisation. No one can take it away from us. Importantly, we cannot trash it and throw it away, simply because it doesn’t suit our political beliefs. And the only demons we need to defeat are those of pride, envy, resentment and hatred that reside constantly in each and every one of us.
Postscript
Off topic, the Manoj Parab-Viresh Borkar war is built up as a Mahabharata of sorts on the Goan political giant screen. Brother vs Brother!! Utter and complete rubbish. The battle for RG is a cartoonish, buffoon-laced tragicomedy of Herculean proportions. What will now play out in the press and on TV is something like Golmaal 6 or 7. Pathetic. Pedestrian. & Ultimately, a premature demise of Goa’s last hope. It would be pertinent to remind the two clowns-in-chief, Manoj and Viresh, that the Gita talks of three egos. You guys are following the first two. Tamasic (characterised by delusion, cruelty and taking pleasure in harming others) and Rajasic (driven by passion, pride, ambition, attachment, and craving for personal recognition and validation). For your sake and Goa’s sake, you need to change course and up your game. Reach out for the Saatvic ego (Go read up about it; I could help).
