Land of Ram or Ravan? || Can never be a land of Sita...
As expected the debate on Ram - Ravan has erupted in Tamilnadu, on the sidelines of the Bhumi puja of Ram mandir at Ayodhya. I was at my 5th standard I found two big books named Ramayanam and Mahabharatam lying on our bookshelf and as I had developed reading habits, I was interested to complete those two books, which I executed too. Thus how I came to know about Ram, Ravan, Krishna, Pandavas, and Kauravas. I found Ramayanam to be very plain compared to Mahabharatam because Ram was so good and Ravan was so bad, no more interesting masalas as in Mahabharatam.
As I entered my civil services preparation, our Geography sir explained an unheard concept about the Aryan-Dravidian divide. He said that Ram and his associates were all Aryans who were generally fair, tall, sharp-nosed, and had brownish hair. The Sukriva and his associates who were portrayed as apes are in real were Dravidians featured with dark skin, stout physique, short, and had black hair. This is how the northern literature holds its perspective towards Dravidians. I was shocked to hear this interpretation.
The above interpretation was negated by another interpretation. It was in support of Ram which claimed that Ram himself was dark-skinned, so cannot be declared as racist. So is Krishna. But none of the statues in temples or serials on these epics showed Ram or Krishna as dark, except for few paintings. I remember that one of the reasons for the rejection of Oscars to the movie Lagaan was because of showing fair-skinned hero and heroine stating that their locality which is almost a desert with the high temperature is contrary to their skin tone. Color does matters right.
Before coming out of these interpretations I encountered a new one which was totally against Ram and stood in support of Ravan who ruled down south, again quoting the Aryan-Dravidian divide. But this concept has so many confusing knots where Ravan was the son of a Brahmin-Demon couple, so as per tradition he is a Brahmin meaning Aryan. So it should be Aryan-Aryan battle where the Dravidians are used by one of the sides. The happened to be Brahmin Ravan was supported by anti-Brahmins where actually Ram is a Kshatriya. The recent trending tag of Land of Ravan by a few people of Tamilnadu is even more confusing that why they are supporting Ravan who has actually made his literary works in Sanskrit. They support Ravan but deny the existence of Ram but without Ram, there cannot be Ravan is also a fact.
I would like to insert the lens of feminism here. In the perspective of Sita, there cannot be much difference between Ram and Ravan. Ram, in spite of being good to the core soul, is being cursed to date because of his decision to prove the chastity of Sita to the people through Agnipariksha. It has really set as a bad example until now and mostly misused. I happened to see a tweet quoting that Ravan might not be loyal to his wife but has never suspected her chastity as Ram did. Seriously? When Ram, the most loyal husband itself has no right to suspect his wife’s chastity how can Ravan who abducted the wife of another person without her consent, can even dare to suspect his wife.
Here comes another interesting interpretation in the savior of Ravan claiming that Sita is his daughter who was kept away due to some reasons and as he heard that his daughter is in exile, he abducted her, thinking as his son-in-law would come to her rescue so then he can have them with him. Bravo! I could not stop myself appreciating the imaginary power of these interpreters for changing transforming the epic into such fantasy tales. But on seeing today’s battle on Land of Ram/Ravan, one thing is damn evident that it was always and is a land of patriarchy, so either Ram or Ravan can claim authority but it can never be claimed as the Land of Sita. After all, I too have a right to express my interpretation!
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