It was not for nothing that Iqbal wrote “Kuchh Baat Hai Ke Hasti Mit-ti Nahin Hamaari; Sadion Raha Hai Dushman Daur-e-Zamaan Hamaara”, however it is surprising that our leftist-historians still believe otherwise. I can only express my sympathies to these frustrated historians who now exist only in the ever-contracting, self-created pseudo-academic space in India despite their efforts to expand it by blatantly misusing their freedom of expression and by agitating unnecessarily for an already existing more than adequate academic space in our Indian society.
Even if we accept that Ram-Kahani is only a part of our mythology we all know that this ‘Kahani is not merely a story but a well-drafted drama that has undisputedly taught us our traditional moral values and has also helped us Indians, in inculcating respect for elders as well as in developing love for younger. Innumerable texts based on this story have successfully inspired all of us to inherit the theory of plurality in our thoughts. Undoubtedly there are more than many versions of Ramayana in our ancient texts but it is also a foregone conclusion that if you leave aside a few Ramayana that Mr. Ramanujan chose to highlight, then all others without exception have been written primarily to establish moral, family values that India is known for. And in this context Ramayana still possesses an unprecedented power to unite this part of the world.
Unfortunately forces that have no faith in the institution of marriage, and see faults in the family system, advocates individual’s freedom bereft of all duties of maintaining order in the society and bothers least about the tradition and other great Indian values have never understood any of the 300 Ramayanas that they themselves talk about. In early eighties these leftists had started believing that they were succeeding in their efforts of destroying the basic tenets and principles of this arguably one of the oldest society. However true to the words of Iqbal as quoted in the beginning, their world came crashing down as they witnessed vacant streets in this part of the world (including Pakistan and Bangladesh) when Ramanand Sagar’s ‘Ramayana’ started airing through Delhi Doordarshan in the late eighties. To have a genuine understanding of the context of the essay one has to read the introduction to the Many Ramayanas by Paula Richman where Ramanujan's essay appears. In the introduction of the book Paula Richman quotes Romila Thapar as saying that Ramanand Sagar's television serial on the Ramayana 'possessed a dangerous and unprecedented authority.'
Let me tell you that they are least concerned about any one of the 300 Ramayanas that they want us to believe that they want to teach, albeit what they want to teach us is the inappropriate, blasphemous and malicious essay written by a propagandist non-historian Ramanujan who penned his ‘singular’ (not plural!) views towards these invaluable texts. Let me challenge these historians to put all more than three hundred Ramayanas on the reading list of the undergraduate curricula and ask them not to shy away from teaching these stories to the students in the name of teaching history. For then at least the students will be appropriately exposed to the less than handful of Ramayanas that were written in some another context similar to those in which Ramanujan himself wrote his infamous essay. I would also like to add to their discomfort by making them realize that even in those few of the ignorable Ramayanas that the left-historians love to blow out of proportion, no progressive approach has been extended in order to paint Sita, Laxman and Hanuman grey. Much to their dismay ‘villains and vamps’ in these stray texts are extracted out of the ‘otherwise’ heroes by establishing that they too did not observe the same great Indian (alias ‘Hindu’) values.
Make no mistake as these historians would like us to celebrate Ram-vadha instead of Ravan-vadha since they believe that Rama has infused all wrong values in us Indians. Don’t reject this as my exaggeration as only recently JNU (known to be the den of these pseudo-historians) observed ‘Mahishasur day’ by honouring Mahishasur in the campus (read the October 25 issue of Times of India in case you have problem in believing this). And nobody needs to be educated that despite their prolonged and systematic efforts to link the Hindu majority with some community outside this country through their disputed and rotten Aryan-invasion theory they have patently failed in getting the Hindus feel detached from this piece of land, an aberration that is arguably witnessed in some other Indian community.
The ever-evolving Indian community where the evolution is primarily driven by the plurality of the religion observed by the majority (undoubtedly Hindus) has proved that what we as a nation stand for is not a singular religion but the high moral, social, cultural and great family values preached through the ‘hymns’ of Valmiki Ramayana and ‘couplets’ of Tulsi Ramcharitmanas. These handful of historians must understand that it is the teaching of Ramayana that drives nobody to argue for banning the Ramanujan’s essay in India but at least let us not allow the innocent undergraduate students to fall prey to the conspiratorial designs of these non-academic ‘historians?’ who want to force them to read the essay as part of their curricula. India must be the only country in the world where we are used to encountering an unprecedented count of mismatches in our popular perceptions/beliefs and that of the history that we are taught in the classrooms. But despite everything they must realize that we as a nation believe in marriage as a necessary institution, we believe in family system, we understand our responsibility towards our society and nation and through this we would like to make this universe as enjoyable and livable as possible.
