In Search Of Sita , livre ebook
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2009
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179
pages
English
Ebook
2009
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Publié par
Date de parution
15 octobre 2009
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9789351184201
Langue
English
Publié par
Date de parution
15 octobre 2009
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9789351184201
Langue
English
In Search of Sita
Revisiting Mythology
Edited by Malashri Lal and Namita Gokhale
Contents
Dedication
Sita: A Personal Journey
Commentary
Sita And Some Other Women From The Epics
Valmiki s Ramayana
Sita As Gauri, Or Kali
Janaki: The Fire And The Earth
R.K. Narayan s Ramayana
Chitrangada Not Sita: Jawaharlal Nehru s Model For Gender Equation
Sita: Naming Purity And Protest
The Justification Of Rama
Matrilineal And Patrilineal
Draupadi s Moment In Sita s Syntax
In Dialogue
Sita s Voice
Sita s Luminous Strength
Ramayana: The Human Story
Trial By Fire
The Diary Of Sita
Laying Janaki To Rest
Sita Sings The Blues
Versions
The Essential Orphan: The Girl Child
The Portrayal Of Sita In Two Bengali Ramayanas
Sita In Pahari Lok Ramain
Versions Of Ramayana Stories In Telugu Folk Literature
Sita s Trial By Fire And Bhojpuri Women s Songs
Sita In The Oriya Ramayana
Creative Interpretations
Reading Pictures: Sita In Victorian Indian Prints
The Day Of The Golden Deer
Janaki
Sitayana
Sita s Letter To Her Unborn Daughter
Sita: An Excerpt From A Novel
Sita In My Dreams
Letters From The Palace
Poems
An Infatuation
References
Notes On Contributors
Notes
Acknowledgements
Copyright Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
To all the incarnate goddesses and to Bellisima, the lady of the waters, at Bellagio.
Sita: A Personal Journey
NAMITA GOKHALE
THIS SEARCH FOR Sita began near the botanical gardens in Peradiniya, Sri Lanka, on a day redolent with the breezes of spring. As I absorbed the lush landscape, the swaying palms, the feather-leaved bamboos, the Java willows, I thought I saw her, sitting on a rock, perhaps an apparition from a Raja Ravi Varma painting.
Sita, Janaki, Bhaumi, Bhumija, Bhukanya, daughter of the Earth. A flesh-and-blood presence, a young woman in distress. Was it myself that I saw there, sitting on that rock? For all of us Indian women carry some of her within us: Sita s strength and her vulnerability.
The name Sita derives from the Sanskrit word for furrow or marks of the plough , and metaphors of the earth surround her birth. Janaki, the daughter of Janaka, was a strong young woman who could lift the Hara, Shiva s bow, with one arm while swabbing the floor with the other in her father s house.
Then why do I picture her weeping? When and why did she become a figure of weakness rather than strength? Sita, in our prevalent idiom, is weak, oppressed, a natural victim. Considering that Sri Rama s wife-Vaidehi, Sita, Ramaa, call her what you will-is the primary archetype for all Indian women, a role model pushed and perpetuated by a predominantly patriarchal society, it is no wonder that she is someone the modern emancipated consciousness prefers to banish into yet another exile.
But she does not exit so easily. Sita has been there, in the mass consciousness of our subcontinent, for very long now. She has been there since the beginning of our timeless history, in the different versions and recensions of the Ramayana, written or recited, and never forgotten. She lives on in all the Sitapurs and Sitamarhis of the nation, in the Janakpurs and Ramgarhs and Rampurs. She has been seen on celluloid, and on television; she has been elected to Parliament from Vadodara, in the person of Deepika Chikhalia, the actress who played her role in Ramanand Sagar s television serial titled Ramayana. She is there in song, in poetry, in the tears that Indian women have been shedding through generations as they tread the lakshmana rekhas that barricade their lives, as they are consumed by the flames of the penitential agni pareeksha s that their families regularly subject them to.
Is this why those hot, helpless tears do not leave my vision or memory?
Mythology in India is not just an academic or a historical subject, it is a vital and living topic of contemporary relevance. The complex social, political and religious attitudes of modern India cannot be understood without an understanding of our myths and their impact on the collective faith of the people. The emotions that drove my quest to deconstruct the real woman behind the anguished formal portrait of Mrs Ramachandra Raghuvanshi were those of sympathy, empathy and curiosity about the fractured identities and expectations of most women in India today. When Dr Malashri Lal and I began work on the compilation of this anthology, we wished to present a composite picture of Sita, of a woman negotiating the public and private spaces in society-between kingship and exile, duty and assertion, loyalty and rejection.
The Ramayana is considered an adikavya, an epic in the realm of poetics, in contrast to the Mahabharata, which is described as itihaas or history. The sage Valmiki, to whom the definitive or classical version of the Ramayana is ascribed, was inspired to begin the epic poem after seeing a kraunch bird, in sight of its mate, killed by a cruel hunter. The dominant emotion invoked in the opening passages is that of compassion, and it is compassion, again, that is evoked in the seventh segment, the Uttara Kanda, where Sita, that brave single parent, bears and rears her twin sons. Her children, Lava and Kusha, are described by Valmiki in the matrilineal mode as Sita s sons- Maithili sutau, Sita putrau . Called suvrata dharmacharini , or the abstemious and righteous one, Sita is never, in any interpretation, depicted as having deviated from her loyalty and integrity to her royal husband.
The Ramayana is a story about monogamous love, in contrast to the complex and passionate codes and polygamous practices of the Mahabharata. Rama s father, Dasharatha, had suffered the consequences of polygamy and the attendant succession crisis, but Sri Rama determinedly maintained his monogamous resolve and adhered to his ek patni vrata .
Kalidasa s Raghuvamsha, Bhavabhuti s Uttara Ramacharita, and all the variations and regional interpretations of this heroic poem, celebrate kinship and the affection and loyalty of brothers, and other social codes of crucial importance in a complex feudal society. Sita, portrayed as being utterly and unquestioningly in love with her husband, is always brave, always dutiful, and does everything in her power to preserve the fabric of this patriarchal universe. She indicates her anguish and exerts her autonomy by departing from this world after being asked to take the second test of fire, but only after having completed the full cycle of her perceived duties. In diasporic and local versions of the epic, however, the contours of the story remain more human and compelling. A handsome and loving couple, united by destiny, the gods, and love for each other, are sent into exile because of feminine manipulations and domestic discontent. The screenplay has all the box office elements of drama and suspense, and the lofty emotions of honour, duty and revenge are played out to a successful denouement.
The anticoda begins with the spoils of peace. When a washerman disgruntled with his wife starts slandering Sita, the anointed queen of Ayodhya, the rites of kingship dictate that the subject of the slander be censured by being banished to live in the forest, alone. The inequity of the situation and the cruelty of the indictment are dealt with quite differently in folk tradition and high art. While sophisticated moralists and classicists have many explanations and alibis for Rama s royal lapse (including some deeply obtuse metaphysical justifications), the folk songs and alternate traditions wax indignant and side with the victim.
This collection of essays attempts to accommodate different points of view. It is divided into sections covering Commentary , Dialogue , Sources and Interpretations . Lord Meghnad Desai, in Sita and Some Better Women in the Epics , contrasts the women of the Mahabharata with those portrayed in the Ramayana. In Janaki: The Fire and the Earth , Tarun Vijay explains the nuances of the maryada that define Rama s moral position, presenting the picture from what might perhaps be Sri Rama s point of view. Interestingly, this thread is picked up again in Arshia Sattar s thoughtful retrospective gaze, as she re-examines the translation of the Ramayana she completed some ten years ago. I am shocked that it is he who draws me to him, compels me to try and understand his cruelty towards Sita and what it means for him to be king, perhaps even against his innermost wishes. I find myself more and more involved with Rama and am convinced that the way to a more complete understanding of the Ramayana, especially for contemporary women, has to be through an inclusion rather than a rejection of Rama and his questionable behaviour.
Creative fiction on the subject of Sita takes many imaginative directions. Shashi Deshpande gives voice to Sita s emotions when she is abandoned in the forest, Vijay Lakshmi Chauhan weaves a modern story on the theme of jealousy. Mallika Sengupta retells the taut drama of the agni pareeksha. In her piece on Bhojpuri women s songs, Smita Tewari Jassal brings alive the vital folklore on the subject. Madhureeta Anand discusses the experience of scripting and shooting the film she has made on Sita, Laying Janaki to Rest, in contemporary terms. Sonal Mansingh, Indira Goswami and Madhu Kishwar share their views and insights on the Sita archetype. A few of the diverse traditions in which the Sita narrative is interpreted are included, as are creative personal interpretations of the Sita myth.
Reading and reacting to the mountains of material that the subject generated was a tiring but consciousness-enhancing task. It was the last piece which swung the whole thing into perspective for me. Keshav Desaraju had suggested that we look at the works of the late Kumudini, who humanized the epic by writing about Sita s imagined letters to her mother. Devotion and respect had distanced Sita from us, while academic interpretations had sterilized the subject.
