300 Ramayanas - Some thoughts

This Diwali was preceded by some fire-crackers in the Delhi University and noise of these crackers made a larger public hear A.K. Ramanujan's essay on the Ramayana - '300 Ramayanas'. A little controversy is always good publicity and lot of people must have read this essay for themselves and made a judgment about it. I read it too, and at a cursory look it looks like an interesting summary of the various ways in which the Ramayana is narrated and the differences that exist in these various tellings. In our country, our scriptures have been the vehicles of spreading culture, rather than being a mere series of historical facts and figures (if such a thing exists). So as times have changed, so have the interpretations to our scriptures. All Ramanujan's essay does it to give a bird's eye view of the process and to highlight the importance attached to these traditions to our country. Go read it for yourself and make a judgment.

Then, the whole controversy of it being deleted from the DU's syllabus doesn't make sense - either from the point of those wanting it in the syllabus or those opposing it.  It was a local university decision which doesn't merit any national headlines. I doesn't do any harm to have it on the university syllabus either, but there is nothing spectacular about Ramanujan's essay to make it indispensable. It is just a manufactured controvery. As Pratap Bhanu Mehta points out,
    "The exclusion of A.K. Ramanujan’s great essay from the syllabus of the Delhi University highlights the ways in which both the Left and the Right have reduced a great tradition to an impoverished political totem."

Both are blinded by their preconceived notions much like Dhridrastra was by his love for Duryodhana,
       "The Left and Right in India share one deep premise. The tradition, in its final analysis, has to be reduced to the social question."

For the Left, as Swapan Das Gupta puts it, "rather than encouraging students to savour divergent ways of looking at the past, history became a set of acceptable truths and unacceptable untruths — hardly an approach befitting an open and argumentative society."

The Right in desperation and indignation, "has substituted intimidation for sober argument." 

The result is the pathetic state of intellectual discourse in India.

Mehta says that the Delhi University was finding it difficult to get anyone to teach Chayavad, that great movement in modern Hindi poetry. Engaging with the meaning of Nirala (Hindi poet) is out of question. But the situation is even more dire for the teaching of Tulsidas. This assertion of tradition is coming at a moment where its loss is imminent.

Das Gupta makes an interesting argument,
"The problem, it would seem, arises from the dubious practice of listing prescribed texts. In the past, a history curriculum would identify broad themes for study, leaving teachers the independence to recommend readings for further study. A student would be tested in the examination for his ability to construct lucid arguments that would reveal their understanding of the subject. With 'prescribed' texts becoming the norm, the student's scope for demonstrating independence of mind and even originality of thought are naturally at a discount. They are expected to imbibe and parrot prevailing orthodoxies — a process that can hardly be said to be conducive for the training of the mind.


What we are witnessing in India is not an assault on free speech but something far worse, an attack on the spirit of free inquiry. There is something fundamentally skewed with a system of higher education that posits two stark alternatives: a compulsory reading (and, by implication, acceptance) of a scholarly work or not reading it at all. The space for critical discernment is fast disappearing and we are turning into a nation of slogan shouters. "

The good thing is that the intellectual debate that should have been in the university is now open to everyone for participation via the Internet. So forget these boardroom wars and read Ramanujan's essay and recommend me any similar ones if you can find them. I would especially like to know if similar ones exist for the Mahabharata.