Posted:
Let forget for the moment about all these high faluting concepts, Sandhya dear. Let us concentrate on what our Maryada Purushottam actually does.
- First, he lies to his wife, that she is being taken to get the blessings of the rishis and the rishipatnis. So much for this descendant of Maharaja Harishchandra! Did the maryada of the Raghukul not shrivel up when their descendant was lying thru his teeth and defrauding his wife in this manner?
Why does he not have to guts to face her and tell her the truth? She would then, the strong woman that she is, have left him and his precious kingdom on her own and gone back to Mithila.
- What is far, far worse, truly horrible, is that he does not arrange for a safe alternate living place for the wife about his love for whom he babbles so much. Instead, he has her dumped in the middle of a forest, with no shelter and no food and no protection. This would, in 99% of the cases, have been the same as having her killed.
What does this say about our Maryada Purushottam, not just as a husband, but even as a king? Sita is also a subject of his, and an innocent subject. Is she not entitled to his protection?
And what does dumping your pregnant wife in a forest and leaving her to a likely death have to do with the maryada of the Raghukul? If their maryada is dependent on this sort of behaviour, it would have been better that it was destroyed.
- How does he decide on a vanvaas for her, that too not in a safe ashram, like the one in which he started his own vanvaas, but in middle of a forest on her own? She is not his property for him to dispose of her like a piece of unwanted junk or garbage, is she? She is not guilty of anything, so he has no right to punish her. So what gives him the right to treat her the way he does? Why does he not arrange to send her back to her father?
- What does a ruler having a clean moral record have to do with any of this? Why should Rama even let any of his subjects question Sita's purity? If that dhobi had been severely punished for his bloody impertinence in the open court - any other king would have decapitated him on the spot for treason - then the rest would have said that he deserved what he got and that would have been the end of the matter.
It is Rama's unbelievable near collapse in the court that gives that chap ideas, and leads to his haranguing the rest of the populace and getting their at least tacit consent to his line. I have never seen a king so weak that he caves in so easily to such defamatory blackmail, and chooses the line of least resistance: abdicate or abandon his wife.
It does not even occur to him to face the problem and fight for what he knows is right. Instead, he succumbs to what he knows is wrong only because he cannot argue with his ancestors. He is like a thali ka baingan, with no powers of judgement and no convictions of his own. Wah re wah!! What sort of king is this?
Incidentally, what was all that nonsense his ancestors were spouting, that if he gave up the throne, the Raghukul would die out? When Bharata was asked to become the king, no one said that because of Dasharatha's folly, the Raghukul was going to die out. So why can Bharata not rule Ayodhya now if Rama abdicates? And as for giving up the kingship, what did Harishchandra do? He gave it away on a platter to Vishwamitra. Did the foundations of the Raghukul and its maryada not totter then?
To revert, Rama, when he was only a stripling, had the guts to argue with his father, the rajguru and the whole populace of Ayodhya to convince them to set aside a millennial tradition, and agree not to sacrifice the ashwa of the Ashwamedha Yagna. Now, when a much greater issue is at a stake, he is so weak that he runs away without facing the issue and trying to solve it.
- And after the wife, about whose indispensability for his existence he used to rave so much, has been disposed of to suit his convenience of the moment, he weeps like a four inch pipe in full flow. I felt like clouting him, Maryada Purushottam or no Maryada Purushottam.
I do not think you have taken into account the extent of damage this one god-who-was-a-man's conduct, and the example he sets here have done to Indian women down the ages. They became the gold standard for assessing and treating women right till the last century. Perhaps even now, depending on the place.
Sita Maiyya ko bhi agnipariksha deni padi thi, so tum kya ho? Sita Maiyya ko bhi vanvaas jaana pada tha, so tum kya ho? Nikalo is ghar se! Yahan tum jaisi kulita ke liye koyi jagah nahin hai!
Again and again and again and again, and all because what Rama did here gave religious sanction to the worst kind of male autocracy, oppression and brutal treatment of women for millennia.
Why, in Raj Kapoor's Awaara, his father kicks out his expectant wife for exactly the same reason, that she was kidnapped by a dacoit and then rescued.
So, Sandhya, I have left you in no doubt as to where I stand in this matter. I am sorry if I sound positively violent, but this passage has always made me see red, even when I was a teenager. In fact I am glad to have this opportunity to bring out all that bottled up anger.
One more thing. One cannot cite "the times" to excuse Rama's conduct. He is supposed to be a pattern card of perfection for all time to come. He belongs not just to his age but to all ages, and his behaviour should have fitted in with that. But we make him a God even when he was pointedly a man - all my critiques of him above are about the king and the man - and thus place him permanently above criticism.
If I were Sita, I would be looking around for ways to get out of marrying this man again for the other six janmas. I cheered when she refuses to undergo another agnipariksha at the end of the Uttara Kanda and goes back to her mother Bhoodevi. If I had been Lava or Kusha, I would never have forgiven my father for what he had done to my mother, and I would never have gone back with him to Ayodhya.
Lastly, I believe those who assert that the Uttara Kanda was never part of the original Adikavya of Valmiki, but was a later insertion at a period when the status of women in Bharatavarsha had deteriorated badly from what it was during the times of Gargi. It is an ugly annexure that we could have very well done without. Even if you compare Valmiki's Sita and Tulsidas' Sita. you can make out the same difference, the same change for the worse in how Sita's stature is perceived.
Shyamala Aunty
- First, he lies to his wife, that she is being taken to get the blessings of the rishis and the rishipatnis. So much for this descendant of Maharaja Harishchandra! Did the maryada of the Raghukul not shrivel up when their descendant was lying thru his teeth and defrauding his wife in this manner?
Why does he not have to guts to face her and tell her the truth? She would then, the strong woman that she is, have left him and his precious kingdom on her own and gone back to Mithila.
- What is far, far worse, truly horrible, is that he does not arrange for a safe alternate living place for the wife about his love for whom he babbles so much. Instead, he has her dumped in the middle of a forest, with no shelter and no food and no protection. This would, in 99% of the cases, have been the same as having her killed.
What does this say about our Maryada Purushottam, not just as a husband, but even as a king? Sita is also a subject of his, and an innocent subject. Is she not entitled to his protection?
And what does dumping your pregnant wife in a forest and leaving her to a likely death have to do with the maryada of the Raghukul? If their maryada is dependent on this sort of behaviour, it would have been better that it was destroyed.
- How does he decide on a vanvaas for her, that too not in a safe ashram, like the one in which he started his own vanvaas, but in middle of a forest on her own? She is not his property for him to dispose of her like a piece of unwanted junk or garbage, is she? She is not guilty of anything, so he has no right to punish her. So what gives him the right to treat her the way he does? Why does he not arrange to send her back to her father?
- What does a ruler having a clean moral record have to do with any of this? Why should Rama even let any of his subjects question Sita's purity? If that dhobi had been severely punished for his bloody impertinence in the open court - any other king would have decapitated him on the spot for treason - then the rest would have said that he deserved what he got and that would have been the end of the matter.
It is Rama's unbelievable near collapse in the court that gives that chap ideas, and leads to his haranguing the rest of the populace and getting their at least tacit consent to his line. I have never seen a king so weak that he caves in so easily to such defamatory blackmail, and chooses the line of least resistance: abdicate or abandon his wife.
It does not even occur to him to face the problem and fight for what he knows is right. Instead, he succumbs to what he knows is wrong only because he cannot argue with his ancestors. He is like a thali ka baingan, with no powers of judgement and no convictions of his own. Wah re wah!! What sort of king is this?
Incidentally, what was all that nonsense his ancestors were spouting, that if he gave up the throne, the Raghukul would die out? When Bharata was asked to become the king, no one said that because of Dasharatha's folly, the Raghukul was going to die out. So why can Bharata not rule Ayodhya now if Rama abdicates? And as for giving up the kingship, what did Harishchandra do? He gave it away on a platter to Vishwamitra. Did the foundations of the Raghukul and its maryada not totter then?
To revert, Rama, when he was only a stripling, had the guts to argue with his father, the rajguru and the whole populace of Ayodhya to convince them to set aside a millennial tradition, and agree not to sacrifice the ashwa of the Ashwamedha Yagna. Now, when a much greater issue is at a stake, he is so weak that he runs away without facing the issue and trying to solve it.
- And after the wife, about whose indispensability for his existence he used to rave so much, has been disposed of to suit his convenience of the moment, he weeps like a four inch pipe in full flow. I felt like clouting him, Maryada Purushottam or no Maryada Purushottam.
I do not think you have taken into account the extent of damage this one god-who-was-a-man's conduct, and the example he sets here have done to Indian women down the ages. They became the gold standard for assessing and treating women right till the last century. Perhaps even now, depending on the place.
Sita Maiyya ko bhi agnipariksha deni padi thi, so tum kya ho? Sita Maiyya ko bhi vanvaas jaana pada tha, so tum kya ho? Nikalo is ghar se! Yahan tum jaisi kulita ke liye koyi jagah nahin hai!
Again and again and again and again, and all because what Rama did here gave religious sanction to the worst kind of male autocracy, oppression and brutal treatment of women for millennia.
Why, in Raj Kapoor's Awaara, his father kicks out his expectant wife for exactly the same reason, that she was kidnapped by a dacoit and then rescued.
So, Sandhya, I have left you in no doubt as to where I stand in this matter. I am sorry if I sound positively violent, but this passage has always made me see red, even when I was a teenager. In fact I am glad to have this opportunity to bring out all that bottled up anger.
One more thing. One cannot cite "the times" to excuse Rama's conduct. He is supposed to be a pattern card of perfection for all time to come. He belongs not just to his age but to all ages, and his behaviour should have fitted in with that. But we make him a God even when he was pointedly a man - all my critiques of him above are about the king and the man - and thus place him permanently above criticism.
If I were Sita, I would be looking around for ways to get out of marrying this man again for the other six janmas. I cheered when she refuses to undergo another agnipariksha at the end of the Uttara Kanda and goes back to her mother Bhoodevi. If I had been Lava or Kusha, I would never have forgiven my father for what he had done to my mother, and I would never have gone back with him to Ayodhya.
Lastly, I believe those who assert that the Uttara Kanda was never part of the original Adikavya of Valmiki, but was a later insertion at a period when the status of women in Bharatavarsha had deteriorated badly from what it was during the times of Gargi. It is an ugly annexure that we could have very well done without. Even if you compare Valmiki's Sita and Tulsidas' Sita. you can make out the same difference, the same change for the worse in how Sita's stature is perceived.
Shyamala Aunty
Originally posted by: Sandhya.A
Okay, just an off topic question, that has always nagged me.
Happened to catch a few minutes of Siya ke Ram.Is Shri Ram justified in sending Sita to the forest for 'Kul Maryada'Of course, we must keep the times and social norms in mind.Purushottam Ram, who has always set an example on how a son should be, how a king should be ( that even today a prosperous rule is referred to as RamRajya) was he right in setting an example to expel a woman to uphold Maryada for no fault of hers?Even in today's world where live in relationships, gays and divorces and remarriages and extrs marital relationships are not uncommon we expect the First Citizen, the Head of the State, the Head of the Country to have a clean record, an examplary conduct, atleast as long as he/she is at the pinnacle. To uphold the respect of their positions. Then when social norms were very rigid, was Shri Ram justified?Should he have abdicated to uphold his pati-dharma? If he could give up 14 yrs of kingship to uphold Putra Dharma, couldn't he give up the rest? What kind of example would that have set for the future kings and princes in general? That they can hold office as long as it suits them. And that they can give up when faced with a tough choice?Or Should he just have insisted on brushing aside gossips?Please give your opinions.đ(Lashy, hope you wouldn't mind this diversion)
Udne Ki Aasha
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