“The Ramayana is perhaps India’s greatest export to the world”, writes historian, author, and illustrator Natasha Sarkar in her book, ‘Whose Ramayana Is It Anyway? ‘ In this vividly illustrated and deeply researched coffee-table book, Sarkar traces the journey of India’s most revered epic from the sub-continent to the rest of Asia through retellings in languages as diverse as Annamese, Balinese, Cambodian, Chinese, Javanese, Laotian, Sinhalese, and Thai, among others.
Tracing the routes, Sarkar concludes that the heroic tale of Rama and Ravana likely spread to the rest of Asia via three primary routes – the northern route via Punjab and Kashmir into Tibet, China, and East Turkistan; the southern route via Gujarat and South India into Java, Sumatra, and Malaya; and the eastern route, via Bengal into Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia.
In an interview with India Current’s Nandita Bose, Sarkar discussed the multifarious interpretations of the epic, the feminist perspective, and, of course, the illustrations that dominate this visually dazzling book.
Nandita Bose (NB): This book is dedicated to A.K. Ramanujan for his scholarly essay ‘300 Ramayanas’. How did it influence this work?
Natasha Sarkar (NS): The genesis of this book was A.K. Ramanujan’s essay, ‘300 Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation ’, which evoked a bit of a controversy controversy in 2011 when it was pulled out of the university syllabus. At that time, I was in Singapore completing my doctoral studies in history, and having lived and travelled there and various places in Southeast Asia and the Far East, I was actually seeing the influence that the epic had culturally in different regions, and how the various versions had evolved.
NB: How did the epic get assimilated into other cultures?
NS: As a historian, the research took me to the works of other anthropologists, sociologists, and linguists; Paula Richman’s “Many Ramayanas” is an example. I explored other literary forms of the Ramayana, like dramas, poetry, and non-literary forms like theater, dance dramas, mass plays, and popular oral traditions.
The other aspect I explored was geographical coverage and the Ramayana’s influence from an anthropological angle in East Asia, especially Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Cambodia.
Then I explored what was happening in other multireligious societies in Southeast Asia, for instance, in Muslim-dominated Indonesia and Malaysia, and in Buddhist Thailand. How was the Ramayana adapted and assimilated in these countries? What sort of routes took the tale of the Ramayana outside India? These regions came to be exposed to the epic through puppetry, dance drama, and other art forms.
NB: The feminist perspective is very striking in some versions…
NS: It is striking that Sita is projected as a very liberated individual – independent, powerful, and empowered. From a feminist perspective, I chanced upon the article in Manushi by Nobonita Dev Sen titled “When Women Retell the Ramayan”. Within India, we had different perspectives. Rural women, the Dalits – how did they perceive their hero in this story? Chapter six is focused on Sita and how the low-caste women of rural Andhra Pradesh look up to her as an independent, liberated woman.
The cover image is that of two 16th-century female poets – Atukuri Molla, a 15th or 16th-century Telugu poet from Andhra Pradesh, and Chandrabati, a 16th-century writer and poet from Bengal, who wrote Chandrabati’s Ramayan, a narrative of the epic from Sita’s perspective.
I have used Mughal miniature imagery in the painting. In one of the panels, we can see pregnant women chatting. Chandrabati, in her version, talks about women and pregnancies in the Ramayana. She gives a stronger character to Sita, and says, ‘Sita was always destined to destroy Ravan’. Molla is a potter’s daughter, and she talks about the battlefield scenes in the Ramayana.
NB: You also explored Ram as the anti-hero…
NS: “Looking at the Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical movements, in South India, a lot of the non-Brahmins were looking up to Ravanan as their hero, and not Ram. In one of the paintings, there is a magnetic compass pointing in the north-south direction, where there is Ravan burning in the North, and Ram burning in the South. It is because Ram, as the protagonist, is now seen to lack the qualities of a conventional hero. I take a closer look at the different episodes in popular versions of the Ramayana – the mutilation of Surpanakha or the killing of Vali are such episodes that are examples. Of course, Michael Madhusudan Dutta’s Meghnad Badh Kabya – William Radice’s translation of it – was one of the works that anchored this position.”
NB: You’ve addressed gender fluidity, especially with an icon like Ravana. Give us the context for that.
NS: “In a Kannada folk song, there are references to Ravana giving birth to Sita – there’s a pregnant Ravana; he sneezes, and Sita is born. It got me to explore where else Ravana was featured as the father of Sita. That correlates to a version of the Thai Ramakien (The Glory of Rama) where Ravana is featured as the father of Sita. Malay Hikayat Seri Ramayan also mentions him as the father of Sita. So, we can’t really problematize the character of Ravana; he is far more complex than an evil rakshasa.”
NB: There are 90 paintings based on various narratives created over two years. Take us through some of those.
NS: “The art actually came before the chapters evolved. I began reading these different narratives and was inspired to start painting. Eventually 90 paintings emerged, all in watercolors and ink on paper.
These conventional portrayals of the Ramayana are predominant in masked dance dramas, such as Kerala’s Kathakali, the Gomira dance of Bengal, Odisha’s Bali Jatra festival, the work of Chitrakarigar artists of Puri, Odisha, and in places like Nepal, Indonesia, and Cambodia. The regional retellings, for instance, in Theravada Buddhism in Thailand and Cambodia, we see two versions of the Ram Katha, and depending on which version is chosen for a particular performance, you see a very different narrative that comes through in an art form like dance.
Ram is the embodiment of Buddha in the Buddhist traditions. Even when you move into Southeast Asia, outside of India, there’s a slight deviation; he’s still looked upon as someone who has noble qualities, but is not revered as a god. Rather, they perceive him as a romantic hero who exiles his wife over a bit of jealousy after she paints a portrait of Ravan.
Figure 1 in the book is called ‘Ramo’. It’s a mask used by the Chitrakarigar community for the Gajan festival (a centuries-old folk festival celebrated primarily in West Bengal and Bangladesh). Figure 2 is Abhinaya because the Kathakali dance form from Kerala uses a lot of eye and hand movement gestures and Abhinaya. The colors in the masks are predominantly blue and green, representing all that’s brave and strong. Figure 3 has Hanuman in white, which is how he is represented in Southeast Asia, though never in India. Figure 4 has Ram as a Bodhisattva, an embodiment of Buddha. This is how he appears in the Gombhira dance of Malda.
In Nepal (refer to Figure 3), you see the Swambhunath Stupa with the eyes of Buddha, at the Monkey Temple in Kathmandu. For the colors, I have been true to how they appear in the original temple; I wanted the reader, many of whom may have also travelled to these places and seen these representations in temples or in the traditional dances, to be able to make a direct association.”
