Opinion Questions lit up

The Right,on the other hand,has substituted intimidation for sober argument. But it does not have the resources to have the foggiest idea of what texts it is trying to defend and why. If so,it would be more seriously worried about startling facts that scholars of Hindi have been pointing out. Apporvanand pointed out recently that Delhi University (which now has more Hindi-medium students than ever) was finding it difficult to get anyone to teach Chayavad,that great movement in modern Hindi poetry. Engaging with the meaning of Nirala 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.

Why should this matter for the culture at large? Part of the narrow-mindedness currently on display is a direct consequence of this larger ignorance. Nirala’s poem takes on board the motifs of every retelling of Ramayana. First,the ethical message is rather more complicated than meets the eye. In a way,Nirala is saying what Gandhi said: sustaining dharma requires making your life itself the offering. Ram has to compose himself as the offering before he is recognised as righteous; the lotuses alone won’t do it. But there is this constant ambiguity: on whose side are the Gods? One of the ignorant clichés of Indian culture is to contrast the simplicity and rectitude of the Ramayana,with the shades of grey of the Mahabharata. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Even as pious a text as Ramcharitmanas describes good and evil as inextricably and complicatedly linked in creation. So the act of moral discernment is always more complicated than the simplistic pieties that are blinding us. Third,there is the constant pan-Indian inter-textuality. Nirala’s spin on Ram’s Shakti puja is possible only with reference to Krittibas’s Bengali Ramayana: a condition of creativity is that it is the next move in an ongoing tradition.

Fourth,the more you delve into the tradition the harder it becomes to swallow the narrow-minded divisions that modern politics and pseudo-scholarship have created. Is the Shakta tradition opposed to the Vaishnava tradition? Is Ram for Tulsidas,Sagun or Nirguna? Is Ram divinity,history or mythology? Such questions are almost unintelligible if you care to know any of these texts. The Right commits the mistake of assimilating all tradition to one single glob,undifferentiated,where nuances don’t matter. But equally,the so-called Left has created intellectual divisions and categories of understanding that bear no relation to the texts at hand.

Fifth,there is an aspect of the assimilative generosity of the tradition itself. Rather than looking upon difference in oppositional terms,it at least seeks to understand. No wonder,the supposedly straight laced Tulsidas,without a trace of irony pays homage even to those “wretches,who without cause delight to vex the righteous. I reverence these scoundrels who with a thousand tongues maliciously describe the faults of others.”

But finally,the most important challenge is this. The Left and Right in India share one deep premise. The tradition,in its final analysis,has to be reduced to the social question. Whose group interests does a particular narrative serve? Some of this has produced remarkable criticism. It is fun reading E.V. Ramasami do a hatchet job on all the heroes in the Ramayana. But in retrospect what strikes you about Ramasami’s Ram-baiting invectives is this. One,that he still lived in a culture where those intricate references to different Ramayana cultures made sense. And two,that he paid unwitting homage to a text by taking it seriously. The most virulent form of deconstruction can itself betray a love and attachment for the object being deconstructed.

But once texts are reduced to the social question,the contest over them will be a contest between raw group power. There will be no space for larger questions of meaning,ethics and ontology. So this Diwali,we wonder what is left of Ram,beyond personal piety on the one hand,and sectarian enlistment on the other. But engagement with many Ramayanas requires two things that have disappeared. The first is shraddha (badly translated as reverence). Where do we get an idea of a basic trust in the world that allows us a mode of being less anxiety driven? The second is what Tulsidas describes as his motive for writing. It is not about spreading a message or conveying the truth. He says he is writing entirely for “self-satisfaction”. Perhaps we are squabbling so much because what gives true self-satisfaction is the question we want to avoid most.

The writer is president,Centre for Policy Research,Delhi,express@expressindia.com