The power of great art is that – to use a cliché – it is a gift that keeps on giving.
Epics, of whichever culture, are great art. Ruth Vanita calls them ‘philosophical poems’. Their constant circulation in high, folk, and popular culture testifies to their endless generosity as far as meaning-giving is concerned.
In Asia, the Ramayana and Mahabharata continue to feed not only a variety of national and regional cultures, but also afford us ways to think through the people we are becoming. Be it through graphic fiction produced by Shibaji Bandopadhyay, novels by Shashi Tharoor or Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, animation like Sita Sings the Blues, or indeed films like Shyam Benegal’s Kalyug, these two Sanskrit epics have lent themselves to an infinite number of creative retellings and analyses over many decades.
Many residents of Kolkata will remember the regular lectures delivered by professor P. Lal on the Mahabharata, much like Bengali theatregoers will recall Shaonli Mitra’s Nathbati Anathbat or the six-hour-long performances of Urubhanga. In recent times, Devdutt Patnaik has pointed out how gender and sexuality function in unconventional ways in these epics.
For me, the re-looking at these two epics began 20 years ago when I bought Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai. Since 2009, I have been discussing extracts of this book as part of one of the courses I teach at the University of Kalyani. My collection of books either authored or translated by Vanita has grown since, including Love’s Rite, Chocolate and Other Stories on Male-Male Desire, and About Me (the latter two being translations from Hindi of the work of Pandey Bechan Sharma).
Also read: What Explains the Enduring Appeal of ‘Ramayan’ and ‘Mahabharat’?
Sharma makes a cameo appearance in Vanita’s latest book – a careful, sustained engagement with the two Sanskrit epics mentioned above. The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna, and Species looks at the two epics through questions that have always been but are now crucial to the ways in which we see ourselves in the universe, and indeed in society.
Ruth Vanita
The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna, and the Species
Oxford University Press (August 2022)
Comprising 12 chapters, the book engages with questions as diverse and important as the feasibility of absolute non-violence; the nature of the relationship between human beings and other animals; the terms of engagement between the individual and their family on one hand and the individual and the society on the other; and the conflicts therein.
Crucial to contemporary India is the discussion on caste. Should caste be natal or contingent on the individual’s actions? Are men and women irreconcilably different? Of particular relevance is the discussion on whether sex and gender are biological. Questions of sexual consent are dealt with, of immediate import in the wake of the #MeToo movement. The discussion on forgiveness gave this reviewer much to think about, as it doubtless will to any reader because most of us are tempted by the desire for revenge.
Vanita tackles the easy accusation of Sanskrit epics being Brahminical by pointing out that Vyasa was of ‘mixed parenthood’; Valmiki is worshipped as a member of the Valmik community by members of that community; and Raidas belonged to an ‘untouchable’ community too, to name just three authors associated with the Sanskrit epics.
Rather more provocatively, Vanita regards as unsatisfactory the tarring of the epics as patriarchal because “Patriarchy is the air we breathe. Therefore, explaining the meaning of a text as patriarchal is as useful as explaining people’s actions by the fact that they breathe”. This runs the risk of making patriarchy sound biological, which is perhaps not the case.
She also challenges the popular production, reception and circulation of Arjuna as the character whose personality and worldview shape the Mahabharata more than those of any other character, by focusing on Yudhisthira too.
Using the epics, Vanita argues convincingly that while we often believe that we belong to people that we are in whatever relationship with and that those people belong to us, “bhakta poets frequently repeat that parents, spouses, children, and homes do not belong to anyone. These are temporary and ultimately unreal relationships”.
Interestingly, friends are not present in the above quotation. Quite rightly too, because in the epics, friendship, be it between multiple human beings or between human beings and non-human animals, is shown to endure and have a permanence which familial relationships are not shown to have.
Perhaps the most famous of all friendships shown in the Sanskrit epics is that of Krishna and Arjuna. It is worthwhile, therefore, to remember, as Vanita informs us in a footnote, that the bhakta poet Jnaneshwara says on one occasion, “Arjuna is the embodiment of friendship devotion (sakhyachi), the mirror of Krishna’s self, and is like a pativrata, who is praised more than her husband is”.
This marital analogy invoked to describe a friendship burnishes the relationship with a queerness that many scholars working in the field of Queer Studies may find interesting. Arjuna is invoked several times in the book to make important points either about gender or about other matters, such as when Krishna advises him to abduct Subhadra (Krishna believes that abduction is better than purchasing or being gifted a bride!). Arjuna is “both male and female”. We are reminded of the time when he became Arjuni “to enjoy love-play with Krishna”. But the epic also contains expressions of homophobia, as when Shishupala says that Bhishma lives according to tritiya prakriti, a term that used to mean ‘men desiring men’.
Also read: Reimagining the ‘Mahabharata’ From the Shadows
Entirely in keeping with the postcolonial and postmodern celebration of hybridity, the book repeatedly stresses on the unhelpfulness of thinking identity and culture by prising open the notion of purity. The Pandavas and Kauravas “are not ‘pure’ ksatriyas”. Perhaps the chapter on ‘Person and Gender’ may be linked to this question of purity if one asks the question, ‘Is there a pure man?’ or ‘Is there a pure woman?’
Our lazy understanding of ‘purusa’ as ‘male’, and ‘prakriti’ as ‘female’ and the way this erroneous notion feeds our desire to have two distinct sexes is challenged when Vanita writes, “Neither purusa nor prakriti has sex or gender.” In a line that would resonate warmly with the way gender is theorised currently, the book states, “A person (vyakti) is not a stable entity but a constantly changing expression (vyakti) of consciousness …”
Sanjaya and Vidura are not often focused on in popular discussions of the epic. The book highlights them as “shudras teaching dharma”. Vidura is shown as not only practising the dharma of moral courage, but also being an ally to women. Much like in Same-Sex Love in India, Vanita includes Buddhism, albeit in a different context here: to underline the idea that a Brahman is not made by birth, but by spiritual action.
What makes the book accessible to readers who would be otherwise averse to discussions about the epics but are invested in questions regarding marriage, sex, old age, consent, sexual attraction and the like, is the phrasing of the sub-headings of various chapters. Here are a few examples: ‘Must all Women Be Married?’, ‘Can Old Women Be Attractive?’, and also engages with the question of whether those who cannot reproduce can marry. What one has to keep in mind is that an unreproductive – to coin an adjective – marriage need not be an asexual marriage.
The chapter that is of immediate relevance to Indians is the one that includes discussions of who is a good ruler and what one should or not should eat. Noteworthy is the line, “Whether or not to eat or sacrifice animals has to be left to individual choice”. This exists as if in dialogue with the chapter dealing with the treatment of animals. The careful distinction between necessity and cruelty is worth keeping in mind.
Vanita refers to Bhishma when he says that those who “tie up young animals, pierce their noses and make them work go to an infernal world”. Just as this reviewer was moved by Vanita’s mention of the incident of Krishna and Arjuna providing water, rest and succour to their horses even as the battle rages on, he was disturbed by the realisation that Sita could also be accused of animal cruelty because, after all, she desires to capture or kill the golden deer and at one point, has a pet parrot and refuses to let the bird go back into the forest.
The book is important because it repeatedly shines a light on those aspects of the two epics that often get lost in their popular simplified retellings. Hiding in plain sight in the Sanskrit epics are words and incidents that can provide us much careful guidance in how to shape a more ethical private and public life.
If this reviewer has a quibble with the book it is that sometimes translations are not provided, as on pages 142, 144, 160, and 240. A translation is especially required for the two lines quoted on page 144 where we are told that Bhisma follows Satyavati’s opinions, but are prevented from knowing exactly what the opinion is due to the lack of a translation.
In the concluding chapter, Vanita writes, “…rulers need to work for conditions that are conducive to all beings having the opportunity to strive for liberation”. This reviewer cannot but agree. Rulers of today would benefit from much of the wisdom to be gleaned from the two Sanskrit epics that this country has inherited.
Niladri Chatterjee is a Professor of English at the University of Kalyani, Nadia, West Bengal
