The ruckus that happened in Pune University over the staging of a play recently, prompted me to revisit a forgotten classic titled Yuganta: The End of an Epoch by the scholar and historian Iravati Karve (1905-1970).
Karve, a feminist in her own right, interprets many aspects of the Ramayana, with special reference to the portrayal of Sita, in a manner that in today’s political and cultural climate would have probably led to the banning and burning of her book. To Karve, Sita comes across as a veritable orphan. She writes: “[Sita] has parents as well as in-laws, but her parents’ home is a home in name only. Of her relations with her in-laws, we hear a little more, but in this context too the character remains sketchy.”
Karve is appalled by the fact that when Sita is swallowed up by the earth, we do not hear a single word of protest from her father or mother. She says, “There is a description of the greatness of her [Sita’s] father, a ruler of the Janakas, but this greatness is of no help to Sita in her times of need.”
Karve feels that although Sita’s forest life was a result of her husband’s idealism and sense of duty, her life in the kingdom of Ayodhya, steeped as it was in grihasti, with servants as well as her in-laws doting on her, deprived her of the chance “to give herself completely to love”. It was only during their exile in the forest that she could enjoy a measure of freedom. Thus, “the memory of her exile was so idyllic that during her pregnancy she craved only one thing—to go back to the forest”.
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While her abduction by the demon-king Ravana, described by Karve as a wealthy and learned man, must have scared Sita, there was no fear, according to Karve, of her being raped. Thus, Karve does not find it surprising that Lord Ram’s suspicion of Sita’s transgressions that led to her abandonment and trial by fire, are not mentioned in the Mahabharata account of Lord Ram’s story. Iravati writes, “The fact that it was not mentioned [in the Mahabharata] makes us suspect that in the original Ramayana there was no question raised about Sita’s chastity.”
Karve feels that the account of Sita’s suffering should have been in the kavya tradition. Here, there is suspicion of the heroine’s character to start with, but then her name is cleared, and there is reconciliation. This, in fact, is the structure of Kalidasa’s Shakuntala. In this context, Karve points out that Lord Ram’s decision to abandon Sita has not been unquestioningly accepted. Several poets, including Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti, have felt that the abandonment of Sita was unjust. It is a blot on the ideal portrait of Lord Ram. Iravati says, “She [Sita] could have undergone some other ordeal to convince people of her innocence, but she chose not to, and her tragic end has remained an unhealed wound in the minds of Indians.”
In conclusion, Karve asks, “Is the sacrifice of an entirely defenceless person justifiable for the sake of public pressure? Couldn’t Rama have given up the kingdom instead?”
The play staged at Pune University. Photo: Screengrab from video
Which brings me to the Pune University play. I find it interesting, first of all, that the performance, including the role of Sita, was by an all-male cast. It shows that men, frequently accused of patriarchy and misogyny, are, for a change, able to see things from a woman’s point of view. Our epics are heavily polarised on gender lines, with women like Karve taking up the cudgels for heroines like Sita and Draupadi, while men are co-opted by points of view that refuse to give women agency. It isn’t as if the Centre for Performing Arts of the University of Pune, also known as Lalit Kala Kendra Gurukul, does not have female students. Why, then, did a male student decide to play the role of Sita? And would right-wing Hindu groups disrupt the play even if it was by an all-woman cast? I am not sure. To me, a male actor essaying Sita’s role and showing her to be smoking a cigarette in green-room banter, is really to symbolically avenge the injustice meted out to her that Karve speaks of.
But the real question is: how and why were outsiders allowed into the campus to disrupt a performance that was, at the end of the day, not a public performance, but a performance that was part of an internal exam? The Savitribai Phule Pune University, where I taught for 29 years, has dozens of security personnel guarding all entrances and exits. Why did they not stop the intruders from forcing their way in, most probably on motorbikes? The question also arises as to who tipped off the intruders? Was it a mole among the students? A reliable source tells me that the writer of the script and an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad member were, apparently, roommates. Was the roommate, then, snooping on the writer’s script?
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The stand taken by the university authorities is highly unfortunate, though not surprising. Almost everywhere in India, universities are known to side with trouble-makers, rather than come to the defence of their own students and faculty. In this case, the university has apologised to the disrupters and allegedly issued a statement saying that parodying historical figures isn’t permitted. But this is not to understand the nature of parody, and its role in the representative arts, including literature, theatre, painting, music and dance.
The Pune University incident takes us back to what happened at the MS University of Baroda more than a decade ago, when a fine arts professor was suspended for allowing his students to have a private exhibition of their art works on campus, that, as usual, hurt the sentiments of Hindutva revivalists. The BJP was in power in the state of Gujarat then, as it is at the Centre now. And civil society asked the same questions then as it is asking now: why did the university administration allow outsiders to enter the campus; why did they side with the mob, rather than defend their own students and professors.
But is anyone listening?
R. Raj Rao is a writer and former head of the English department at Savitribai Phule Pune University.