Teaching Morality To The Gods

One of the episodes of the Ramayana that has always disturbed me deeply was the infamous banishment of Sita by Rama.

For what crime, one might ask.

Well, she was abducted by the demon Ravana (no fault of hers except misplaced generosity) and spent a few months in captivity in his kingdom. When Rama finally rescued her, he asked her to prove her 'chastity' to all assembled by walking through fire, which was awful in itself. Even the great Rama didn't have the courage of his convictions and was afraid of what other people might think!

Then later, even after they were back in Ayodhya, crowned king and queen and everything seemed hunky-dory, some troglodyte of a subject cast his (presumably unfaithful) wife out of his house, adding for good measure that he wasn't like Rama, who would take back a 'fallen' wife. That incident, when reported to Rama, had the expected effect on the moral coward, who proceeded to evict his by-then-pregnant queen and bundled her off to the forest. The story goes downhill from there for Sita, and this shameful part of the Ramayana is appropriately rarely told, with genteel folk agreeing to end the tale with the couple's triumphant return to Ayodhya.

The earliest memory I have of this is from Amar Chitra Katha's depiction

A scene from the episode "Banishment!" of animator Nina Paley's work "Sita sings the blues"

I was reminded of Rama's conduct when I read this news item about a man who married his girlfriend who had earlier been gang-raped. What's so heroic about this, one might ask. And indeed, it is a shameful commentary on our society that this man's decision should even be considered extraordinary. We live in a society of moral cowards where victims are blamed and shamed, and 'decent' people prove their decency by joining in the stone-throwing. So yes, in such a society, this man is nothing less than a hero.

In a country and a religion where Rama is considered the perfect man and an example to follow, I think the tables have been turned. Lord Rama could take some lessons in morality from this mortal.

As the song goes,

kabhI kabhI bhagwAn ko bhI bhaktO:n sE kAm paDE
jAnA thA gangA pAr prabhU kEvaT kI nAv chaDe

(Sometimes even God needs the help of his devotees
When He wanted to cross the Ganga, Lord (Rama) climbed into the boatman's boat)

Yup, sometimes a human boatman has to help a god navigate those treacherous moral shoals!

Lovely song by Anup Jalota , another mortal who stuck by his wife in sickness and in health
(As philosopher Alain de Botton says in his speech on "Atheism 2.0", atheists should feel free to appreciate the aesthetic beauty of even the religious works they do not believe in!)

Humanity's Three Great Epics

OK, this is partly tongue-in-cheek, but only partly.

Those of you who saw the romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding will surely remember the father of the female lead who is always very big on Greek culture ("What were the three greatest contributions of Greek civilisation to the world? Astronomy, philosophy, democracy").

Well, like the Greeks have the Iliad and the Odyssey, we of Indian descent have the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. (Yes, it's hard to tell where the accent goes, so try Raa-maayuh-na and Muh-haa-bhaa-ruh-ta). Mighty proud of these epics are Indians, and rightly so. Modern Indian literature, movies, songs and colloquial speech are littered with allusions to these classics. Babies are named after characters in the great epics. You'll even find these epics in comic book form. Indian kids grow up on the stuff. I read these comics in English, side by side with Tarzan and Superman, when I was growing up.

But I've also enjoyed shocking traditional Indians with my entirely serious thesis that there are three great epics in the world, - the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and Star Wars. I never fail to get a rise out of people with that statement.

Just look at the similarities. All three are about the struggle of good against evil (and the ultimate triumph of good). They're all long, all boring in places, with confusing sub-plots and myriad characters, many of whom are only tangentially relevant. And ultimately, they're entertaining while being morally educational (To those like me who are perpetually suspicious of organised religion, that last bit should prompt a mental uh-oh).

I would like to report a successful experiment that I just concluded last week. I got my 77 year old mother to watch the entire 6 part movie series of Star Wars! And wonder of wonders, she grudgingly acknowledged that Star Wars was "quite nice". She agreed that there were parallels between the Jedi religion and Hindu philosophy (there are murmurs in the musty corners of Indian philosophy to the effect that dark, tantric practices are a bit more powerful than the wholesome yoga and meditation that India would like to showcase - the "power of the dark side"). She thought the transformation of Anakin Skywalker from innocent child through idealistic (and disillusioned) young man to evildoer paralleled the stories of many demons in Hindu mythology who also started off being nicer folk.

She quoted Yoda's statement: "Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering." To her, this was lifted straight out of Eastern philosophy, so rather than Star Wars being a legitimate epic of the stature of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, it was just a copy, albeit a well-made one.

An example of how Hindu philosophy has influenced Star Wars

But I'm happy at the outcome. My mother, a representative member of an older Indian generation, has seen something of value and relevance in Star Wars, so much so that she's expressed a desire to watch the series again after a few months!

I must say I don't necessarily see religion in any of these epics (though there's a fair bit of spirituality). I think they're great stories with awesome atmosphere, powerful symbolism and beautiful imagery. To me, the image of Tatooine's twin suns or the unfinished Death Star is as powerful as the paintings (by Raja Ravi Varma and by someone else) of the noble vulture Jatayu's (Juh-taa-yoo) vain attempt to rescue Sita as she is carried off by the demon king Ravana (Raa-vuh-na), or of Abhimanyu (Uh-bhi-muhn-yoo) attacking the Kauravas (Cow-ruh-vaas) "like a proud young lion falling upon a herd of elephants" (to quote Amar Chitra Katha). Or, for that matter, the image of Achilles dragging Hector's body around the walled city of Troy, or that of the Cyclops throwing rocks at Ulysses' ship as the Greeks flee his island. Lots of stuff that gives me goose-pimples even today.

Star Wars - Tatooine's twin suns

Star Wars - The unfinished Death Star

The Ramayana - Jatayu fights Ravana in vain to save Sita

The Mahabharata - Abhimanyu attacking the Kauravas "like a proud young lion falling upon a herd of elephants"

The Iliad - Achilles drags Hector's body around Troy

The Odyssey - The blinded Cyclops throws rocks at Ulysses's ship

That's the stuff of which epics are made. Epics are about heroes and other larger-than-life characters (many of them tragically flawed), their struggles and adventures, they're about destiny and nemesis and an overarching moral theme that dwarfs all characters. Star Wars has all of this in full measure. So an epic isn't necessarily one that was written hundreds or thousands of years ago. It could just as easily have been released in 1977.

So there you have it - humanity's three great epics (or five, since we wouldn't want to belittle Homer :-).