Breaking & Moulds

8 March 2020

In memory, we have never been so extensively documented as a social network since this advent of internet of things and social media. One of the biggest plusses of this advent has been how mainstream media can place us no longer in peril, can even list and plunge head-on like the Titanic but we the people will sail home to New York not as mere survivors but more enriched by this process! In his inimitable style Kalki Krishnamurthi in Ponniyin Selvan documented the resilience and self sufficiency of the Chola peoples, who helped each other and rebuilt after each cyclone. In a sense, he also alluded to the Tamil legend of rebuilding and resettling, which is marked in the chronology of the Tamil Sangams, which mention how the oceans welled up to swallow their capital not once but thrice over, and yet on each occasion a new ‘Madurai’ more grander and more pristine that the previous one was painstakingly invested in!

So away now even from the WhatsApp world, from Facebook and in a sense Twitter Feeds too, an alternative is emerging which is recording and narrating the events that accosted Delhi when the American potentate was in town. They are also recording the efforts of faces we may have to wait for decades perhaps to know and acknowledge, who came in those nights like ‘knights of Truth’ who guarded, who suffered with their neighbours, who chose not to look away or walk away! Call it an Alternate Universe, that truth of Delhi is out there, and it is as I had first broached it soon after the events themselves, when I blogged about it.

For how long are Indians going to be under the grip of this theology like pedantic mindset, which sees a foreign conspiracy and a persecution of ‘Hindus’? How long are we going to keep talking of Vedic civilisation and hope to appropriate within the sub continent some fossil or archeological site as clinching evidence when every advancement of Rakhigarhi to Kheezhadi is further apart from this cornerstone? Why must we see heated exchanges about PIE ( Proto Indo European) languages from which scholars advance a theory that Sanskrit evolved, including a site in Syria which today has the world’s oldest inscription of Sanskrit?

If you thought, I was being fleet footed after this week long break, you thought right or wrong, based on your point of view. I am in no hurry, the luxury of ‘knowing’ is something which affords me that languid approach. But if there is one thing I am done with by now, is this mould that is the mainstay of the RSS Hindutva ideology that wants to say that there were no Aryan- Dravidian or such mixes either by translocation through migration or military expeditions, that India’s home to human civilisation, that for human evolution from species of hominids if the world can have an Out of Africa theory, then equally the world must work with an Out of Indian Subcontinent theory for civilisational influences. There are many many gullible people out there, who believe Sanskrit is divine, that she is the mother of languages, that Dharma Shastras and every thing else is sourced from the Vedas, that what is to be known and what would be needed for human progress is already attendant knowledge of scriptures of ‘Sanatan Dharma’. Then there are folk like me, who say distinctly look at the rich tapestry of Itihasa-Purana, of the Vedas themselves for internal evidence, then lean on the legend of the admix of linguistic influences that inform subcontinental dialects and languages, stretching back to more than four millennia, look at Tamil scripture and grammar which uniquely documented peoples as sociocultural groups embedded into distinct geographical zones, and then look at how eventually today it is the Deep South that is at once the bastion of both liturgical Sanskrit as well as Tamil.

Yet, I was working in the innards of human memory and evolution to prise out whether such contestation of antiquity, of origins, had led to the rise of segregation and systematic targeting of inconvenient narratives from ancient lore to now, and I find evidence that those now accommodated in the pantheon of Dharma were themselves protagonists, who portrayed their forays and adventures as missions of the sacred kind, and with the rise of multiple sources, historical, archeological, lore, genetics and more, it is now increasingly clear that our heroes and heroines were admitted into the pantheon to promote a particular narrative, not without recording their foibles and follies no doubt, but with them iridescent as if anointing their edifices like badges of honour. Only redeeming and recurring theme in our narratives till now have been how ‘contrite’ ‘sorry’ ‘sorrowful’ or ‘ashamed’ the actors themselves were about these individual episodes, their remorses even in the background of justifying narratives was genuine and prominent to the record, not tucked away as footnotes or addendum.

So when I look at Rama, as probable historical figure, I know that probably, Ayodhya of Rama was a Kingdom not a city, that Saket is not a place mentioned in the initial legends about him, and was later on linked to his story, his allies the Vanaras were not classical army, but a rag tag coalition of volunteers who were distinctly primitive in weaponry and tactics compared to the Rakshasas of Lanka against whom they were arrayed. That Rama was offered a chariot to wage his final duel with Ravana, that Hanuman ‘flew’ like a modern rocket, his flight describes how gravity worked, from observational sciences, and Rama’s moral dilemmas about Sita’s status were possible later on distortions in the narrative which explain how we remember today Sita as a Fairy Queen and Rama as her Knight in Shining Armour, when there is enough within the narratives to suggest that she was an equal warrior, companion and a woman of substance who could not be taken against her consent when she was alive.

Actually distorters were never quite able to cleanse the evidences of what is a clash of ways of lives, of a patriarchy on ascendent over a more sophisticated and equal (liberal)society, which is why Keikeyi was vilified and not celebrated, Soorpanakha too was more than physically mutilated. So we know this that chroniclers and later day arrangers of our compendia were clever people, but nowhere divining enough to eliminate the treasure trove of evidences within, that allow us to view Ramayana itself as a Clash of Civilisations. Within the deification of Rama the purity of Rama’s soul shines through, in all his encounters with strangers, allies and foes, his transparency, his sense of justice and his all embracing nature. Rama struggled all his life to keep his word, who was willing to give it all way, to Bharata because of his Father’s word. He is still there, even after the rubble of Babri Masjid, after the now near universal war cry that uses his name as it attends lynching and brutal murders of people in streets, by-lanes and homes in India now! Rama would never have been certain that today’s Ayodhya was his, nor a five hundred year old structure of another culture. Even if it were, he would have preferred to leave those aside and build for himself as he did at Panchavati or Chitrakoot. After slaying Vali, he kept Sugreeva on the throne, without tarrying even a second of enthroning himself. Forget the narrative, remember that he was in the wilderness as an exile. What modern management gurus christen as ‘operative phrase’ that is this- ‘Rama- The Exiled’! Nor did he retain Soorpanakha, nor detain the vanquished legions of Khara and Dushana! Nor did he hesitate in transferring power to Vibhishana after slaying Ravana. It is his truth, his searing sense of Right and Fairness that does not allow us to make a mere passing reference to him. That is why even those alien to moral persuasions of Dharma were to honour him, making him a universal hero, across Asia including the honour of Imam E Hind.

Today, I cringe and convulse when I think how his mould got broken by Hindutva. Through clever placement, we have furthered a divisive agenda, othering cultures and peoples of our choosing using his very name! I know many moulds were broken starting from Gandhi’s and Nehru’s, their ideas of social India and modern India, as we coursed through our recent history, flaring up as latest manifestation, this madness that blew over Delhi.

The reason why Rama and in effect, all Dharmic values survived as one continuous legacy, beyond the vicissitudes of time and martial forces, was because, until now, we did not have so clever a narrative that would uproot the past and replace it in its entirety like how Hindutva has now done! It is an irony that in this I see the seeds that would eventually destroy ‘Sanatana’ Dharma and the legacy of ‘Aram’ of Tamil culture both, because this palace coup wields weapons that never were wielded by invaders, innovators and immigrants to this land before- Weapons fashioned from Falsehood and Remorseless Absence of Morality!

Yes Hinduism is in peril…Haan Hindu Khatre me hain…