The Continuing Popularity of Sita in India
Madhu Kishwar
I wish to clarify at the outset that I am going to focus primarily on the Sita of popular imagination rather than the Sita of Tulsi, Balmiki or any other textual or oral version of the Ramayan. Therefore, I deliberately refrain from detailed textual analysis. I have focused on how her life is interpreted and sought to be emulated in today's context. However, there is no escaping the fact that in north India the Sita of popular imagination has been deeply influenced by the Sita of Ramcharit Manas by Tulsi. In most other versions of the Ramayan, close companionship and joyful togetherness of the couple are the most prominent features of the Ram-Sita relationship rather than her self-effacing devotion and loyalty which have become the hallmark of the modern day stereotype of Sita. The medieval Ramayan of Tulsi marks the transition from Ram and Sita being presented as an ideal couple to projecting each of them as an ideal man and woman respectively. As a maryada purushottam, Ram's conjugal life has to be sacrificed at the altar of "higher" duties. Sita is now portrayed in a highly focussed manner as an ideal wife who acts as the moral anchor in a marriage, and stays unswerving in her loyalty and righteousness no matter how ill-matched be her husband's response. The power of the ideal wife archetype in Tulsi's Ramayan overshadows the happy conjugal life of the couple prior to Ram's rejection of Sita. The Sita image indeed lends itself to diverse appeals which is perhaps why it has continued to hold sway over the minds of the people of India over the centuries. For instance, in a study carried out in Uttar Pradesh, 500 boys and 360 girls between the ages of 9 and 22 years were asked to select the ideal woman from a list of 24 names of gods, goddesses, heroes, and heroines of history. Sita was seen as the ideal woman by an overwhelming proportion of the respondents. There were no age or sex differences 1 That was a 1957 survey. However, Sita continues to command similar reverence even today, even among modern educated people in India. This paper is a preliminary exploration into why Sita continues to exercise such a powerful grip on popular imagination, especially among women. A Slavish Wife?
I grew up thinking of Sita as a much wronged woman - a slavish wife without a mind of her own. And precisely for that reason she was not for me a symbol of inspiration, but a warning. She was all that I did not want to be. I naively believed she deserved her fate for being so weak and submissive. It was not as though I were deliberately and consciously rejecting Sita as an ideal. Fortunately, she was never held up as an example for me and, therefore, she did not seem an important reference point - positive or negative - in my life. Sita forced herself on my consciousness only after I began working on Manushi. The articles and poems that came to us, especially those for the Hindi edition, showed an obsessive involvement with Sita and her fire ordeal (agnipariksha). My impression is that 80 to 90 percent of the poems that came to us for the Hindi version of Manushi, and at least half of those for English Manushi, revolved around the mythological Sita, or the writer as a contemporary Sita, with a focus on her steadfast resolve, her suffering, or her rebellion. Sita loomed large in the lives of these women, whether they were asserting their moral strength or rebelling against what they had come to see as the unreasonable demands of society or family. Either way Sita was the point of reference - an ideal they emulated or rejected. I was very puzzled by this obsession, and even began to get impatient with the harangues of our modern day Sitas. And then came the biggest surprise of all. The first poem I ever wrote was in Hindi, and was entitled, Agnipariksha. I give some extracts in a rough translation:
I too have given agnipariksha,Not just me, even my former colleague, Ruth Vanita, who is from a Christian family, wrote many a poem around the Sita theme. Her recent collection of poems has several poems that revolve around the Sita symbol. It took a long time, but eventually I became conscious that this obsession with Sita needs to be understood more sensitively than I was hitherto prepared for. Therefore, I began to ask this question fairly regularly of various men and women I met over the years: who do they hold up as an example of the ideal man and ideal woman? Young girls tend to name public figures like Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, Indira Gandhi, and Mother Teresa as their ideals. But those already married or on the threshold of marriage very frequently mention Sita as their ideal (barring the few who are avowedly feminist). At this point of their life, the distinction between an ideal woman and an ideal wife seems to often get blurred in the minds of women. That includes not just women of my mother or grandmother's generations but even young college-going girls - not just those in small towns and villages, but also those in metropolitan cities like Delhi. Even among my students in the Delhi University college where I teach, Sita invariably crops up as their notion of an ideal woman. She is frequently the first choice if you ask someone to name a symbol of an ideal wife. When I ask women why they find this ideal still relevant, the most common response is that the example Sita sets will always remain relevant, even though they may themselves not be able to completely live up to it. This failure they attribute to their living in kalyug. They feel that in today's debased world it is difficult to measure up to such high standards. However, most women add that they do try to live up to the Sita ideal to the best of their ability, while making some adjustments keeping present day circumstances in view. Importance of Being Sita
Not one - but many
Everyday, a new one.
However, this agnipariksha
Is not to prove myself worthy of this or that Ram
But to make myself
Worthy of freedom.
Every day your envious, dirty looks
Reduced me to ashes
And everyday, like a Phoenix, I arose again
Out of my own ashes ... ... ...
Who is Ram to reject me?
I have rejected that entire society
Which has converted
Homes into prisons.
Since I don't have the space to quote extensively from the large number and variety of interviews I have done on the subject, I merely give the gist of what emerged out of these interviews. It is a common sentiment among Indian women (and men) that the ideals set in bygone ages are still valid and worth emulating, though they admit few people manage to do so in today's world. This attitude contrasts sharply with the popular western view that assumes that people in by-gone ages were less knowledgeable, were far less aware and conscious of their rights and dignity, had fewer options, and therefore were less evolved as human beings. This linear view of human society makes the past something to be studied and kept in museums but is not expected to encroach upon the supposedly superior wisdom of the present generation. In India, on the other hand, Ram and Sita are not seen as remote figures out of a distant past to be dismissed lightly just because we are living in a different age and have evolved different lifestyles. They are living role models seen as having set standards so superior that they are hard to emulate for those living in our more "corrupt" age, the kalyug. My interviews indicate that Indian women are not endorsing female slavery when they mention Sita as their ideal. Sita is not perceived as being a mindless creature who meekly suffers maltreatment at the hands of her husband without complaining. Nor does accepting Sita as an ideal mean endorsing a husband's right to behave unreasonably and a wife's duty to bear insults graciously. She is seen as a person whose sense of dharma is superior to and more awe inspiring than that of Ram - someone who puts even maryada purushottam Ram - the most perfect of men - to shame. She is the darling of Kaushalya, her mother-in-law, who constantly mourns Sita's absence from Ayodhya. She worries about her more than she does for her son Ram. As the bahu of Avadh, she is everyone's dream of an ideal, loving daughter-in-law. To the people of Mithila, she is far more divine and worthy of reverence than Ram. Her father-in-law, Dashrath, and her three brothers-in-law dote on her. Ram has at least some enemies like Bali who feel wronged and cheated by him. Ram can become angry and act the role of an avenger. Sita is love and forgiveness incarnate and has no ill feelings even for those who torture her in Ravan's captivity. In many folk songs, even Lakshman, the forever obedient and devoted brother of Ram, takes Sita's side against his own brother when Ram decides to banish Sita. In one particular folk song, he argues with Ram: "How can I abandon a bhabhi such as Sita who is like food for the hungry and clothes for the naked? She is like a cool drink of water for the thirsty. She is now in full term of pregnancy. How can I cast her away at your command?" (Singh,1986)2 He is in such pain at having to obey and carry out such an unjust command of his king and elder brother that he does not dare disclose the true intent of their trip to the forest. Squirming with shame, he leaves her there on a false pretense. She is a woman who even the gods revere, a woman who refuses to accept her husband's tyranny even while she remains steadfast in her love for him and loyalty to him to the very end. People commonly perceive Sita's steadfastness as a sign of emotional strength and not slavery, because she refuses to forsake her dharma even though Ram forsook his dharma as a husband. Most women (and even men) I have spoken to on the subject refer to her as a "flawless" person, overlooking even those episodes where she acts unreasonably (e.g., her humiliating Lakshman with crude allegations about his intentions towards her), whereas Ram is seen as possessing a major flaw in his otherwise respect worthy character because of the way he behaved towards his wife and children. When gods go wrong
Hindus talk of Ram and Sita, Shiv and Parvati and sundry other gods in very human ways and feel no hesitation in passing moral judgement on them. Very few Hindu men or women justify those actions of these deities which they consider wrong or immoral by contemporaneously upheld standards of morality. In other words, gods and goddesses are expected to live up to the expectations of fair play demanded by their present day worshippers. Their praiseworthy actions are neatly sifted from those where the gods fail to uphold dharmic conduct. Such criticism and condemnation is not seen as a sign of being irreligious or irreverent but as an acknow- ledgement that even gods are not perfect or infallible. This provides a far greater sense of freedom and volition to individuals within the Hindu faith than in religions where god's commandments are to be unconditionally obeyed and the god is upheld as a symbol of infallibility. Sita's offer of agnipariksha and her coming out of it unscathed is by and large seen not as an act of supine surrender to the whims of an unreasonable husband but as an act of defiance that challenges her husband's aspersions, as a means of showing him to be so flawed in his judgement that the gods have to come and pull up Ram for his foolishness. Unlike Draupadi, she does not call upon them for help. Their help comes unsolicited. She emerges as a woman that even agni (fire god) -who has the power to destroy everything he touches - dare not touch or harm. Thus, in popular perception Sita's agni pariksha is not put in the same category as the mandatory virginity test Diana had to go through in order to prove herself a suitable bride for Prince Charles, but rather as an act of supreme defiance on her part. It only underscores the point that Ram is emotionally unreliable and can be unjust in his dealings with Sita, that he behaved like a petty minded, stupidly mistrustful, jealous husband and showed himself to be a slave to social opinion. Most women and men I interviewed felt he had no right to reject and humiliate her or to demand an agnipariksha. Rejection of Ram
The refusal of Sita to go through a second agnipariksha - which Ram demands in addition to the first one that she had offered in defiance - has left a far deeper impact on the popular imagination. It is interpreted not as an act of self annihilation but as a momentous but dignified rejection of Ram as a husband. It is noteworthy that Sita is considered the foremost of the mahasatis even though she rejected Ram's tyrannical demand of that final fire ordeal resolutely and refused to come back and live with him. It is he who is left grieving for her and is humbled and rejected by his own sons. Ram may not have rejected her as a wife but only as a queen in deference to social opinion, but Sita rejects him as a husband. In Kalidasa's Raghuvansha, after her banishment by Ram, Sita does not address Ram as Aryaputra (a term for husband that literally translates as son of my father-in-law) but refers to him as 'King' instead. For instance, when Lakshman comes to her with Ram's message, she conveys her rejection of him as her husband in the following words: "Tell the king on my behalf that even after finding me pure after the fire ordeal he had in your presence, now you have chosen to leave me because of public slander. Do you think it is befitting the noble family in which you were born?" (Kalidasa)3 His rejection of Sita is almost universally condemned while her rejection of him is held up as an example of supreme dignity. By that act she emerges triumphant and supreme, she leaves a permanent stigma on Ram's name. I have never heard even one person, man or woman, suggest that Sita should have gone through the second fire ordeal quietly and obediently and accepted life with her husband once again, though I often hear people say that Ram had no business to reject her in the first place. Despite the Divorce
Ram may have forsaken Sita, but the power of popular sentiment has kept them united. Her name precedes Ram's in the popular greeting in North India: Jai Siya Ram, as also in several bhajansand chants. He is seen as incomplete without her. He stands alone only in the BJP's propaganda and posters. Otherwise he is never worshipped without his spouse. There is no Ram mandir without Sita by his side. However, there is at least one Sita mandir that I personally know of where Sita presides without Ram. I was introduced to it by the workers of Shetkari Sangathana. This is in Raveri village of Yeotmal district in Maharashtra. The people of the village and surrounding areas tell a moving story associated with the Sita mandir in the area about how that temple came to be. When Sita was banished by Ram, she roamed from village to village as a homeless destitute. When she came to this particular village, she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. She begged for food but the villagers, for some reason, did not oblige. She cursed the village, vowing that no anaj (grain) would ever grow in their fields. The villagers say that until the advent of hybrid wheat, for centuries, no wheat grew in their village, though plenty grew in neighbouring villages. The villagers all believe in Sita mai's curse. Her two sons were both said to have been born on the outskirts of the village, where a temple was built commemorating Sita mata's years of banishment. Apologia for Ram
The injustice done to Sita seems to weigh very heavily on the collective conscience of men in India. Those few who try to find justifications for Ram's cruel behaviour towards Sita take pains to explain it in one of the following ways:
- Ram did it not because he personally doubted Sita but because of the demands of his dharma as a king; he knew she was innocent but he had to show his praja (subject) that unlike his father, he was not a slave to a woman, that as a just raja he was willing to make any amount of personal sacrifices for them.
- It was an act of sacrifice for him as well. He suffered no less, and lived an ascetic life thereafter;
- He banished only the shadow of Sita. He kept the real Sita by his side all the time.
Even in the rest of India, very few people endorse Ram's behaviour towards Sita. He has not been forgiven this injustice through all these centuries, despite his being a revered figure in most other ways. In this context, I am reminded of the time when Ramanand Sagar's Ramayan was being telecast over Doordarshan. As the story began approaching the point when Sita was supposed to undergo her agnipariksha the serial makers were flooded in advance with so many letters of protest against the depiction of Sita going through the fire ordeal that Sagar was forced to deviate from his text and show the agnipariksha to be a mock one. The TV Ram was made to clarify that he did not doubt Sita's chastity. Clearly, Ram's injustice to Sita has hung so heavily on the collective conscience of Indians that they are willing to demand that a sacred text be altered. In this new text, determined by contemporary devotees, maryada purushottam Ram was being ordered to behave better. Disqualified Husband
The final rejection of Ram by Sita has come to acquire a much larger meaning in popular imagination than one woman's individual protest against the injustice done to her. It is a whole culture's rejection of Ram as a husband. For instance, people will say approvingly: "He is a Ram-like son, a Ram-like brother, or a Ram-like king." But they will never say as a mark of approval, "He is a Ram-like husband." If Ram had not been smart enough to win Sita for a wife by his skill in stringing Shiv's bow, if instead Janak had decided to match their horoscope and it had predicted that Sita would be abandoned by him, I doubt that Ram would have ever found a wife. No father would have consented to give his daughter to a man like Ram - his claims to godlike perfection notwithstanding. Most people I talked to echoed this sentiment: "Ram honge bade admi par Sita ne kya sukh paya?" (Ram may have been a great man, but what good did it do Sita?) Thus, not just modern day Sitas but even traditional women and men reject Ram as an appropriate husband. Indian women's favourite husband has forever been Bhole Shiv Shankar - the innocent, the trusting, the all devoted spouse who allowed his wife to guide his life and his decisions. Unmarried women keep fasts on Monday, the day assigned for Lord Shiv and pray that they may be blessed with Parvati's good fortune. Shiv and Parvati are the most celebrated and happy couple in Hindu mythology, representing perfect joy in togetherness, including in their sexual union. Their mutual devotion, companionship and respect for each other are legendary. Shiv is not seen as a bossy husband demanding unconditional obedience but as one who respected his wife's wishes, even her trivial whims. To quote Devyani (a middle aged woman working as a domestic help in my neighbourhood): "Bhole Shankar never caused pain to his wife. He would indulge every whim of hers. Only when a man behaves with such respect for his wife can you have a sukhi grahsthi (happy domestic life)." It is significant that pauranic descriptions of Shiv show him as the least domesticated and the most rebellious of all the gods, one whose appearance and adventures border on the weird. He is so unlike a normal husband that Sati's father never forgives her for marrying Shiv. Yet Hindu women have selectively domesticated him for their purpose, emphasising his devotion to Sati/Parvati as well as the fact that he allowed his spouse an important role in influencing his decisions. At the same time these women conveniently overlook the many very prominent and contradictory aspects of his life and deeds. Interestingly, Parvati is not just seen as a grihalakshmi, as someone whose reign is confined to the domestic sphere. She often also controls and guides Shiv's dealings with the outside world, constantly goading him to be more generous, compassionate and sensitive to the needs of his bhakts. While there has been a lot of discussion and analysis of the demands put on women in the Hindu tradition, the sacrifices expected of ideal wives, we have failed to evaluate the demands put on an ideal husband. The Hindu tradition might valourise wives who put up with tyrannical husbands gracefully but it does not valourise unreasonable husbands. On the contrary, it places heavy demands on them and expects very high levels of sexual and emotional loyalty from them if they are to qualify as "good husbands". Shiv, for instance, is perceived as someone who cannot live without Parvati. He is said to have no desire for other women. He is supposed to have roamed around the world like a crazed being carrying Parvati's dead body on his shoulders after she jumped into the fire to protest against her father's insult to her husband. His tandava threatens to destroy the whole world and he rests only after he has brought her back to life. However, most women realise that a Shiv like husband is not easy to get. Therefore, they need other strategies to make husbands act responsibly. There are several practical reasons why Sita-like behaviour makes sense to Indian women. The outcome of marriage in India depends not just on the attitude of a husband but as much on the kind of relationship a women has with her marital family and extended kinship group. If, like Sita, she commands respect and affection from the latter, she can frequently count on them to intervene on her behalf and keep her husband from straying, from behaving unreasonably. Similarly, once her children grow up, they can often play an effective role in protecting her from being needlessly bullied by her husband, and bring about a real change in the power equation in the family, because in India, children, especially sons, frequently continue living with their parents even after they are grown up. A woman can hope to get her marital relatives and her children to act in her favour only if she is seen as being more or less above reproach. Most women realise that it is not easy to tie men down to domestic responsibility. You need a lot of social and familial controls on men in order to prevent them from extra-marital affairs which can seriously jeopardise the stability of a marriage. Thus, they think it is best to avoid taking on the ways of men. To respond to a husband's unreasonableness or extra-marital affair by seeking a divorce or having an affair herself would only allow men further excuses to legitimise their irresponsible behaviour. Thus, it is a strategy to domesticate men, to minimise the risk of marriage breakdown and of having to be a single parent, with its consequent effect on children. A man breaking off with a Sita-like wife is likely to invite widespread disapproval in his social circle and is therefore, more likely to be kept under a measure of restraint, even if he has a tendency to stray. While for women Sita represents an example of an ideal wife, for men she is Sita mata (jagjannani), not just the daughter of earth but Mother Earth herself who inspires awe and reverence. By shaping themselves in the Sita mould, women often manage to acquire enormous clout and power over their husbands and family. I am grateful to my friend Berny and my colleague Dhirubhai Sheth for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper. This article has been extracted from a longer paper presented at a conference organised in January 1996 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. 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