Avant Propos: Constructing – Deconstructionism

Inspired by the theory and belief of an imagined India a vocal and influential section in the Indian and Western academia and intelligentsia has been uninterruptedly inspiring and promoting a spirit of an all round deconstructionism – especially when it comes to Hindu foundational texts and literature. I shall not enter here into the issue of how such a state of affair came into being in the first place and of how it continued to be promoted by a widely networked scholar-coterie over the last four decades. I shall avoid doing so, simply because the phenomenon has been adequately and vehemently debated over the last decade and much has been exposed and unmasked. It would suffice here for my purposes to point out that this habit of deconstructing and of looking at the whole of our collective national existence as imagined and notional began to gain ground in the early seventies of the last century when a political light-weight Syed Nurul Hasan (1921-1993) became the Union Minister of State for Education (with Independent Charge). As the undisputed boss of Indian education and culture in the seventies, Hasan, to his credit, created research institutions all over the country – especially in the field of history and sociology – but he also ensured that they remained in control of and packed with his ideological comrades of the Marxian Left. In course of time this Left syndicate came to rule the Indian academia and wield an influence much disproportionate to their political strength, which even at its height remained confined to a few far-flung pockets of the country. The ascendance of this group in the Indian academia and their robust and mutually sustaining network with other such like minded conglomerates in the Western academia helped usher in the era of deconstructionism with a special focus on Indian – read Hindu – texts, scriptures, positions, customs – in short, the Hindu way of life. As per its prescriptions our revolutionary nationalists became terrorists, our epochal kings and sages vaporized into fiction, our epic figures transmuted into pygmies with debasing propensities and our entire civilisational existence and literary creation was, well – just imagination! The effort reminds one of the French Jesuit Abbé Dubois’s (1765-1848) observation on the objectives of colonial education in India and the method of achieving them, ‘To make a new Race of Hindus’, opined Dubois, ‘one would have to begin by undermining the very foundations of their civilisation, religion and polity, and by turning them into atheists…’¹

To further and consolidate this habit of deconstructing; texts and passages that propagated such a diluting spirit were selected as course material and recommended reading and the originals, or traditional interpretations, or interpretations of these texts that reinforced concepts of a national life, unity – cultural and spiritual – were deliberately omitted. Hence, a process of divorcing young learners from an all round understanding and knowledge of their collective civilisational mind was gradually introduced. The young minds simply received a deconstructed view of the entire Indian cultural and civilisational tableau and were never being equipped to savour the whole nor appreciate its deeper and life-sustaining message for the Indian people and the whole of mankind. All this was done in the name of promoting a genuine spirit of enquiry and rational thought among them – it never mattered that the promotion remained one-sided and ideologically tinctured! The current and past argumentations surrounding our national epics may perhaps be examined with this background in mind.

The Epics in our national life: some points

In the present discussion’ I argue that in the not so distant past some of our best and most versatile national minds where also preoccupied, in their own way, with examining, analysing and discussing our epics and their message. They were not static ideologues bogged down solely with the semantics of the texts but were instead roving ambassadors of national unity and culture spreading the life-sustaining message of the epics as they discerned it. While doing this they also absorbed the deeply percolated age-old traditions and customs surrounding them that they saw preserved by the vast masses of the subcontinent for whose liberation they sought to speak. It was the ‘proletariat’ – rather than the rootless ‘bourgeois’ who unfailingly responded, thrilled and found solace in the epics. For the present discussion I have selected a few of these thought-leaders and shall highlight excerpts from their interpretations and understanding of our epics finally arguing that these too must find their way into our educational syllabus of literature and history allowing them to mould opinion and thought and to give rise to the much needed ‘other point of view’ in the study of Indian history, culture, religion and society. Apart from their striking lucidity some salient points emerge from an examination of these passages: First, that there were a number of interpretations, additions and alterations in the epics was a known and accepted fact and did not seem to give rise to any controversy and rather encouraged debate. But the moot point to be observed is that in all of these interpretations there appears to be absolutely no place for the profane, each version was looked upon and seen from a sublimated perspective. Second, the epics and all their versions were widely accepted as a sacred and powerful vehicle of national education – education for the masses – which in the comrades’ parlance symbolises– the proletariat. This, the people themselves had accepted as such and had developed a unique system of the wandering preachers and minstrels who would, through the ages, keep reiterating the message of the epics throughout the length and breadth of the land. Third, the habit of recounting the epics that each Hindu family had evolved over the ages had turned into an effective instrument for exposing young minds to a deeper ethico-spiritual code of existence and conduct and in moulding, to a great extent, their personalities in accordance with that code. Fourth, the epics, kept alive and throbbing to the present day, were seen as threads of national unity which, despite differences of interpretations and versions, weaved the entire people into a palpable national oneness. Most of the selected perspectives, as shall be seen, exuded on the whole an entirely constructive approach to the epics and their messages and made the case that in a system of national education these can emerge as powerful educating and spiritualising instruments. Nowhere does one perceive exhaustive dissections of versions and interpretations but only an attempt at presenting their deeper metaphysical sense, much as Swami Vivekananda, talking of ‘The Sages of India’, exhorted, while referring to the life of another giant figure of the epics, Sri Krishna, that ‘Do not waste your time upon little details. Take up the framework, the essence of the life.’² It is this essence that the present arbiters of education in India fail to take up and to communicate.

I. Epics as Unifiers: C.R. and his vision

While dedicating his rendering of the Ramayana the formidable polymath C.Rajagopalachari (1878-1972) made a personal remark that perhaps sets in perspective the contemporary relevance and place of the epics in our national life, [the retelling of the Mahabharata and] ‘Ramayana, is, in my opinion, the best service I have rendered to my people. At any rate, they embody the best joy I have experienced; for in these two books I helped our great Sages to speak to our dear men and women in their own language, elevating their minds through the sorrows borne by Kunti, Kausalya, Draupadi and Sita. The real need of the hour is a re-communion between us and the sages of our land, so that the future may be built on rock and not on sand.’³ Rajaji was quite forthright in his demand for the epics to be made available to the young, unlike some of the present day academics; he saw this as being part of a constructive effort at positively igniting young minds. ‘I appeal particularly to the young men in schools and colleges’, he wrote, ‘to read these books …after reading you will emerge with greater courage, stronger will and purer mind. …They are the records of the mind and spirit of our forefathers who cared for the good, ever so much more than for the pleasant and who saw more of the mystery of life than we can do in our interminable pursuit for petty and illusory achievements in the material field…’⁴ The scholar-statesman clearly saw the epics as unifiers, ‘let us keep in our minds the fact that it is the Ramayana and the Mahabharata that bind our vast numbers together as one people, despite caste, space and language that seemingly divide them.’⁵ Weaving the other view, Rajaji’s rendering of the epics has till date not found a place in the national educational mainstream, this despite acceptance by some public intellectuals today that they had, in their formative years, read and re-read these renderings for ‘the lucidity of their language and the extravagant colour of their content.’⁶

II. Epics and the Masses: examples from an Indian village

That the epics had a pan-Indian appeal and inspired and soothed all sections has been amply and richly recorded. That the huge ‘rustic’ masses of India spontaneously responded to them and to any opportunity to listen to their tales and morals and that these indeed became the binding force of the vast majority has also been meticulously recorded. But these narrations have never or have rarely found their way out into academic light. In fact, it would be interesting to note that in the Indian – Hindu lexicon and perception there appears to be an absence of any exclusively ‘North-Indian’ or ‘South-Indian’ god or deity. A reading of descriptions of the peoples’ response to the epics is bound to shake many of the shibboleths at least, of the impartial seekers. The description of the approach of the villagers to the epics in a village near Madras is perhaps illustrative of this point. In his ‘Life in an Indian Village’ T.Ramakrishna narrates just such an occasion seen at first hand and describes the link that the epics have with the people and the system evolved to make it accessible to them in a regular manner. Ramakrishna argues that the ‘two great national epics’ have exerted a powerfully ‘ennobling influence on the character and modes of thought of the people’ of the country partly owing to ‘the fact that they have an intrinsic merit of their own, as being the grandest literary achievement of India’s master minds, and in a great measure owing to the strong conviction that they are Thévakathas (stories of God).’ He saw the pious Hindu walking great distances, sitting up for hours and ready to forego all sorts of conveniences, only for an opportunity to hear these divine stories even ‘though it may be for the hundredth time.’ ‘Various ways are devised to entertain the people with the stirring incidents of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. They are produced on the stage in form of plays, they are recited by professional bards in lyric verse, and they are expounded to the public in plain prose.’ And in order to enliven and stage these, professional preachers were found everywhere in the country ‘even in obscure villages, who sermonize on the popular incidents to be found in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata…’⁷ His description of a session in the village of Kélambakam where episodes from one of the epics were narrated deserves to be cited in some detail, just to reinforce the point that the epics did greatly impress the Indian mind across regions and divides:

‘In Kélambakam, the preacher who delights its inhabitants is Nalla Pillai, the schoolmaster. He has read very carefully all fourteen thousand stanzas of his great-grandfather’s Mahabharata in Tamil, and at night…he explains them to the people. His fame as a preacher is pretty well established, and the people from the neighbouring villages attend his preaching. I myself had once the pleasure and privilege of hearing this preacher of Kélambakam. …People came pouring in from Kélambakam and from neighbouring villages to the house of the village headman. On the pial of the house was seated the preacher. Before him was placed the picture of Krishna playing the flute and leaning on a cow. The picture was profusely decorated with flowers. There were also two vessels. In one there was camphor and some burning incense, in the other were flowers and fruits. The people swarmed like bees. Some were seated in the open street, and others on the pial of neighbouring houses, the whole audience being eager to catch the words that fell from the preacher’s lips. At eight o’clock the preaching commenced….There was dead silence…The preacher knelt down before the picture, and then seating himself commenced to speak… [The preacher ended the discourse with]…’Glory be to Krishna, this saviour of mankind, who is ever ready to assist the good and punish the wicked, this Dispenser of Justice who protected the good and noble Arjuna from his awful doom. Let us all therefore unite in praising our Creator. So saying, the preacher knelt down before the picture…and the whole audience rising en masse and exultingly shouting words, Krishna, Govinda, Gopala…knelt before the picture.’ ⁸

With regard to the ‘wonderful incident’ the author was relieved to realise that the ‘boasted “age of reason” had not yet arrived in Indian villages, the people of which implicitly believe in whatever is written in their scared writing.’⁹ Recognition of such primary texts as material for better understanding Indian religion, culture and history would have served the purpose of truly educating the Indian mind on the intrinsic and organic link that these foundational texts had and continue to have with the people of this land and with their quotidian life. And, as mentioned above, the epics were truly recreational texts for the vast ‘proletariat’ and were not usually meant for the ‘bourgeois’’ pastime. The original Left academic-syndicate as well their present day successors have roundly overlooked this very crucial factor in their often skewed study of the epics! Biased interpretations of the epics would perhaps have some effect and acceptance among an urbanized set of learners but it would, undoubtedly, be squarely rejected by the above kind of audience which continues to dominate the vast Indian hinterlands.

III. The Perpetual Hinduisers: Nivedita and her India

It would be worthwhile here to present two views and understanding of the epics in our national life, made by two Westerners who had in their own ways internalized the Indian civilisational ethos. One evolved as a front-ranking thought-leader in her years in India, having dedicated herself to India’s spiritual, cultural and political rejuvenation. And the other, a more subdued academic who for years closely observed Indian life, traditions and customs and prolifically wrote on them. The first, Sister Nivedita (Margaret Noble) (1867-1911), made immense and multifaceted contributions to the nationalist movement in India in the first decade of the last century – it is another matter that contributions of this Western lady is downplayed and ignored and no systematic effort made to include in the education curriculum selections from her vast and diverse writings on Indian culture, history, spirituality and mythology.¹⁰ In her celebrated ‘The Web of Indian Life’ which gained wide acclaim as a deeply authentic study of Indian life and Eastern ideals and on which the Manchester Guardian was to comment that ‘it is the first time that an Englishwoman has not only grasped the Eastern outlook, but has set it forth fairly and freely without regard to its startling contradiction to Western misconception’ which in any case was under a spell of ‘appalling ignorance.’¹¹; Nivedita brought out the various aspects of the epics as powerful, unifying and educating instruments for the nation. Her direct, simple yet captivating style that may appear to academics today as exaggerated and emotional became immensely popular with generations of Indian youth active in the national movement. India, argued Nivedita, is ‘one of the saga-lands’, this was an essential recognition in order to be able to absorb the place and the role of the epics in its national life. Similar to the above description of the congregation in the south Indian village, Nivedita too, sets in perspective the exalted position of sagas in the Indian psyche when she writes that ‘At every lull in her [India’s] history we may hear the chanting of her bards, and the joy of her people in the story of their past. The long twilight of the North is no better adapted to the growth of such a literature than the deep and early night of the South. In verandahs and courtyards, with the women concealed behind screens at the back, it has been the Indian fashion for hundreds of years through the winter months to gather at dusk round the seat of the Wandering Teller, and listen hour after hour to his stirring theme. Surrounded by lights and flowers, gay carpets and burning incense, there is in his performance a mixture of reading, song, and story. It is something of the opera, sermon, and literature, all in one.’¹² There was no surprise at the habit of making additions in the principal narrative. The additions in the main story was but a natural accretion of centuries and it was very well understood that ‘the stories that it [epic] tells have been worked over by the imagination of singers and people for hundreds of years [and] have become simple, direct, inevitable. They are spoken out of the inmost heart of a nation…They are nothing if not absolutely sincere.’¹³

Referring to the Ramayana, Nivedita saw its ‘strong and quiet story’ speaking straight to ‘the heart of the people,’ and to this day there are no characters as beloved of the masses as those permeating the Ramayana. For her, in order to truly understand the ‘roundness and plasticity’ of the Ramayana’s drama one had to be in touch with the national aspiration, but even a cursory reader of the epic would be stuck with its ‘insight and delicacy.’¹⁴ The existence of various versions was recognised as a natural dimension of the saga, Nivedita saw these versions as serving a larger purpose. Since few were able to read the original Sanskrit version translations were made ‘in various vernaculars by great poets from time to time – into Bengali…by Kirtibas, and into Hindi by Tulsidas’ with each rendering having its peculiar regional flavour, outlook and additions. The source of inspiration for these and vernacular translators was their life in the community – their growing up in the communal life where recounting of the epics was a daily pulsating-ritual performed by their venerated elders. And in recounting the great tale, basing themselves on memories of past narrations, the poets had the ‘perfect freedom to give their own version of each episode’ which keeps it ‘fresh and living and explains its change of tint in the hand of the genius.’ There could no ‘complete criticism of the Ramayana’ without recognition of this ‘working of the communal consciousness on the theme’ [of the epic]’ for each version was ultimately ‘new transcribings’ of the original.¹⁵ Each version seems to define the story more clearly and through each of them runs the ‘Hindu reverence for Rama as man, husband, and king’ and this reverence never seeks to accept that ‘that which is expressed was at any time less than the ideal.’ And the ideal that each version expressed remained the same, it was that of a ‘conception of duty that placed Society far above the individual, and made the perfect king seek the good of his people without any consideration for his own or his wife’s happiness.’¹⁶ But perhaps Nivedita was at her eloquent best when describing the epics and their mingling with the Indian soil and soul:

‘They [the stories of the Ramayana] penetrate to every part of the country, every class of society, every grade of education. Journeying in the mountains at nightfall, one came upon the small open hut of the grain dealer, and saw, round a tiny lamp, a boy reading the Ramayana in the vernacular to a circle of his elders. At the end of each stanza, they bowed their heads to the earth, with the chant, “To dear Sita’s bridegroom, great Rama, all!” The shopkeeper in the city, counts out his ware to the customer, saying, “One (Ram), two (Ram), three (Ram), and so on, relapsing into a dream of worship when the measuring is done…The woman terrified at thunder calls on “Sita Ram!” and the bearers of the dead keep time to the cry of “Nama Rama Sattva hai!” (“The name of the Lord alone is real!”). What philosophy by itself could never have done for the humble, what the laws of Manu have done only in some small measure for the few, that the Epics have done through unnumbered ages are doing still for all classes alike. They are the perpetual Hinduisers, they are the ideal embodiments of that form of life, that conception of conduct, of which laws and theories can give but the briefest abstract, yet towards which the hope and effort of every Hindu child must be directed.’¹⁷