Ram-Leela
The PIL against the title Ram-Leela, the protests outside theatres
against showing the film without a title change, the Madhya Pradesh court’s
injunction against its release – all these are a bit of déjà vu in contemporary
intolerant India where
throwing stones and raising a hue and cry at perceived hurt to religious
sentiments are routine happenings. How
dare anyone talk about Ram, described as “Oka Mata,Oka Bana, Oka Baarya” i.e., One
word, One Arrow, One Wife
–as indulging in ‘leela’ or dance that is a sanctified privilege given only to Krishna
for his Rasleela- to dance
simultaneously with a number of gopis in Brindavan. The Rama Bhaktas are up in
arms for denigrating Maryada
Purush Ram by associating him with leela that is an exclusive right conferred
on Krishna. That is why they have never objected to films
with titles like Natwarlal, Banke Bihari, Bhol Bhulaiyya etc as
Krishna is an acclaimed and the most loved prankster.The Judiciary In Madhya Pradesh in its wisdom factored in the wounded feelings
of Ram
Bhaktas to order a stay on the
release of Ram-Leela despite the producer’s plea that Leela is the name of the
female protagonist of the film. Even the
Producer’s willingness to use capital ‘L’ for Leela and hyphenate the names Ram
and Leela to make the distinction between ‘Ramleela’ and ‘Ram-Leela’ has fallen
flat on the Ram Bhaktas. For them to equate Ram
and his ‘Oka Barya’(one wife) with the story of Romeo and Juliet is seen as the
worst sacrilege of the Ramayana even though with
due apology and nervous trepidation one has to point to the commonality of enduring love between the two pairs.
The New Age Ram Bhaktas are practising cultural atavism citing divine
sanction to punish all those whose semantics defy any relationship between signs or
symbols and what they denote. In India intolerance of other points of view specially related to religion has been on the upswing as we have seen this periodically
happening starting with the ban on Ram Swarup’s Understanding Islam
through Hadis(1982), Salman Rushdie’s
The Satanic Verses(1988), Taslima
Nasrin’s
Lajja(1993) and Dwikhandito(2003), James
Laine’s Shivaji-Hindu King in Islamic India(2003),-to
name a few. This Cultural
fanaticism seems to be the new
aristocratism of the masses arrogating to itself the right to be inhuman, and making cultural rights the prerogatives of
the inhuman.
The best course is for the Ram Bhaktas to file a PIL in the Supreme Court
seeking a divine copyright on the name Ram and a ban on naming anyone as Ram.
These pious devotees can even come out with a list of names that should
be out
of bounds for ordinary mortals. Maybe this can even be one of the election
promises that an ingenuous political party can make use of.
It is interesting that in the
West one hardly comes across the name Jesus. There is one and only one Jesus of
Nazareth.It is a rare surname : 1 in 100000 families. This is not by a
governmental fiat or by a
religious injunction, but it is a part of the Western tradition
and culture to respect the Son of
God. It is the same with Islam. There
can be no second Allah . In
Hinduism, giving God’s
names is to make it easy for all to
utter God’s names as and when those with divine names are called.
But those who cry against the desecration of the name have in ignorance
woven a halo around the name Ram and have
not understood the significance
of the oft-repeated question: ‘What is in a name?’ The best way to understand
the correlation between name and personality is to read Gottfried Lessing’s play Nathan der Weise(Nathan the Wise)
published in1779 which is a parable of three rings to bring about religious
cohesion among Judaism, Islam
and Christianity. Nathan a wise Jewish merchant was asked by Sultan Saladin as
to which religion was true. Nathan narrates to him a parable
about a heirloom ring that had the magical quality to make the owner of the ring
pleasant in the eyes of God and mankind. This ring was passed on by the father
to his most beloved son generation after generation. Once it happened that a
father had three sons whom he loved equally and promised the ring to each one of them. So he
made two replicas of the ring and gave the three to them without identifying
which one was the genuine one. The brothers quarreled as to who had the
original till a wise judge admonished them saying that it was impossible to identify the original, as it was quite
possible that all three were replicas and the original could have been lost.
To find out, whether one of them had the real ring, it was up to them to
live in such a way that they could prove their ring's powers by living a life that is pleasant in the eyes
of God and mankind rather than expecting the ring's miraculous powers to
do so.
So should
each one of us live true to
the ideal exemplified by Ram than debate about whether Ram is Romeo and Leela is Juliet or whether Ram gives himself to leelas without
remaining true to the original ‘Oka Mata, Oka Bana, Oka Barya’.
This is well phrased by Gertrude Stein
who says ‘A rose is a rose is a rose’ meaning,
‘things are as they are and not as they should be’. The New age cultural
atavists will have to understand that in earlier
times, a creative artist could
use the name of the thing and the thing was really there. Over long periods,
the thing has
lost its identity and so to cavil at titles like Ram Leela is both a
sign of their ignorance and intolerance- far removed from the attributes of the Lord whose nobility they seem to espouse..
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