Audrey Trushke silencing Sita in the Ramayana

The Caravan magazine- not content with pretending that Judges routinely murder their brother judges if they refuse a big bribe from the Chief Justice- has published an article by Audrey Trushke on the Ramayana.

For Heaven's sake, why?

Have they not got the memo that Rahul is now a janeo-dhari Shaivite Brahmin who visits Temples while Modi and Shah are probably crypto-Jains or acharabrashtas of some description?

Rajiv Gandhi was our Rama- as promoted by Doordarshan TV. His son has returned to the Hindu fold. His Mom- a pativrata, like Sita,- inherits silence and oblivion.

Audrey has a peculiar view of the Ramayana. It has a life of its own. It can do pointless things like 'resist singularity'. What text can't resist singularity? None at all. Trushke's essay itself resists singularity. Logically, the least marked way to receive it would involve the following axioms-

1) All women, even Sita, are stupid bitches who are wholly worthless and parasitical.

2) Any and every character that has been written about- fictional, allegorical, mythological, or whatever- actually exists and can interact with every other. What's more the Meinongian world where they do so defines the political sphere for actual human societies. 

In other words, Trushke upholds so horribly misogynistic a view of not just the Ramayana but also Reality itself,  that her own  jaundiced view of Valmiki's epic attains the status of scriptural, irrefragable, truth for all non-Hindus, or those without a doctrine of partial incarnation or occassionalist theism, because women are always worthless shite.  

How does Trushke pull this off? The answer is, she does this by lacking a penis. This makes her a woman and thus, axiomatically, a worthless, whining, bitch- according to her own hermeneutic theory. 

Yet, Trushke appears to be arguing from a feminist point of view. She begins her essay by saying-

From the beginning, the Ramayana resisted singularity.

A text begins with its first line. At least one text 'resisted singularity' from its first line. It follows that an alethic text based on that text- stated to be the Ramayana- must also resist singularity. In other words, Audrey is saying- 'either I am writing nonsense, or else everything that follows actively resists a univocal reading of it.' Thus it must be the case that Audrey is saying the opposite of the conventional 'feminist' response to the epic. But what could that be? The answer is- Sita was a whining bitch who was utterly worthless whom Lord Rama needed to get shot off by any and every means.

But this begs the question, are their texts which don't resist singularity? Do some texts guard against multivalency or adulteration by some internal means?

Suppose I were to say- 'from the beginning, Harry Potter resisted singularity. Thus he could not be the brainchild of a single individual. The earliest extant version of his story is that of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh who, as a Parmahansa Yogi, was able to project himself forward in time into the body of a beautiful and very smart British lady. Thus, the evil British Raj was able to appropriate intellectual property in 'Hari Putthar' which belongs by right to me coz my great-great grandfather was Sri Aurobindo's cook and was rewarded with the relevant copyright by the Bengali Sage. '

You might very well answer- 'Don't be silly. J.K Rowling is a genius. She and she alone created Harry Potter and ensured that his every action and utterance displayed, in a univocal and aesthetically compelling manner, the several remarkable aspects of his character, resolve, and emotional attachment to his friends, teachers and comrades in the battle against Voldemort.

But then, Harry Potter does not 'resist singularity'- he resists Evil which is polymorphous and invested in multiple horcruxes- the last of which is the hero himself. All great Epic heroes have this quality. No doubt, an inferior writer of 'fan-fiction' who pens 'Harry Potter vs Dr. Strange' will 'resist singularity' in that Potter and Strange may end up in bed together rubbing each others wands. However, this Harry Potter would be of a scenes a faire type- i.e. he would be a cardboard cut-out, without any real depth.

Audrey says-

Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana is the earliest extant version of Rama’s story, written 2,000 years ago, give or take a few centuries.

Written? The Valmiki Ramayana was written? Why not simply say it was typed on an iMac? 

Thousands of handwritten manuscripts of Valmiki’s text survive today, and no two are identical.

Those manuscripts aren't of Valmiki's Ramayana. They capture diverse oral transmissions of Valmiki's text. The same can be said about Homer's texts. 

Like the Mahabharata, its sister epic, Valmiki’s Ramayana was an “open” text, subject to alterations and additions with every new handwritten copy in premodernity.

'Valmiki's Ramayana' is a Kripkean 'rigid designator'. It couldn't have been an open text because 'every new handwritten copy' was judged by a pre-existing community as either conforming or departing from a 'buck-stopped' conception of the original. Thus, variation did not mean 'openness'.  Scholars say- 'King Lear had a happy ending in Nahum Tate's version of Shakespear'- they don't say Shakespeare's Lear resists singularity. It is an open text. That is why Ophelia is able to save Hamlet by fisting his mother till her new husband has a heart-attack and keels over. This enables Hamlet to marry Fortinbras and devote himself to Marine Ecology.

Audrey believes editors can change a text with a Kripkean rigid designation-

Over time, the thousands of editors substantially changed Valmiki’s epic.

No. Some writers created new versions of the epic- because that is what they wanted to do. Others did not because that was not their intention. Rather they sought a Schelling focal solution to a coordination problem concerned with recovering and transmitting something rigidly designated as Valmiki's text. 

Valmiki, or at least some single individual, likely authored the bulk of books two through six of the seven-book text, and most of the first and seventh books were added later.

So what? Bhagwan Valmiki was a Yogijiva. That's why we call him 'Bhagwan'. He could exist in multiple locations and incarnate in diverse bodies concurrently. That is the Hindu view.

From an aesthetic point of view, we readily acknowledge a picture to be by Leonardo even if we know some work was done on it by a later disciple.

The point about the Ramayana & Mahabharata, is that they have a fractal structure. One couplet can summarise the whole epic- more particularly by a hypertrophied type of grammatical analysis.

Notably, for Valmiki, Rama was probably more a man than a god.

More a man than a god? What about Trump to Audrey? Is he more a man than a God?

The fact is, Heroes- like Hercules- gain apotheosis in Epics of the Iron Age. But Rama has a very different personality from a Weyland Smith or Divine Caesar. We may say he is an idealised representation. But a representation of what? The answer is, Ram is the ideal representation of the One all compassionate God made flesh.

His deification was grafted onto the epic—or at least seriously amplified—in later centuries, transforming Rama into Lord Ram, an incarnation of Vishnu, as he is known to Hindus today.

So what? Vaishnavism has a doctrine of partial incarnation. All who serve others in a selfless manner so as to become fitting vessels and vehicles of the Lord are as limbs of the One.

What Audrey is saying is that some wicked editors, for some fell reason, turned some boring story about Kings and Demons shooting arrows at each other into a sublime spiritual text able to unite very simple and ordinary people from diverse parts of India together.

Audrey may think Indians should never make common cause and that they should certainly not have the temerity to believe that the Lord himself once paced Ind's forest paths and river fords as an exile and a man of sorrows, but this begs the question- does Audrey really think?

But, whether he was viewed as human or divine, Valmiki’s Rama was never beyond reproach.

Ordinary people reproach God constantly. Nobody is beyond reproach. The thing is, when you reproach one who is selfless and dedicated to your uplift, sooner or later you discover your error and tears of repentance come into your eyes and you join your hands in, for a change, a purely unselfish prayer for that one whose concern is only with the commonweal.

Valmiki could pack quite a punch in his poetry, and he used derisive language to admonish Rama at times, often voiced by other characters in the tale.

Wow! Audrey sure is a master of the English language! 'Pact quite a punch!' What a lapidary phrase! Rutgers must be so proud.

For example, when Rama shoots Vali in the back, a blatant violation of the rules of war, the monkey king upbraids him for being two-faced, treacherous, vile, and cruel.

Rama shot from the side because Vali had the boon that whosoever attacks from in front will lose his power to him. Yet Ram's arrow struck in Vali's chest. Why? In Tamil poetry, the mother of a slain warrior goes to the battlefield to check for herself that her son died while attacking the enemy, not fleeing like a coward. If she sees an arrow in his back, she weeps believing he tried to flee. If she finds his chest hacked by swords and pierced by arrows, she rejoices. She gave birth to a hero.

The dialogue between Ram and Vali shows that the Grace of God- even if you are the enemy of God- will use your own 'virodha bhakti' or thymotic 'samrambha yoga' to affect your own salvation!

This is a psychological truth. A big and powerful man may rail against his small and tiny daughter because she has destroyed his brandy or other such intoxicant. He may reveal, in his wrath, that this child is not his daughter at all but just some foundling abandoned during the famine. The child may make some answer- more or less shamefaced or unsound in law- but the brute confronting her will experience a change of heart. When you are in the wrong, it helps to blow off steam. The last thing you need is some one to tell you why you are in the wrong. You already know you did wrong. There is no need for some big debate. Let the sinner have the last word so long as  he repents and earns a seat in Heaven.

When Rama tries to leave Sita behind in Ayodhya while he goes to the forest, Sita likens him to a śailūṣa.

Quite right! That's how people who love each other talk. Sita says 'oho! you want to go off gallivanting is it? No such luck, dear. I'll be with you every step of the way. Otherwise God alone knows what shenanigans you will get up to.'

Suppose Sita had said- 'My Lord! My duty is to go with you and share your misfortune! Please do not destroy my Religion by preventing me from doing my Duty'- we may well suspect that her true attachment was to duty and that she was not a warm and affectionate spouse.

By using a word meaning a roguish male dancer or other such entertainer who would have plenty of amorous opportunities, Sita silences Ram very effectively.

This is sound psychology. But it also tells us something about Vaishnav, or Hindu, Religion. Love triumphs over 'akrebia'- i.e. a narrow, legalistic, conception of Duty as Eusebia.

In a 2004 article titled “Resisting Rama,” the scholar Robert Goldman, who has devoted his career to studying Valmiki’s text, translated the term, a bit zestily, as “pimp.”

Why? The word means a male who is a dancer or vagabond who has affairs with women. A pimp does not do so. He sells girls- whom he threatens and beats- to other men.

Robert Goldman, on this evidence, is not a scholar. He is a pimp. He is selling an erudition, not his own, for a vile and repugnant end.

During the fire trial to test her chastity on her return from captivity under Ravana in Lanka, Sita calls Rama prākṛta, meaning vulgar or uncouth, and smears him as laghuneva manuṣyeṇa, which the scholar David Shulman has translated as “like a little man.”

She was right to do so. Consider what actually happened. Ram had won a war to get back his beloved. But he was also a King. He had to affirm in open court that no woman can be considered property. Sita had been held in captivity and it was right that Ram fought for her freedom. Though he had vanquished a King and could have taken a rich Kingdom by right of conquest, he could not take back even his own beloved wife because she was a free agent. Might does not create Right- at least when it comes to Love.

Valmiki shows that Rama becomes enraged prior to Sita's appearance. Anger is a bad thing- it disorders one's wits- as Ravana's, or Vali's, wits had been disordered. However, this 'samrambha yoga', in Valmiki, serves to bring about the best possible end. Ravana and Vali gain union with the godhead. Rama's anger and his clumsy, but vulgarly 'feminist', statements causes Sita to herself become enraged and enter the fire. The result is that the Gods are apalled and cause all of the virtuous dead to be restored to life.

What made Rama so angry? The answer is that Vibhishina's courtiers were using sticks to beat back the throng of monkeys. When I go on pilgrimage, I may lose my sense of decorum and surge forward with the crowd eager for 'darshan' of the Godhead. At such times, men with staves beat me back. VIPs can jump the queue. We are inured to this sort of thing nowadays but Lord Ram himself is angered by such discrimination. 

Why was Rama so enraged? The Vanars more than anyone else deserved Sita's 'munh dekhai'- because to see her face is salvation. This did not mean Sita was placed under any obligation at all. Liberation from Captivity does not mean a new type of slavery to the Liberator.

Valmiki's genius is that he gives Sita a chance to show her mettle. Rama, like an idiot, says 'marry whom you like- Vibhishina or Hanuman or Laxman (which means they have to keep silent, otherwise Sita will turn her fury on them and accuse them of lust) or go anywhere you wish and marry who you like'.

Sita, we feel, could have destroyed Lanka by the power of her chastity- as Kanagi did another great City.  Ram's maladroitness- which is kinda cute coz what he's really saying is- 'Most cruel! due to why you abandoned me and didn't come to give me even one or two kisses? Boo!'- causes Sita's anger and self immolation which was what was required to restore all the dead to life and end this Divine Comedy.

This is not Audrey's view-

Sita also accuses Rama of prejudice against women or, more succinctly, misogyny. In her words, “pṛthakstrīṇāṃ pracāreṇa jātiṃ tvaṃ pariśaṅkase”—“You suspect all women because of the vulgar ones’ behaviour.”

Quite right! There are folk forms all over the length and breadth of the sub-continent which feature 'flyting' matches. The male singer repeats sententious proverbs about the fickleness of women.  The female rebuts the charges and piles on some of her own. Both then agree that God is Love and without Gender or Jealousy.

Valmiki himself appears uncomfortable with Rama’s treatment of Sita during the fire test, and the poet describes his speech as rūkṣaṃ, or cruel, and, in some north Indian versions, as ghoraṃ, or horrible.

Really? So Valmiki didn't really write the Ramayana. He witnessed it. Otherwise why should he feel uncomfortable if he is himself putting words in the mouths of imaginary characters?

All of this is little remembered today. On Twitter, I recently colloquially summarised Sita’s criticism of Rama during the fire test, as narrated by Valmiki. An explosion of anger—predominantly from men—followed. Many expressed their rage about a perceived insult to Lord Ram—articulated in a woman’s voice—by threatening to rape or kill me.

Wonderful. Audrey likes to tweet. That makes her an authority on Valmiki. Why didn't she tweet about Trump? She'd have gotten even more rape threats. BTW, I received a lot of rape threats after I tweeted my disproof of Arrow's theorem. With hindsight, my big mistake was to use the handle 'Honeytits Cumbucket'.

In a sick twist of irony, the grotesque language these men employed displayed the very misogyny that, in their minds, Lord Ram, the ideal man—maryādāpuruṣottam—could never harbour.

That's a sick twist of irony? No. A sick twist of irony would have been their Moms interrupting their whacking off to your tweet with the result that they jizzed in their own sandesh and their Moms made them eat it anyway to teach them a lesson.

When I called attention to these hateful threats, many critics accused me of just playing the victim and refused to themselves describe the attacks as misogynistic.

These guys were jacking off. What's misogynistic about that? It's sad is all- more especially coz their Moms made them eat their own jizz which had landed on their dessert. Anyway, they'll probably fail Chemistry and have to settle for a worthless non-STEM subject like whatever shite you profess.

This was again a patriarchal tactic—the dismissal of gendered threats of violence—designed to intimate and silence women.

A patriarch is a Dad. He has daughters. He may beat the shite out of his sons but he does not threaten to rape or kill his little Princesses.
Some sad loser, tweeting rape threats till he jizzed into his sandesh is not a Patriarch. He is a emotionally arrested wanker.

Unsurprisingly, most of my critics focussed on the perceived insult to Lord Ram, without much consideration for Sita and her point of view.

Sita is Divine. Her point of view is the same as that of Lord Ram- viz. caritas for creation commences with changing the hearts of creatures.

Such is the logic of modern misogyny that it demands female voices in the grand Ramayana tradition remain subordinate to male feelings.

What was the logic of pre-modern misogyny? Did it demand male voices remain subordinate to female feelings?

In order to understand Valmiki’s text it is important to recover Sita’s voice, and to resist any soft-pedalling of it despite our own prejudices.

Does Audrey believe Sita really existed? Hindus do, but they also believe she was Divine and had miraculous powers. If Audrey wants to 'recover Sita's voice' then it must be the case that everybody, except her, had miraculous powers. Thus, her recovered voice would bitterly complain about how she got burned to a crisp when she entered the fire. For everybody else there's some miracle, why not for me? Sod this for a game for soldiers. I'm well out of it, mate'.

While Valmiki’s text was changed over the centuries, the criticisms of Rama contained in it were preserved.

How do you know? Also...why?

Valmiki’s Ramayana holds within itself the tension of a perfect man-cum-god who acts brutally, giving the reader plenty of ethical dilemmas to mull over.

Where is the brutality? The guy is an incarnation of the Lord fulfilling the Divine plan. What does he do wrong? Killing Vali? But Vali had a boon such that he could only be attacked from the side. Warriors know that other warriors will seek to circumvent their precautions. Vali should have asked for a better boon or taken some other precaution. Under the rules of war, no brutal act was committed.

A guy can tell his wife that she is free to depart and marry someone else. That is not brutish. Men have the right to a divorce- same as women do.

The epic also has a way of crafting episodes to simultaneously advance conservative social values and offer glimmers of resistance. For instance, Sita’s fire test is designed to prove her sexual purity, a gendered concern in the patriarchal society of the time, but it is Sita’s idea, which can be read as her exercising agency.

Is Audrey utterly mad? I am as chaste as the driven snow but I don't set fire to myself to prove it every time the g.f pretends to get jealous of the homeless lady up the road who always lifts her skirt and shouts 'Paki bastid!' when I walk past.

To reduce instances of perceived moral lapse in Valmiki’s version, especially regarding Rama’s interactions with Sita, premodern Indians often rewrote the epic.

Indians produced their own versions of the story for different purposes- e.g. to demonstrate the rules of grammar or to advance a particular metaphysical doctrine.

For example, book seven of what we now call Valmiki’s Ramayana—one of the books that was added, in part or whole, in later centuries—depicts Rama abandoning a pregnant Sita in the forest and later attempting to subject her to a second fire test.

Actually, modern Hindus don't call it part of the Valmiki Ramayana. For example, Vikram Seth, in 'A Suitable Boy' has a character refer to it as being from Tulsi. 

These episodes sought to wrestle with moral crises raised by the narrative, especially doubts about Sita’s chastity during her time in Lanka. But some of these later episodes also showed Rama behaving harshly towards his wife, which discomforted many later premodern readers who decided to change them.

The ending of an incarnation is a fit subject for a certain sort of tragedy which depicts a society lapsing from a golden age. 
It is a fit subject for courtly literature but has no soteriological function. Why? The thing is too artificial. Gods and Demons and Fires which do not scorch the chaste don't really exist. The Lord may ordain such things for some purpose of his own, but that is not our concern. Our salvation lies in selfless service to Daridra Narayan- the Lord in the form of the afflicted and despised of men.

Bhavabhuti, the great Sanskrit dramatist of the eighth century, composed his Uttararamacarita, or Rama’s Last Act, precisely as a revision of Valmiki’s treatment of Sita.

Nonsense! The guy wrote a play because that was what he did for a living. He is comparable with Nahum Tate, not Shakespeare.

Bhavabhuti concluded his drama with Rama and Sita living happily ever after. But during the several acts it takes to reach that ending, he singles out Rama for admonishment. As translated by the Sanskrit scholar Sheldon Pollock, he depicts Janaka, Sita’s father, exclaiming, “Why, who in the name of heaven is this god of fire to presume to purify my daughter? How dare anyone speak like this and insult us more when Rama has already insulted us enough?”

Wow! This dude must have been one swell dramatist! Or, no, it is only the translator's lack of talent which is revealed here.

Bhavabhuti also expresses criticism of Rama in the hero’s own voice. The dramatist has Rama bitterly rebuke himself as immoral when he feels compelled to slice off the head of Shambuka, a Shudra who had upset the caste system by practising asceticism.
O my right hand, bring down this sword
upon the Shudra monk
and bring the dead son of the Brahman
back to life. You are a limb
of Rama’s—who had it in him to drive
his Sita into exile,
weary and heavy with child.
Why start with pity now?

So, the whole thing is just play-acting. True, a good translator could find something interesting in Bhavabhuti's lines. But that rules Pollock's bollocks out.

Rama’s treatment of Sita at the end of the tale often served as a focal point for changes to Valmiki’s story.

A focal point? How? What Audrey means is 'some authors changed the ending as they pleased'. 

Some devotional Ramayanas, which advocated Rama’s divinity, preferred a cleaner narrative, devoid of even the suggestion of bad behaviour on Rama’s part. For example, the fifteenth-century Sanskrit Adhyatma Ramayana and Tulsidas’s sixteenth-century Hindi Ramcharitmanas fundamentally altered Sita’s fire test so that it is no test at all.

There was never any test. Fire burns human beings. No doubt, for Theists, the Lord can will otherwise. But writing a play can't change what the Lord willed.  In any case, you had a full blown Occassionalism by then so all was but Maya- an illusion.

Rather, both works introduced a shadow Sita, a replica who replaces the real Sita during her abduction in order to avoid uncomfortable questions of sexual misconduct and contamination. In these versions, the shadow Sita enters the fire, and the real Sita emerges to reunite with Rama. The plot device absolves Rama of blame for cruelty or mistrust, since in these retellings he did not subject his distraught wife to a chastity test. Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas has been highly influential in shaping modern knowledge of Rama’s story, and served as the primary inspiration for the director Ramanand Sagar’s television adaptation of the Ramayana for Doordarshan.

Quite untrue. Modern knowledge of the Ramayana comes from prose narratives in vernacular languages, and also English, sometimes commissioned by Educational authorities and sometimes penned by Nationalistic leaders- like Rajaji.

In eastern India, a series of more critical Ramayanas—versions which often took up gender issues—were written starting in the fifteenth century. For instance, Candravati—a female poet—dwells on Sita’s grief in her sixteenth-century Bengali Ramayana, thus forefronting her perspective. Candravati also introduces other female characters into her narrative, such as Kukuya, Rama’s sister. In Candravati’s narrative, Kukuya acts malevolently against Sita and manipulates Rama, thus playing into the gendered trope of the scheming woman. Arguably, however, she also displaces some of Rama’s male agency and so might direct readers’ attention to Sita’s plight rather than Rama’s morality.

How is this a 'more critical Ramayana'? It is an absorbing narrative, no doubt, but it isn't criticising anything. Audrey thinks that a guy wrote a book which caused patriarchy to be mean. Then some other guy wrote a book but patriarchy stayed mean. Then some lady wrote a more critical book but that mean old Patriarchy stayed mean so now Audrey herself will tweet some shite and patriarchy will stop being so mean.

Still, some premodern retellings of the Ramayana found revering Rama to be fully compatible with depicting his behaviour as heartless. Most notable here is the poet Kamban, who reimagined Rama’s story in Tamil in the twelfth century. Valmiki depicts Rama as speaking to Sita cruelly during the fire test episode, telling her to get lost (gaccha hyabhyanujñātā yatheṣṭaṃ), that she is worthless to him (kāryamasti na me tvayā), and that she should go live with one of his brothers or even a monkey. Kamban makes Rama’s words even harsher. He depicts Lord Ram—he was, for Kamban, a god—telling Sita to die. As Shulman has translated the Tamil,
What is the point of talking?
Your conduct has destroyed forever
all understanding.
The thing to do
is to die
or, if you won’t do that,
then go somewhere,
anywhere,
away.

Kamban wrote for us Tamils who pride ourselves on our harshness of speech and love nothing more than a big fight where all sorts of things are said. So what? Shit has to be expelled from the body. When we speak hateful obscene nonsense we realise how much in need of Grace we are. We repent the more heartily and welcome selfless service as the one sure path out of the Hell of egotism. Why use honeyed words and gracious forms of speech to appear better than we are? Who are we fooling?

In the twenty-first century, the Ramayana continues to enliven imaginations, retellings and criticism. Indeed, one of the many beautiful aspects of Hindu religious traditions is that they encourage dynamic dialogue with the dramatic stories of their sacred texts. But modern Ramayanas—especially when they criticise Rama or dwell on Sita—have been met with escalating pushback.

Quite true. The thing has gone too far. But we all know why. The fact is the Dynasty, in the early Eighties, dropped talk of 'Removing Poverty' and reinvented itself as champions of upper caste Hinduism. Indira was Durga. Rajiv was Ram. He reopened Ram's birthplace in Ayodhya for Hindu worship. The BJP saw their clothes were being stolen and embarked on an agitation to have a new temple built at that spot. Had Rajiv lived, he would have easily outfoxed Advani- a 'casteless' Sindhi- because Rajiv was descended from Brahmin Pundits and, what's more, looked the part.

The BJP's campaign to build a Ram Temple led to a Muslim backlash which however led to a counter-backlash more particularly after Al Qaeda type terrorism gained salience. After 9/11 and the attack on the Indian Parliament, Islam in India- as elsewhere- appeared a threat. Still, the Indian people wanted good governance above all else. They did not greatly care if some academics and public intellectuals went on denigrating Hinduism and pretending that 'Hindu terrorists' posed some big threat. However, the new English speaking middle class did become alarmed by the stupidity and ignorance displayed by such academics and public intellectuals. They were not aware that the thing was a backhanded compliment. People like Pollock or Sen were saying 'High Caste Hindus have already attained a status similar to WASPs in the U.S. Thus by attacking their Culture and Religion, their hegemony is asserted in a covert fashion.

The problem with this view is that most Hindus who now use English aren't really secure or in a hegemonic position. They need their ancestral religion to continue to serve a 'ratchet' type function- i.e. prevent a sudden and precipitous decline in social standing consequent of some economic shock. Thus, the BJP became the Hindu party by default. Rahul is now combating this notion vigorously. He is also letting Congress take a back-seat in anti-BJP coalitions and giving more freedom to regional leaders. The Hindus will be reassured and go back to 'voting their caste, rather than casting their vote'.  Meanwhile, all those stupid academics who pretended Hinduism was Hitlerism and that Lord Ram had been 'reinvented as a vengeful Father God', will lose salience. Twitter may still shower them with shit but nobody believes any longer that Rahul will listen to them in the way that Sonia listened to Romila Thapar or Manmohan gave Amartya Sen the time of day. Sonia and Manmohan weren't Hindus. Rahul has reasserted his Brahminical, Saivite, heritage. What's more, he is one up on his cousin because he can come out as a celibate dedicated to the Nation in the same manner as Atal or Narendra.

Whining about the treatment of women is old hat. We know very well that the old Feminists- like Germaine Greer- are going to come out and say 'Rape is a good thing' sooner or later. Meanwhile, in every sphere of public life- including, now, the Armed Forces- women are surging ahead. Why? Purely on the basis of superior ability and integrity.

Why pretend women are weak little whiners? They may put backbones into men; they don't bend their backs to them.

Many modern Indian retellings of the epic strike a censorious tone regarding Rama, specifically regarding his treatment of women. Women’s songs and folktales across South Asia are notable in this regard, and often focus on Sita’s sorrow and mistreatment.

Why? They wish to create solidarity amongst women of all classes residing in a particular location so that they can collaborate to improve lives and livelihoods in the area. Sita's sorrow and mistreatment does not matter. Either she was Divine and has no problems or she didn't exist. What is this Hecuba to Hindu women? Nothing at all.

Critical Ramayanas are rather common in south India, and some have been met with violence. For instance, in 2000, the Hindu chauvinist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh attacked the offices of Andhra Jyothy, a popular Telugu weekly magazine, after it published the first two parts of a three-part story in which Sita condemns Rama and Ravana as womanisers.

Ravana was a womaniser. Why equate Rama with him? Audrey is referring to a 3 part story by a minor writer named D.R Indra called Ravana Josyam (Ravana's Prophesy) which features Sita and Ravana chatting amiably. Sita decides that her husband is just like Ravana- who rapes a lot of women- because he loves her and has consensual sex with her coz she loves him and can't get enough of his hot bod.

In other words, Sita is as stupid as shit. So are all women. Kidnap them and then say- 'Listen, I am a big-time rapist. I'm holding off in your case coz I luv u.'- and they will immediately reply- 'OMG! My hubby is a rapist too! I just realised it! He said he loved me and had sex with me coz I said I loved him and wanted his hot bod and...that was RAPE! My hubby is a serial rapist because...urm... well he just is coz of Feminism and Environmental Sustainability and oooh are them Hindus evil!'

The RSS turned up in response to this shit and threatened the office staff and so the paper discontinued this delightful series. D.R. Indra was thus denied the opportunity to go on to show how Jesus Christ raped Prophet Moses and Karl Marx was there and he said something really wise and then the World Trade Centre raped Osama bin Laden while he was flying over New York and so 9/11 had to happen to avenge that act of supererogatory sodomy on the part of neoliberalism which is like so uncool.

Attacks on those who retell the Ramayana are generally led by followers of Hindutva, who seek to narrow the range of ways to be Hindu as part of a bid to create a more monolithic, hypermasculine tradition.

The main way of being Hindu is by ignoring stupid shite written by fuckwits.  Some Hindutvadis have broadened the range of ways of being a Hindu and Hindu writers and artists are very grateful because they can pose as Salman Rushdie type martyrs. Indeed, there are outfits whom you can pay to come and create a ruckus at your gallery opening or book release so as to garner a bit of publicity.

The Ramayana is a logical place for Hindutva ideologues to focus their efforts because the Ramayana tradition—in its stubborn multiplicity and refusal to eradicate criticism of men—is a grave threat to their vision of singular Hindu identity.

How is it a threat? My generation has witnessed the rise and rise of Hindutva on the back of standing up for Lord Ram and standing against worthless shitheads who denigrate Hinduism and talk nonsense.

Smearing shit on the Religion of the Majority community of a country causes a backlash such that whichever party appears more orthodox gets a bonanza at the ballot box. Audrey and her ilk have been helping the BJP and the RSS- which is now wholly respectable to even old Congress-wallahs like Pranab Mukherjee- all these years without getting paid a penny. No doubt, they receive rape threats- but then it seems these people already gave away their scholarly reputation to benefit the Sangh Parivar, so perhaps they also wish to gratify the lust or sadism of such people in a gratuitous manner.

Academics, too, have come under heavy fire for engaging with the grand Ramayana tradition. In 2003, the Indologist Wendy Doniger had an egg thrown at her after she explored the Lakshmana-Sita relationship in a public lecture in London.

Get your facts straight! A bomb was thrown at her. Not an egg. Eggs aren't newsworthy. Terrorists don't throw eggs.

In 2011, Delhi University scrubbed AK Ramanujan’s “Three Hundred Ramayanas,” a seminal essay on the awesome breadth and depth of the Ramayana tradition, from its syllabus.

Awesome breadth and depth? AK, poor fellow, studied English and got a PhD in linguistics. He wasn't a philologist. His book is tendentious post-Babri shite.

Hindu right-wing groups raised many objections to the essay, several of which concerned sex and gender. They fumed that Ramanujan mentioned variations on Sita’s story, including south Indian tales in which Sita is born when Ravana sneezes and an oral tribal tradition that claims Sita was seduced by Lakshmana. Notably, Ramanujan’s essay had been taught widely, and peacefully, for decades before the controversy.

Taught widely by donkeys to donkeys who, however, couldn't all get teaching jobs. Most hoped to get into the Civil Service. Ramanujan's text damaged their life chances. Being able to repeat a shloka or two of Valmiki and being able to say which alamkar or what quality of dhvani it exhibited could get them a pat on the back. Why? India is a Hindu country. Even non-Hindus don't want to hear about alternative Scriptures where Goddesses fist each other vigorously so as to challenge Patriarchy.

Artists have found themselves maligned for using the Ramayana as creative material, especially when they focus on Sita. In 2011, Nina Paley, an American animator, saw a screening of her much-acclaimed film Sita Sings the Blues cancelled in New York after protests.

So what? American Hindus did not want their kids to end up like Nina's protagonist- alone with a cat- because they have crazy ideas about how females lack agency and if their b.f dumps them all they can do is caterwaul. Instead, Hindus- like other people- want their daughters to be Doctors or CEOs and to dump loser b.f's or hubbies before they are themselves dumped. Also, if you feel you have to marry a loser, get a pre-nup. If the guy is a high-flyer, don't- but also stick to him and make him work his ass off and get to the corner office.

The renowned Indian artist MF Husain was vilified in the 1990s for his highly stylised paintings of Indian deities, created a few decades earlier. Adherents of Hindutva objected, sometimes violently, to Husain’s omission of clothing, including in a portrayal of Hanuman carrying Sita, and they drove him out of India in 2006. Husain died in exile.

Husain took Qatari citizenship at a time when that Emirate was more Wahhabi than its neighbor. Them Wahhabis sure do love their nudes- especially one's featuring Goddesses!

Indian society is changing fast these days as Hindu nationalism morphs into a mainstream ideology, placing previously accepted ideas out of bounds.

Audrey is writing this in 2018! Has she not heard that Narendra Modi is now Prime Minister? Her mentors paved the way for the BJP becoming the default Hindu as well as the default Nationalist party.

No 'previously accepted ideas' were placed out of bounds- save the notion that Professors of Sanskrit would speak sensibly of Sanskrit literature- not pretend, as Pollock does, that it has magical powers.

Whether Rama’s self-appointed defenders succeed in silencing Sita and those who wish to explore, honour or revise her story remains to be seen.

OMG! Is Audrey's Sita still whining? About what? Surely she and Mandodari would be too busy fisting each other to signal their resistance to Patriarchy? Or does Audrey disapprove of such behaviour? Is she also opposed to transgender people?

It is a distasteful reality that scholars and artists alike are increasingly willing to toe the line drawn by the Hindu right and avoid commenting on potentially controversial topics.

Yes, yes. It is very distasteful that scholars and artists are not fisting each other after appropriate gender reassignment surgery as part of a new Ramleela tradition that will at last challenge Patriarchy and Neoliberalism and Repressive Desublimation and so forth.

Some uphold academic and artistic integrity despite physical assaults, book bans, death threats, lawsuits, bad-faith interlocutors and intense hate campaigns on social media.

But they are still shite. The gerontocratic Left got tenure as the price of becoming wholly irrelevant to the struggles of the masses. Now they are dead or brain-dead or just going through the motions.

But others choose to remain mute and so wind up endorsing—by the power of their silence—hateful Hindutva ideas. It is an apt moment to underscore that the Ramayana tradition has, historically, not silenced multiple voices and provocative perspectives.

What hateful Hindutva idea is involved in saying Ram and Sita loved each other. On earth, they could be parted. Not so in Heaven. We too, married or unmarried, orphaned or yet possessing parents who are as Gods in our eyes, we too gain felicity by the path of selfless service to Daridra Narayan- God as he appears in those distressed and discriminated against. That is Modi's Ramayana. It is also the message of Yogi Adityanath. If they succeed even a little in their stated plan, they may be re-elected. Otherwise, they will get the order of the boot.

Audrey is welcome to go on re-cycling this essay so long as plutocrat funded Caravans remain trundling along the road. There's always some new source of crooked money for a smear-sheet.