Rina Tripathi in Conversation with Madhu Kishwar

Rina Tripathi (RT): Do you think Sita accepted Rama’s demand and went through the agni pariksha to prove her chastity? Do you think it has been influential in defining a low status for women and patriarchal control over women’s sexuality?

Madhu Kishwar (MK): While Rama’s demand for an agni pariksha is indeed offensive, Sita’s act of undertaking the fire ordeal is presented by the various writers of the Ramayana more as an act of defiance, rather than as submission to Rama’s tyranny. I find it very strange that most feminists see the agni pariksha as proof of our culture’s endorsement of women’s quiet suffering and submission to the tyranny of their husbands.

For them, a ‘Sita-like’ woman is synonymous with a slavishly dutiful wife. It is as though the main purpose of the authors of the epic was to brainwash Indian women into accepting a servile status for themselves. They tend to forget that the Ramayana is not a commandment-giving religious text in the way that the Bible or the Koran is. Valmiki’s Ramayana is first and foremost a literary text like Homer’s Iliad. And yet feminist critiques tend to treat the Ramayana as a ‘religious’ text.

Even a casual reading of the text shows that like any astute literary writer, Valmiki develops the two agni pariksha sequences as great dramatic moments to evoke a sense of utter shock and disbelief in the reader as well as all those characters who witness Rama demanding them of Sita.

It is similar to the dramatic horror evoked by Othello’s murder of Desdemona. No one would be naïve enough to suggest that Shakespeare wrote the play Othello in order to valorize jealous husbands who murder their wives and that the aim of the play is to exhort women to gracefully accept insults and even death at the hands of their suspicious husbands. This is despite the fact that Shakespeare treats Othello’s fits of jealous rage with a lot of sympathy. In contrast, Valmiki does not build any defence whatsoever for Rama’s behaviour. In most versions of the Ramayana, Rama is projected as being highly flawed in his moral judgement, in his treatment of Sita. Everyone who witnesses the agni pariksha episode is on Sita’s side and openly disapproves of Rama. That includes his own brother Lakshmana, his mother Kaushalya and all other relatives, associates and even a devotee like Hanuman.

This unease has led to numerous Rama reform measures in diverse Ramayanas. In many latter-day Ramayanas, Rama is seen either as behaving more responsibly towards Sita or being soundly condemned by those around him. A Rama devotee like Tulsidas in his Ramacharitmanas just glosses over the first agni pariksha altogether. This indicates the unease that Tulsidas felt at Sita’s ordeal by fire.

Ramanand Sagar’s TV serial Ramayana presents the agni pariksha as part of a pre-planned pact between Rama and Sita whereby Rama leaves Sita in the safe custody of Agnidev to save her from the travails of his exile. As per this version (which is influenced by some of the regional Ramayanas), when Rama asks Sita to walk through the agnidwar, he is not asking her to prove her chastity but asking her to take leave of Agnidev’s protection and walk back into the world of ordinary mortals. Agnidev endorses the truth of this pact by appearing in person to return the real Sita and explains that the Sita who was abducted by Ravana was a ‘shadow’ Sita. It is noteworthy that several months before the agni pariksha episode, Ramanand Sagar was flooded with letters from viewers advising him not to allow Rama to subject Sita to the humiliation of an agni pariksha. He explained that this had influenced his choice of interpretation of the episode.

RT: Do you think the practice of bride-burning in India has been influenced by Sita’s fire ordeal?

MK: In my view, attributing the incidence of bride-burning in India to the negative influence of Sita’s agni pariksha is a very naïve response. We have to distinguish between two kinds of bride-burning: when a woman is burnt to death by her husband and/or in-laws; when a woman burns herself to death. In the first instance, it is a pure and simple case of murder, a crime no different from a man shooting, battering or strangling his wife to death. In most such cases, the woman is first battered and strangled and then burnt to death. Burning a woman by dousing her with kerosene and then setting her on fire is resorted to more often in India mainly because people have discovered that it is easy to destroy evidence of battering and pass it off as a case of suicide by the woman or a case of an accident in the kitchen, especially since we have a police force which is prone to obliging criminals, provided they are suitably bribed.

In the second instance of a woman burning herself to death, one can see a definite unconscious influence of Sita’s agni pariksha, even though the woman who chooses to do so knows very well that unlike Ramayana’s Sita, she is not going to come out unscathed and Agnidev is certainly not going to come and offer her a good character certificate.

A woman who chooses the most painful way of killing herself is, in effect, saying, ‘I consider living in my marital home more hurtful than burning myself to death. I reject this relationship and this marriage because there is no sanctity left in it. The oaths taken by my husband with Agnidev as witness have been trampled upon. Therefore, I surrender myself to agni.’

I read this as a strong statement of protest and rejection, similar to Sita’s plea to Mother Earth to swallow her because she finds the demand for a second agni pariksha so utterly humiliating that she would rather be dead than live as Rama’s queen.

A woman who chooses this form of death leaves a permanent blot on the marital family, just as Ramayana’s Sita leaves Rama permanently stigmatized. When a charred body is found in a house, the sight itself is so horrific that it leaves no one in doubt that the woman suffered endless cruelties and indignities. In such cases, no matter what the verdict of the court is, the social verdict goes against the husband and in-laws. It is a very deadly and unforgettable way to register protest and damn your torturers, especially in a country where people can’t depend on the police or the law courts to provide them redressal and justice.

This perhaps explains Indian women’s fascination with and psychological connection to Sita. Through the ages, Rama’s conduct with regard to Sita has earned the disapproval of even his devotees, who have not been able to either justify or forgive him for such a grievous insult and injustice. Rama shrinks in stature due to his cruel and flawed judgement, while Sita rises in our estimation by defiantly rejecting his demand and his moral code and instead preferring to be swallowed by Mother Earth.

RT: Were you influenced by Sita’s character in your growing up years?

MK: Far from it. She was never a role model for me. I was more influenced by the likes of Rani of Jhansi and Joan of Arc rather than the Sitas or Savitris of India. However, I was also deeply influenced by Mirabai’s life and her rejection of matrimonial ties and queenly comforts in order to pursue her chosen goal and a life amidst ordinary people challenging all possible social hierarchies such as those imposed by caste, class and gender. Mirabai for me was a symbol of feminine freedom and autonomy. Even today, I don’t have the grahasthya ashram mindset simply because I was never inclined towards matrimony and did not want to channelize my energies towards seeking a spouse and bringing up my own children. I love other people’s children. I would rather work for all those children who are deprived of a dignified life rather than focus on bringing up one or more of my own.

I got interested in Sita only because I witnessed the widespread obsession with and admiration for Sita among Indian women and men alike, cutting across caste, class, regional, religious and educational divides. I found it very puzzling that while most feminists hold her in contempt and treat her as a negative role model, the vast majority of women across the country admire Sita as a symbol of perfect womanhood. The feminist mission or counter obsession is to ‘cure’ Indian women of their tendency to idolize Sita and instead urge them to adopt Western notions of women’s equality and freedom, or else adopt Durga and Kali as their role models. However, they tend to overlook the fact that Durga is not just a warrior goddess, a slayer of evil demons but also a compassionate mother who is nurturing and forgiving. People respect her wrath because it is focused on combating evil rather than being a permanent state of being. They reach out to her to seek her love and protection. No one would go near a woman who is permanently wrathful, who has no compassion or love to counterbalance it.

A lot of my writing, including the essay on Sita as well as the special issue on the lives of women saint poets of India, has been motivated by the desire to counter the simplistic negative stereotypes held by many feminists regarding our cultural heritage and traditions. Very often, such critics pick up two couplets from Tulsi’s Ramayana, four lines from Manusmriti, a para from here and a para from there—all out of context—and present the case that our entire civilizational history is about oppression, subjugation and brutalization of women. They forget that for every loyal spouse like Savitri or Damayanti, our mythology provides us hundreds of thousands of Durga-Chandi type goddesses, who are revered through the length and breadth of the country, with new ones taking avatar at will every now and then. No doubt, contemporary Indian society may practice unacceptable forms of discrimination against women. But the continuing hold of the tradition of goddess worship in India and the belief that the feminine represents the shakti that energizes the entire universe makes for a strong counterbalance to the woman-hating aspects of our culture.

Our goddesses believe in peaceful co-existence, in graceful acceptance of each other’s worth rather than claiming or establishing superiority over one another. For example, a martial goddess like Durga does not consider herself superior to a patient sufferer like Sita. Nor is Radha treated with disdain for being lost in Krishna’s love despite his polygamous dalliances. It is accepted that they represent diverse aspects of the feminine shakti, and diverse responses to similar and varied situations. Therefore, devotees of one are not expected to disparage other manifestations of Shakti.

The range of moral exemplars available to Indian women is indeed spectacular. Apart from goddesses who work hard to win respect as wives, at the other end of the spectrum are those who consider it an affront that any male should dare consider them sexually accessible or that they should condescend to be mere consorts. Radha’s complete abandon to her extra-marital love with Krishna is no less deified than Sita’s steadfast devotion to her husband.

My experience tells me that women who display strength and courage come to be revered with much greater ease by traditional sections of society in India, than in many other parts of the world. A woman who acts like a mother figure, and can order men around while exercising her authority, but who is also compassionate and nurturing at the same time, is put on a special pedestal and treated like a virtual goddess. In contrast to men rooted in traditional Indic values, Western-educated men in India, who are liberal in mouthing the rhetoric of women’s equality, are much less able to accept women in positions of authority because Western culture is traditionally more macho and male-centric.