When a daughter steps out of her father’s house after marriage, the father is supposed to say, ‘May you find happiness wherever you go.’ But Janaka instead told Sita, ‘May you bring happiness wherever you go.’ Perhaps because he was a good father who had brought up his daughter to be autonomous and responsible for her life and those around her, or perhaps because he knew his daughter was a goddess—the earth itself.
The earth can be wild or domesticated. Wild, she is the forest. Domesticated, she is the field. Wild, she is a woman. Domesticated, she is the wife. In Hindu mythology, wild earth is visualized as Kali, an unclothed goddess, fearsome, naked, bloodthirsty, one with hair unbound. Domesticated earth is visualized as Gauri, the goddess of civilization, gentle, demure, beautiful, draped in cloth. Gauri’s cloth represents the rules that turn nature into civilization—rules such as marital fidelity, which ensure that even the weakest of men has conjugal security.
Sita is Gauri, the clothed goddess, and this is made explicit in the Adbhut Ramayana, where it is said that a demon more frightening than Ravana attacked Ayodhya. All the men tried to destroy this demon but were unable to do so. Finally, it is revealed that only a chaste woman could destroy this demon and save the city. All the women of the city were asked to fight the demon but none were able to defeat him. Finally Sita was called, and she transformed herself into Kali and destroyed the demon as easily as a child breaks a twig. As Kali she was so frightening that Rama begged her to return to her original state—that of Sita, clothed, with tied hair and demure disposition. This tale makes explicit the association of Sita with the goddess—she is Kali but clothed; draped in cloth, she acts out her role as Gauri.
As Gauri she is the wife who follows her husband wherever he goes. When Rama prepares to set out for his exile, she follows him—not because he asks her to do so, but because it is her duty to be by his side. He tries to stop her but she insists on fulfilling her role as his wife. Rama cannot dissuade her otherwise. And so he sets out with her. Sita is thus not the obedient wife but the dutiful wife, one who knows her responsibilities.
When Sita leaves Ayodhya, she prepares to clothe herself as Rama does—in clothes of bark and leaves. The women of the palace forbid her from doing so because as a daughter-in-law, she represents the reputation of the royal household. If she is beautifully dressed, it means that the household is beautiful, and if she is shabbily dressed, it means that the household is shabby. Further, her beauty brings luck to the house—if she abandons her finery, bad luck would strike. Thus, Sita’s clothes play both a symbolic as well as a talismanic role. If she is well dressed as Gauri, it indicates that Rama upholds dharma and all is well in Ayodhya. That is why Sita follows Rama into the forest in bridal jewellery.
Sita’s role as Gauri is further reinforced by Anasuya, the wife of Rishi Atri, who gifts Sita with a sari which never gets soiled. Later, when Sita is abducted by Ravana, she throws pieces of her jewellery into the forest, ostensibly to leave a trail behind her so that Rama can find her. But by abandoning her jewellery, she conveys a subtle symbolic message to Rama. It means that his dharma is being challenged as Ravana, by abducting Rama’s wife, has defied the civilized code of marital fidelity. Ravana wants to make Rama’s field, his forest; he wants to convert Gauri into Kali. Every piece of jewellery dropped into the forest is a reminder of how close civilization is at risk of being overrun by the forest.
When Ravana is killed and Sita rescued, Rama demands proof that Gauri, the field, which is bound to a single man, did not even momentarily become Kali, the forest, which is bound to no man, and hence available to all men. The only way this can be done is through the trial of fire. Sita goes through the ordeal and the fire does not touch her, proving that neither in thought nor in action did she ever think of any other man.
This story indicates how difficult it is to uphold the social value of fidelity. While it may be easy to uphold fidelity in action, it is not always possible to uphold it in thought. Fidelity in action can be witnessed but fidelity in thought cannot. Therefore, in typical mythological narratives, women who succeed in being faithful to their husbands in both action and thought are elevated to the status of goddesses, unaffected by fire. They get equated with Sati Maharani. Sita is like Sati—chaste in action and thought, able to walk unharmed through flames.
Despite this proof of her chastity given by Sita, the people of Ayodhya ask Rama to reject the queen because of her soiled reputation. The same laws which demanded that Rama should obey the commandments of his father, now demanded that Rama should respect the wishes of his people. And so, Sita is once again sent into the forest. It is strange that Rama, the only Hindu deity known for being faithful to one wife, is also the only Hindu deity to abandon his wife. This is clearly meant to highlight the difference between Rama, the husband, who is faithful to his wife, and Rama, the king, who is sensitive to the wishes of his people. Rama, the king, sends Sita back into the forest but Rama, the husband, never remarries. He places next to him an effigy of Sita made of gold, the metal which symbolizes purity, suggesting that he does not doubt his wife’s fidelity but that he respects the laws of Ayodhya and its royal household, however misguided they may have been.
Who is this Sita in the forest? Gauri or Kali? She is Gauri to her children—raising them as powerful warriors, who on their own are able to defeat the mighty army of Rama. But she is also Kali—the one who has shaken off the mantle of civilization. She is no longer bound by its rules. Rejected, she refuses to return to Ayodhya either as queen or as wife. She does not feel the need to follow her husband, this time, as a wife. She no longer feels obliged to represent the prosperity of the household that rejected her, or to bring good luck into it. When asked to prove her chastity once more, she returns to the bowels of the earth, whence she came from. Thus, when the people of Ayodhya asked their king to abandon his queen, they inadvertently ended up losing Janaka’s daughter, who took away all happiness from Ayodhya with her.
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