Ramayana, Mahabharata & The Need to Revisit Indian History
Like millions of Indians, I sat down during the lockdown to revisit the nostalgia of Doordarshan when Mahabharata and Ramayana aired on Indian national television again after three decades.
In 1988 when they were first aired, they brought most of India’s population together; how the times have changed since then. Three decades ago few homes had television screens; now most individuals had to be enticed to look away from their personal screens.
The medium of storytelling has come a long way in India — from Harikathas at Temples, Natakas, Yakshaganas, Gamakas, Radio, Television to OTT.
But have the stories of Ramayana & Mahabharata also changed? Surprisingly, Yes.
The Mahabharata has had many retellings over its glorious 4000+ year history. The story remains essentially the same: 2 warrior clans fighting for power. In the specific case of Kannada, my mother tongue, Mahabharata has been retold thrice by three great poets in a span of 1000 years.
A story set more than 4000 years ago has been retold several times in the last one thousand years. Why? It turns out even great writers contemporize classical stories to their own times.
Three Retellings Across 1000 Years
1. Pampa — Vikramarjuna Vijaya (10th Century)
1000 years ago, Pampa in the court of Arikesari II wrote the Vikramarjuna Vijaya as an epic tale of warrior splendour and the glamour of military conquest. It was the Age of the Kshatriya when Veera (Courage) was the Pradhana Rasa; death on the battlefield was celebrated with Veeragallu or the Hero’s Stone. It tells a lot about tenth-century Karnataka — a feudatory kingdom striving for domination of a distributed Rashtrakuta empire.
2. Kumara Vyasa — Karnata Bharatha Manjari (15th Century)
500 years later in the Vijayanagara empire, Kumara Vyasa wrote Karnata Bharatha Manjari, a retelling of Mahabharata as a story of Krishna Bhakti and devotion. Kumaravyasa’s world was extremely different from Pampa’s, with external forces threatening their cultural, economic and mortal existence. This called for Dharma to take the front step and Krishna to revive his “Dharma sansthapanarthaya...” role.
3. S.L. Bhyrappa — Parva (1970s)
A 1000 years after Pampa, S.L. Bhyrappa gave the world his Parva — the Mahabharata as a human story in which Krishna is no longer God but a mere mortal, albeit a wise one. It was the late 1970s; a young independent India looked at Emergency and political turmoil. Parva tells the story from several perspectives, firmly rooted in reality. Non-alignment is not an option in this War.
Why Does This Matter for Indian History?
The telling and retelling of our stories have always been subject to the challenges of the current time. We need to revisit Indian History because the challenges of today’s world are completely different.
At no other point in human history has an individual been this powerful or the human network so interconnected and interdependent.
No one makes this point better than Rabindranath Tagore in his Bharatbarsher Itihas:
“On a stormy day, the storm itself is not the only event of the day… For human beings, the events of births and deaths, joy and sadness taking place on that day are more important. But a foreigner sees only the storm because he is outside the houses, not inside.”
Innovation & Indian History Series from The Saranga Project is an attempt to look at how India coped with global disruption from an Indian perspective.
