India: BJP MP Vinay Katiyar says Ramayana museum a mere 'lollipop'

The times of India

BJP MP Vinay Katiyar says Ramayana museum a mere 'lollipop'
TNN | Updated: Oct 18, 2016, 15:30 IST

NEW DELHI: Even as the ruling BJP faces opposition criticism for announcing a huge Ramayana museum in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, its own Rajya Sabha parliamentarian Vinay Katiyar today called the museum a mere "lollipop", ANI reported.

"We should be trying to build a Ram temple, we won't be happy with this lollipop," Katiyar said, referring to the museum, which is set to come up about 15km from the disputed Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi site.

"Wherever I go in Ayodhya, saints ask me when will Ram Mandir be built, good I did not go today," Katiyar added He was referring to the scheduled visit today of Union tourism minister Mahesh Sharma to the site of the proposed Ramayana museum near Ayodhya.

Katiyar was incidentally the face of the violent Ram temple movement in Ayodhya in the 1990s. He's said in the past that the Modi government should "move to resolve" the matter without waiting for a Supreme Court verdict on the disputed site.

On this issue, Katiyar also has the support of Subramanian Swamy, another BJP MP who's raised the issue in the Rajya Sabha earlier this year. He said some months ago that both sides in the Ram Janmabhoomi temple dispute have said that a court order on the issue would be acceptable to them, and therefore government must agree to a do day-to-day hearing on the issue.

And Just on Sunday, Swamy said a Ram temple is the key to a win in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh polls. Speaking at a conference in Allahabad, he said no party could ever win an election on the issue of development alone, and that if the BJP succeeded in giving the impression that a Ram temple in Ayodhya would soon be a reality, then it would have a chance of winning the upcoming Assembly polls.

India: Among the Ramayanas, Sita’s ascent (Anuradha Raman)

The Hindu, November 25, 2015
Among the Ramayanas, Sita’s ascent


Anuradha Raman


With concerted attempts to homogenise the epic and make one size applicable to all, questions must be asked about what we do with the many Ramayanas in the countryside.

Call it an anti-intellectual antidote to the one Ramayana that is being foisted by the cultural watchdogs of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as they go about in earnest setting dates around which the epic’s main hero was born. And this based on a study of the constellations in an attempt to provide a standardised text for all.

However, in Kannada poet Du. Saraswathi’s telling of the epic, in which Sita speaks, there is little room for the man extolled and venerated as the most virtuous one. Seen through her eyes, he appears diminished. Saraswathi, also a feisty woman’s rights activist, who represents one of the many small traditions that India is, points out that in every village there is an account of the epic. In every village there is a marker, a spring, a rock, or a tree around which the timeless story of the king of Ayodhya is woven. And these are far removed from the tele-version that was aired on Doordarshan in the 1980s and that has since spawned several imitations as kitschy as the original. In these attempts, the epic has been standardised, overlooking the layered interpretations that go beyond what the eye can see on television.

Representing unseen women

There is something deeply paradoxical in the retelling of the Ramayana, a satire by Sannthimmi, the character created by Saraswathi, who represents little, unknown and unseen Indian women, who are comfortable without the heroes in their lives. This is a Sita who goes about her everyday work, cooking for all those dear to her. Saraswathi has not brought her one-woman act to Delhi, but she has travelled around the villages and towns of Karnataka; the telling of the epic has evolved with her. As she puts it, her attempt is to show that the rural folk of India have their knowledge systems and philosophies in place, which cannot be dislodged by an attempt to push through a linear, homogenous narrative. “I fear that is what is being attempted right now; it is an attempt to force down a narrative which is compatible to us all,” she says.

Nearly five years ago, poet and scholar A.K. Ramanujan’s Three Hundred Ramayanas, prescribed as study material for history undergraduates in Delhi University, was removed from the curriculum. This was following pressure from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student body affiliated to the BJP, and claiming to be among the torch-bearers of Indian tradition. It had found the essay objectionable. The vice chancellor who made the decision to expunge the essay, said that there was nothing intellectual about it, implying that it lacked the heft necessary for its inclusion in the curriculum. Yet, as more attempts are being made to standardise the epic, questions must be asked about what do we do with the many Ramayanas in the countryside. As the Culture Ministry blesses an exhibition which seeks to authenticate the Ramayana among other epics by raising it to a historical fact, there are many Ramayanas in the countryside that the government is oblivious to.

In every village there is a rock or a tree around which the timeless story of the king of Ayodhya is woven. These are far removed from the version that was aired on Doordarshan.

Saraswathi’s fears are not unfounded when placed in the context of Union Minister of State for Culture and Tourism Mahesh Sharma’s praise for a foundation researching on the Ramayana, mirroring the attempts being made by the Indian Council of Historical Research to fix a date to the epic. While many question the attempts to historicise the Ramayana, for Saraswathi the dangers lie in removing the many Ramayanas where Sita is a single woman, a single mother, and comfortable in her own skin. It is also a feminist interpretation of Sita from a Dalit perspective. As Saraswathi grapples with her central character, a leading television channel has decided to take the plunge again, delving into the epic in an attempt to see it from a woman’s perspective.

Branding exercise


“Siya Ke Ram”, being marketed and advertised as the Ramayana from Sita’s point of view, is as glossy as its previous electronic media avatars. And though the general manager of Star Plus, Gaurav Banerjee, says his telling of the epic is Sita’s narrative, there is no escaping the Ramayana branding exercise under way. Using the official Twitter handle of the channel, you can retweet if you like an episode in the serial, which is aired six times a week on prime time. The Twitter handle, ‘@StarPlus’, raises questions about questions that Sita asks in the epic. An example: “Is Sita right in asking questions?” The answers are a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. Mr. Banerjee promises that all the characters will spring a surprise. Kaikeyi, Rama’s stepmother, is depicted as a woman who is extraordinarily intelligent and forced to extract a promise from King Dasharatha only to safeguard her son’s future. “We can understand her dilemma,” he says.

The programme has spawned Twitter handles from fans, and there is no escaping the fact that this is a telling that conforms to the grand vision of the BJP. Lost in the hyper-marketing branding exercise is the voice of Saraswathi.

“I am happy with my life,” says Saraswathi’s Sita. “I say this not with sadness or anger. One day the throne you sit on will pierce you and to Mother Earth you will also return.” Saraswathi cooks on stage for an audience as she tells her story. She doesn’t have the time to do a stand-up number. Like other women, she too has to juggle various responsibilities that life has thrown at her. These include being a single mother to two sons.

As the academic Velcheru Narayana Rao reminds us in A Ramayana of their Own, “The Ramayana in India is not a story with a variety of retellings; it is a language with which a host of statements may be made.” It is a reminder for anyone who wishes to engage with the epic.

anuradha.r@thehindu.co.in

India: Silencing A Tradition - Refusal to respect diverse readings of the Ramayana is cultural vandalism (Amrith Lal)

Indian Express - 14 September 2015

Silencing A Tradition
Refusal to respect diverse readings of the Ramayana is cultural vandalism

by Amrith Lal

The Hindutva activists in Kozhikode who forced academic M.M. Basheer to stop writing on the Ramayana argued that there could be no criticism of Lord Ram (even by Valmiki) and that Basheer, being a non-Hindu, should not write on a “Hindu text”. They reveal a colossal ignorance of the Ramayana tradition in Malayalam. Their success in silencing a well-respected teacher and critic indicates the emergence of a new hate politics in Kerala.

The Ramayana tradition in Malayalam, as in most Indian languages, includes numerous retellings and interpretations of the Rama katha across genres. Some of these are soaked in bhakti, while a few others offer different points of view, including criticism of Rama and his ethical universe. The tradition has been richer and more complex for the diverse readings. Basheer was not the first, or the only, non-Hindu to write on the Ramayana — Basheer himself has written nearly 50 essays on the epic.
- See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/silencing-a-tradition/

Daljit Nagra: My Ramayana | The Guardian

Growing up near London Daljit Nagra was enthralled by the fantastical stories of Rama and Sita told by his mother and grandmother. He explains why he wanted to retell these tales for a western audience

by Daljit Nagra (The Guardian, Friday 11 October 2013)
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/11/daljit-nagra-rereading-ramayana

Invitation to First AK Ramanujan Lecture (21 March 2012) Delhi University

INVITATION TO THE FIRST AK RAMANUJAN LECTURE AND SEMINAR

The History Society Ramjas College, University of Delhi invites you to a National Seminar, ‘Speaking with Ramanujan’, to be held in the College Auditorium on March 21, 2012, 9.45 am onwards.

This seminar is being organized in light of the recent decision of the Academic Council of Delhi University to exile AK Ramanujan’s scholarly essay, ‘300 Ramayanas’ from the Undergraduate syllabus of the University, and in appreciation of the vast range and depth of AK Ramanujan’s intellectual contributions. The seminar will underline the significance of Ramanujan’s work for the Humanities and the Social Sciences and its importance for the understanding of India’s histories and cultures.

Shri Girish Karnad will deliver the First AK Ramanujan Lecture. This shall be preceded by the screening of a documentary film ‘Kanaka Purandara’, made by Shri Karnad in 1988. This film draws heavily on AK Ramanujan’s prefaces to Speaking of Siva and Hymns for the Drowning. The screening and lecture will be followed by a discussion initiated by Profs. Kumkum Roy and Udaya Kumar, and Dastangoi-‘Dastan Jai Ram Ji Ki’, by Mahmood Farooqui and Danish Husain. The day will end with Bindhumalini from Bangalore and Vedanth from Chennai singing songs written by India’s mystic poets.

This effort is generously supported by the ICHR, the IIAS, Shimla, The School of Liberal Studies and The School of Undergraduate Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi, the Department of Hindi Deshbandhu College, and the Departments of History Jamia Millia Islamia, Miranda House, Zakir Hussain College (evening) and Indraprastha College.

We look forward to seeing you at Ramjas on March 21.

Delhi University Teachers Organising Discussion on 'Three Hundred Ramayanas'

http://news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=751257

Discussion on 'Three Hundred Ramayanas' in DU
PTI | New Delhi | Feb 13, 2012

It has been six months since the removal of scholar A K Ramanujan's essay 'Three Hundred Ramayanas' incensed the teaching fraternity at Delhi University, but the rumblings have refused to die down.

A group of mostly Left-bent organisations of teachers and students is reviving their campaign against the withdrawal of the essay by organising a public talk on the issue.

The talk to be held on Wednesday will be attended by a number of scholars from within and outside the university.

Titled 'The Ramayana: Versions and Subversions', the talk will see the scholars discuss the numerous versions of the epic tale of Lord Rama, the controversy around the essay, and the "censoring" of education.

The 30-page essay, which offers a number of tellings of the epic story of Lord Rama, including the Jain, Buddhist and Kannada narratives, had not gone down well with sections of the right wing, some of whom called it "blasphemous".

The decision to remove the essay from the History syllabus was taken by the Academic Council in October last year amid much protest.

Groups of teachers and students had come together in a series of protests and debates against the decision last year.

"We see the removal of the essay as part of the policy of this fascist varsity administration that aims to suppress all dissenting voices and squeezing of space for democratic protest," said DUTA Executive Abha Dev Habib.

An online signature campaign was also launched against the decision and among the noted scholars who had signed the petition were Prof Bipin Chandra, Prof Romila Thapar and Prof Mridula Mukherjee.

"We would like to keep this alive as all the issues that we are facing in the University today regarding curtailing of democratic rights are interlinked... We also want our MPs to raise this issue in the parliament," Habib said.
Filed On: Feb 13, 2012 21:25 IST

Battle to get OUP to republish Ramanujan's work may have been won, but lets not sit back

From: Hindustan Times

Read the fine print

Ramachandra Guha

December 05, 2011

A western spin doctor once formulated a numerical rule as regards adverse publicity. If critical stories about a prominent individual appeared in a particular newspaper, then that person would do best to ignore them. However, if these stories were picked up by other newspapers, and the controversy dragged on for more than 10 days, then the person was in trouble, and should take remedial measures.

This 10-day rule applies as much to organisations as to indi-viduals. Consider the controversy around AK Ramanujan’s essay Three Hundred Ramayanas published in this country by the Oxford University Press (OUP), first in an edited collection entitled Many Ramayanas, and then in the author’s own Collected Essays. A litigant in a small town claimed the essay offended his sentiments. Rather than contest the claim, the OUP apologised (in rather craven terms), and allowed the books containing the essay to go out of print. This decision then encouraged the (reactionary or pusillanimous) vice chancellor of the University of Delhi to have the essay withdrawn from the syllabus.

The behaviour of the OUP was widely condemned by the scholarly community. Its actions were seen as a blow to the freedom of expression, and as an insult to the memory of arguably the greatest scholar in the humanities produced by India. Poet, folklorist, essayist, translator, and theorist, AK Ramanujan had a profound, enduring influence on Indian and global scholarship. That his work was being suppressed due to pressure from Hindutva bigots was particularly ironic — for his majestic translations of medieval Hindu poetry had done much to make the world aware of the beauty and depth of our mystical traditions.

The OUP’s abandonment of Ramanujan led to an outrage that was spontaneous, and worldwide. Critical articles appeared in the Indian press while a petition urging the OUP to bring the essay back into circulation was endorsed by more than 500 scholars, many of them very distinguished indeed.

The OUP is the world’s greatest (and oldest) publisher. OUP India has itself played a transformative role in nurturing Indian scholarship. A short list of OUP authors would include Shahid Amin, Kaushik Basu, Andre Beteille, Partha Chatterjee, Veena Das, Jean Dreze, Ranajit Guha, Irfan Habib, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Girish Karnad, Nayanjot Lahiri, Ashis Nandy, Sumit Sarkar, Amartya Sen, Vijay Tendulkar, and Romila Thapar. To this stellar cast of Indians one can add an equally eminent roster of the finest foreign scholars on India.

The anguish over the OUP’s betrayal of Ramanujan was in part because of the press’s reputation; in part because of Ramanujan’s own distinction; and in part because it followed on other such examples of the betrayal of scholars and scholarship. In recent years, the OUP has withdrawn books on the law, on medieval history, and on Indian nationalism under pressure from bigots and from the State.

These successive betrayals were, it now appears, a product of an obsessive concern with the bottom line. The profits the OUP makes come largely from textbooks and dictionaries, so why then care about the concerns of scholars? Indeed, when it comes to its material interests, OUP India is happy to engage in a battle in court. While it acquiesced in the suppression of AK Ramanujan’s work, it recruited some of the country’s most expensive lawyers to fight a tax case on its behalf.

This obsession with profit, so manifest in the past decade, has meant that the books produced by the OUP have often been carelessly edited and badly produced. This has led to a flight to other presses of some of its best-known authors, and (as importantly) of its best-qualified editors. It may very well be that there is no one in the OUP today who has read AK Ramanujan or knows of his intellectual standing. How else can one explain that disavowal of his work in court?

Notably, when the first series of critical articles appeared in the Indian press, the OUP dismissed it as the work of malicious or motivated individuals. This was characteristic; famous and powerful organisations think their fame and power will in itself quell all criticism. For years, the Catholic Church refused to admit that a growing number of its priests were abusing children. The US government denied that unspeakable crimes were being committed by it in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

But, as in those other instances, the criticisms would not go away. Fresh articles appeared, highlighting previous instances of the suppression of books by the OUP. Then came that cross-continental signature campaign. In meetings with top bosses in Delhi and Oxford, OUP authors expressed their anger and dismay. By now, the public shaming of the OUP had extended well beyond the 10-day period. It was time to make amends. And so the OUP has agreed to reprint AK Ramanujan’s Collected Essays, in a belated but still welcome vindication of that author, of other authors, of the history of the organisation, and of the principle of freedom of expression.

Scholars and intellectuals may have won this particular battle. But any complacency would be unwarranted. For Indians who stand for the freedom of artistic expression have lost very many battles in the past. There is a long, melancholy list of writers and artists — MF Hussain, James Laine, Taslima Nasreen, Salman Rushdie et al — whose work has been suppressed in India by bigots and fundamentalists, aided by the State and political parties.

In most cases, the denial of freedom occurs because elected politicians allow goondas to get their way. In this case, it was the spine of a private organisation, the OUP, which needed stiffening. It may be much harder to get state and central governments to exchange their habitual cowardice for an unqualified commitment to constitutional values and the rule of law.

(Ramachandra Guha is the author of India After Gandhi: The History Of The World’s Largest Democracy)

The views expressed by the author are personal

Anek Ramayan a documentary film by Shikha Sen

Anek Ramayan will be telecast on NDTV 24/7 this Saturday, 10th Dec, at 3 pm and on Sunday, 11th December at 11pm
and
on NDTV Profit, next weekend, on Saturday,17th Dec, at 10 pm and on Sunday, 18th Dec at 5 pm.
Please do share on FB and spread the word among all who you think may be interested.

A brief write-up about the film :

Anek Ramayan is a film based on a play scripted and performed by parents at a school in Delhi, in which different episodes of the epic are depicted from different texts, with many authors coming in as characters to talk about how they see the story. 'Anek Ramayan' was initially intended as a Ramlila production, but when they began working on the script, the parents had to confront questions of how to integrate their own versions of the Ramayana and accommodate others'. The film looks at the evolving processes of conflict and consensus as agreement was achieved about the final presentation. It also features songs and recitations as well as contesting e-mail exchanges between parents.

The original film is about 70 mins long, but the NDTV 24/7 version will be 40 mins and the NDTV Profit version will be 50 mins.

Here's a report on the film from MailToday:



see URL: http://tinyurl.com/cuedalc

Please do spread the word among all who you think may be interested.

A petition by members of Oxford University condemns Oxford University Press for stopping publications with Ramanujan's essay

Press Statement

Oxford, England

Date: 30 November 2011

A petition by members of Oxford University has condemned Oxford University Press (OUP) India’s unflattering role and its deafening silence on the controversy surrounding Delhi University’s recent decision to drop A.K. Ramanujan’s essay (Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation). This petition has gained the abounding support of Oxford intelligentsia across 15 departments and 20 constituent colleges. Signatories include distinguished faculty members, senior academics and students.

In 2008 OUP India unceremoniously decided to stop publication of the only two books (Paula Richman’s Many Ramayanas and Vinay Dharwadker’s The Collected Essays of A.K. Ramanujan) containing Ramanujan’s essay. This happened to coincide with legal proceedings instituted inter alia against OUP India by fringe religious and cultural groups. OUP India’s prolonged subsequent silence on this matter lent widespread credence to the contention that OUP India caved in to external pressure thereby compromising its stated goals of “…[furthering] excellence in research, scholarship… by publishing worldwide.”

In our correspondence with the CEO of OUP, Mr. Nigel Portwood, and the University Delegates (highly established, senior academics at Oxford University who oversee the functioning of the Press), we asked OUP to inquire whether OUP India had been guilty of abandoning these publications on grounds contrary to publication ethics. Additionally, to remedy the undeniable loss of reputation and integrity, regardless of the reasons for dropping these publications, we demanded that OUP and OUP India issue a statement that they stand by the continuing scholarly credibility and value of Ramanujan’s essay.

Mr. Portwood, on behalf of the University Delegates, has furnished an inadequate response foregrounding commercial factor as the sole reason for OUP India’s actions. He maintains that this has in no way blemished OUP India’s longstanding integrity. Since then OUP India has issued a statement in which it asserts that it “does not apologise and has never apologised for publishing the essay.” While we have reason to doubt the second half of this assertion on the basis of the 2008 statement to the court, we acknowledge OUP India’s reaffirmation of its original decision to publish the essay. However, we believe this statement falls short of attributing due recognition to the scholarship of A.K. Ramanujan and the academic value of the essay that OUP India once saw fit to publish.

The statement claims that the book, The Collected Essays of A.K. Ramanujan, is available through OUP India’s short-run print programme. However, on inquiring, OUP India’s branch offices themselves have indicated that the book is unavailable, as confirmed by major bookstores in metropolitan cities in India. We are given to understand that OUP India is awaiting a minimum number of orders before it reprints the book. We insist that OUP India clarify its distribution strategy of this book. In the meantime, we strongly encourage everyone to place their orders for the book on the OUP India website in an effort to upholding academic freedom.

As it enters its centenary year, we believe that OUP India is facing a grave crisis, which has wrecked the reputation of a formerly venerated institution. We believe OUP India must redeem itself by ordering an immediate reprint of The Collected Essays of A.K. Ramanujan. Towards this end, distinguished panelists- Dr. Ramachandra Guha, Dr. Nandini Gooptu and Dr. Faisal Devji- engaged in a stimulating debate on The Politics and Culture of Non-State Censorship in Contemporary India: Contextualising the Ramanujan Ramayana Essay Controversy, at University of Oxford on Wednesday, 30 November. The organisers of the panel discussion had also invited Mr. Portwood, who declined to attend or nominate a representative.

“OUP in India had an extra ordinary capacity to nurture young talents. It had always had that.” At the panel discussion, while acknowledging OUP’s efforts to promote academic excellence in the past, Dr. Ramachandra Guha raised serious concerns about “precipitously declining” editing standards and pecuniary goals overriding OUP India’s primary objective of furthering excellence in research and scholarship. He argued that in the last 15 years, we have witnessed an unfortunate “thatcherisation of publishing process” that has affected OUP and OUP India. “OUP today is run by people who do not know about books; who had never heard of AK Ramanujan,” declared Dr. Guha and maintained that the proscription of Ramanujan’s essay is a “gratuitous insult to his (Ramanujan’s) memory.”

The only way forward, Dr. Guha contended was for OUP India to immediately reprint the book as an “emphatic affirmation” of Ramanujan’s renowned oeuvre and against “bigotry.” “We must ensure that The Collected Essays of A.K. Ramanujan are back because this is what we owe to the scholar, the academic community and to Indian democracy.” Additionally, he added that given how big institutions like OUP work, almost never admitting to mistakes, it is crucial to mount pressure on OUP in the given context.

Dr. Gooptu, agreeing with Dr. Guha on the need to mount pressure on OUP began her speech by contextualising the controversy within the peculiarities of liberalism in the Indian political culture. She argued that the way forward to this debate is to “politically animate and ignite precisely this debate about public censorship which may force publishing house to stick their necks out… Otherwise it will always be possible to hide behind the argument of commercial non viability.”

Finally, Dr. Devji in his speech emphasised the “rhetoric of the opposition” used in such controversies that invokes the “language of the intimacy, hurt and betrayal.” He opined that, “The precedent set by this is not about this essay or one of two essays but it’s about publishing in India, freedom of thought and expression in India… what is produced by publishing houses especially like OUP India has world historical importance.” He reiterated Dr. Guha and Dr. Gooptu’s concern about exerting pressure on OUP into publishing the essay.

—

Sanchita Bakshi (QEH); Agrima Bhasin (Social and Cultural Anthropology); Malak Bhatt (Law); Shashank Kumar (Sociology); Sumeet Mhaskar (Sociology); Karan Nagpal (Economics); Simin Patel (Oriental Institute); Anisha Sharma (Economics); Anup Surendranath (Law); Anish Vanaik (History)

Contact Information:

Anup Surendranath [anup.surendranath at law.ox.ac.uk]
Anish Vanaik [anish.vanaik at history.ox.ac.uk]

Dr. Ramachandra Guha at the panel discussion

Dr. Guha began the discussion by speaking of his long-standing association with OUP India. “OUP is the oldest and arguably the most prestigious publisher in the world and next year it will mark its centenary year in India. I stand here as an academic author, someone how has been made by the OUP. I was not a student of a prestigious university like Delhi University or JNU in India…and if it had not been for a brilliant young editor in OUP, I would not have been standing before you here today.” “OUP in India had an extra ordinary capacity to nurture young talents. It had always had that.”

At some length, he spoke of the contribution made by Mr Ravi Dyal, a former general manager of OUP in stewarding the publishing house to great heights. Amongst other things, he spoke of Mr Dyal’s role in extending social science scholarship and nurturing subaltern studies. “Had it not been for Ravi Dyal the works of Gyan Pandey, Ranajit Guha, Tanika Sarkar would not have been published.” Even outside history, OUP nurtured the “brilliant original minds’ and the works of Andre Beteille, Ashish Nady…” The great modern playwrights like Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sarkar, Girish Karnad were also nurtured by OUP. “Even A.K. Ramanujan who is at the centre of the controversy today, his translation of U.R. Anantmurthy’s Samskara was commissioned and published by the OUP. Ramanujan’s poetry was published by Oxford and Ramanujan incidentally is the only Indian poet published in the Oxford Poetry Series. That is the tradition of OUP India nurtured by Ravi Dyal and other various such general managers who followed Ravi Dyal including Neal O’ Brien, Santosh Mukherjee.”

He called them the “publishers who read books and understood the importance of books.” He argued that in the last 15 years, we have witnessed an unfortunate ‘thatcherisation of publishing process that has affected OUP here and OUP India, so the bottom line is that profit became paramount, even though OUP is an arm of the University committed to promoting high standards in academic scholarship.” “Making profits became the overriding motive and editing standards precipitously declined.” “OUP today is run by people who do not know about books. Who had never heard of AK Ramanujan. That Ramanujan is arguably the most influential, most creative writer and thinker in the humanities ever produced by India escapes them. If the Manging Director, Editing Director, The Literary Editor had known of AK Ramanujan, we would not have been here today.” With the present essay controversy he said that “OUP has behaved in a rather short sighted way.”

Regards the latest statement, “OUP is essentially resorting to legal equivocation.” Dr. Guha pointed out that when it comes to tax matters, OUP in the past have appointed “the most expensive lawyer, Fali Nariman to fight it but when it comes to this case of a lunatic filing a case in Dera Bassi, Punjab in 2008, the OUP wrote saying we are terribly sorry if we have offended anyone and we don’t want to offend anyone advertently or inadvertently and therefore we are going to withdraw the essay. And now the OUP press release says that we haven’t really apologised and legal scholars can say more about this legal equivocation.”

“Withdrawing the essay gave Delhi University an excuse to withdraw it from the BA History Curriculum. I met the CEO of OUP today and essentially we disagreed on the interpretation of the apology, also disagreed of whether the book has been withdrawn.” The CEO maintains that Ramanujan’s essay “is not out of print, we don’t have enough orders, we have 50 orders and if we get 100 orders then we will print it but if you go to any bookshop you cant find the book.” Although the CEO agreed that there is a “problem of perception.” Dr. Guha spoke of the signature campaign initiated by the academics, which gathered 453 signatures within a day due to the “extra ordinary stature of Ramanujan.”

Dr. Guha also pointed the declining academic standards of the OUP because of which scholars like Partha Chatterjee and Romila Thapar have already chosen other publishing houses over OUP. He asserted that the way to restore OUP’s “perception problem” is to “immediately print the essay which would be a vindication of your respect for Ramanujan, vindication of the principle of free speech and vindication of your bottom line too.” That said, Dr. Guha argued that he “doesn’t know how seriously Mr. Portwood (CEO OUP) would take that suggestion.”

“A successful resolution on the controversy which will be a face saver for the OUP which does due respect to the memory of the great AK Ramanujan which is in consonance of the principles of free speech. And which will be an emphatic affirmation of the value of scholarship and against the bigotry of fanatics would be to bring the essay back in print.”

Dr. Guha concluded his speech by saying that such a reaction is emblematic of ancient venerable and powerful institutions like the Catholic Church which took years and years to admit that pope was abusing young children, like United States of America which took time to admit the torture of detainees in Abu Gharib and Congress Party back in India which took years to admit the corruption within its ranks. He urged students to keep the pressure so that the collected essays of A.K. Ramanujan are back.

Ramanujan Affair: Why secular universities buckle before the hooliganism of right-wing ?

Ramkatha, Rambhakts and the University

by Ashwin Anshu (in EPW, 12 November 2011)

The controversy over Ramanujan's essay highlights some key issues. One of them is the Hindu right's claim to act as the custodian of Hindu identity and to assert its hegemony over all "Hindu" traditions is often successful due to the weaknesses of our institutions. The other is that the defence of academic freedom and autonomy is central to the life of a university. The supremacy of rational enquiry is the fundamental basis of all academic endeavours and undermining that destroys the basis of a university. If the logic of the criticism of Ramanujan's essay is extended, then historical studies will be transformed into theological works that discuss religion only from the theological rather than secular standpoint. If the aim of history education is to broaden minds and to infuse a critical understanding of the past then shelving of essays like that of Ramanujan on non-academic grounds does not help. The climate of intolerance will only be furthered. Therefore, it is the duty of all members of the university community, the larger academic community as well as citizens concerned about our secular public institutions to impress upon Delhi University authorities that they should not bow down to violence but defend their own faculty and academia and reinstate Ramanujan's essay in the undergraduate syllabi.

Read More : http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/16731.pdf

Right to read Ramanujan's essay : Interview with K.N. Panikkar

A student's right to read Ramanujan's essay on the Ramayana should be inviolable, says historian K.N. Panikkar. Educational institutions are being besieged by bigots bent on imposing their views on the curriculum.

[ read more at: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/interview/article2650780.ece ]

Ban on Ramanujan’s essay shameful : UR Ananthamurthy

The Times of India

Ban on Ramanujan’s essay shameful: URA

TNN | Nov 2, 2011, 04.58AM IST

BANGALORE : Kannada litterateur UR Ananthamurthy has soundly criticized Delhi University's decision to remove AK Ramanujan's essay, 'Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation' , from its undergraduate History syllabus.

The essay has been in the eye of a storm in the otherwise sleepy ac ademia and has forced academics and students to take to the streets in protest against what they see as a blow to the diversity of Indian thought and scholarship.

"The old orthodox India would never have done this. It made room for so many variations. It is only the modern India of communalism and extreme nationalism that finds itself unable to deal with plurality and diversity,'' Ananthamurthy told TOI. "It is an utter shame. It is intolerable.''

In 2008, ABVP activists charged into the office of the then head of DU's department of history, Prof SZH Jafri, and demanded that the essay be withdrawn. The academic council later referred the essay to an expert committee which was to decide whether it should remain on the syllabus or not. Although three of the four experts on the committee recommended that the university keep the essay on its syllabus, the council voted to drop it.

According to Ananthamurthy , ancient texts are often to be found in one or many of the following forms: 'shruti' , 'smriti' and 'purana' . While 'shruti' refers to the oral version of texts, 'smriti' refers to remembered accounts and 'purana ' to the written ones. "There is no end as to how many versions there can be. Only very limited people can claim that there must be only one version," he said.

Illustrating how intertextual ancient epics can take shape in their telling and retelling over centuries, Ananthamurthy laughingly recounted a certain version of the Ramayana performed in a rural area, in which Sita is denied permission to accompany her husband on his forest exile: She says, "How come all the other Sitas are allowed to go with Rama while I am not?''

Academics and students from two of Delhi's universities support Ramanujan's essay

Courtesy: Mail Today

Rohan Venkataramakrishnan and Suhas Munshi New Delhi, November 17, 2011 | UPDATED 16:24 IST

Delhi univs voice support for banned Ramayan

The DU meet was chaired by Dr Upinder Singh (right).

RELATEDS

• DU essay row mirrors the rot in higher education

Students and teachers from two universities in Delhi assembled on Wednesday to express their support in favour of retaining A. K. Ramanujan's essay, 300 Ramayanas. They also had a discussion on the various translations of the Ramayana.

While those gathered at Delhi University held a candlelight march, the scholars gathered at Ambedkar University were audience to a short documentary called Anek Ramayana.

The gathering at the DU campus saw about 50 people marching from the department of history to the faculty of arts, shouting slogans against the administration and the growing influence of communalism on academia.

"Basically, we're trying to mobilise opinion both within the university and outside. We are trying to use democratic ways to express our demand," said Pankaj Jha, a professor of history at Lady Shri Ram college. "The only thing that will really satisfy us in the end is for the essay to be reinstated in the syllabus."

The march was preceded by a panel of professors discussing the impact of the decision to drop the essay, written by renowned scholar A. K. Ramanujan. History professor and daughter of the Prime Minister, Dr Upinder Singh chaired the meet.

"In the face of all this intimidation... it seems like the space for academics to express themselves is under threat, and we need to do something about that," Singh told the crowd, "This is a question of safeguarding the university as a place It is a struggle to ensure that this kind of thing is not taken casually."

Ambedkar University was host to a short documentary film directed by Sikha Sen, which explored the various translations and historical depictions of the Ramayan. The documentary was followed by a panel discussion aimed at debating how autonomous may an educational body be in teaching its syllabus, and how immune may it be to political pressure. "The issue before us is to decide whether to succumb to political pressure. In my opinion we have to fight this political pressure that pressurises syllabus decisions not on merit but political basis," faculty member Salil Mishra said.

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/delhi-universities-support-banned-ramayan/1/160403.html

DU essay row mirrors the rot in higher education

From: Mail Today, 15 November 2011


by Jyotirmaya Sharma

THE REMOVAL of A. K. Ramanujan’s essay on the Ramayana by the Delhi University’s Academic Council is disgraceful. So is the way in which the Vice- Chancellor presided over this Goebbelsian purge through propaganda. But the episode hides the callousness with which we treat ideas, especially ideas that do not seem to fit our cherished myths. Ideas question our sense of comfort, challenge our self- deception and assail the banality of our selfimage.

No amount of signing petitions and writing to the HRD minister would redress the damage this shameful episode has done to intellectual freedom in Indian universities.

The academic community will have to find new ways of dissent. For instance, the emails of the VC and all those who voted in favour of removal of the essay ought to be clogged with copies of the essay, and I mean hundreds of them. This must happen every single day, every hour, for weeks and months, for as long as the people responsible do not express contrition.

Scenario

It is likely that some of them will eventually read the essay and realise their folly as well as admit their ignorance. Students and teachers must gather outside the VC’s office and outside the offices of those who favoured the removal and read aloud the essay. The din caused by Ramanujan’s wisdom must paralyse the day to day functioning of people who revel in parading their insolent might.

Waking and sleeping, these men, who are enemies of ideas and excellence, must be made to encounter Ramanujan’s prose.

Teachers must begin to teach and discuss the essay in class, whether it is on the syllabus or not. The assault on the written word must be countered by the greater power of the akshara , that which does not perish.

There is no doubt that these episodes will continue to happen and haunt us till we do not address questions that plague university education in India, and especially higher education. No sensible individual can question the goal of providing access to education for all those who want to avail of the opportunity for higher education. But access and excellence must go hand in hand.

Higher education must be about excellence. But excellence does not mean phoney elitism or social snobbery. Neither does it have anything to do with the technocratic- managerial argument of meritocracy. It has much to do with raising the bar of the kind of questions that are asked, the manner in which these are posed and the solidity of research that emerges out of it.

For that to happen, the school system and the regime of undergraduate education have to be qualitatively lifted and enhanced.

Further, the academic departments have to be granted genuine autonomy and not be hostage to the game of numbers that is often played out in bodies like the academic councils in the name of democratic functioning. For departments to be autonomous, they must be made accountable and funding ought to be tied to their performance across rational parameters. Too much today depends on the grace and favour of bodies like the UGC and university administrations.

But thinking about higher education seems to be going in the opposite direction. There are moves to standardise higher education at the national level, an attempt that hides behind the rhetoric of greater mobility of students but has at its core the idea of watering down standards.

Higher education cannot deliver till such time it is controlled by a bureaucracy at the top, aided by mediocre academics whose business it becomes to help water- down standards for the sake of their own survival.

Teachers

Neither can the market become the sole arbiter of excellence.

A substantial part of the blame lies with teachers: they have pandered to furthering mindless representation of ideologies, fashions, notions of political correctness and populism.

In other words, they have simulated what politicians and demagogues do best.

In times of crisis they have resorted to taking help of politicians and political parties rather than sorting contentious issues within the confines of their institutions.

Moreover, higher education has survived too long on the empty rhetoric of ‘ nation building’, an abstraction open to multiple interpretations and political interventions. This is so especially when what constitutes the nation and its interests are susceptible to ideological and political interpretations.

The way teachers treat students, especially in the realm of higher education, is part of the problem. A misplaced paternalism exists where, instead, there ought to be friendship and partnership.

Teachers and policymakers continue to treat students reaching postgraduate studies as children who need to be led, guided, and protected from what they consider as dangerous trends. Instead of showing the way to intellectual freedom, students are told to be careful of things that might harm their intellects and, in turn, harm the nation.

Our collective insecurity as a nation and our valorisation of smug mediocrity in the name of the nation’s interests turns students from free individuals to slaves. Denying access to a certain kind of literature is, in fact, the modern manifestation of caste elitism, where some texts are denied access because of a higher reason prevailing, which denies that access. If literature of all sorts is available, the students would be able to make their minds up about what to them would be the most tenable and convincing argument.

But academic bureaucracies have little respect for ideas, and even less respect for the endusers of the system in whose name they seem to exist and seem to flourish.

Solution

The lesson from the Delhi University episode is also that banal Hindutva has no ideology or political affiliation. It cuts across party politics. If this move had been initiated by Murli Manohar Joshi, people would automatically impute ideological motives to it. But this shameful act of removing an essay has happened when a Congress- led government is in place and in a place where a Congress ruled government rules Delhi. Banal Hindutva thrives on mediocrity, amorality, conformity, smugness and misplaced certainty.

The solution to this lies within the university. Those who supported this move have to be shamed and their shallowness exposed. But the community of teachers and scholars must rise in order to assert their academic independence and their administrative autonomy. Otherwise, their fates would continue to be sealed by twenty five men and women, within which number are several beholden to the arbitrary power of the Vice- Chancellor, many of them quiet and indifferent, and a handful allowed to commit crimes against intellectual excellence and flourishing.

Delhi University must show the country that they are ready to take their destiny back into their hands, not by running to ministers and politicians, but by fabricating a new vocabulary of dissent.

The writer teaches politics at the University of Hyderabad

Furore over Hindu epic essay points to India's cultural divide

From: Reuters

Furore over Hindu epic essay points to India's cultural divide

By Frank Jack Daniel

NEW DELHI | Tue Nov 1, 2011 9:35am EDT

(Reuters) - Under pressure from Hindu hardliners, a prestigious university has dropped a scholarly text on the Ramayana epic from its history syllabus, in the latest sign of conservatives' deep influence over a globalizing India's cultural battles.

In October, Delhi University removed the essay by eminent academic A.K. Ramanujan from the reading list after Hindu nationalist students vandalized the history department and lodged a complaint that the text's bawdy references offended beliefs about the life of hero-god Rama.

Liberal thinkers are furious at what they see as another capitulation by a secular institution to pressure from hardliners -- in a tweet last week author Salman Rushdie called it "academic censorship."

The furor bears some resemblance to U.S. tussles over the teaching of evolutionary theory and highlights the resurgence of India's religious right at a time when voters are turning away from a center-left Congress government weakened by corruption scandals.

This was not the first case of radical Hindu pressure over India's culture. It has ranged from state governments banning books seen as offensive to raids on bars by Hindu groups in the IT hub of Bangalore to protest Western culture corrupting Indian values.

Last year, Mumbai University removed Rohinton Mistry's Booker Prize shortlisted novel Such A Long Journey from its literature syllabus after threats and book burnings by radical Hindu political party Shiv Sena.

India's best-known artist, painter Maqbool Fida Husain, fled the country in 2006 and died in exile in London this year after his depictions of naked Hindu goddesses enraged zealots who attacked his house and vandalized shows.

MULTIPLE INTERPRETATIONS

Ramanujan's "Three Hundred Ramayanas," is considered by Indologists to be a classic study of Hindu diversity and a discussion of the hundreds of different tellings of the epic story of Rama and Sita.

"It's not a religious essay at all, it's not about which version are you supposed to read," said Delhi University professor Bharati Jagannathan, who said she used the text to teach students that history has many interpretations.

Revered in academic circles as a critic, poet and playwright, the author was a MacArthur Fellow and taught at Chicago University for decades. He died in 1993.

But India's Hindu nationalist movement seeks a more doctrinal approach to the religion's foundational texts. Student activists called Ramanujan's study a perversion of tradition, especially the inclusion of early versions of the tale with numerous sexual references.

"There's no need to distort our Hindu texts, which we hold in great reverence, to this degree. Why? If this is the case, then why not do multiple interpretations of Islamic and Christian texts?" said student leader Rohit Chahal.

Beleaguered Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's coalition led by the Congress party has not spoken on the issue, giving the impression it fears offending hardline Hindu voters by standing up for its secular ideals.

"None of the so-called secular Congress leaders have spoken a word, not the prime minister, nor the home minister nor the education minister, they have maintained a deafening silence," said political analyst Amulya Ganguli.

In the past, Congress politicians have also bowed to pressure from Muslim groups in freedom of speech cases. In 1988, India banned imports of Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses, which had offended many Muslims and led to a Iranian fatwa ordering the author's death.

The angry protests by Hindu groups highlight a pervasive current of conservative Indians who are still an important political voice, despite the rapid modernization of Asia's third largest economy.

Opinion polls show growing support for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that represents the moderate face of a movement seeking to define India as a Hindu nation.

When it governed from 1998 to 2004 the BJP focused on good economic management rather than religious supremacy, but agitation by extremist members of the Hindu nationalist or Hindutva movement that backs the party has not gone away.

The country's most popular opposition politician, Narendra Modi, is a BJP governor respected for presiding over a long economic boom in Gujarat state but is also associated with religious riots that killed hundreds of Muslims.

(Additional reporting by Annie Banerji; Editing by Alistair Scrutton)

Mukul Dube on The Ramayanas Controversy at Delhi University

From: Mainstream Weekly, 5 November 2011

On The Ramayanas Affair

By Mukul Dube

Delhi University's Academic Council decided, in the firt half of October 2011, to remove from its “concurrent course in history” for all B.A. (Hons.) students, A.K. Ramanujan's essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation”. At the direction of the Supreme Court in July 2010, f our experts had been asked to give their views on the essay to the Academic Council. The opinion of only one of these experts went against the essay and led to the decision ( http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/article2550965.ece ). Nine members of the Council “vehemently opposed [the proposal to remove the essay] and submitted written dissents” ( http://www.deccanherald.com/content/197763/delhi-university-scraps-ramanujans-essay.html ). One of the dissenting members said that the decision was an instance of “a secular institution buckling under the pressure of right wing organisations” (ibid.).

The dispute over the essay goes back to its introduction into the syllabus about five years earlier. Certain right-wing groups had objected to the essay and had described it as “blasphemous” (ibid.). In 2008, activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the BJP, had entered the history department of the university and had “gone on the rampage” (ibid.). Finally, right-wing groups moved a writ petition in the Supreme Court, claiming that the essay “hurt their religious sentiments” (http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/article2550965.ece).

It is a fact that there are hundreds of versions of the Rama-Sita-Ravana story. In some, Rama and Sita are not a married couple but are siblings. In others, Ravana is not an evil demon but a pious scholar-king. Folklorists know that stories are often modified in the course of geographical dispersion. For example, a folk tale of Delhi featuring a frog and a crocodile, might in Agra or Aligarh be the very same but with a rabbit and a wolf as its chief characters.

Are the Rama-Sita-Ravana chronicles stories spun and re-spun by human beings or do they represent historical fact? Or are we to take it that they descended from the heavens, without human will or intervention, and must therefore be swallowed whole like the immaculate conception in Christianity or, in Islam, the timely appearance of a ram when Ibrahim was about to sacrifice his son?

The person whom we may call the victorious expert is believed to have said, “Epic personalities are divine characters and showing them in [a] bad light is not easily tolerated” (ibid.). He or she is also understood to have “termed the Indian psyche incapable of handling different versions of the Ramayana” (ibid.). This cannot be a historian speaking: it is more a character like Chanakya, capitulating to the forces of obscurantism and justifying that by reference to the need to maintain peace. Are psychologists to chart the course of the academic historian? Is this sort of abomination, also seen not so long ago in the Allahabad High Court's verdict in the Babari Masjid matter, to be the future of India, a land which the fools among us misguidedly call secular?

It is clear that the dispute is between those who respect facts and those who are guided by the unquestioning and unreasoning phenomenon called faith. “The members who were opposed to withdrawing of the essay submitted a note of dissent on the issue. They said that the ‘Hindu understanding of Ramayana and Valmiki's rendering of the Ramayana are in no way the singular versions of Ramayana' and that ‘The removal of any material that incorporates Tamil versions of the Ramayana and Jaina and Buddhist versions of the Ramayana would be an act of majority fundamentalism...'” ( http://www.firstpost.com/fwire/du-to-scrap-ramanujan-essay-on-ramayana-that-incensed-right-wingers-104127.html ).

Let us listen to another of the four experts, the one saying that “the recent trend among advocates of Hindutva to consider this work as being composed of actual historical data is deplorable. It is contrary to our tradition, sanity and common sense, and an insult to our scholarly culture” ( http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/article2550965.ece ).

Why does a big publisher crawl when the fundamentalists threaten thier books? : OUP India, Ramanujan etc

EXCERPTS FROM:
NARROW VIEW AT THE TOP - Ramanujan: a publisher’s perspective
by Rukun Advani (in The Telegraph, 7 November 2011)

In the Ramanujan case, what should the publishing institution that took on his book (and thereby bought itself respect and made good money) say to his ghost, and to the serious reading public for which it was set up to publish such books in the first place? How would secular, progressive and sane sections of the reading public expect the publisher under attack to respond? Even if we forget the book’s commercial success — academic books sell in small numbers — isn’t there a publishing ethic that requires a publisher, specially a big publisher, to stand by a book and author he has taken on, and defend them, if not to the death, at least legally, vocally, and reasonably strongly? Such expectation would only be strengthened if the publisher happened to be a reputed university press claiming that the very purpose of its existence was to promote learning. How would it look if, instead of standing its ground and defending its authors, such a press were to cave in, whine out an apology to medievalists for having caused unintended hurt to their religious views and promise never again to reprint supposedly offensive books?

Cut from the domain of the imagination to the realm of the real. A.K. Ramanujan, a scholar so formidable that he was, for several years after his premature death in 1993, considered irreplaceable by his department at the University of Chicago (he was replaced many years later by D.R. Nagaraj), writes a pathbreaking essay on the Ramayan. In it he documents the popularity of the epic by showing how its influence on the Indian imagination is evident in the diversity of narratives and regional versions which it has generated. He publishes the essay, alongside many others which argue the same view — oddly, these other essays are not deemed offensive merely because Delhi University happens not to prescribe them — with the University of California Press, from which the Oxford University Press in India buys rights of republication for South Asia.

A history department prescribes it. A hurt Hindu, his sentiments backed up by the sort of antagonism to ideas in which only cretinous Indian vice-chancellors specialize, takes the publisher to court. And what does the publisher do? Instead of preparing for a siege and sticking his Oxford Blue banner into the battleground, the publisher grovels. He agrees that what he has published can cause religious offence, and that by publishing Ramanujan he has caused it. He promises in court that he will renounce Ramanujan and not reprint the offensive essay.

Are such reactions by a major publisher acceptable? Is this the way in which even a small-time press, lacking the resources to fight legal battles but intent on retaining its self-respect, would react — never mind one of the world’s phenomenally resource-rich publishing multinational organizations? Has OUP India not heard of Penguin’s successful defence of D.H. Lawrence against State censorship? Or an Italian publisher’s defence of Roberto Saviano for exposing the Sicilian mafia?

I ask this in part because I was, 20 years back, the editor who acquisitioned and published the Indian edition of Paula Richman’s Many Ramayanas. And because I am, like many thinking academics and readers, dismayed by the position taken by the book’s Indian publisher. I also ask this because, being now a small independent publisher of scholarly books, I recognize the enormous difficulties that mischievous litigation can cause; and therefore, in principle, I am in fact sympathetic to any press besieged by fanatics.

But it is one thing to be a little publisher in a garage beset by the mob; it is quite another to be a corporation with offices in every continent and equipped with a whole legal department experienced in dealing with hurlers of footwear. Its press is Oxford University’s single largest donor to the university coffers. If the OUP were on sale, even Rupert Murdoch would have to check with his bank if he had the money to buy it. If the OUP were a bank, it would be asked to rescue Greece and save the euro. Given its financial worth, how can such a publisher seem so oblivious of its own intellectual and cultural worth, specially in India, a country with universities round every corner but without even one functioning university press? Why doesn’t this, of all publishers, empty its massive coffers just by the little that’s required to employ a security agency, protect its employees, put steel on its windows — and a little into its spine?

The Ramanujan case is not, unluckily, the only instance which shows OUP India crawling when asked to bend. A brief foray into publishing history shows a consistency in their response pattern when assaulted by numbskull vice-chancellors and their ilk. A few months before I left the OUP, I had signed on an excellent legal monograph by the German legal sociology scholar, Hans Dembowski. In 2001, soon after publishing his book, Taking the State to Court, OUP India apologized to the Calcutta High Court and withdrew the book instead of defending either it or the author (a first-rate German scholar who later put the book online). Two years later came the James Laine controversy. Same brick-throwers, same response: book withdrawn, apology tendered, academics left feeling betrayed.

The case for mounting a defence of Dembowski and Laine earlier, and Ramanujan now, is not just very strong, it is absolutely required. It ought to be any self-respecting press’s first response to say it will defend what it has published. Unfortunately, the OUP’s actions in court, and vis-à-vis its own scholarly constituency, seem to suggest the philosophy of a myopic accountant who sees books as fodder for a cash till, not as ideological artefacts by great writers who can feel either supported or betrayed. In all these cases, the publisher’s instinctive reaction seems to have been to apologize and withdraw the book. In fact, both the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court threw out Maharashtra state’s case against Laine —but much after OUP’s instant apology and withdrawal of the book. It would seem excusable, though far from commendable, if a small press were to try worming its way out of prolonged and crippling litigation; but if, in addition to being big, you’re the pre-eminent scholarly publisher in your world, your every move is a statement of your ideology and must be carefully thought through. If a publisher with enormous resources sidles apologetically out of court, it will be interpreted as having said: “Let fascism rule, we haven’t the stomach to fight it.”

READ FULL TEXT HERE : http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111107/jsp/opinion/story_14715754.jsp

The pre-history of the Ramanujan Ramayana essay in India

The Hindu, November 3, 2011

When a Department let the University down

by Shahid Amin

The pre-history of the Ramanujan Ramayana essay in India.

“No Hindu ever reads the Mahabharata for the first time,” wrote A.K. Ramanujan in 1968. “I have heard bits and pieces of it [in Kannada and Tamil] in a tailor's shop where a pundit used to regale us with Mahabharata stories; from an older boy who loved to keep us spellbound with it after cricket …; from a somewhat bored algebra teacher who switched from the binomial theorem to the problem of Draupadi and her five husbands.”

It was such an acclaimed linguist, folklorist and translator of all things Indian, forever opening doors to the interplay between the epic and everyday experience, who was recently shunned as an “untouchable” by the academic caste panchayat of Delhi University. This has invited a humungous uproar among academics and civil society in India and abroad. The now famous Expert D, whose minority view justified the excision of Ramanajun's classic essay on 300 Ramayans from the University syllabus, feared that non-Hindu teachers will have difficulty putting across its excesses to believing students. By that token this article should get killed right here, for my name might end up betraying my thoughts — a sad reflection that communities in India cannot communicate!

In any case, the role played by the Oxford University Press (OUP) in the three-year long saga ending with the burial of Ramanujan's Ramayana piece illustrates how the world out there has come to unthinkingly push artefacts of the mind out of public spaces. This is cause for grave concern.

FULL TEXT AT: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2595429.ece?homepage=true

Lord Ram: Many Tellings

by Ram Puniyani

Recently Delhi University Academic Council (Oct 2011) decided to drop the scholarly essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas” of A.K.Ramanujan, on different telling of Ram’s story from the syllabus of ‘Culture in India’ for BA Honors students. Of the four experts on the committee, one of them, whose opinion was finally accepted, said that undergraduate students will not be able to tolerate the portrayal of divine characters in the different versions given in the essay. In response to the ban while Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, which is an affiliate of RSS, and company celebrated, the staff and many students protested against this ban. Just to recall earlier in 2008 ABVP activists had protested against the introduction of this essay, and indulged in vandalism on the issue.

This essay by the much acclaimed scholar, A.K.Ramanujan is part of his "The Collected Essays of A.K.Ramanujan (Oxford 1999). Earlier in the aftermath of Babri demolition, a Sahmat exhibition on different versions of Ramayana was attacked by RSS combine's goons in Pune in 1993. This was done on the pretext that one of the panels based on Jataka (Buddhist version) showed Ram and Sita as brother and sister, and it is an insult to their faith. Ramanujan's essay talks of different versions and presents five of them as an example.

It is known that there are hundreds of versions of Ramayana, Buddhist, Jain, Valmiki etc. Paula Richman in her book Many Ramayana's (Oxford) describes several of these. And again there are different interpretations of the prevalent Valmiki Ramayana, many of which are not to the liking of those who are indulging in politics in the name of their faith. Surprisingly all this intolerance is shown by those who assert that Hinduism is tolerant and other religions are intolerant.

It is a fascinating exercise to go through various tellings and interpretations of Ramayana. Even the other renderings acceptable to this intolerant but currently dominant political force are not uniform. Valmiki, Tulsidas and later the one adopted by Ramanand Sagar for his serial Ramayana have their own subtle nuances, which are very different from each other.

Ramayana has been rendered in many languages of Asia in particular. Ramanujan points out that the tellings of Ram story has been part of Balinese, Bengali, Kashmiri, Thai, Sinhala, Santhali Tamil, Tibetan and Pali amongst others. There are innumerable versions in Western languages also. The narrative in these is not matching. Those opposing this essay take Valmiki as the standard and others as diversions which are not acceptable to them for political reasons. The version of Ramayana, the communalists want to impose has the caste and gender equations of pre-modern times so it is hung up upon only that version as the only one acceptable to it.

Interestingly one can see the correlation between the class-caste aspirations of the narration-interpretation. In Buddhist Dasharath Jataka, Sita is projected both as sister and wife of Ram. As per this version Dashrath is King not of Ayodhya but of Varanasi. The marriage of sister and brother is part of the tradition of glorious Kshtriya clans who wanted to maintain their caste and clan purity. This Jataka tale shows Ram to be the follower of Buddha. Similarly Jain versions of Ramayana project Ram as the propagator of Jain values, especially as a follower of non-violence. What do both Buddhist and Jain versions have in common is that in these Ravan is not shown as a villain but a great spiritual soul dedicated to quest of knowledge, endowed with majestic commands over passions, a sage and a responsible ruler. Popular and prevalent "Women's Ramayana Songs" of Telugu Brahmin Women, put together by Rangnayakamma, keep the women's concern as the central theme. These songs present Sita as finally victorious over Ram and in these, Surpanakha succeeds in taking revenge over Ram.

In Thai Ramkirti, or Ramkin (Ram's story), there is a twist in the tale and Shurpanakh's daughter decides to take revenge attributing her mother’s mutilation primarily because of Sita. More interestingly here the focus is on Hanuman, who in this telling is neither devout nor celibate but quite a ladies’ man, looking into the bedrooms of Lanka. In Valmiki, Kampan and Tamil tellings Hanuman regards seeing another man’s sleeping wife as a sin, but not in this Thai version. Incidentally he is a very popular Thai hero even today. Also like Jain Ramayana this Thai telling focuses on genealogy and adventures of Ravana and not of Ram.

In recent times Jotiba Phule who stood more with the interests of Dalits and women, was amongst the first to interpret this mythological tale from the perspective of those subjugated by caste-varna-gender hierarchy. Phule points out that upper castes were descendents of conquering Indo-Europeans who overturned the original egalitarian society and forbade the conquered from studying texts. His mythology is woven around King Bali, who could invoke the image of peasant community. Needless to say his murder by Lord Ram from behind is condemned and is seen as an act of subjugation of lower castes by the upper castes. And Ram is seen as an avatar of Vishnu out to conquer the land from the Rakshasas (those protecting their crops) for establishing the hegemony of upper caste values of caste and gender hierarchy.

Dr. Ambedkar and Periyar's commentaries are more an alternative reading of the Valmiki's text rather than a separate version. There is a good deal of overlap in the interpretation of both. Dr. Ambedkar focuses his attention on the issues pertaining to Ram's killing of Shambuk for violating the prevalent norm where a low caste has no right to do penance, tapasya. Like Phule he also castigates Lord Ram for murdering the popular folk king Bali. He questions Ram's act of taking Sita's agnipariksha, trial by fire, and his patriarchal attitude towards her. After defeating Ravan he tells Sita that he had done all this battle not to get her released for her own sake but to restore his honor, and his banishing her in response to the rumors about her chastity when she was pregnant comes for severest criticism from Ambedkar.

Periyar is basically taking the same line but in his interpretation the North Indian upper caste onslaught-South Indian resistance becomes the central theme. Periyar the initiator of ‘Self Respect Movement’ was the pioneer of caste and gender equality in Tamilnadu. In one of the movements, which is very less known, on the lines of Dr. Ambedkar burning Manusmriti, he planned to burn the photo of Ram, as for him Ram symbolized the imposition of upper caste norms in South India. This was a part of his campaign against caste Hinduism. Periyar also upheld Tamil identity. According to him the Ramayana story was a thinly disguised historical account of how caste ridden, Sanskritic, Upper caste North Indians led by Ram subjugated South Indians. He identifies Ravan as the monarch of ancient Dravidians, who abducted Sita, primarily to take revenge against the mutilation and insult of his sister Surpanakha. In his interpretation Ravana is practitioner of Bhakti, and is a virtuous man.

It seems the dropping of the essay from syllabus is under indirect political pressure of communal forces. RSS and affiliates who have reaped rich benefit from the campaign around Lord Ram are also giving the political message of caste and gender hierarchy, through the version upheld by them, the one of Valmiki and presented in current times by Ramanand Sagar’s tele serial Ramayana. And the politics claiming to be tolerant is intolerant about scholarly renderings of ‘Many Rams: Many Ramayanas’ prevalent World over!

The richness of the Ramayana, the poverty of a University: Interview with Romila Thapar

The Hindu, 28 October 2011

The controversial decision earlier this month by the Academic Council of Delhi University to drop A.K. Ramanujan's celebrated essay on the Ramayana, Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translations from the B.A. History (Honours) course has evoked sharp protests from several historians and other scholars.

Coming three years after the Hindutva student body, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), vandalised DU's History department to protest against the teaching of this essay, the decision has been criticised as a surrender of academic freedom in the face of political pressure.

Romila Thapar, the foremost authority on early Indian history, spoke to Priscilla Jebaraj about the decision, its adverse consequences for scholarship and knowledge, and the efforts by vested interests to project one version of Hindu cultural heritage and religious tradition over all others.

Read the interview here