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Where do alter-narratives stand in a multi-faceted India?

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On the third day of The Mumbai LitFest, barely hours before his production The Killing of Dussasana which fused kathakali and flamenco to tell a tale of gender violence, civil war and revenge, Spanish director César Lorente Rató discovered Ajaya, a book by Anand Neelakantan dedicated to the Kaurava clan. “I wasn’t aware there are different Mahabharata narratives. Had I known, I’d have based my production on this theme instead,” he remarked.

Even as he spoke at the three-day fest, mobs from BJP’s youth wing in Chandigarh, hundreds of kilometres away, were protesting outside a theatre screening Goliyon Ki Rasleela: Ram-Leela, demanding an apology from director Sanjay Leela Bhansali for his use of the word Ram. They alleged that the religious sentiments of the Hindu community had been hurt.

Unlike Rató, are Indians largely intolerant of alter-narratives when it comes to mythology? “Yes,” says historian and author Ananda Pawar. “Before the emergence of strident right-wing Hindutva in the build-up to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, such rabid ideologies were rightfully confined to the fringes. More concerned about where his next meal is coming from, the average Indian has always supported the moderate middle-path.” Pawar also thinks that post 1992-93, it has become easy to muddy waters in the name of religion and that everybody now wants to borrow the template of the divisive politics of hatred.

Not everyone agrees.

Anand Neelakantan, whose book caught Rató’s eye, is one of them. “We have an ancient tradition of alter-narratives respected as great works of literature in Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi and Odiya, too. Just outside the Madurai Meenaxi temple is a Periyar statue which damns the Hindu religion and calls its followers fools. Can you imagine this happening outside the Vatican or Mecca or even outside the Communist party headquarters in Russia or China?” he asserts, adding that despite aberrations, Hinduism is largely a peace-loving and accommodating religion for him.

His book Asura: Tale Of The Vanquished, The Story of Ravana And His People, which tells the story of the vanquished Asura people, cherished by the oppressed castes of India for 3,000 years, has sold over 1.5 lakh copies.

“I began finding out why a father (a knowledgeable emperor) named his children after villains — Duryodhana (misuser of wealth and power), Dushashana (mis-administrator)? Also the pedigree of Suyodhana (the actual name of Duryodhana) was of a king so just, he gave away his son’s inheritance to his brother’s children, and a mother who sacrificed her sight to share her husband’s blindness. Compare it to those of the Pandavas, who gambled their wife for a game and several questions arise,” Neelakantan opines.

According to him, if one logically and rationally explains their stand, then people will listen.

Problems arise when in the pursuit of sensation, one goes and deliberately offends people, giving the rabid right an unnecessary handle.

Eminent historian Romila Thapar feels that mythology or history should not be mixed. “When it comes to mythology, people are free to create as many versions as they want, unlike history, where research and analysis has to prove a point before it’s made,” she says, citing the example of the different versions  of the Ramayana representing the articulations of different communities and reflecting the “alternate perceptions” that exist in society.

Pawar, however, argues his point: “Look at Valmiki’s Ramayana in Sanskrit, the Buddhist version contained in the Jataka Tales in Pali and the Jain version in the Paumacariyam in Prakrit. Many additions have been made to Valmiki’s version between 400BC to 400AD. They reflect the perspectives of the person who was writing and why. One can’t ignore how nuances borrowed from the society at the time in which the additions were made, did not end up becoming a part of the work as we know today.”

The debate is an old one — and complex. And there is always a new discovery waiting to be made. In Kerala, I happened to visit the Malanada Temple in Kollam district’s Poruvazhy village only to find that the temple deity was Duryodhana, the Mahabharata ‘villain’.

The alter-narratives can be numerous and our beloved epics as multi-faceted as Indian society itself. Rató will never find a dearth of material to adapt from.

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