New Delhi: A new television series called Ravan, on Zee TV, has for the first time, begun providing a sympathetic view of the life of mythological figure Ravan in popular entertainment.
The serial focuses on the different aspects of Ravan’s life and his personality.
Ravan has always been the villain in the popular consciousness - the flawed polar opposite of Maryada Purushottom or Lord Ram.
However, in Tamil Nadu, Ravan has been seen as a symbol of Dravidian pride and Southern non-Sanskritic hero as compared to the northern Hindi-speaking Ram. There are several Ravan temples in the South and the first in north India is already being built in Rajasthan.
The topic of discussion on Face the Nation this time was - Is it wrong to see Ravan as a villain?
On the panel were the actor who plays Ravan in the TV series Ravan, Naren Jha, the producer of Ravan, Gulshan Sachdev, professor of history, A R Venkatachalapati and historian, Puroshottom Agarwal.
Does Ravan need an image makeover?
Ravan is a hero (or a villain) who has an image problem. He is essentially an epic gangster. So what motivated Gulshan Sachdev to produce the serial?
"Actually the Ravan war itself is very exciting. If you mention the word to any Indian they will get excited. I never thought that I would make a serial on Ravan. I got a message from Zee TV one day where Aswhini was programming with a business head and he asked me whether I was interested to make a serial on Ravan. I was excited and after thinking for all of 10 seconds I said, ‘why not?’," said Gulshan Sachdev.
So how does Naren Jha feel when he plays Ravan? Is there an inner Ravan within within him?
"I really don't think that there is a Ravan within me for I don’t think that I am that strong and that big. I always considered Ravan to have a larger than life image and he was really a scholarly man. He has so many qualities that I don’t have. And definitely making an attempt to play his character gives me a lot of pleasure and excitement," said Jha.
So how is Ravan being presented in the serial? Is he a a sympathetic character or is he a kind of a mythological don from Ramayan?
"The serial is about the normal life journey of Ravan, about how he comes from nowhere when he started his initial journey of life. Being a person from an ordinary family, he chalked out his strategy to become the great man that he was," explained Jha.
Jha added that he was not wearing all the ten heads that symboilise Ravan in the serial. He explained that there was in fact an interesting story behind the 10 heads. "He used to wear a mani ki mala which reflected his 10 heads and people used to think that he has 10 heads. It was the reflection of the mala that made him a Scandhar (ten-headed man).
Some people speculate that maybe the 10 heads were in fact a metaphor for Ravan's immense intellect.
Why Ravan is seen as a villain?
There could be various reasons for the fact that Ravan is seen a villain. One could be the fact that he was the exact opposite of Maryada Purushottom who was a man of impossible virtue. So from this comes the fact that anyone who opposes Ram would have to branded a villain.
"Actually Ram is not a person of impossible virtue. He was a man of imminent suffering. Ram is a in the popular imagination and not because of his virtues because it has been noticed in folklore as well as in literature. And about Ravan, I don’t think he is seen as a villain. Even those who see him an adversary of Ram concede in popular imagination and creative literature many immense qualities of Ravan. He was a great scholar, he was a man of character and never tried to misbehave with Sita," says Purushottom Agarwal.
But the fact is that Ram was supposed to have run an ideal kingdom. Ravan on the other hand is a Dravidian icon and is seen as the non-Sanskritic, non-Hindi-speaking alternative to the Sanskritised Ram of the North.
"Yes, but that happened in the late 19th century. If you look at it historically it combines a great epic where he completely reinterprets Valmiki’s Ramayan. In this great 12th century epic Ram is defied for the very first time anywhere in India but that the same time Ravan is not demonised at all. Ravan comes across as a great scholar, an expert in Vedic literature and as a person who is well versed in music. In fact it has been said that Ravan is the hero in Kambhramayana but in the late 19th century in the context of the new theories about Aryan race and Dravidian race as distinct from Aryan languages and Dravidian languages, Ravan is seen as a Dravidian hero and this has taken up subsequently by the Dravidian moment. In 1946 the great Dravidian idol called Pulavar Kulanthali wrote an entire epic called Ravan Kaaviyam but it was proscribed by the Congress government and the ban was lifted only in 1968 to 1969," says A R Venkatachalapathy.
Is a compliment being compared to Ravan?
Naren Jha said that playing Ravan will never give him an image problem and that even if the people will call him Ravan Jha, it would be a compliment to him to be compared with such a great man.
"I have a lot of regards and respect for what he was," he said.
But what is the one flaw that the serial will show in Ravan's character? What were his faults? Was it ambition or was it lust?
"It was neither. I think it was just circumstances that lead him to kidnap Sita. I have been reading about Ravan and I have not come across any vice in his character so far," said Jha.
The question now really is how has the serial been received by audiences, who are so accustomed to seeing Ravan as a bad man?
"The serial has been received very well. The moment we started showing promos of the serial on TV, we got a very good reaction form the viewers," said Gulshan Sachdev.
The fact is that most people think Ravan was an exciting figure in mythological lore - villain or not. So there is some romance attached to the bad guy?
"I am a creative person and we always look for outlets. The new show is really exciting because it is different. No one has ever chosen Ravan as the protagonist of their show so that makes us creative and the subject exciting," said Sachdev.
Ram, too, had flaws in his character
The point is now that why are fingers always pointed at Ravan? Ram himself was flawed in certain ways. Laxman killed Meghnad in a duplicitous way, he killed Bali in a very deceitful way, he questioned his wife’s chastity and he killed Sudhaka who was trying to become a racist caste. So should audiences actually brand Ram as a hero and Ravan as a villain or see both as equally flawed?
"What we must understand is that unlike monotheistic traditions, the Hindu imagination refuses to paint people in black and white. It recognises their dominance of grace in life and characters so that is why not only Ravan, in fact in Hindu mythology you will find a character who can be plainly called a villain, the way we know the Bollywood villains. None of them is a villain in that sense. It is not a part of the monotheistic Hindu traditions. There is no clear-cut division between black and white," said Purushottam Agarwal.
"The other point that I would like to make here about the non-Sanskritic tradition is that after all Ravan is not exactly a historical figure. He is a mythological figure and a legendary figure. And the same mythologies and the same legends created him for actually writing the best and first BhasyaRigved which is book per Sanskritic traditions and which is a fountainhead of so called Brahminical vision," he added.
"Also, Ravan is credited with creating the first grammar of Sanskrit language. He is credited for having compiled and edited the Krishnayajurved. As Venkatachalapathy rightly hinted, the whole division between Aryan and non- Aryans as race is actually a later invention," he said.
However, even in the serial Ravan, one can hear Ravan saying, ‘Mein Arya ko mar dunga (I will kill the Aryans)’.
"I am not making comments on the serial but we are talking about the mythology and the history created around the mythology. The Aryan and Dravidian divisions refer to the linguistic families and not to the races," said Agarwal.
Was Ravan the embodiment of many virtues?
So what are the attributes given to Ravan in the south that are distinct from Ram?
"Ravan is seen as a great king and he is a learned man, he is well versed in music and he is the embodiment of many virtues. In Kanban’s Ramayana, we find that he falls. It is a flaw in his character that he abducts Sita but otherwise in the whole he comes across as an extremely great man," said A R Venkatachalapathy.
The question then comes is that if he was such a great man, why did he abduct Sita? Was it lust or was it just the desire to extend his empire in which she was simply a pawn?
"It is the provocative act of Laxman in disfiguring Shurpankha (Ravan's sister). And another contrasting example is that in Tamil tradition generally in power-play psyche, Vibhishan (Ravan's brother) is seen as a quisling, a traitor and a betrayer, which stands in very stark contrast to how he is seen in the North," said A R Venkatachalapathy.
"Vibhishan is not seen as a hero in the North as well," agreed Purushottom Agarwal.
So when it is said that Ravan is not a seen as completely dark figure, it is not just the Dravidian movement ideologues and dramatists that are being referred to, but it was also thus in mainstream Tamil dramatisation and filmmaking.
SMS poll results - Is it wrong to see Ravan as a villain?
Yes - 36 per cent
No - 64 per cent
Source: IBN LiVE