by Mark Tully
For centuries, Ram has been seen as the ideal man, and Sita as the ideal woman. In the introduction to his translation Eternal Ramayana – the Ramayana of Tulsi Das, published in 1883, F. S. Growse, a member of the British Indian Civil Service, wrote, ‘All may admire, though they refuse to worship… the affectionate devotion of Sita, that paragon of all wife-like virtues; and the purity, meekness, generosity, and self-sacrifice of Rama, the model son, husband, and brother, “the guileless king, high, self-contained, and passionless,” the Arthur of Indian chivalry.’ Ram is believed to be one of the ten incarnations of the god Vishnu, and Ram Rajya – Ram's rule – is always talked of as the golden age of India. Each year, in the Dussehra festival, the defeat of Ravan is celebrated as the triumph of good over evil, and in countless towns and villages the story of the Ramayan is staged in what are known as Ram Lilas. Lessons relevant to contemporary life are drawn from the events depicted in these performances, and so the Ramayan is being continually adapted. Yet intellectuals have asked angrily, ‘How dare Ramanand Sagar write his own Ramayan?”
Ramanand Sagar certainly has written his own Ramayan. He has based it on Valmiki and Tulsi Das, but it is very much his own. I watched him in the small room which serves as his bedroom and study in the Umargaon studios, working on the script for the evening's shoot. ‘Each person who wrote the Ramayan had his social exigencies to cope with,’ he said. ‘In the time of Tulsi Das, the worshippers of Vishnu and Shiva were fighting and so Tulsi Das had the two gods worshipping each other. I have also tried to bring in our times. You see, when the people of Ayodhya tell Ram's half-brother Bharat that they want him to be king, he says, “A month ago you chose Ram, now you have accepted that he should go into exile and have chosen me.” The lesson I have drawn is that it's a great privilege to have the vote, but the vote must be safeguarded – otherwise people will have kings foisted on them by palace intrigues.’
I asked Ramanand Sagar whether this was a reference to Rajiv Gandhi's succession. His mother, Indira Gandhi, was often said to have presided over a darbar or court. Ramanand Sagar laughed and said, ‘I'll leave you to work that one out.’
Some of the fiercest critics of Sagar's Ramayan have been the feminists, who have accused him of portraying Sita as being meek and submissive – the very qualities which they say have led to the plight of Indian women. Two feminists, Kamla Bhasin and Ritu Menon wrote in the February 1988 issue of the magazine Seminar:
Eternal mythologies like the Ramayan are revived and popularised via state controlled media at the mass ‘entertainment’ level, and the negative values they convey regarding women find more than adequate reflection in textbooks and children's literature at the ‘education’ level. With Sita as our ideal, can sati [widow-burning] be far behind? It is this overarching ideology of male superiority and female dispensability that sanctions sati and leads to its glorification, and accepts the silent violence against women that rages in practically every home across the country.
That statement, suggesting that raging violence is tolerated in practically every home, is surely an insult to Indian women.
When I was in Umargaon, Ramanand Sagar was wrestling with feminist problems in the last section of the Ramayan. He was thinking of placating the feminists by making Sita take the decision to go into exile herself.
‘Sita notices that Ram can't take any decision, and so she asks him what is wrong. He replies that people are saying that she is not pure. She tells him that the people are fools, but Ram says, “They are our people.” Then Sita says, “I will not stay and bring disrespect on this great family.” Ram's brother Lakshman then tries to pacify her by saying, “We will cut their tongues out.” So Sita then replies, “That's the men's way of doing things. We have ways of making people feel ashamed so that there is a permanent change in them.” Eventually, after her exile, the people of Ayodhya go out and beg her to come back. She tells them, “You do not deserve me,” and asks Mother Earth to swallow her up. So she is the winner, not the loser as the feminists seem to think.’
Ramanand Sagar has certainly not turned Sita or any of Ravan's wives into sex objects. I don't know what the feminists would have said if he had stuck more closely to Valmiki's description of Ravan's court:
On opulent carpets sprawled
Hundreds of ravishing women
In colourful dresses, drowsed
With wine-drinking
And with love-making…
Jewels scattered
During dancing and drinking --
Dresses crushed,
Deprived of earrings,
Like overburdened mares
Hastily disburdened…
Ravan lay, savouring
The sugar-wine breath
Of his wives; some, in stupor,
Kissed the lips of co-wives
Again and again,
Thinking they were Ravan's;
And the co-wives, passionately
In love with Ravan,
Returned the kisses, imagining
They were kissing their lord.
It's also highly unlikely that such scenes would have passed the censor.
Ramanand Sagar always refuses to accept the credit for his Ramayan. He told me, ‘I have no credit. All credit goes to Hanuman – he could have picked up any other person like me and told him to do this.’ Whatever the divine inspiration, there is no doubt that the human agent for the television triumph is Ramanand Sagar. The small, stout, bald, Pickwickian figure does all the writing and much of the directing, and supervises the editing and the production. That is no mean achievement for a man of seventy-one. He rules the studio with a kind but firm hand – everyone calls him ‘Pappaji’ or ‘Daddy’, and he calls all the cast by their epic names.
The critics write off Ramanand Sagar as a failed Bombay film-producer, but he has many successes to his name. His family had at one stage amassed a fortune in Kashmir. His son Moti said, ‘My great-grandfather's children used to skim coins across Dal Lake like other boys skimmed stones.’ But then there was a family row, and Ramanand Sagar's own father was left with nothing. When he died, his wife and the young Ramanand went to live with her parents in Lahore, where Ramanand was educated. His grandparents found a girl for him to marry but reneged on the deal when they learnt of another candidate who would bring a larger dowry. Ramanand apparently refused to break off the original engagement and was thrown out of the house. The future film mogul earned a living selling soap by the roadside and cleaning cars. He caught tuberculosis and spent a year in a sanatorium in Kashmir, where he wrote a diary which was serialized in a Lahore literary magazine and made his name as a writer. When he came out of the sanatorium, he got a job as a journalist and built himself a comparatively prosperous life.
That all disappeared with partition, when Lahore became part of Pakistan. Ramanand Sagar fled to India, where he eventually made his way to Bombay to start another literary career. He wrote a much praised novel about the brutality of partition, called Aur Insan Mar Gaya (‘And Humanity Died’), and a play which led on to the script for the first hit by Raj Kapoor, who was to earn the title of ‘the Great Showman’ and dominate the Bombay film industry for nearly thirty years. Ramanand Sagar became a film-producer too. As he said to me, ‘I have had some of the biggest hits, and some of the biggest flops.’ It has to be admitted that his last two films fell into the latter category. But that's all behind him now. He told me, ‘I won't make any more commercial films now.
I will continue to do devotional work. The next project may well be the life of Lord Krishna.’
When I arrived at the studio, Pappaji was directing an outside scene – Ram seated on a chariot with Sita beside him, driving in triumph through the streets of Ayodha. One of Ram's brothers sat opposite, and the other two stood behind him. Squatting on his haunches on the front of the chariot was the giant figure of Hanuman, the monkey-god. The chariot was pulled by two reluctant and distinctly seedy ponies. Their rich caparison did not hide their humble origins - t
hey were local tonga or trap ponies. Some of the soldiers of Ayodhya had to push the chariot from behind, to keep the royal party rolling steadily forward. Ahead of the chariot rode a few villagers on ponies with lances in their hands - the household cavalry of Ayodhya. The shot showed Ram passing a large pillared building whose steps were crowded with beautiful maidens throwing marigold flowers over the royal couple. On the other side of the street, young men mingled with soldiers shouting, ‘Raja Ramchandra ki jai' - ‘Long live King Ram Chandra!’
Subash Sagar said to me, ‘You see the costumes? They are all made out of silk. There was a lot of gold around in those days, so we have to make everyone look very splendid.’ Ram was dressed in a brilliant yellow dhoti with a red embroidered border. Strings of pearls hung over his bare chest, and on his head he wore a pointed gold crown which from a distance seemed to be shaped like a bishop's mitre. The crown was, I think, made of papier mâché, but it glittered in the bright lights. Sita's sari was pink with a silver border. Her head was covered with a matching long, pink headscarf or dupatta, embroidered with silver. The soldiers’ uniforms were purple and gold, and the citizens of Ayodhya were in their brightest and best.
All this magnificence was hidden from Ramanand Sagar himself, who was sitting inside a thatched hut directing from a monitor screen. His directions were relayed by a number of strategically placed loudspeakers. ‘Give Sita some reflector.’ ‘Lakshman, are you ready? Did Lakshman hear?’ A voice came back from the set: ‘Lakshman is eating a biscuit.’ Ramanand Sagar again: ‘Look, Hanuman is happy. Stay happy, Hanuman!’ I don't know how anyone could have been happy crouched in the uncomfortable position that Hanuman was in. ‘Roll camera. Throw flowers. Move chariot. Come on – get hold of those ponies, move the chariot.’
The cameraman, who had once worked in the news department of the government-controlled television, filmed all this from a high platform sheltered from the sun by a black umbrella.
The chariot was the main problem. The red and gold velvet parasol covering Ram and Sita kept getting caught in the branches of a banyan tree. When the chariot did move, it went so slowly and steadily, in spite of its creaking axles, that no impression of movement showed in the close-ups. Ramanand Sagar ordered a platoon of the Ayodhya army to shake it up and down. Ram and Sita obligingly bounced on their seats.
For all the splendour of the scene, a measure of economy was exercised. The extras and some sweepers picked up the marigold flowers between takes, for reuse. The set which was now Ayodhya had not so long ago been Ravan's capital, Lanka. The maidens came from Surat, the nearest sizeable city, because they were cheaper than Bombay film extras.
Madhu Jain, one of India's most sensitive journalists, wrote off Ramanand Sagar's Ramayan as ‘moving calendar art pictures’. There is truth in her criticism. The Ram I saw resembled the stereotyped deities pictured on the gaudy calendars that hang in almost every shop in India. Sagar argues that that's how people see their gods. He told Madhu Jain, ‘Transporting everyone to that golden age, I have brought the college boy from the disco culture to the Ramayan. College boys don't say “Hi” any more, they say “Jai Shri Ram ki” – “Long live Shri Ram.”’ Madhu Jain didn't quarrel with that. Nor did she quarrel with Ramanand Sagar when he said, ‘Ramayan has achieved national integration. Young people in the south started learning Hindi to be able to understand the dialogues.’ The venerable Calcutta daily the Statesman, in an editorial, described the acting in Ramanand Sagar's Ramayan as ‘barely adequate’ and the technical aspects of the production as ‘nothing less than shoddy’; nevertheless, the paper could not deny the popularity of the serial and ended its editorial by saying, ‘Ultimately it was the victory of good over evil, perhaps a message which has both appeal and relevance in the contemporary context.’ To me, it would certainly seem to have relevance in a country which has become as cynical about its politics as India.
Later that day I saw the trouble that Ramanand Sagar had taken with at least some aspects of his production. He had moved into the main studio, which had been transformed into Ram's court. Vashisht, who had been the royal family's guru for the last forty generations, was addressing the king. Because the script was written day by day, Sudhir Dehlvi, the actor playing Vashisht, had not had time to learn his lines properly, so they were written down by hand in large letters and held up by a technician, a human teleprompter, sufficiently far away to be out of shot but sufficiently near for Vashisht to read. Even then he had a great deal of difficulty with the archaic language of his speech. After five or six attempts the reverend figure, clad in a saffron robe, muttered through his silver beard, ‘These words are driving me crazy, they're so difficult.’ But Ramanand Sagar would not let him give up – he told the guru, ‘You are a great scholar, and the people can't see a great scholar mispronouncing even one word.’
Ramanand Sagar had told me that his Ramayan was relevant to today. Certainly there were parts of Vashisht's speech and Ram's reply which were relevant to modern Indian political life. Vashisht told the king that his family had survived in power for so many generations only because they had retained the confidence and loyalty of their people. Speaking of the former heads of the dynasty, Vashisht said, ‘They ruled not because it was their right to rule, but because they were the servants of their people. You must give your people confidence that you too will live up to the noble traditions handed down by your forefathers – the traditions of courage and fortitude, of devotion to the path of duty set for you by our religion, of austerity and, if it should be required of you, of sacrifice.’
Modern India has seen the birth of many dynasties. At the top, of course, there is the dynasty founded by Motilal Nehru, Rajiv Gandhi's great-grandfather; but at other levels too sons move in with their fathers as if they were joining the family business. In fact one of the most common complaints you hear in India is that politics has become a business. Very few Indian politicians now remember the lesson which Vashisht taught Ram and which Mahatma Gandhi tried to teach his contemporaries: the lesson that the people of India like their leaders to be austere. Ram, in his reply to the guru, said, ‘To become a king means to become a sannyasi, an ascetic. Nothing remains that is the king's. Everything belongs to the people, to the nation. He who cannot sacrifice everything for his country has no right to ascend the throne as king.’ Yet all too often nowadays the Indian politician adopts the attitude that everything which belongs to the state belongs to him.
Minor kings, ministers, army officers and Ram's colleagues from the war sat below the throne, looking like calendar gods too. Jamvan the bear, who was one of the generals of Ram's army, was clearly uncomfortable in the heat of the arc lights. He scratched at the furry costume which covered him from head to foot. During breaks, he took off his claws and sipped water through a straw, unable to get a glass to his lips.
Ramanand Sagar did lose his patience with one of the minor kings who had to make a speech asking Ram to accept the offerings brought to him by all the other rulers who had offered to join him in the battle against Ravan. The elderly actor, who had been waiting all evening for his brief moment of glory, stood up, puffed out his chest and delivered his words. Clearly not satisfied with the impact, he asked the director, ‘Shall I make my speech with more dignity, because after all I am a senior member of the court?’
Ramanand Sagar replied, ‘Make it how you like, but stop swaying around the place.’
It was nearly midnight when Hanuman the monkey-god made his appearance. Dara Singh, the six feet two and a half inches tall former world heavyweight wrestling champion who plays Hanu-man, is, at fifty-nine, still in splendid condition. He needs to be because, as Dara Singh explained to me, ‘Hanuman is a working god.’ In the Ramayan, he lifts up a Himalayan mountain, leaps across the Straits of Palk to Lanka and sets fire to Ravan's capital with his tail. In ‘real life’, Hanuman is perhaps the most popular god in northern India. He is powerful and accessible – the ideal god to go to if you are in trouble. An actor less impressive than
Dara Singh could never have played the role. In 1957 Dara Singh filled the Albert Hall in a world championship bout with Lou Thesz of the USA, although he admits that half the spectators were Indians. He learnt to wrestle in the traditional mud and clay pits of Punjab, turning professional when he went to Singapore, where some of his family were in business. His career as a professional wrestler lasted for thirty years. While he was in training, he ate enormous quantities of chicken, milk, almonds and ghi. At that time he weighed 250 pounds. Now he eats less and is down to 230 pounds, keeping himself trim with yoga, but he still advertises his favourite Punjabi ‘Milkfood’ ghi on television.
Dara Singh told me that his acting career began when he was approached to play the title role in a Hindi film called King Kong. Despite its name, this was inspired by Tarzan and was about ‘a man of the jungle’. He was reluctant and told the producers that he was shy and couldn't act. They replied, ‘Never mind acting – we want your strength and fight.’ Since then, Dara Singh has starred in 110 pictures, playing roles like Hercules, Samson (as whom he wrestled with elephants) and Alexander the Great.
Ramanand Sagar had made the most of the ex-champion's physique, dressing his Hanuman in just a scarlet and saffron loincloth, an armlet, several necklaces, large gold earrings and a gold crown. A tail like a bent pipecleaner strapped on his back and clay protuberances on his nose and both lips produced the required simian appearance.
That evening Hanuman had to bow low before Ram and Sita, who were presenting him with a pearl necklace for the invaluable assistance he had given in the battle against Ravan. With tears in his eyes, he told them he would rather have the divine royal couple living in his heart. Ramanand Sagar insisted on retake after retake. During each break, the make-up man wiped the sweat off the wrestler's torso and adjusted the protuberances on his nose and lips which had slipped out of position. Eventually Dara Singh, who had been crouching in extreme discomfort for over an hour, gave up, saying, ‘I've dried.’ The director called a halt, and we all left the studio for a nightcap. It was by then forty minutes past midnight, and Ramanand Sagar had still not written the script for the next day.
