Who Is Ram Vs Whose Ram?

Will the quotidian Ram in our mind and body be replaced by the victorious powerful Ram outside in an inert stone house?

- Mrinal Kaul

IN a certain outlying sylvan setting of some Ramnagar, Ramchandar hurled a daily greeting at his friend— “Ram, Ram, Ramkhilavan” to which came a quick reply—“Ram, Ram, Ramchandar!” And soon enough this enquiry into the wellbeing of each other transformed into a sense of daily duty. It had to, that is how it is. All of us living in India have been a witness to such a quotidian Ram. But what did they mean to communicate in this mirrored cultural alliteration and who is this Ram, and where is he? In many parts of India, the truth of Ram is invoked when carrying bodies to crematoriums i.e., in death is seen the truth of Ram and yet other times the victory to Ram is celebrated seeking hegemonic power for him. But whose Ram is he? In south Asia, Ram is a potent cultural trope—right from the poetic hero in the Ramayana of Valmiki to the popular hero of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, to the impersonated pure compassion of Bhavabhuti’s play Uttararamacarita, to Mullah Sa’dullah Panipati’s Muslim Ram in Masnavi-i Ram va Sita, to Kabir’s universal Ram and to sceptic philosopher Ram of the Maha-Ramayana, also known as the Yogavasistha, and all the way to the BJP’s political Ram. The Adhyatma-Ramayana hails Ram as a metaphysical reality (Brahman) while the poet-philosopher Allama Iqbal’s Ram is the ‘spiritual leader of India’ (Imam-e-Hind).

Unlike Valmiki’s Ramayana, the philosophical Ram of the Great Ramayana (