In Pune, Another Day of Yielding to Political Pressure and Sacrificing the Defenceless
R. Raj Rao | 6 February 2024 | The Wire
The ruckus that happened in Pune University over the staging of a play recently, prompted me to revisit a forgotten classic titled Yuganta: The End of an Epoch by the scholar and historian Iravati Karve (1905-1970).
Karve, a feminist in her own right, interprets many aspects of the Ramayana, with special reference to the portrayal of Sita, in a manner that in today’s political and cultural climate would have probably led to the banning and burning of her book. To Karve, Sita comes across as a veritable orphan. She writes: “[Sita] has parents as well as in-laws, but her parents’ home is a home in name only. Of her relations with her in-laws, we hear a little more, but in this context too the character remains sketchy.”
Karve is appalled by the fact that when Sita is swallowed up by the earth, we do not hear a single word of protest from her father or mother. She says, “There is a description of the greatness of her [Sita’s] father, a ruler of the Janakas, but this greatness is of no help to Sita in her times of need.”…