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Retelling and Representation in the Ramakatha Tradition: Critical Perspectives
[ISBN: 978-81-952119-4-4]

Editor: Dr. Pallavi Mishra, Assistant Professor of English, SDM Govt PG College, Doiwala, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India

Manuscripts in MS Word (4,000–8,000 words) adhering to MLA 9th edition formatting guidelines should be sent to pallavi.engdhe@gmail.com by 31 December 2024.

Ramakatha, as a literary text or dramatic performance has been retold in countless ways across time and space adapting to the values, ethos and ambience of diverse cultures resulting in the emergence of numerous traditions of literature, visual arts and performances. The story of Rama has enjoyed an incredibly vast, varied and dynamic receptive history. A literary text reflects its age alongside shaping contexts by persuading people to accept popular beliefs and opinions thereby affirming that literature contributes to the construction of the socio-cultural-historical contexts in every age. The sacred biography, Shri Ramacharitmanas having the privilege of collectivity of audience; is undoubtedly a socio-cultural text unequivocally shared by a great number of people belonging to both popular and elite space. It is into the belief-system of not only certain individuals, or even of many, but is the act of everyone. The idealism and aesthetic beauty implicated gets an immediate spontaneous response from the crowd. As a work of literary art it is a receptacle of both the present, of mankind’s memories of its past and a prediction of the future overstepping the boundaries of time, introducing author’s own experiences into the future and despite all changes remains itself.

As a panorama of Indian spiritual, the text as an invigorating force accomplished the task of bringing desired social, political and historical changes upholding its relevance for all times. Showing signs of in-escapability of a historical process and possessing a ‘life’ that impels immortality to its subsistence within elite/non-elite, urban/non-urban, literary/ oral, cosmopolitan/local, metropolitan/folk spheres; it holds people together to form a linkage rendering a common identity to a collectivity by defining their value-system. Defining “Social Energy” in his critical work “The Circulation of Social Energy”, Greenblatt points out: “We identify energia only indirectly, by its effects: it is manifested in the capacity of certain verbal, aural, and visual traces to produce, shape and organize collective physical and mental experiences. Hence it is associated with repeatable forms of pleasure and interest, with the capacity to arouse disquiet, pain, fear, the beating of the heart, pity, laughter, tension, relief, and wonder.” Apparently, the re/reading of Ramacharitmas or the performance of Ramakatha has energized the social space, exhilarated the imagination of masses in all age and is continuing to generate meanings even today. The energies of power, charisma, wonder, love, desire, anxiety, awe that is produced by the text in the society have the invisible power to cause ‘a stir to the mind’ thereby changing/reforming the cultural, social and political climate of the nation.

A critical reading into the Ramacharitmanas negotiates, investigates, and retrieves the past memories that signify benevolence, support, resonance, coordination, balance and contact with the “Other.” Revisiting the text is retrieving the old for re-carving the new and the process brings to the fore a literature of emancipation, critique and transformation. Some sort of mobility and continuity need to be established between the traditional and new centers of learning. When it comes to this text, the Indian scholars in English or other Indian languages become uncritical receivers by calling it as orthodox, religious, patriarchal text that their original writers might not have approved of. An alternative ground needs to be prepared from where an active evaluation can be done afresh. In the process of reading, the text gets transformed into a cultural behavior that gets communicated to the group through the mode of performance that is ritualistic, verbal and expressive, personal joy that becomes public sharing of that joy. Mysticism, being the temper inherent in an artist reveals the element of cosmic oneness and its experience of it within him; it can be called the source of the origin of the “Vision” that inspires him deep within and bursts forth through the created artifact, which, in this context, is a “story that is sung”. The singer of the song, inadvertently, becomes a mystic. Valmiki and Tulsi as mystics and literary artists exerted enormous appeal to literary and social environment of their times; to their contemporaries and to all humanity. The Ramakatha theme as used in different schools of dance, drama, folk-music, painting, sculpture possesses a huge oral narrative giving way to performatory traditions that emerge from multitudinous and multifarious explorations of the Rama story.

In traditional socio-cultural-historical spheres, “Rama” is an icon and draws manifold interpretations. Public memory doesn’t allow the imprints of an icon to get erased with time rather it gives material space to it in various forms. Public memory, esp., cultural and national, requires ‘icons’. It plays a significant role in providing associational value to the icon by enriching their meaning. It is time that the text is re-read and re-interpreted in modern literary contexts as this age is once again emboldened by the charisma of Rama that the epic-writers like Valmiki and Tulsi had carved. The rationale behind the Indian epics and their visual re-telling was that the epical renderings are primordial inheritances of the world, the common properties of humanity. Epical renderings and Ramakatha, for the Hindu psyche is a history of all times that lies embedded in many versions. Climate may change due to geological upheavals and rulers may alter forms of government but Ram Rajya is constantly anticipated in the history of the world through the ages.

Sub-Themes

* Ramakatha: A Common Cultural Memory
* Understanding the Structure of Valmiki Ramayana: Division of Ramayana in the Kanda, Sarga and Shloka System
* The Character of Rama: From Finite to Infinite/ From Human to Divine
* Nation: A Spiritual and Cultural Entity than a Geographical or Material Possession
* Ramakatha: A History for all Times
* The Sacred Biography: As a Saga of Love and Loyalty
* Women as Archetypes and Motherhood Narratives
* Ramacharitmanas as an Ecocritical Text
* Images, Imagery, and Symbols in Ramayana/s
* Mysticism and Philosophical Lineaments in the Epic
* Hybridity, Racial Solidarity and Social Inclusiveness in Ramacharitmanas
* Vernacularization and Regionalization of the Pan-Indian Epic in Popular Culture
* Ramacharitmanas: Author’s Text or a Reader’s Text?
* Ramayana Paintings: Folk and Classical in Visual Illustrations
* Valmiki and Tulsi: Poets par excellence
* Contemporary Retellings: How Relevant are They?