Ramayana Film: Ravana Glorification Debate and Uttara Kanda

Hello, friends. Welcome to the new episode on my channel.

I’m Aritra. In this video, we’re going to talk about the Ramayana.

There’s a controversy surrounding the Ramayana.

This has been going on since yesterday: Apparently, Ravana has been glorified through this film.

So, those making this argument— what’s their opinion? What’s their point of view?

Why is this criticism being made? We’ll talk about those things and discuss them in this video.

So, this video will be a little long, because we’re going to discuss several aspects here.

So, the first thing is this: They’ve shown Ravana’s backstory and so on, and they’ve kind of shown the gods oppressing the asuras, you know.

They’re the oppressors, and these ones are cheated.

And you’ll see a picture of Nitesh Tiwari going viral on Twitter.

Where Nitesh Tiwari, you know, when there’s this thing…

They were discussing the concept and what the arcs would be like with the writers, so here, under where it says “Asuras,” it says “They are cheated,” with an arrow pointing to “cheated.”

So were they cheated there? So does that mean the gods did nothing but oppress the Asuras, as the movie shows, by not letting them eat, or do this?

After losing the war, they went to the underworld.

These are the kinds of things that are shown, and then Ravana is kind of their messiah, their savior, and then he is shown as someone who respects women, which is the opposite of his actual nature.

I mean, it’s the opposite of what’s mentioned in the actual text.

I mean, in the scene with Vidyut Jammwal, with Vivek Oberoi, if you look, he’s protecting a girl.

So these kinds of things are being used to glorify him.

His curse, you know, says he can't touch any woman.

There’s no mention of it in that way. The curse says just one thing, but it doesn’t say exactly what that is.

So, very carefully, the fact that Ravana was an unrighteous man, that he was evil, those things were deliberately, since a big star was cast in the role, gradually, gradually, I mean, were very smartly omitted and at some point, he was also given a kind of parallel hero track and that’s what the criticism is about,

that this idea of good versus evil isn’t coming through.

You can see this criticism. So why does this criticism arise? Actually, Ravana’s backstory, his origin stories, which you can see in the film, are all in the Uttara Kanda.

Now, many people say that this was a later addition, meaning it was actually omitted from Valmiki’s Ramayana.

Meaning, the story ends with the Yuddha Kanda.

And apparently, the Uttara Kanda was a later addition.

And apparently, that addition was made very cleverly, so that Rama could be made to look bad.

That’s what many scholars say. Even, I’m telling you, Kumar Vishwas, who is associated with the Ramayana film, and wrote the lyrics and so on, if you look, he also puts forward that theory that the Uttara Kanda was added later.

So, what is there in the Uttara Kanda that’s controversial, and that people talk about in this way, what was deliberately added to assassinate Lord Shri Rama’s character— what events are in it, and we can see Ravana’s origin story and so on.

All of these are mentioned in the Uttara Kanda.

But these aren’t there before. I mean, in the Valmiki Ramayana, the other six, uh…

That isn’t included in it, you know. Anyway, now we’ll move on to the Uttara Kanda and discuss why people give the logic that the Uttara Kanda is a later addition. We’ll definitely talk about that too.

So, let’s talk a little about the Uttara Kanda.

So, what happens is, I mean… In the Yuddha Kanda, Ravana is killed and Mother Sita, Lakshmana, and Lord Shri Ram they, um, return to Ayodhya.

The monkey army comes along and then Lord Shri Ram, you know, takes the throne.

The Ram Rajya is established. And that’s where the story ends.

All right, that’s the Yuddha Kanda. But what happens in the Uttara Kanda is that there are many things we’ve seen in this story, whose backstories we haven’t learned, and so on.

We can interpret “Uttara” in two ways. One is “answers.” We also call that “Uttara.”

So, the questions that have come to mind…

The unanswered questions within the narrative are answered, and the second thing you answer—in Sanskrit, it's called an epilogue, a kind of conclusion.

Now, in this particular section, it's shown that Sita is repeatedly told, “Prove your purity.”

All right, first, the trial by fire. Then, later, when she is sent away while pregnant, the incident you surely know about, where a washerman sends people from Lord Shri Ram's kingdom to see whether the people, or our subjects, are happy,

and what they are saying. From there, they discover that a washerman is, well, talking about Ram.

So Ram feels, “No, I have to protect my family's dignity.”

That's why, about his own wife, he says that people are saying she isn't pure, that a woman like her came from somewhere else.

How could he keep her? So from there, well, Ram tells Lakshman to leave Sita in the forest while she’s pregnant.

So Sita goes there. After that, she gives birth in the forest.

All right, later on, when she returns again, you all know that Lava and Kusha stopped the Ashvamedha horse and then fought Lakshman, fought them, fought Shatrughna, and so on. All of that happens.

Then Lord Rama, Shri Rama, goes. Then he finds out, and asks for proof once again.

After that, Sita has to prove herself once again and there she says, “I can’t keep undergoing tests again and again.”

By then, she goes underground, you know, and Janaki, whom King Janak found in the earth when she was born, goes back into the earth once again.

That’s really so sad for this character.

That’s really so sad for this character.

Now, what happens here is that the character becomes a misogynist.

He fought for his wife, or— but now he keeps testing his wife, again and again, and doubting her.

A trait like this comes through, one that people say is not right.

This was added later. All right, Then, here’s another controversial aspect. Look at this.

I’m telling you what the scholars say. As for the other events, if you’ve watched the Luv-Kush serial, you’ll see that Ramanand Sagar showed many events from the Uttara Kanda there.

Of course, it didn’t show Ravana’s backstory and so on.

But what happens in the epilogue— many of those events had already been shown in the Luv-Kush serial.

I mean, if I tell you where it appears visually, Anyway, that was one event.

From there, a kind of misogynistic image emerges.

On the other hand, another casteist image of Lord Rama also emerges.

Now, I’ll also get to the argument made about that.

First, there’s a story here in the Uttara Kanda.

It’s the killing of Shambuka. This Shambuka, I mean, appears while Rama’s kingdom is flourishing.

Suddenly, a Brahmin’s son dies. So he brings his dead son there.

So how did this happen? So Lord Rama sets out to investigate this.

And while investigating, he sees a Shudra.

This man is Shambuka. He’s hanging upside down from a tree and reciting the Vedas.

Now, in those days, the rule was that only Brahmins could recite the Vedas.

A Shudra wasn’t allowed to recite them. So Lord Rama warns him, and then cuts his throat with a sword.

And then everything is restored. And then that Brahmin's son comes back to life.

Now, what can we understand from this story, that you're restricting the Vedas to a particular field of study.

Only Brahmins will learn, and Shudras won't.

Now, this is bad. This is a very controversial chapter.

Now, it's saying that the letter was added, you know.

Meaning, it wasn't there, and scholars actually say this was added later.

Why do they say that? Because if you look, in the original story, Lord Shri Ram eats the berries Shabari offers him in the forest, you know.

She picks them out and tests them, you know, and he eats them.

So, if he had a casteist mindset, why would he do that? Why would he do that?

And then later, he kills Shambuka. The two are, like, one eighty-degree opposites in terms of action.

So people argue that this is wrong for that reason.

Well, besides that, we learn Ravana’s backstory and so on in the Uttara Kanda.

How he was born. And Sumali is Kaikeyi’s son.

These are the things you saw in this Ramayana movie.

I’m not going into detail. There’s also something about Vedavati.

Vedavati is said to be kind of a reincarnation of Mother Lakshmi, who wanted to marry Vishnu from the very beginning, She was performing penance, and Ravana saw her in the forest.

He grabbed her hair out of lust. And then Vedavati said, “I will be the cause of your death.”

So many say that in her next birth, Vedavati was born as Sita.

Some say she was born as Maya Sita, because she jumped into the fire.

So, I don't know if you know about the concept of Maya Sita.

Maya Sita means, they say, that Agni, the fire god, when Rama goes into the forest after the golden deer, and Ravana comes to kidnap her, the real Sita, they say, Agni had kept within himself, hidden away safely.

And a Maya Sita, the one who was Vedavati, who became Maya Sita, was the one Ravana kidnapped and took away.

They say he never kidnapped the real Sita.

And later, during the ordeal of the trial by fire, the Maya Sita enters the fire, and the real Sita, who had been protected inside the fire, is returned by Agni.

That's another story, too. So, we learn Vedavati's story in this Uttara Kanda.

Then, as I told you, Ravana assaulted the wife of Kubera's son, and that incident is also included here.

Then, I mean, what Ravana conquered, how he defeated Kubera, and what other events took place.

I mean, in the Uttara Kanda, we see Lord Shri Ram, you know, learning Ravana's backstory from various sages and hermits.

That's where the story of Ravana and Bali comes in, the one I told you about, about how Bali defeated Ravana.

After that, they made a peace treaty. So all those events are in there.

So the point where, actually, the Ramayana— this Ramayana film by Namit Malhotra— actually begins, all those events are from the Uttara Kanda.

I mean, that origin story, all of it is in the Uttara Kanda.

Also, we find the story of Rama's ancestors— Lord Shri Ram's ancestors—in the Uttara Kanda.

You've heard the name Mandhata. We say, "from Mandhata's time, from Mandhata's time."

Mandhata was basically one of Rama's ancestors.

He had conquered a great deal on Earth. Then he became a little too overambitious and even in heaven he aspired to go and conquer it.

So then, the king of the gods, Indra, told him that there was a place called Madhuvan.