The World Of Valmiki
by N. Raghunathan
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Lakshmana Incidentally, this episode is a reminder to us that Lakshmana is, to Rama, so inseparably a part of himself that the idea of
adopting a judicial attitude towards him does not occur to him. Lakshmana had said that he had become the slave of his brother's good qualities. But for Rama he was no dasha. He was the beloved disciple,
the son on whom he lavished an affection which it is doubtful whether Kusa and Lava ever got, the brother who could take the place of the adored father and–dare we say it?–the counsellor who kept him, Rama, on even keel when for a
moment his Meru-like constancy (sthairya) seems to desert him. When, distracted by Sita's loss Rama says he will destroy the universe, Lakshamana beseeches him:
'Having all along shown yourself soft-hearted, self-controlled and intent on the good of all
And Rama saw the sense of those well-spoken words: (Aran. 67.1) Lakshmana is in fact the touchstone of Rama's most intimate atma-gunas. Of Lakshmana as of Sita he expects a standard of
conduct, a level of performance which far transcends our human capacities. But that was a measure of his illimitable love. Of Sita, Rama says,
'It is impossible for me to give her up any more than it is possible for the man of reason to give And Sita tells
Hanuman, making royal amends to the absent Lakshmana, that there is one whom Rama loves even better: 'Lakshmana, his brother, is dearer to Rama than me.' (Sun. 38.62)
Slight exaggeration, perhaps--but imagine what it is to have had Rama's love next only to Sita. Lakshmana is not so much a foil to Rama as the mirror of one side of his character, as Bharata is the contemplative.
And in Rama the two are miraculously matched, producing heavenly harmony. Rama is the complete man. All of us, encaged in our imperfections, seem to find it difficult to take him in whole and entire: there seem to be
spots in the sun, but perhaps they are spots on your retina. But this much is certain, that it is the Vishvamitras and the Vasishthas, the Sutikshnas and the Agastyas, the men who have conquered raga and dvesha,
that see him in the round and have an integral apprehension of him. And there is one other equal to them in every way, I mean Hanuman; but of him more later. Is it possible to be as detached as Rama was, towards
those one loves so wholly as he did Sita and Lakshmana? It was not difficult for him, because he profoundly respected their individualtiy. Valmiki describes the union of hearts of the divine couple in immortal words: 'Heart spoke to heart what was hidden in it.' (Bala 77.30) And yet Rama tells Sita that if he hesitated to take her to the forest it was becasue he wished to ascertain
and respect her real wishes. Likewise, when at the coronation Rama presses Lakshmana to share the kingly responsibilities and Lakshmana, anchored in serenity, declines, the brother who could get him to do amything he liked,
does not constrain him. And Rama carries his detachment to its logical conclusion. The giving up of such a wife and such a brother comes as the climax of a career of deliberate renunciation–not in the spirit of a
world-denying anchorite but as one who means well by the world. He loved life well but loved satya more, (satyam ishtam hi me sada) and he lived the dharma in which satya
found fulfilment. Sri Rama may or may not have been conscious of his divinity–I will not be lured into that endless discussion. But there is no doubt that he looked upon himself as a Dharama-pratishthapaka. It
is not, however, a new gospel or way of life that he propounds. It is the Philosophia perennis, to give it a name that has been made recently popular by Western thinkers; to give it its indigenous name, it is the
Sanatana Dharma. Ravana The world had, even in those days, resiled from it in various degrees, thanks to the mutations of Time. But it was Ravana that was out to destroy it, with the zeal of an
apostate. He was one who had been cradled in that Dharma. He had achieved an iron self-control thanks to the discipline imposed by that Dharma. But it was all directed towards an end, Power. Ravana
represents that hypertrophy of the will which history has made us familiar with in a series of scourges from Attila to Hitler. His attitude towards tapas was the attitude towards science of the Governments engaged in
the feverish competition for Hydrogen and Nitrogen bombs. It did not give him a set of values to hold by. Instead it strengthened his innate tendency to repudiate the values of the dharmic society. Indeed
he took a perverse delight in standing every one of those values on its head. He tells Maricha that he comes to him, not for advice, but for implicit obedience. From this he goes on to enlarge on the glory of Kings, which
according to him makes servility to them the utmost duty of ministers. He must get Sita at all costs, and so he has no difficulty in persuading himself that Rama is a low, despicable fellow: (Aran, 40.5) Truth is thus the first casualty and Maricha, the intended second. Ravana goes his own wilful way to the very end. And when his grand-uncle protests, he replies with the petulance of a spoilt child: 'I would break rather than bend.' (Yuddha, 36.11) He thinks that by calling stupid obstinacy a congenital defect he has disposed of it. Sita's exhortation
to him to follow his Svadharma falls on deaf ears; instead of cleaving to sva-dharma he hugs his sva-adharma, his own besetting sin of pride. And because pride--pride of possession, pride of power, pride of
glory--springs from an inner insufficiency, there is a spiritual vacuum in him which makes him restless for assurance. And Sita seems to him the one thing lacking that would make his felicity complete. Rama saw
that it would not be sufficient to free the world from Ravana. After all he was but an advanced case of the prevailing malaise. Kaikeyi had coveted a kingdom; Vali had coveted his brother's inheritance; the inhabitants
of Lanka, including the devakanyas whom Ravana had taken into his harem, found nothing wrong in the organisation of Ravana-Rajya on the basis of adharma: they were, like most of us, creatures of use and
wont. And in Rama's own Ayodhya there were the gossips who could tear Sita's reputation to tatters. If the tendency to greed and possessiveness were not rooted out, if men could not be given a positive ideal to replace
the will-o'-the-wisps, these deluded people followed, the mere killing of Ravana would leave the world very much where it was. So Rama, in pursuing his objective of killing Ravana, does not forget the distant goal. He
has no use for short cuts, for compromises with truth. And it is his business to persuade the world that it must have none either. The peerless hero who is accused of imperialistic adventures by our latter-day moralists
would not take so much as even a glass of water from Guha; would not so much as set foot inside Kishkindha or Lanka. It did not occur to him ask even for an air-lift in the Pushpaka as far as Ayodhya. The bump of
acquisitiveness was not developed in him at all. Ravana in fact thought him, the wanderer in the forest, so little attached to life that he remarked to Sita rather contemptuously: 'I wonder whether he is alive at all.'
creatures, you should not now allow your anger to get the better of you, going against your
own natural disposition.' (Aran. 65.4)
up his fame.' (Ayo. 30.29)