The Dharma of Love in the Time of Injustice

As Americans gather for Thanksgiving in the wake of the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse and the vindication of Ahmaud Arbery, many are considering the complicated and often violent legacy that is the American story. In that light, I find myself reflecting on the Rāmāyaṇa and its message about justice, itself not a straightforward morality tale.

Many have heard the story of Rāma and had varying reactions from admiration for his magnanimity and bravery, to harsh criticism of certain actions he takes which are seen as arbitrary. I won’t go in detail here, but there are many resources online about this issue.

I have recently been working on a paper on the many tellings of the story of Lord Rāma and Sītā, for a class on South Asian literature in the first millennium CE. One such telling of the story is that of the playwright and poet Bhavabhūti (8th century). His take on the Rāmāyaṇa includes two plays, including the Mahāvīracarita and the Uttararāmacarita. I was assigned the latter for a class reading, and as background, we read about how the play was received by critics in its time.

While we know only a little about Bhavabhūti, we do know that he was a poet working under the patronage of the king Yaśovarman of Kannauj. The practice of revising or reimagining the Ramayana in particular was well known throughout South Asian history (though perhaps not so much since South Asian independence), even while it made some uncomfortable (that much has not changed).