Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

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Volume 16 Number 2, August 2015

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Religious, Non-Religious and the Changing Consciousness of the Ramlila

by

Smriti Srivastava and Varsha Jha

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur

Abstract

The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are epics that have been an integral part of the Indian consciousness for the longest time. Many of the Indian theatre forms such as, Pandvani, Ramlila, Krishnalila, Koodiyattam, have originated from them Most of these folk forms or alternative forms of theatre were religious in nature. The audience went to watch them as if they were going to temples for it was a belief that the gods themselves descended into the actors performing them. With the passage of time and presence of other ethnicities the role of such theatre forms changed.

Our focus is on the changing nature of these theatre forms, especially the Ramlila which is a folk form that tells the story of Lord Rama. Most of the other theatre forms based on religious stories from the epics developed in separate areas in the country, which explains the regional nature of these folk forms. For instance, Koodiyattam is performed only in the state of Kerala. However, the Ramlila is not bound to an area or region. It is performed all over the country and in different guises, each performance interpreting the religious stories in different ways. The presence of a master manuscript does not mean that one region’s Ramlila might not differ from that of another region. Though the Ramlila is religious in nature, the implications attached to its performances have changed through the ages, swinging from religious to being a tool for rebellion and moving beyond that to lose its religious and moral connotations and becoming a ‘mere’ spectacle.

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The epics in India like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, are examples of living tradition. The written texts have stabilised to a large extent with hardly any changes being made to them. On the other hand retellings and adaptations abound. The Mahabharata with its numerous stories and convoluted narrative is perhaps difficult to deal with in an oral manner. But the Ramayana which is basically the story of Rama carries along with it an oral tradition more prevalent and pervasive than the Mahabharata. As Stuart H. Blackburn points out:

 

The many Ramayanas is a function of the many genres, the many languages, and the many occasions on which the Rama story is orally performed. By tale-tellers and epic-singers, temple pundits and school teachers, and any number of unknown tellers and tellings, the story is spoken, chanted, sung, mimed, retold, and explained (156).

 

One form that the telling (or rather the ‘performing’) of the Rama story takes is the Hindi folk form or traditional form of Ramlila. It is a folk form that is enacted every year during the Dussehra festival during the months of September or October. The festival celebrates the defeat of Ravana at the hands of Rama and symbolises archetypal victory of the ‘good’ over ‘evil’. The Ramlila performed in Varanasi and Ramnagar are considered to be the most famous and colourful of all in the North of India. The Ramnagar Ramlila specifically is a large-scale ‘folk-drama’ production staged like a ‘spectacle’, patroned by the ‘Maharaja’ of  Benaras, which of course explains the hype and the pomp around the Ramnagar Ramlila. Since it is one of the most easily accessible productions, it also becomes one of the most researched upon the Ramlilas: there have been several works on this ‘event’, for instance: “The Ramlila of Ram Nagar” by Richard Schechner and Linda Hess; “The Ramnagar Ramlila: Text, Performance, Practice” by William S. Sax; “Actors, Pilgrims, Kings and Gods: The Ramlila at Ramnagar” by Anuradha Kapoor. There are, however, many small troupes that belong to different villages, cities, towns and even mohallas or localities, which do not get as much academic/scholarly attention as the Ramnagar Ramlila. These smaller scale productions are regionally localized and might differ from one another in their styles and flavours. The scale of these local versions of the Ramlila may be small when compared to the Ramnagar Ramlila, but they are similar to the latter in that they are open-air (not necessarily peripatetic like the Raman agar lila) performances, and that their scripts are based on Tulsidas’ Ramcharitmanas and not on Valmiki’s text. This could be partly explained by the regional popularity of Tulsa’s version in the heartland of India.

 

Ananda Lal describes the Ramlila as:

 

…the annual enactment of Ram’s story, during the Dussehra festival in September-October celebrating his defeat of Ravana, is found in most north Indian cities and villages, among various castes, classes and even religions. Customarily organised by local committees and sustained by community contributions, the performances differ greatly in style and scale, but also share certain characteristics …They are usually not presented in a single day but go on for a number of consecutive days ranging between nine and thirty-one …they are not necessarily at a single location, but move through the local landscapes. They are based on the Ramcharitmanas. Through the enactment Ram, Sita, and Ram’s brothers Bharat, Lakshman, and Shatrughna are worshipped in the manner of gods.  (350-351)

 

This makes clear the religious nature of the performance. On the other hand, though the Ramlila is religious in nature, the implications attached to its performances have changed through the ages swinging from religious to being tools for rebellion and moving beyond in certain circumstances to lose their religious and moral connotations and becoming ‘mere’ spectacles. This point solicits a quote by Ramchandra De, (secretary to the Maharaja of Benaras) recorded in “The Ramlila of Ramnagar”:

 

Because people have more money, they come to see the show only. Religious belief is fading. The Ramlila hasn't changed because the Maharaja is a conservative. After him? Elsewhere Ramlila has changed. Today people come to see friends, relations, make purchases. Before they had to walk, had no money to waste or spend. Now with good income they travel by train and bus, they visit the city and buy. Some leave before arati. (Schechner and Hess 71)

 

The aim of this paper is to trace this transition of attitudes towards the form (not the epic). The paper also tries to examine the factors that might have been responsible for this transition in Ramlila’s reception by its audience. What is of concern to this paper is not the parochial lamenting and reminiscing of older and higher regards for the Ramlila, or the glorification of its religiousness, but the gradual and inevitable transmutation of the hallowed Ramlila into a commercialised ‘show’; or maybe the convenient co-existing of the ‘sanctified reverence’ and the ‘secular rejoicing’, where the idea of the ‘commercial’ and the ‘marketplace’ need not be read as necessarily derogatory.

 

The Ramlila’s emergence might be explained under the influence of the Bhakti Movement between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The movement signified an “upsurge of the devotional fervor” (Jain 37) that resulted in the emergence of many traditional forms that had religious allegiances  as far as the subjects of their performances were concerned. Traditional forms such as the Ramlila, Raslila, Ankia Nat, Krishnattam, Koodiyattam, Kathakali, Mayurbhanja Chhau Ramayana, are based on mythological stories and are “organised for a wider dissemination and popularity of the objectives of some specific religion or religious sect”(40). Nemichandra Jain explains this growing fascination with religion during this period as:

 

…during the middle ages, the assertion of religious identity took the form of a struggle for the very  survival as distinct people or society. The conflict and antagonism with the Muslim conquerors and rulers mainly centered around religion and the co-existence of the people with them could be really possible only on the basis of acceptance of an independent, distinct identity at the religious level. Thus, during this period, it was mainly through the religious movements, that an exchange, mutual adjustment, synthesis or harmony between the indigenous and outside ideologies, social ideals and beliefs became possible. (41)

 

Many people till date believe that the telling of the Rama story in itself is a sacred act. Hence the actors in a Ramlila are the swarups/incarnations of the godly spirits. It has been a social tradition among local Hindu communities to watch a performance of the Ramlila as if conducting a puja or worship. Philip Ludgendorf also stresses the religious factors which draw the millions of devotees into the mammoth affair that Ramlila is. His essay records a devotee’s observation: "the Lord has four fundamental aspects [vigrah]: name, form, acts, and abode [nam, rup, lila, and dham ]—catch hold of any one of these and you'll be saved!" (Ludgendorf 250). Spectators of all kinds—saadhus, ramnamis, and local residents—might have superficially different reasons for coming to the Ramlila, but fundamentally, it is the sheer sanctity that binds them all together. The Ramlila, claim Hess, Schechner and Ludgendorf, has a transformative effect on its audience if experienced totally. Balwant Gargi cites an incident to support the sacred nature of the performance where when one of the spectators asked the actor playing Rama to remove his crown for a photograph, “the head priest thundered a rebuke: ‘It is not a drama, but an act of faith! Once Rama puts on the crown, nobody can take it off. He is the god. Who are you to ask the god to remove his headgear?”’ (109). The audience is filled with darshanabhilashis or worshippers awaiting a glimpse of God. A lot of them carry flower garlands and other offerings with them to honour the swarups or  (literal translation of the word swarup: God’s own image) the actors who play the Gods During the Ramlila “people come to just look at [Rama] and his wife, Sita, mother of the world. Or to touch their feet, accept a lotus blossom from their hands. These devotees are face to face with gods, with boys, with maya-lila” (Schechner 116).Ironically though, these same characters cease to be the swarups the moment each day’s lila is over. These are small time local actors who come from poor families and get paid very nominal fees for playing the roles allotted to them. On stage, donning the Gods’ garb and garment, they are the Gods themselves; offstage returning to their respective places, they are just lesser mortals, non-entities who are mere paid performers, stripped of the power to hold the audiences together. With the suspension of lila, the maya too loosens its grip over the erstwhile awed audience. Precisely herein lies the contour that seamlessly weaves the religious and the non-religious.

 

Richard Schechner explains with relation to Indian theatre tradition that the concepts of maya and lila are an inherent part of the Indian philosophy. The terms may be loosely translated to mean ‘illusion’ and ‘play’ and seem to imply that “all experienced reality is constructed”  (2002:114). The notion of ‘actor’ and ‘god’ thus becomes interchangeable. Gods play out a human drama and through their lilas the world of illusions is granted a semblance of reality. This lila when emulated by the humans elevates them to the status of gods foregrounding the presence of divine in the human lila. The human enactment of Ramlila allows for variations in its staging as might be evident by the way it is performed in different parts of India. Apart from the differences in its staging techniques the message that a performance might carry also varies. A good example would be the Ramlila performed at Southall which we discuss later in the article.

 

With the stabilisation of the socio-political situation in post-Independence India (in the 1950’s), and with the  Nehruvian rhetoric of secularity, religious intensity was to a large extent sent to the background. However, one has to keep in mind the twin purpose behind the staging of stories from the epics during the middle ages of Indian theatre tradition (fourteenth to seventeenth centuries) –firstly the propagation of religion and its tenet; and secondly, a subdued protest against the presence of Mughal conquerors and their different religion, thus reinforcing the religious-cultural identity of the spectator and performer. The very act of thus performing a religious story was simultaneously imbued with a spirit of rebellion.
 

During the time of British rule also the burning of the effigy of Ravana came to represent victory against the British rule in India though it never lost its religious aspects. Popular and regional folk forms of theatre were a source of anxiety for the British as they realised the significance of the theatre’s “ability …to incite audience” (Bhatia 2). The limited number of literate Indians added to the importance of the role played by theatre and especially street theatre in India. Bhatia in the introduction of her book Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance asserts that in “largely non-literate cultures …printed materials would only reach a small percentage of the educated elite and thus the special attention paid to theatre and its various forms as tools of resistance” (5). Street performances and in particular the ones that dealt with mythological themes were significant as they seemingly were in no way connected to the contemporary situation but every time a demon was killed by the gods it came to denote the loosening shackles of the British rule in India. Moreover, the audience in such performances went more or less unregulated, unlike the ones in the theatre buildings where only the Europeans or elites could gain entrance.

 

The playwrights were also incorporating mythological themes in their plays as a form of protest when the political dramas were being censured and repressed through the Dramatic Performances Censorship Act of 1876. The mythology based plays were “interspersed with commentaries and contained elements of melodrama” (Bhatia 43). The playwrights added religious overtones to the plays that dealt with socio-political dominance, thus creating a ‘safe’ space for their protest against British rule as these plays did not fall under the purview of the Dramatic Performances Censorship Act. In addition to this, the religious nature of these plays “challenged the perception of Indian drama as ‘immoral’ and ‘obscene’ and accomplished at the same time its intended purpose” (Bhatia 49). The religious traditional forms thus provided inspiration and foundational material to base the plays of protest.

 

This holds true for relatively recent performances of the Ramlila which have moved beyond the geographical limits of the Indian sub-continent. Paula Richman provides an example of such an adaptation of the form in her essay “The Ramlila Migrates to Southall”:

 

On October 19, 1979, Southall Black Sisters (henceforth SBS), a feminist group of South Asian and African Caribbean women from Southall, Greater London, ended their Ramlila, as usual, by burning an effigy of Ravana…SBS framed and periodically interrupted their rendition of the Ramlila with humorous commentary that gave a topical slant to incidents, relating them to socio-economic conditions, domestic and national politics, and sexism. Ravana wore a huge mask, on which each of his ten heads had been drawn to represent an aspect of racism that non-white groups in Britain encountered, including faces of Enoch Powell, Maggie Thatcher, and other political candidates, the insignia of the riot police, and an image standing for restrictive immigration laws.  (309)

 

This multi-ethnic performance was significant for the fact that the script and the performance were moulded to suit the purpose of Southall Black Sisters. The religious nature of the story was overshadowed by other concerns like the discrimination and racism faced by the non-white public at the hands of the Southall locality’s white residents, women’s place in society as exemplified through Sita’s relationship with Rama, other issues of local importance. The traditional Ramlila gains in meaning through its contemporaneous adaptation and one realises the significance of the Rama story beyond its religious worth.

        

In yet another guise the ‘fun’ Ramlila has also become a presence. The Ramlilas in rural settings or even in smaller localities in the city are adapted in a way that is supposed to ‘entertain’ the targeted audience. The main action of the Ramlila is interspersed with slapstick and topical comments. In recent times one can also find dance numbers playing during certain parts of the Rama story, for instance, Ravana being entertained in his court by apsaras or celestial dancers performing to the tunes of popular (often vulgar) Bollywood songs. It reminds one of the Indian Classical categorisation of dramas into ten types (as maybe found in Bharat’s Natyashastra when the Ramlila as a theatre form was not even in existence) or the more recent tripartite categorisation of drama by Bhartendu Harishchandra. Both classifications allow for drama types which to a certain extent are aimed at the lower strata of society and thus are more overtly humorous in nature (Dalmia 35). While Bharata does not mention Ramlila specifically, Harishchandra in his categorization puts Ramlila and other religious traditional forms under the third category of Bhrasht or corrupt. The three divisions that he talks about are –poetical drama or kavyamishra, pure spectacle or shuddhakautuk and corrupt or bhrashta. Dramas in which poetry is the mainstay becomes the first (higher) category in his tripartite division. In the second he includes “puppetry, mime, feats of skills, and other forms of civilised entertainment” (35). The last category “from which he distances himself [belongs to] those that originally possessed theatricality, but which have since degenerated; no recognisable dramatic quality is any longer to be found in them […] and they have become devoid of poetry. [In this] he includes not only the popular forms bhand, Indarsabha, tamasha and yatra, but also, surprisingly given his pious bent, forms explicitly rooted in religious traditions such as rasa, lila and jhankis”(35).

 

The form and function of smaller Ramlilas today then has moved beyond the religious to the entertainment factor. The audience is aware of the religious implications of the performance but enjoys the Bollywood songs and dance numbers all the same. This can be attributed in part to the general Bollywoodization of visual culture in India. Interjecting the main performance with familiar Hindi film songs makes the Ramlila more peppy, perky and suitably contemporary, as if it were custom-made for the townsfolk who do not care much for the religiosity of the tradition. The performance nonetheless has an overall consciousness of divinity; it is therefore careful not to slip away into the trajectory of the blasphemous and the profane. Improvisation of the dialogues by actors on stage, witticisms and impromptu dance numbers from the Hindi film industry add to the general mood of frolic and provide the general audience with opportunities for laughter. This paper’s authors went with their friends to watch the Ramlila being performed in a field that lies within the periphery of their educational institute’s campus. The main action was peppered with improvised comments by the stage characters that referred to the performance as a ‘prastuti’ or a presentation particularly designed with the audience in mind. The women in the audience seated in  separate rows and columns from those of men, as if in a ‘satsang’(a religious gathering to hear out seers and pundits) always taking care to cover their heads with the loose ends of their sarees as a mark of their respect and ‘bhakti’ for the Gods on stage. The posing of Hanuman for the cameras (the little children who fixed their gazes on the long, fancy unreal tail of the unreal Hanuman) while still onstage and the dancing ‘apsaras’ (who were men playing women’s parts) stopping in the middle of a dance to collect the offerings in the form of nominal money or what the prompter preferred to call ‘mudra’(Sanskrit word for ‘token’ or seals of exchange) from the audience were a source of great entertainment to the audience. Even the singers offstage who were supposed to be singing the couplets from Ramcharitmanas stop and rest their throats when the notes taxed their throats. These and in many other small ways the performance’s tenor shifted from religious to entertaining without actually denying the religious nature of the performance.

 

 The whole set/structure of these localised Ramlilas are miniature models of a mela or a fun-fair which is typically designed to keep the sacred and the commercial separate. The centre-stage is set for the performance with relevant structures like a loosely-carved Lanka (which has to be burned down by Hanuman in due course of the lila) at a slight distance from the stage. The outer circle or the non-performance area is a zone of fun, frolic and food where the spectators and enthusiasts crowd about for small time shopping of items such as clay toys and plastic masks of Hanuman and Ravan. But the Ramlila grounds, despite the apparent demarcation of the sacred and the secular become a site/sight where religion most subtly transitions into an industry. The line between ‘Bhakti’ and buffoonery disappears.

 

Keeping all these facts in mind it will be difficult to say that the function or the perception of the Ramlila has changed completely. It will be more appropriate to say that through the passage of time the traditional form of Ramlila has moved beyond its ‘traditional’ functions and gained more layers of meanings and connotations along the way. Referring back to Schechner’s explanation of maya and lila as illusion and play one can extend ‘play’ to mean the changes in the performances from one performance to another. This way it can be suggested that like the play of the Gods brings the world into being, similarly, the play of the actors/swarups on stage brings a world of diverse, interspersed meanings into existence. The religious consciousness is present in all the performances. The other functions of the form (like entertainment or protest) keep adding sub-textual coats of varying hues and textures to the main body of the act through the lila on stage.

 

Works Cited

Bhatia, Nandi. Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance: Theatre and Politics in Colonial and Postcolonial India. New Delhi: OUP, 2004. Print.

Blackburn, Stuart H. "Creating Conversations: The Rama Story as Puppet Play in Kerala." Many Ramayanas : The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in. Ed. Paula Richman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. 156-172. Web. 23 March 2011. <http://www.bookos-z1.org>.

Dalmia, Vasudha. Poetics, Plays, and Performances: The Politics of Modern Indian Theatre. New Delhi: OUP, 2006. Print.

Freitag, Sandria Ed. Culture and Power in Banaras: Community, Performance, and Environment, 1800-1980. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989. Web. 20 Feb. 2015. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft6p3007sk

Gargi, Balwant. Folk Theatre of India. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966. Print.

Hess, Linda and Schechner. “The Ramlila of Ramnagar” The Drama Review. 21.3 (Sept. 1977): 51-82. The MIT Press. Web. 11 June. 2015.

Jain, Nemichandra. Indian Theatre: Tradition, Continuity and Change. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing Huse Pvt Ltd, 1992. Print.

Kapur, Anuradha. Actors, Pilgrims, Kings and Gods: The Ramlila at Ramnagar. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1990. Print.

Lal, Ananda. Theatre of India. New Delhi: OUP, 2009. Print.

Ludgendorf, Philip. "Words Made Flesh: The Text Enacted.” The Life of a Text. Berkeley: U of California P, 1991. 248-340. UC-Press E-Book Collections, 1982-2004. Web. 1 June 2015. www.publishing.cidlib.org.

Richman, Paula. "The Ramlila Migrates to Southall.” Questioning Ramayanas: A South Asian Tradition. Ed. Paula Richman. New Delhi: OUP, 2000. 309-328. Print.

Sax, S. William. “The Ramnagar Ramlila: Text, Performance, Pilgrimage.” History of Religions 30.2 (Nov.,1990): 129-153. JSTOR. Web. 12 March. 2015.

 Schechner, Richard. Performance Studies: An Introduction. 2nd. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

--- "The Ramlila of Ramnagar” The Drama Review. 21.3 (Sept. 1977): 51-82. The MIT Press. Web. 11 June. 2015. www.jstor.org.