I find that as far as the Ramayana is concerned there are three points that are repeatedly raised. They are raised to prove that lord Rama was not infallible and had many faults and many of his actions are not acceptable to modern sensibilities. They are his suspecting of his wife’s chastity ,his killing of Shambuka who was doing penance and lastly his deceitful killing of Vali. All these are given as examples of his less than noble conduct and is often compared with Ravana’s noble character for he never violated Sita’s when she was in his custody.
The first one is of course regarding the Agni Pariksha. Before we go further we should know the story of Ramayana. Rama is the avatar of Lord Vishnu and he came to this world as Rama to set an example to human kind. And in the case of the Avatar his consort Sri Lakshmi also descends to aid the Lord in his divine works. She had incarnated as Sita to fulfill His plan. As the omnipotent Lord , Rama certainly knows that Sita was untouched otherwise omnipotence is meaningless. Neither can Sita be touched by any mortal or immortal , asura or rakshasha or man as she is the adhipathi of this universe. Thus the concept of his suspecting is wife here is a meaningless one. Clearly Rama was eager to establish that his wife was pure and fit for the throne of Ayodhya. And it was to this end that he asked her to undergo the Agni Pariksha which was meant to elevate the status of Sita amongst his subjects. Thus he actually shows how an ideal King should be , one who keeps the feelings of the public in mind.We must realize that in those days much was expected of kings , quite unlike today’s elected democratic rulers whose misdemeanor we have come to expect. Rama has thus established the code of conduct for an ideal king and by his act becomes flawless and worthy of respect.
Aurobindo commenting of Lord Rama
It was his business to be not necessarily a perfect, but a largely representative sattwic Man, a faithful husband and a lover, a loving and obedient son, a tender and perfect brother, father, friend—he is friend of all kinds of people, friend of the outcast Guhaka, friend of the Animal leaders, Sugriva, Hanuman, friend of the vulture Jatayu, friend of even Rakshasa Vibhishana. All that he was in a brilliant, striking but above all spontaneous and inevitable way, not with forcing of this note or that like Harishchandra or Shivi, but with a certain harmonious completeness. But most of all, it was his business to typify and establish the things on which the social idea and its stability depend, truth and honour, the sense of Dharma, public spirit and the sense of order. To the first, to truth and honour, much more than to his filial love and obedience to his father—though to that also—he sacrificed his personal rights as the elect of the King and the assembly and fourteen of the best years of his life and went into exile in the forests. To his public spirit and his sense of public order (the great and supreme civic virtue in the eyes of the ancient Indians, Greeks, Romans, for at that time the maintenance of the ordered community, not the separate development and satisfaction of the individual was the pressing need of the human evolution) he sacrificed his own happiness and domestic life and the happiness of Sita. In that he was at one with the moral sense of all the antique races, though at variance with the later romantic individualistic sentimental morality of the modern man who can afford to have that less stern morality just because the ancients sacrificed the individual in order to make the world safe for the spirit of social order. Finally, it was Rama's business to make the world safe for the ideal of the sattwic human being by destroying the sovereignty of Ravana, the Rakshasa menace. All this he did with such a divine afflatus in his personality and action that his figure has been stamped for more than two millenniums on the mind of Indian culture, and what he stood for has dominated the reason and idealising mind of man in all countries, and in spite of the constant revolt of the human vital, is likely to continue to do so until a greater ideal arises. And you say in spite of all these that he was no Avatar? If you like—but at any rate he stands among the few greatest Vibhutis. You may dethrone him now—for man is no longer satisfied with the sattwic ideal and is seeking for something more—but his work and meaning remain stamped on the past of the earth's evolving race. When I spoke of the gap that would be left by his absence, I did not mean a gap among the prophets and intellectuals, but a gap in the scheme of Avatarhood—there was somebody who was the Avatar of the sattwic Human as Krishna was the Avatar of the overmental Superman—I can see no one but Rama who can fill the place.
In Aurobindo’s view Rama came to complete an evolutionary task , the establishment of an orderly society where a satvic type was established firmly over and above the Rakshashic type.Where social order and ethics were more important than the individual freedom.So that on this stable foundation future races can enjoy individual freedom (with which they criticize Rama himself)
The second issue on which Rama is criticized is his treatment of Vaali. He was the monkey king who usurped the throne of Sugriva .
Madhva states that it is adharmic to kill sinners in a dharmic fashion. It is a sin to kill a sinner dharmically. It is dharmic to kill a sinners in an adharmic fahion. Sinners don’t deserve a dharmic death. Madhva lays great emphasis on yogyata or deservedness of individuals. A deva or a daivic person has the yogyata to be treated respectfully or fairly especially at the time of his death. But an Asuric individual cannot claim similar status.
Vaali was a sinner so he did not deserve to be killed from the front. He was therefore killed from behind. But on the other hand Ravana was one of the dvarapalakas of Vaikuntha who was cursed thrice to be born on earth and battle the Lord so he was basically of a divine nature. So Rama faces him squarely and from the front and defeats him and disarms and even asks him to come back tomorrow well armed. The humiliation of Ravana is recorded by Kambar “ Kadan pattar nenjam pol kalanginaan yelangai vendhan , indru poi naalai vaa endru vittane ”. When the Avatar descends , it first of all frees the earth of all evil doers and creates an atmosphere suitable for Yoga. Vishnu also uses this opportunity to take back all his closest devotees and especially the great souls who had been cursed to be born on earth to fulfill his plan for the cosmos.
Volume: 12 [CWSA] (Essays Divine and Human), Page: 495 Ravana's mind thought it was hungering after universal sovereignty and victory over Rama; but the aim his soul kept its vision fixed upon all the time was to get back to its heaven as soon as possible & be again God's menial. Therefore, as the shortest way, it hurled itself against God in a furious clasp of enmity.
At any rate Rama has proved his bravery in his fight against Ravana and also in his fight against the demons who tried to thwart the yagna of Vishwamitra. There was no need to prove it against an underserving infra human like Vaali.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 415 No, certainly not—an Avatar is not at all bound to be a spiritual prophet—he is never in fact merely a prophet, he is a realiser, an establisher—not of outward things only, though he does realise something in the outward also, but, as I have said, of something essential and radical needed for the terrestrial evolution which is the evolution of the embodied spirit through successive stages towards the Divine.
It was not at all Rama's business to establish the spiritual stage of that evolution—so he did not at all concern himself with that. His business was to destroy Ravana and to establish the Rama-rajya—in other words, to fix for the future the possibility of an order proper to the sattwic civilised human being who governs his life by the reason, the finer emotions, morality, or at least moral ideals, such as truth, obedience, co-operation and harmony, the sense of domestic and public order,—to establish this in a world still occupied by anarchic forces, the Animal mind and the powers of the vital Ego making its own satisfaction the rule of life, in other words, the Vanara and Rakshasa. This is the meaning of Rama and his life-work and it is according as he fulfilled it or not that he must be judged as Avatar or no Avatar. It was not his business to play the comedy of the chivalrous Kshatriya with the formidable brute beast that was Bali, it was his business to kill him and get the Animal under his control .
If we judge Rama by our human standards , bullets for karsevaks and biriyani for terrorists , Rama certainly does not come out very well. But Rama belongs to the divine world and in that world there is a difference between divine and demonic , the two are not equal (never equal according to Madhva) and the treatment is different for both of them.
Vishnu as both Rama and Krishna upheld the divine law. As Rama he upheld it by his actions and as Krishna he never participated in the wars but he always advised his servants to kill the asuras by deceit and trickery. Thus Bhimasena was advised by Krishna to hit Duryodhana below the waist and kill him which also helped fulfill Bhimasena’s vow that he would shatter the sinners thighs. Also when killing Keechaka , Arjuna dresses as a lady to seduce the Asura and once inside the trap , he is eliminated by Bhima . Again Bhimasena after killing Dushashana tears up his body to pieces. When Bhishma objects to this as an act of barbarism Krishna comes to the defence of Bhima and states that a sinner like Dushashana only deserved that kind of a death , he deserves to be torn apart and scatterd in the battlefield and not given a decent treatment. But when it came to Shishupala , the reincarnation of Ravana , or more precisely the dvarapalaka , Krishna allows him to abuse him a hundred times and after that kills him with his Chakra.
The third issue on which Rama is often attacked is his killing of Shambuka. We are told that Shambuka was a shudra who was doing penance to attain salvation and he did not like the shudra aspiring for salvation so he was killed off. But the real reason was that Shambuka was an asura and he was aspiring for Indra’s position and he was doing penance for that. It was to protect devatas from the asura that Rama destroyed his penance. Also let us not forget Rama ate the half-eaten fruits given to him by Shabari who was aspiring for salvation . Do you mean to save Rama loves Scheduled Tribes but hates Shudras ? This is really funny to say the least.
Epilogue
I cannot think of a better closing than quoting Aurobindo
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 413
I have no intention of entering into a supreme defence of Rama—I only entered into the points about Bali etc. because these are usually employed nowadays to belittle him as a great personality on the usual level. But from the point of view of Avatarhood I would no more think of defending his moral perfection according to modern standards than I would think of defending Napoleon or Caesar against the moralists or the democratic critics or the debunkers in order to prove that they were Vibhutis. Vibhuti, Avatar are terms which have their own meaning and scope, and they are not concerned with morality or immorality, perfection or imperfection according to small human standards or setting an example to men or showing new moral attitudes or giving new spiritual teachings. These may or may not be done, but they are not at all the essence of the matter.
Also, I do not consider your method of dealing with the human personality of Rama to be the right one. It has to be taken as a whole in the setting that Valmiki gave it (not treated as if it were the story of a modern man) and with the significance that he gave to his hero's personality, deeds and works. If it is pulled out of its setting and analysed under the dissecting knife of a modern ethical mind, it loses all its significance at once. Krishna so treated becomes a debauchee and trickster who no doubt did great things in politics—but so did Rama in war. Achilles and Odysseus pulled out of their setting become, one a furious egoistic savage, and the other a cruel and cunning savage. I consider myself under an obligation to enter into the spirit, significance, atmosphere of the Mahabharata, Iliad, Ramayana and identify myself with their time-spirit before I can feel what their heroes were in themselves apart from the details of their outer action.
As for the Avatarhood, I accept it for Rama because he fills a place in the scheme—and seems to me to fill it rightly—and because when I read the Ramayana I feel a great afflatus which I recognise and which makes of its story—mere faery-tale though it seems—a parable of a great critical transitional event that happened in the terrestrial evolution and gives to the main character's personality and action a significance of the large typical cosmic kind which these actions would not have had if they had been done by another man in another scheme of events. The Avatar is not bound to do extraordinary actions, but he is bound to give his acts or his work or what he is—any of these or all—a significance and an effective power that are part of something essential to be done in the history of the earth and its races.
All the same, if anybody does not see as I do and wants to eject Rama from his place, I have no objection—I have no particular partiality for Rama—provided somebody is put in who can worthily fill up the gap his absence leaves. There was somebody there, Valmiki's Rama or another Rama or somebody not Rama. Also I do not mean that I admit the validity of your remarks about Rama, even taken as a piecemeal criticism, but that I have no time for today. I maintain my position about the killing of Bali and the banishment of Sita in spite of Bali's preliminary objection to the procedure, afterwards retracted, and in spite of the opinion of Rama's relatives, necessarily from the point of view of the antique dharma—not from that of any universal moral standard—which besides does not exist, since the standard changes according to clime or age.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 419
I am afraid your picture of him is quite out of focus—you efface the main lines of the characters, belittle and brush out all the lights to which Valmiki gave so much value and prominence and hammer always at some details and some parts of shadow which you turn into the larger part of Rama. That is what the debunkers do—but a debunked figure is not the true figure.
Uploaded on 03-Oct-2007