EPIC ATTRACTION
Ramayana helps India use soft power to connect with countries in South and Southeast Asia and other parts of the world where the Hindu epic is popular. By Narendra Kaushik in New Delhi
Anakagung Susila Panji believes it is inappropriate to connect the
Ramayana with religion. The head of Wiraga Sandhi, an Indonesian dance troupe currently performing different episodes of the Hindu epic across India, he works with Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Christian performers. Most of the 300 artists belonging to the group back home on Indonesia are Muslims.
For Panji and other artists in the group, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the other major Sanskrit epic originating in India, are a part of their cultural identity. They have nothing to do with their religion.
“The message in the Ramayana is about courage, faith, believing and serving. Anybody can perform in it as long as he knows the story and understands the character,” he told Asia Focus through an interpreter during an interview at the Indonesian embassy in New Delhi.
The performances by Wiraga Sandhi are among the highlights of the third International Ramayana Festival now taking place in India. Apart from New Delhi, Panji and his group of five dance teachers (all Hindus coincidentally) will be performing Rama
yana episodes in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state, and Ayodhya, the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama. On Sept 11 they performed an episode called Hanu
man Doota (Hanuman the Messenger) at the Kamani auditorium in New Delhi.
Wiraga Sandhi is touring the country at the invitation of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), an autonomous organisation working under the Union Ministry of External Affairs.
Besides the Indonesian group, troupes from Malaysia, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Karnataka state in South India are participating in the third edition of the festival, which will end on Wednesday.
Eleven members of the Kalpana Dance Theatre from Malaysia are performing Sita
Swayamvaram and other dance dramas in New Delhi, Chandigarh, Bengaluru and Chennai. Founder Shangita Namasivayam told Asia Focus that the Ramayana was very popular among the Indian community in Malaysia.
Thailand participated in the inaugural International Ramayana Festival in 2015 and also has a presence at this year’s event. Groups from Singapore, Cambodia, Fiji, Bhutan, Trinidad and Tobago and Sri Lanka have also taken part in the past.
According to Mahinder K Sehgal, programme director with the ICCR, the objective of the festival is to explore cultural diplomacy through the Hindu epic, which is popular in several countries in South and Southeast Asia and also countries where people of Indian origin are settled in large numbers.
The Ramayana was believed to have travelled to Southeast Asia in the sixth century AD. According to Sanskrit accounts from the Chenla kingdom (the precursor of the Khmer empire) of King Bhavavarman I, the Ramayana was one of the three scriptures that would be recited every day in the seventh century.
Many people in Thailand believe that part of the Ramayana took place in their country and that Hanuman carried san
jeevani booti (a magical herb that saved the life of Lakshman after he was injured in conflict) from Sapphaya hill in Chai Nat province to Lanka. They point to statues of Hanuman on Sapphaya and at Khao Samokorn in Lop Buri to prove their point.
Thai people believe Hanuman is still alive and visits a cave in Lop Buri once every three years to incapacitate a wounded demon there. In Thailand, the Ramayana forms the basis for performances of the
Ramakien, with as many as six versions known to have existed, although only three survive today.
Since the ascent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2014, the Indian central government and state governments belonging to his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have launched various efforts to use the Rama
yana to strengthen cultural connections with South and Southeast Asia and other countries. The strategy is not fundamentally different from that of South Korea, which has used pop music and dance as soft power in Asia in recent years.
Considering that major countries of South and Southeast Asia are predominantly Buddhist or Muslim, the Modi government has emphasised exploring the Ramayana as a cultural rather than a religious phenomenon.
Last year the Ayodhya Research Institute (ARI), an autonomous body under the Uttar Pradesh state government, spearheaded the publication of a research report, In the
Footsteps of Lord Rama in Thailand, compiled by Thai scholars.
The report, put together by a group headed by the prominent Sanskrit scholar Chirapat Prapandvidya, cites pictures from northeastern Thailand, a book titled
Hua Khon on masks and another book on mural paintings to prove the presence of the Ramayana in Thailand at least 800 years ago.
YP Singh, director of the Ayodhya Research Institute, is of the view that the
Ramayana reached Southeast Asia after the Kalinga war (261 BC) where King Ashoka renounced violence and embraced Buddhism. He believes people from Kalinga, in what is now the Indian state of Odisha, migrated to Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia and Cambodia after the war.
Singh cites the presence of the Ramlila (a re-enactment of Rama’s life and war with Ravana) in Buddhist Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia and Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia to illustrate that “religion is personal and culture is public and both can be developed simultaneously in any country”.
Indentured labourers sent abroad by the British from India to grow sugarcane before India’s independence became the agents for spreading the Rama story to other countries as well. They include Fiji, South Africa, Mauritius, Surinam, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Jamaica and other Caribbean nations. The presence of large Indian communities has also kept the Ramayana alive in the United States, the United Kingdom and other European countries.
In December last year, the Madhya Pradesh state government funded a World Ramayana Conference in Jabalpur where scholars from United States, India, the UK, Guyana, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Mauritius and other countries took part. The conference, organised by the ICCR, the Indira Gandhi Centre for the Arts and a private NGO called the Brahmrishi Mission Committee, paved the way for the formation of an Indo-Thai Ramayana Forum. The largest delegation came from Thailand.
In November this year, Tejpur University in Assam will hold a three-day international conference on the subject “Ram in Asian Life, Literature and Art” in collaboration with the Ayodhya Research Institute and the Culture Department of the Uttar Pradesh state government.
The message in the Ramayana is about courage, faith, believing and serving. Anybody can perform in it as long as he knows the story and understands the character” ANAKAGUNG SUSILA PANJI Wiraga Sandhi dance troupe leader