[Reader-list] Transcendental love

[S.Fatima]

Transcendental love
Tarun Vijay

Hindus are the most celebrative people who could
create a Khajuraho and depict all aspects of life with
the finesse of gods and divinity of Mother Earth. No
one saw any eroticism and lust in it till the
secularists of the Valentine's Day variety arrived,
trying to push “live-in relationships” and “one night
stand” freedom motifs, using Hindu motifs of eternal
love that defined higher levels of spirituality and
submission. They want us to oppose their notion of
Valentine’s Day so that a controversy is created and
fetches more publicity and money. I think we better
disappoint them. To each his own. 

To me love is sacrifice, giving without ever demanding
anything in return. True love has to be blind and
beyond logic. In fact it begins where logic ends. And
it's essentially beyond the realm of the physical,
something that can only be felt and not described.
Bulle Shah, the great poet of love, had reached a
state of union with the creator whom he loved as his
beloved. Then only he could say: let all the temples
and mosques be razed but never hurt a heart because
God resides there. God does not seek a one-room cosy
place but prefers to live in the heart of devotees. We
sing many songs to this effect but keep erecting
places of worship everyday and ignore and insult those
who have god in their heart. 

Suppose there was not a single temple, mosque or
church on this planet but all of us lived happily
respecting each others' sensitivities and viewpoints,
with love prevailing sans boundaries. Wouldn’t this be
great? Deriding love in the name of obscurantist
values and then shouting the name of god from rooftops
disturbs the heavens and destroys the earth. Why do we
need a temple or a mosque when we have a heart to
worship and respect? 

I began this column on Basant, the auspicious day when
spring begins and the air brings love, joy and
spirituality. It's the day when Saraswati Puja is
conducted and children offer flowers to their
teachers, buy new books and wear new clothes. The day
has a biological relation with us and we have grown
with it; it's not a transplanted kidney. A few years
ago, I was in Lahore on this day and saw colourful and
delightful celebrations there. Basant brings
all-pervading joy and hotels in Pakistan are booked
months in advance; there are special food festivals,
kite-flying competitions and people wish each other
warmly. The advent of spring is celebrated for a
fortnight around the same time in China. Spring is New
Year time too and they celebrate it with a lot of
gaiety. “Valentine's Day has reduced the feelings of
true love to mere physical relationship,” lamented the
great Chinese literateur Li Zhi, who is also the
President of the Writers’ Association (equivalent to
our Sahitya Akademi). In China they are trying to
promote the spring festival as their biggest annual
event and special efforts are made to popularise it
among college students. 

Love can't be vulgar and a mechanism to extract
favours and gratification. It's not permissiveness or
materialistic. It's an uncontrollable, indescribable
fire of bliss that can’t be reversed or extinguished.
It's a river of fire and the blessed soul has to cross
it swimming. Mahadevi Verma wrote: “Agnipath ke paar
chandan chandni ka desh hai kya, ab kaho sandesh hai
kya (Is there a regime of moonlit sandal beyond this
path of fire?)” Nobody knows. This love made Meera a
symbol of love sublime and she smilingly drank the cup
of poison sent to her by her belligerent husband. Love
and lust have to be differentiated like a wife and
prostitute. It was the love for the motherland that
made revolutionaries embrace death with Mera Rang De
Basanti Chola playing on their lips. And it’s the love
for serving humanity and ensuring that children do not
suffer that makes yogis like Sri Sri Ravishankar and
Ramdev and the ochre-robed monks of Swaminarayan and
Gayatri Pariwar, pracharaks of the RSS and Mata
Amritanandmayi's spiritual followers dedicate their
life for service. The same spirit of love and
submission to the cause I have seen among Christian
missionaries who leave their home and hearth thousands
of miles away and serve people and their faith in the
most trying circumstances. We may differ with their
objective but their love to serve can't be questioned.
The element of undiluted love made Bhai Kanhaiya to
offer water even to injured opponents and Jesus to
pardon all those who had betrayed him. Love is a state
of mind where nothing exists except you and the
beloved. 

This love is the love of Basant. Give what you can,
and be content. The rest is simple masala and
self-deception. 
And who else can represent that power of love and
strength of character than Sita? 

Ram and Sita – they couldn't live without each other,
yet adhered to the values of righteousness and became
an immortal embodiment of love. 

Sita was all that India could think of in womanhood.
That's the reason perhaps those scholars and so-called
modern analysts of women issues find it so revolting
to see a Gandhi projecting Sita's ideal before Indian
masses as a symbol of lioness, anti-colonialism,
indigenous cultural values and a powerful icon of
unyielding swadeshi spirit . To him and many other
thinkers rooted in the civilisational contours that
make us identifiable as Indians, Sita remains a far
superior character than even Rama. Her silent
suffering and enduring patience epitomises Indian
moral values. 

There is an attempt to place Sita in the framework of
so-called modern day value systems and attributes that
a western oriented contemporary writer would like to
see in a woman of today. So Sita has to be portrayed
as a rebellious, uncompromising, courageous and
independent character in the mould of Simone de
Beauvoir or Betty Friedan. 

Why should it be necessary? Why can't we appreciate
and adore what Sita was and has remained since time
immemorial? Why do we end up subscribing to the notion
that devotion to one’s husband, agreeing to an agni
pariksha (ordeal by fire), silent suffering and
accepting exile in a forest even when pregnant are the
actions of a woman who deserves pity and not respect?
Such interpretations are meant to make wrong an entire
socio-cultural fabric of a civilisationally rich land.


Its ironical that values that have sustained our
society for thousands of years and inspired great
souls are sought to be “reformed” and amended by
modernists whose singular passion is to debunk and
dispossess whatever India has cherished for ages. It's
not necessary to denounce the past to glorify the
present and the future should find its own feet. 

Sita's insistence on following Rama into exile and
Rama's anguish on seeing her in agony while walking to
the forest has been vividly narrated in the Kavitavali
of Tulsidas. Her love for Rama and his deep feelings
for her overwhelm people even today. Rama's tears
began to flow when he saw his beloved trying to walk
the rough road ridden with pebbles and thorns while
following him to the forest. It was breaking with
tradition for Sita to insist that she would join her
husband in exile. A timid, compromising and
traditional wife wouldn't have dared to defy the norms
of her times in such manner. When Rama tells her about
the rigours of life in exile, Sita replies: "Any term
of austerities or forest or even heaven, let it be to
me with you only. To me, who follow you behind, there
will be no tiredness. I shall remain in the path
without any fatigue, as remaining in a place of
recreation or as in a sleep. While walking with you,
blades of kusha grass, shrubs by the name of kaasa,
reeds and rushes and plants with prickles which fall
in the path will touch my soles like a heap of cotton
or soft deerskin. I shall reckon the dust raised by
the strongest wind that will cover my body as sandal
dust of highest advantage. Your companionship will be
a heaven to me. Without you, it will be a hell. Oh,
Rama! By knowing thus my great love, obtain supreme
joy with me.” (Valmiki Ramayana). 

Even Lankan authors admiringly acknowledge Sita’s
strong character. They have kept intact Sita's memory
with great respect. I recently read a beautiful
description of the place where Sita was kept as
Ravana's captive: "Ravana took Sita from Ravana Kotte
for greater security to the smallest plateau of Nuwara
Eliya and to a locality known as Asoka Aramaya a
pleasure garden which had beautiful scenery and dense
of forest surrounding it. Asoka trees flowered there.
Sita Eliya on the outskirts of Nuwara Eliya is
associated with Sita. Hanuman also came here looking
for Sita.” 

(Rama, Ravana & Sita: Road to Ramayana, by Sirancee
Gunawardene). 

Ravana held her captive in Ashok Vatika; that place
too is well preserved even today and a temple has been
constructed with generous help from an entrepreneur
from Punjab. In captivity, Sita was chaste even in her
thoughts and consistently rejected Ravana's advances,
remaining unwavering in her love and devotion to her
husband. Rama too left no stone unturned to free her
and organised a massive assault on Lanka in order to
see his beloved again. 

Sita was anguished when asked to prove her purity
after returning from Lanka; even the fire refused to
harm her, the gods were pained and protected her. The
famous Tamil poet Kamba has vividly described Sita's
anguish in his celebrated Ramayana Iravataram, written
in the 12th century AD. The entire universe is deeply
disturbed when she is about to enter the fire. The
fire (Agni) leaves her untouched and scolds Rama:
"Have you abandoned Dharma [righteousness]? The earth
may get divided into two and there will be
unprecedented famine, the universe may not survive
this ordeal to the most pious lady.” Such is the
strength of Sita's love and inner self. 

If Sita's character was weak, why would Indians and
east Asians adore her as the greatest icon for their
life? 

>From Thailand to Laos, Janaki's characterisation in
literature and temples has inspired generations. 

Without Janaki, there is no Rama. A pious person
mentions Sita’s name before Rama’s in everyday chants
– it is always Sitaram, never ever Ramasita. 

That's the power of love sublime, the spirit of Basant
and message of a celebrative Bharat. 

The author is the editor of Panchjanya, a Hindi weekly
brought out by the RSS. The views expressed are his
personal. 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Tarun_Vijay_Transcendental_love/articleshow/2780342.cms



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