Tuesday:
In the “History, Myth, India, and Hinduism” article, it is made clear that the Ramayana has been used in a recent context to establish hierarchy between the Indian populace. Recently, the RSS and the Hindu government have set out to establish that “ancestors of all people of Indian origin - including 172 million Muslims - were Hindu and that they must accept their common ancestry as part of Bharat Mata, or Mother India.” This established a primacy on the population’s Hindu heritage, which in turn portrays current Indian Muslims as having strayed from their true and correct heritage. This group is attempting to make this claim by proving that the Ramayana is a historical and factually true story, which thereby would prove “ that today’s Hindu population is directly descended from the land’s first inhabitants.”
In “The Rama Temple Incident,” the many ways that the Ramayana and Rama as a character have been used as “a potent weapon for the Hindu communal forces to reap the much desired political dividends” (22). In this chapter it is discussed how the “Rama legend represents the victory of Hinduism over Buddhism,” again placing a hierarchy between the religious groups centered on Rama’s story and other stories (23). Additionally, the presumed destruction of a Ram temple by Muslims has justified tension and even battles between the two religious groups (13).
Thursday:
Whereas in Tuesday’s reading there is a presented hierarchy between Muslims and Hindus because of some perception that true Indians descend from Hinduism, this reading presents more interconnectivity between the two. This chapter discusses both a Muslim poet and a Muslim scholar who study the Ramayana. In fact, the author notes that “we regularly encounter names of Muslim scholars who have studied the Tamil Ramayana” (273). Though Tuesday’s readings portray more resentment between these religious groups in India, this text provides examples of more cross over between them. And one of these Muslim scholars of the Ramayana, Justice Ismail, is even revered by the Shankaracharya, a prominent Hindu Brahmin who has a large following in India; they are noted in the chapter as having met for “friendly and scholarly discussions and conversations over the last thirty years” (278). This friendship between this Hindu man and Muslim man stands in stark contrast with some of the portrayals of Muslim/Hindu relations from the beginning of the week.