I really enjoyed this week’s reading “Yes to Sita, No to Ram: The Continuing Hold of Sita on Popular Imagination in India,” particularly because there are lots of apparent ties to my own research project. For my paper, I am analyzing the creation stories in Genesis 1-3 and its impact on gender norms in Christian and secular circles. This reading, which discusses different women’s interpretations of the Ramayana, has really made evident that just because one pervasive story tries to establish norms (in this case, domestic gendered norms), there can still be a variety of interpretations that stem from it. In this week’s chapter, the author provides accounts of several different modern Hindu women’s interpretations of the story and the roles/behaviors of Sita and Ram. It iterates that there can be any number of different understandings of the story, and that just because it is influential in the society does not mean that everyone loves the story.
I also really liked the reading from Many Ramayanas in the discussion of women’s oral tradition of the Ramayana. This chapter analyzes how this event and its discussion would “inevitably have various versions depending on the attitude, point of view, intent, and social position of the teller” (Rao 115). Different women from different social castes have varying perceptions of the Ramayana, and this chapter provides accounts of Brahmin women vs. non-Brahmin women interpreting and retelling the story. This is a new angle that I could really explore for my own research project and look how class also plays a role in the understanding of established gender norms in Genesis 1-3.