Author Amish Tripathi talks about his new book, Raavan, the third in his Ramachandra series, after Ram and Sita.
Amish, the author who made mythology cool, is a bestselling Indian writer in English whose books have sold five million copies. His new book, Raavan, the third in his Ramachandra series, after Ram and Sita, is the darkest and deals with a complex character. Amish talks about villains in our stories, how India is not proud of its culture and extr-eme religious positions with Satish PadmanaÂbhan. Excerpts:
There have been so many retellings of the Ramayana and yet its power remains intact. How were you swept by it?
I had heard these wonderful lines바카라”no Indian reads or hears the Ramayana for the first time. We are just born with it. We are a surviving ancient culture and these stories are in our genes, helping us explore them, learn from them, celebrate them. One reason why our culture has remained alive is our tradition of retellings바카라”keeping the soul of the old but adding something new. We have the ideal mix of rigidity and flexibility. I learnt much I write today from my family. My grandfather was a pandit in Kashi; my parents are deeply religious.
Your new book Raavan is one of the darkest you have written. What kind of research goes into it?
I don바카라™t do research for a particular book. Whenever I am not writing, I keep reading. I read five to six books a month, I read non-fiction and my favourite genres are mythology, spirituality, science, politics, economics. I travel a lot and learn something about local ways. For instance, in Kenya I was fascinated by the warrior culture of the Masais.
Raavan is a very dark character. But he is different from your ordinary villain. He바카라™s a scholarly, very complex man, he is not just violent. He is a brilliant musician, poet, good dancer, a good administrator. He is a fascinating, and troubling, character to write about. Even his violence is kind of studied바카라¦he will actually behead someone and look closely at the gaping neck, how the blood is spurting out. For him that바카라™s a path to knowledge.
In our popular culture, do you think depictions of Raavan have become monochromatic?
Not just him. Sadly, in popular culture we have lost much of the depth and nuance of the original. I blame our education system. We teach little about our ancÂient culture, our ancient texts, our traditional plays. In an atmosphere of ignorance, half-baked knowledge will prosper.
What do you mean by not teaching our culture?
Why should literature have Shakespeare and Tennyson? It should have Kalidasa or Thiruvalluvar, it should have Mirza Ghalib, it should have Bhasa. Why should mathematics have only Euclid and PythaÂgoras? It should have BhasÂkaracharya. Why should the MahabhaÂrata and the Ramayana not be taught as it was in our gurkuls and madrasas till the British came. It is the heritage of everyone, irrespective of caste, religion or region. Â
But you know there is the narrative that our past was not all great바카라¦.
No, that바카라™s not what I am saying. Yes, there is a painful part of invasions as well. I think one of the misfortunes of India is that our historians called the Turkic colonial rule 바카라˜Islamic rule바카라™. Nobody calls British colonial rule Christian rule. To my mind, calling Turkic colonial rule Islamic is a major mistake. Islam didn바카라™t come to India with the Turk invaders. Islam came a lot earlier. In fact, the second oldest mosque is in India. The Delhi sultans were Turkic. You read the list of nobles, you will find no Indian Muslims there; they were all Uzbek, basically all Turks, and their administrators were all Persians. But that바카라™s not what our history books say. We must be the only culture which is not proud of its past.
Only sometimes, pride touches fantastical levels바카라”there was plastic surgery in ancient India, or there were test tube babies, that we had missile technology. That is when the problem starts.
Test tube babies and missile technology are clearly fantasies. But of plastic surgery, there is evidence. The first recorded rhinoplasty, or nose reconstruction surgery, was recorded in a British magazine by British soldiers who saw it being done on a soldier of the Maratha army. The procedure the surgeon folloÂwed was exactly the same thing spoken of by Sushruta a thousand years ago. Our education system doesn바카라™t teach us that, so genuine achievements get merged with fantasies.
What I meant was half-baked knowledge leads to some bizarre claims about our past바카라¦.
Yes, absolutely. No knowledge is as dangerous as half-baked knowledge. But rather than beating our chest about the achievements of our ancestors I would like us to take inspiration from it. Compared to the rest of the world our ancestors had great achievements. But where are we today? The solution really is only knowledge바카라”or fantasy and ignorance will prosper.
In the present political atmosphere, everything seems to be getting lost in this extreme right or extreme left argÂuments. The middle core, which perhaps forms the largest part of our country, is getting lost in it as you have pointed out.
I never comment on politics. As for politicians, it바카라™s their job to get votes. India is a difficult country and I have a lot of respect for politicians. My thing is more on the public debate space. This has sadly been captured by two groups of extremists. Left-wing extremists want to deride everything about our past, don바카라™t want to talk of religion, our spirituality, our achievements. And right-wing extremists think we were the only great people. I genuinely belÂieve a vast majority of Indians are in the centre. But perhaps we don바카라™t speak loudly enough. Or are so fed up with the debates and say 바카라˜I don바카라™t want to be a part of this바카라™. I think those of us in the centre must speak out more.
You have also said that some feel going back to our past is at variance with liberal thought, which is equated with Western thought, while we had the most liberal thinkers.
I think there is a reason why liberalism is losing the argument. It is sad because if there was ever a point in time when the world truly needed liberalism, it is today. The biggest enemies of liberalism are liberals themselves. They don바카라™t truly understand the land they are in. Almost none of us resonate with the West. So, we have to use arguments which connect here. And fortunately we don바카라™t have to make things up; you only have to read our ancient texts. Sadly, modern Indian liberals don바카라™t reaÂlise that the ancients are their biggest ally, but they haven바카라™t read many of our ancient texts. They have been brought up largely on Western texts. The ancient versions of the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the plays of Kalidasa, of Bhasa, of Shudraka, will have a huge positive impact. It바카라™s not just a Hindu thing; Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Indian Islamic interpretations. Only an Indian Muslim could have said: Ya toh masjid mein sharab peene de saaki/ ya aisi jagah bata jahan khuda na ho.