How is Rama’s treatment of Sita justified?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
how is Lord Ram’s treating of Mother Sita justified? the whole mood of the Ramayana is a mood of sacrificing one’s own leisure for a higher cause so Ram himself manifests that mood where he does not demand his right I should have the kingdom, I am the eldest son what wrong have I done why are you sending me to the poorest Ram’s mood is sacrifice sacrifice of one’s rights for a higher cause the ashram he also sacrifices it’s not that he is eager to send Ram away because he has given his word he is obliged to do that so he sacrifices the pleasure of having his beloved son with him so that he could honor the word that he has given to him so the whole epic has that mood of sacrificing one’s own pleasure for a higher cause and in that mood of sacrifice the emphasis is not on rights the emphasis is not on rights, this is my right and I will get it, that’s not the mood the mood is what will serve a higher cause and willingness to sacrifice one’s rights for a higher cause and eventually when Sita comes back with Ram and there are some people who accuse her now she is innocent and she has already proved her innocence through the Agni Pariksha so it’s not a question of rights at all, it’s not a question of what is right or wrong so Ram is not at all happy, he is distressed, he is devastated with what he has to do now why does he have to do that there are conflicting duties we all have our dharmas but sometimes we have different dharmas different duties based on different situations so Dashrath for him his dharma as a pita as a father and his dharma as a husband they conflicted with each other and in that particular situation he felt honouring his word to Kaikeyi was more important than than giving the keeram to Ram so when two duties collide that is an ethical conflict moral conflict means one option is moral the other is immoral ethical conflict means there are two options, both of them are moral but which is the higher morality so in this case when Sita was being accused it was not just that she was accused of unchastity Ram was being accused of being attached to a woman who is unchaste and that attachment see a king that attachment was something which would have decreased his citizen’s capacity to respect him and to follow him so Ram had his duty towards his wife to protect him and he had his duty to his citizen to live in an exemplary way now so he at that time was conflicted which dharma to follow so now because it’s a very different cultural context so we may not understand what is wrong with standing by your wife if she is being accused but in that context the point was the more he would have defended Sita the more he would have appeared attached so Ram was concerned about his duty as a king as his raj dharma and his pati dharma the two came in conflict and he had to choose his raj dharma but he did not abandon his pati dharma entirely he did not abandon his duty as a husband because although in a sense Sita was banished but it was not exactly banishment of the same kind which Ram himself had abandoned and Ram had been banished outside the kingdom in the forest with the animals with no home, with no protection Sita was still in Ram’s kingdom she was taken by Lakshman to the outskirts of Valmiki’s ashram and she was told you can go and stay there Sita was shattered but even Sita understood what Ram is doing she was devastated, that’s natural but at the same time she did not blink down she said this is what you feel is the best thing to do in this situation I accept it so it is not allowed we can see that for Ram himself he was not just being opportunistic sometimes you know you say some people may just want to get rid of a wife so that they can marry again but Ram he refused he refused to marry again even the Brahmins told him you know you have to do yagyas you have to have a wife with you yajman is a sunigrasta grasta means husband and wife are together so Ram he actually made an effigy a deity of Sita and placed that next to her next to him while performing yagyas this means that he personally did not reject Sita or even consider Sita to be contaminated with anything in yagya sacrifices actually everything is meant to be very pure so if Sita were unchaste or even if he had considered Sita unchaste he would not have put her effigy over there the fact that he put her image over there and performed sacrifice with her indicated that he was still devoted to her so it was only circumstance that forced him to make that choice so if we make this if we if what is essentially a sacrifice we make it into an issue of justice that means oh you know Ram was so unjust to Sita and in Indian culture women are always treated unfairly it’s completely missing out on the mood of the epic the mood of the epic is a mood of voluntary sacrifice it is not a mood of imposed injustice and forced fighting for one’s rights in the midst of injustice so Sita’s Lord Ram sending Sita away is the culmination of the mood of sacrifice in the Ramayana the whole Ramayana the major fight is to bring Ram and Sita together and their time together would have been the time of the greatest celebration but Ram demonstrates the ultimate sacrifice and so does Sita so it’s not a matter of fairness or unfairness it’s a matter of sacrificing what is one’s right for a higher cause and both Ram and Sita voluntarily do this sacrifice so instead of seeing Ram as a victimizer and Sita as a victim Ram was so unfair to Sita we need to see actually if you want to compare Ram to anyone the best person to compare Ram to is Dashrath when Dashrath sent Ram to the forest and when Ram sent Sita to the forest both of them are in a similar situation they didn’t want to do it, they would have tried their best to avoid it but they were compelled to do it because of a higher because of a devotion to a higher dharma so we don’t see Dashrath as a victimizer and Ram as a victim we see Dashrath and Ram both as gallantly sticking to the call of duty even when it calls for an immense sacrifice similarly Ram and Sita they stick to the call of duty even when it calls for an immense sacrifice so both of them are sacrificers, it is not that Ram is a victimizer and Sita is a victim both of them are voluntarily sacrificing for a higher cause and it is not that this is a standard by which any man can reject any woman not at all that same Ram comes as Krishna and when he comes as Krishna at that time there is a demon Bhaumasur and this Bhaumasur he has abducted many princesses and he is planning to ravish them he is waiting for astrologically auspicious moment to commit this inauspicious activity of ravishing so that is this perverse mentality and then Krishna goes and rescues them and then he releases them and then they say that we have been abducted by him we have we will be accused of being fallen women because we have stayed in another man’s house so Krishna asks Krishna what do you want please accept this and Krishna accepts them not just as maid servants who are to be accommodated in some corner of his house he makes them all his queens so Krishna so Ram is demonstrating the ethos of sacrifice the principle of sacrifice and that same Lord as Krishna is demonstrating the ethos the virtue of compassion of inclusion of social inclusion but people, the women who are considered fallen he includes them, not only includes them he gives them extremely respectable position of being the queens of one of the most powerful kings of that time so that’s why we can’t stereotype or make any blanket value judgment based on one incident of how Ram deals with Sita it’s a profound example of selfless sacrifice for higher cause