Dilip Simeon's blog

it is Ramanujan’s soft voice insisting on plurality and the particular we must strive to hear In April this year, I was back at the University of Chicago, where I studied under A.K. Ramanujan in the 1980s. We were gathered to celebrate 60 years of the study of South Asia at the university and it was a grand reunion of faculty and students across generations and across disciplines. Many of us who had studied there were now teachers in our own right, but each of us had returned to honour the place and the people that had made us who we are. The essay by AK Ramanujan censored by DU's Academic Council No one was remembered with more admiration that weekend than Ramanujan. In all the speeches and the talks and the anecdotal histories and the informally shared memories, ‘Raman’ was mentioned with affection, with respect and with the speaker’s sense of sheer good fortune for having known the man and been in his classroom. In the 30 years that he taught at Chicago (and elsewhere...

Muslim organisations in Mumbai object to ‘compulsory’ Yoga Day in schools NB: This is an exp osure of the RSS agenda. It is not Yoga or ancient Indian wisdom, that interests them, but compulsion - in thought and culture as per their interpretation. First, an observation on the objections by the self-appointed representatives of 'the Muslim interest' and interpreters of Islam. To reduce any aasan to its origins in prayer is incorrect. (Muslim clerics in Rajasthan have adopted the same position ). I have practiced yoga for over 30 years; and this includes surya namaskar . At no time did I imagine myself to be worshipping the Sun God – I was performing a physical exercise of value to my health. To treat yoga as some kind of religious ritual is ridiculous. It is now accepted the world over as an excellent aid to longevity and physical health. But no one forced me to learn yoga.  I did so of my own free choice.  In this regard, the SIO statement is proper. It’s the compulsi...

The History Society, Ramjas College Open invitation to a National Seminar: Speaking of the Hindus and the  Second A.K. Ramanujan Lecture New Conference Hall (above the canteen), Ramjas College March 6, 2014, 10.30 am onwards Profs. DN Jha, Kunal Chakrabarti and Apoorvanand will speak at the Seminar which will be chaired by Prof. Romila Thapar, 10.30 am -1 pm. Shri Gopalkrishna Gandhi will deliver the Second AK Ramanujan Lecture , between 2 and 3.15 pm.  The title chosen by Gopal Gandhi for his talk is Alive at India's Dead Ends At 5.30 pm Vidya Shah will perform 'Akhtari', a musical tribute to Begum Akhtar, with Danish Husain. Please circulate widely & come in large numbers for more reasons than one. After all, as a film lover once remarked, 'I don't go to film festivals just to see films'!  Mukul Mangalik, Seminar-in-charge, History Society Ramjas College See also: Stephen Alter - The right of the reader...

It says something about the times that it took a dreary battle in one of India’s interminable ‘culture wars’ to make AK Ramanujan’s name familiar to readers of the broadsheet newspapers. Someone decided that it was a bad idea for a scholarly essay of Ramanujan’s from 1991 about the many tellings of the Ramayana story in South and Southeast Asia to be on the undergraduate syllabus for history students at Delhi University. The essay was removed from the syllabus in October 2011, and sure enough, the usual round of angry protests and smug op-eds followed. The essay by AK Ramanujan censored by DU's Academic Council Now, it is easy enough to see why the essay, with its narratives of Ramayana traditions that show a striking irreverence for the figure of Rama, could prove a source of controversy. But it is a shame how little was made of the teachable moment even by Ramanujan’s academic defenders. Shortly after the university decided to exclude the essay from its syllabus, the politi...

As part of its shift to the four-year format for undergraduate students, Delhi University has dropped the works of scholar A K Ramanujan whose "controversial" essay titled Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five examples and Three Thoughts on Translation was removed from the History syllabus last year for "hurting religious sentiments". Two works by Ramanujan, Speaking of Shiva and an essay co-authored by Vinay Dharwadker, featured in the syllabus for English. "Speaking of Shiva was prescribed for a paper on Indian Classical Literature, while his essay was given as background reading for another course called Indian writing in English," Rudrashish Chakraborty, who teaches English at Kirorimal College, said. The essay from Ramanujan's Speaking of Shiva was one of the readings required for a section on Kannada poets Dasimayya and Vasavanna in the Indian classical literature paper. "This section was dropped at the standing committee meeting which took pla...

Shikha Sen's Anek Ramayan will now be webcast on NDTV.com, for a month. So whoever would like to, can see it online. This is a drastically shortened version of the film - 40 mins of the original 70. Please share it with all you know who can access it online. They can also leave their comments on the page or write to the film maker at the id given at the end of the film. Here is where you can see it: http://www.ndtv.com/video/ player/documentary-24x7/anek- ramayan-a-film-by-shikha-sen/ 218125 This weekend, on  Sat, 17th Dec at 10 pm  and on  Sun, 18th Dec, at 5 pm , NDTV  PROFIT  will telecast a 50 min version of the film.

Sanskrit scholar Arshia Sattar's new book, “Lost Loves…”, sees Rama with all his human follies... No other character from Hindu mythology, perhaps, has been as enmeshed in modern Indian politics as Rama. While mystic poet Kabir once saw Rama as the ideal man who can't be tied down in idols or holy places, the controversy over the place of his birth threatened to rip apart the secular fabric of the country in the 1990s. More recently, A.K. Ramanujan's celebrated essay on the Ramayana was taken off the Delhi University syllabus under pressure from Right wing activists. As a Sanskrit scholar and translator, Arshia Sattar has studied Rama through all these avatars. A Ph.D. from the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, her translation of Valmiki Ramayana is an acclaimed work. Her recent book, “Lost Loves: Exploring Rama's Anguish”, looks at Rama as an angst-ridden character constantly torn between divinity and humanness. Wend...

'The essay is a marvellous account of the hundreds of ways in which the  Ramayana  has been told, complete with examples of this narrative diversity. I can’t imagine that the vice-chancellor, a member of that urbane cohort, the Class of ’75, wanted the essay removed because he agreed with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad goons who first agitated on the issue three years ago. They did this by trashing the department of history and physically assaulting the head of the department. This happened during the tenure of the previous vice-chancellor, but no holder of this office could possibly wish to further the work of thugs who seek to violently limit the intellectual freedom of a university. So that couldn’t be the reason. The essay by AK Ramanujan censored by DU's Academic Council Nor could it be expert opinion. The expert committee appointed by the Supreme Court to investigate the matter had four members, three of whom endorsed Ramanujan’s essay without reservation...

Three Hundred Ramayanas : Five Examples & Three Thoughts on Translation How many Ramayanas? Three hundred? Three thousand? At the end of some Ramayanas , a question is sometimes asked: How many Ramayanas have there been? And there are stories that answer the question. Here is one..One day when Rama was sitting on his throne, his ring fell off. When it touched the earth, it made a hole in the ground and disappeared into it. It was gone. His trusty henchman, Hanuman, was at his feet. Rama said to Hanuman, "Look, my ring is lost. Find it for me." Now Hanuman can enter any hole, no matter how tiny. He had the power to become the smallest of the small and larger than the largest thing. So he took on a tiny form and went down the hole..   He went and went and went and suddenly fell into the netherworld. There were women down there. "Look, a tiny monkey! It's fallen from above? Then they caught him and placed him on a platter ( thali  ). The King of Spirits ( bhut ...