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| Dr T S Shyam Kumar: courtesy Pachakuthira |
At Brahma muhurta this morning, I was reading
something profane if not blasphemous. Well, I didn’t even know until I was
reading it that Brahma muhurta was the most auspicious time of the day
and that it lay in the fourth yama of the night – that is, from 3 am to
6 am approx.
Sleep eludes me these days in this
period of the night. I wake up in the Brahma muhurta and then I am
unable to go to sleep, for some reason beyond me. So I pick up my mobile phone
and go to Magzter App. The magazine I chose to read this morning happened to be
a Malayalam literary periodical, Pachakuthira. An interview with Dr T S
Syamkumar, Sanskrit scholar and teacher as well as author of many books and
recipient of some notable awards, caught my attention. This interview was
something unique for me and one of the many things I learnt from it is that Brahma
muhurta is the auspicious period that begins roughly 1 hour 36 minutes
before sunrise and lasts for about 48 minutes.
Dr Syamkumar questions the very paternity of Lord Rama in the interview, among a lot
of other blasphemous things he speaks without any fear of the reigning right
wing of today’s India. King Dasaratha had no children though he had three
wives. So he organised a religious ritual known as Putrakameshti, meant
to beget children, sons of course.
When a great person’s genesis is not
quite socially acceptable, says Dr Syamkumar, we ascribe some divine intervention
to it. Dasaratha’s royal priest Vasishta got Sage Rishyasringa to perform the
Putrakameshti. Vasishta must have been too old to do the ‘special’ sagely
service that would actually help the queens to conceive, though the myth gives
the honour of the conceptions to a sweet pudding given by Agni the fire-god who
emerged from Rishyasringa’s sacrificial fire. Fire and sweetness can be
powerful aesthetic metaphors, if you look at the story as a work of fiction. Rishyasringa’s
sweet fire led to the conception of Rama, Lakshmana, Bharata, and
Shatrughna, the four sons of Dasaratha.
What a story to read in Brahma
muhurta?
Moreover, the story of the birth of
Rama and his step-brothers is just a faint glimmer of a sun that has yet to
rise. Or a lone drop hinting at an unseen ocean. The interview has so much to
offer us: from D D Kosambi to Max Meuller.
Syamkumar went on to question
almost everything that sustains what today’s Sangh Parivar upholds as sacred.
He questions the sanctity of Sanskrit which, according to him, has always been
a language of oppression. The rituals like the lower caste people cleansing
themselves ritually with the dust on the feet of the Brahmins become a horror
for him. And the Sangh’s Rama is a Brahmin Rama, asserts Shyam Kumar.
When Madan Mohan Malviya asked the
people of Kerala to chant the name of Rama during his speech in Kottayam in the
1920s, certain Hindu reformers of Kerala chanted ‘Ravana ki Jai’, says Syamkumar before going on to quote Sri Narayana Guru who claimed that the fate of
the low-caste Shambuka at the hands of Rama would have been our fate too had
the British not ruled us. Well, I resolved to study the history of Kerala in
detail.
Who was Rama really? Was he anything like what today’s Sangh Parivar claims to be? This is the major theme that underlies the interview that kept me engrossed in the Brahma muhurta this morning. The first thing I did after I closed the Magzter App was to place an order for Syamkumar’s book in Malayalam, titled Arute Raman? [Whose Rama?]. Soon you will find me in the local library where I have noticed a few good books on Kerala’s history.
As there are a Thousand Ramayanas, there could be Umpteen Ramas. Of course, Parivar's Rama is a larger than life, over papered over, to cover his rough edges, over Maryadaised, more Genteel than Gentle. Another Mascot, like Mr Modi, who is 56 inch chested with the Pakistanis and 3.5 inched with the Chinese. Please read also Modernity of Slavery by Dr Sanal Mohan and Thakazhi's Kayar and Randidangazhi - to get into the innards of Kerala's History from Below.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the recommendations. I'll definitely find time to read them, Thakazhi gor sure.
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteJust as I accept that there is no such thing as 'immaculate conception', I can accept this version of Rama's conception. And your quest to dig deeper into your own local history is inspired... which is exactly why Brahma-muhurta is revered! Even in western culture it is considered... "early to bed and early to rise makes one healthy, wealthy and wise"! YAM xx
I was brought up and later trained to wake up much before sunrise and it has done me a lot good.
DeleteInteresting.
ReplyDeleteHistory is fun.
DeleteI hear a lot of people wake up early like that and can't go back to sleep. It sounds like you're making good use of that time. Again, those in power seek to oppress those who aren't. It's like a theme or something.
ReplyDeleteYes, the oppressiveness of power is becoming a mind of leitmotif for me these days. The reason could be that my government has become highly oppressive, intrusive, and menacing.
Delete