Fake news demons

The real is finally mythical; and fake news, much like the golden deer in the Ramayana, is leading the world from order into chaos.

Fake news is real, morphed images are used freely to make a point, quotes are repurposed to state what they never did or to make a point different from the original one.

The golden deer was a demon in deerskin and it presents a turning point in the epic. It led to Sita's abduction a and the subsequent battle between Rama and Ravana and changed the course of the narrative. Just as misinformation, white lies, hyperbole and outright lies are doing today.

There are two parts to the problem of credibility today, one is the dwindling trust in people who wield power and the second is the lack of faith in the words they use. For instance, when politicians talk about the demonetisation exercise or growth or religion, the words used are the same but intent and understanding differ. Words have lost their power, being used to make a point rather than reveal a truth.

In myths, the word is sacred. It is the beginning of the world and brings the universe into being. Ancient cultures imbue a sense of infallible divinity in the word; a goddess in most cultures. Aletheia is the Greek goddess of truth, while Vac is the Vedic goddess of speech. (Vac and Saraswati are used interchangeably in the later texts.)

If the word is divine, she must be upheld and hence myths were fashioned around principles that aimed to drive home the importance of being true to a promise or a curse or a boon. In the Ramayana, for instance, there are stories that set down the dire consequences that may result if the word of Brahma, the creator god, is proven false.

Brahma had granted Ravana the boon of immortality. Drunk on his power, the king of Lanka stormed into the realm of Death. Brahma had also granted Yama the kaldanda, the weapon that gave him authority over the end of every creature’s life. So when Ravana faced off with Yama, Brahma was rattled. If Yama killed Ravana using Brahma’s weapon, his boon would be rendered false. And if Ravana survived, then his word to Yama would be untrue. So Brahma asked Yama to stand down because, he said that making his word false would put all the three worlds at risk. Truth was more important than anything else.

Brahma’s veracity has to be absolute if the universe has to keep its consistency wrote Robert Antoine, a Belgian Jesuit priest who taught comparative literature Jadavpur University (Rama and the bards: Epic memory in the Ramayana). Brahma’s word stands for universal truth, and when that is challenged or rendered futile by misuse, the world falls into an abyss.

The Greek myths add another layer to the power of truth in the story of Aletheia’s origin. Prometheus sat down to sculpt the perfect goddess, one who would regulate human behaviour. He was nearly done with his work when he was called away by Zeus. Prometheus left the workshop under the charge of his assistant, Dolus (trickery) who fashioned an identical sculpture. But just as he was about to put the feet on the sculpture, Prometheus walked back in. The god did not question his assistant for he wanted to take credit for the work and he breathed life into both. But Truth or Aletheia walked with measured steps while the other stood in her tracks. Her name is Mendacium or Falsehood.   

A lie wrecked the order of the universe and had to be stopped, that is what the myths said. In the Mahabharata it was seen as the greatest sin. Yudhishthira suffered a glimpse of hell because he told a half-truth on the battlefield, not because he gambled away his brothers and wife. In epics and myths across the world, sages took their students to task for not revealing the most inane details of an exercise and kings staked their children to keep their word. Truth was non-negotiable, unlike the present day when it stands in front of a mirror with many faces. 

ARUNDHUTI DASGUPTA
This article first appeared in Business Standard

Right and Wrong

In the Ramayana, after the battle has been won and Ravana vanquished, the epic instead of winding down to a happy ending throws up a dilemma. Should Rama allow the words of one of his subjects to influence his life with Sita? Should he, as king, listen to his people who believed that Sita's chastity had been compromised due to her abduction, or should he, as husband, stand by her. Especially since she had put herself through a trial by fire at his request! Finally he chose his kingly duties over that of a husband and would-be father, and banished Sita to the forest.

The choices that stared at Rama were the choices society was grappling with at the time. Who is a good king? Should kings be answerable to their people more than they are to their families? And what makes the perfect man? Myths, epics and other literature of the time explored these issues in myriad ways and, in a way, helped communities deal with questions that had no straight answers.

Different people offered different perspectives. The concept of perfect man, for instance, was the concern of both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. While the Ramayana offered a template for perfection, the Mahabharata seemed to say there was no such thing. Wendy Doniger explains (The Hindus: An Alternative History; Penguin/Viking) that The Ramayana says, "There is a perfect man and his name is Rama," and the Mahabharata says, "Not really; dharma is so subtle that even Yudhisthira cannot always fulfill it." Dharma was an invigorating, but extremely complex concept. It meant making choices, taking stands and adopting behaviour patterns that were at times difficult to reconcile with other societal constructs such as family, love and loyalty. The epics reflected the quandary of the people over the concept of dharma: some believed that it had to be firmly defined while others imbued it with shades of grey.

The Occident was similarly preoccupied with the concept of justice. Homer grappled with it in Iliad and Odyssey as did Aeschylus in Orestia. The concept of revenge as a form of justice was explored in great detail in Orestia. Agamemnon was murdered by his wife. As per societal norms, he had to be avenged by Orestes, his son. Orestes was faced with a dilemma: not avenging his father's killing would be a crime as would be killing his mother. The code of ethics or morality that prevailed at the time said that a son had to act on behalf of his father but Aeschylus's plays sought a new form of justice, one that freed society from the cycle of revenge and retribution. Both Homer and Aeschylus were trying to offer an understanding of justice that looked beyond the immediate concerns of the family and tribe; one that was not tethered to the ancient Greek concept of 'miasma'. Miasma is envisioned as a cloud of pollution. It was believed that miasma hovered around evil deeds and stuck to one involved in an act of crime and to anyone who happened to be around the scene at the time. This was built on the philosophy that bad things do happen to good people and the only way to explain this is through miasma. By getting their heroes and other characters to deliberate and debate different ideas around revenge and fairness, the Greek epics helped build a more nuanced understanding of justice.

The epics - Indian as well as Greek - were also burdened with the task of defining what it meant to be a good woman. A woman's dignity, her position in society and her rights were issues that were dealt with through characters such as Kunti, Sita, Draupadi, Helen and Penelope. In the Mahabharata, the disrobing of Draupadi in a court full of people was meant to evoke anger as well as to fuel debate. Among the many questions that the scene raised were: what right did her husband have to wager her on the dice board? Are women the property of their fathers and then of their husbands? Did Draupadi have the right to be offended? While the Mahabharata was unequivocal in its condemnation of the act and understood her anger and desire for vengeance, it was less definitive about the culpability of the men who allowed this under their watch. Bhishma, when questioned by Draupadi, pointed out the difficulty of adhering to dharma at all times.

Interestingly, we live in times where the concepts of justice, role of women and a host of other issues are in a state of flux, yet again. It is not just India but people in several parts of the world are being forced to confront the knotty and tangled web of choices that circle these problems. Gordon Brown, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, put it most eloquently in a lecture to students at Edinburgh when he said, "We need to underpin the development of our new society by a global ethic that makes sense of our responsibilities to each other."

It may be time for communities across the globe to go back to the treasure chest of questions raised in our myths and epics.

(This article was first published in Business Standard Weekend) http://goo.gl/lkVvC8