Ramayana And The Mahabharata Analysis

The epics Ramayana and the Mahabharata have become an integral part of our psyche. They have been the subject for several interpretations and re-interpretations across genres from poems to plays to ballets to films and books. Revisionist interpretations pave way for multiple perspectives and multiple voices expanding the horizons of understanding the epics. On one hand, revisionist narratives open up new vistas of interpreting events while on the other, they also accommodate voices of hitherto forgotten or marginalised characters. Indian mythological narratives conventionally have always been male-focussed against the grand, sweeping background of great wars. Women, even if they are central to the narratives have existed on peripheral spaces

She is a strong, independent Kshatriya princess in love with Karna, the son of a charioteer. Despite the huge gap in their social statuses Uruvi marries Karna, breaking every patriarchal stereotype. Kane contemporizes the epic and retells it through the eyes of Uruvi, who dares to make bold choices and stands by her decisions and her man strongly. She lends a feminist narrative to the life of a woman looking into a man’s world, a warrior’s wife questioning war and a woman fighting to live her life and save her family. Though she could be a fictitious character, her story is important because we get a woman’s gaze on the deadly war with the looming shadow of death at every corner of the narrative. The story of Uruvi runs parallel to the story of Draupadi and the Great War; it traces her journey from that of a girl to being a woman, to a life with a husband who has pledged his everything to Duryodhana yet living her life with her own

The initial opposition from her parents and their efforts to convince her is also a spill over effect of patriarchy which followed a rigid caste system. Uma Chakravarthy, in her essay Conceptualising Brahminical Patriarchy in Early India uses the term ‘Brahminical patriarchy’ to highlight the control of women and their sexuality through a rigid caste system. The control of women’s sexuality is prevalent through marriages within the same caste group. “The lower caste male whose sexuality is a threat to upper caste purity has been institutionally prevented from having sexual access to women of the higher castes so women must be carefully guided” (Chakravarthy;579) Uruvi’s decision to marry Karna and her life after such a marriage is a manifestation of the patriarchal control and this control is precisely that Uruvi resists through her marriage. Uruvi’s marriage to Karna, who belonged to a much lower varna is a pratiloma marriage where in a woman of a higher varna marries a man from a lower varna, says Kevin McGrath in his work Stri:Women in Epic