Sreesanth ban 'against principles of natural justice'

Nagraj Gollapudi in Cricinfo

Sreesanth's legal counsel has called the life ban imposed by the BCCI "bizarre", against the principles of natural justice and unlikely to stand legal scrutiny, and said the player would challenge the ban in court once he received a copy of the order. A day after Sreesanth was handed the ban by the BCCI's disciplinary committee, his counsel Rebecca John said the biggest flaw was the report drew heavily on the police findings in the criminal case, which itself is yet to reach a verdict.

The sanctions were based on the report compiled by the board's anti-corruption commissioner Ravi Sawani.

"The [BCCI] order is completely against the principles of natural justice," John told ESPNcricinfo. If Sawani had relied so heavily on the findings of Delhi Police, she said, then the least he and the BCCI should have done was wait for the final verdict by the Patiala House Court in Delhi, which is hearing the case.

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Also read

Sreesanth - Another modern day Valmiki?

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"It has based its findings on personal interactions with members of Delhi Police as well as taken material from the chargesheet that has been filed by the police before a sessions court. If that is so then they should have waited for the court to determine whether or not any of this holds up in legal proceedings. They just picked up conversations they had with members of Delhi Police where they said Sreesanth and other members of the cricketing community confessed before them. It is a very, very loose report with little or no substance in it," John, who was hired by Sreesanth as soon as Delhi Police arrested him on corruption charges during the IPL in May, said.

She pointed out that the evidence produced by Delhi Police against all the Rajasthan Royal players was found to be insufficient to keep them in custody - the sessions court has granted bail to all of them, including Sreesanth. "The fact is that the sessions court has released players on bail and said none of this adds up as a case. [The court said] it is very, very tenuous - the link between whatever bookie you are saying had a role to play and the players, particularly Sreesanth, and granted him bail. And then this BCCI's one-man committee says that Sreesanth is guilty of spot-fixing and hands over a life sentence to him. Not only is it is excessive, it is completely contrary to all principles of natural justice."

John said that from what she had read of his report on the internet, Sawani's findings, especially on Sreesanth, never added up to a case. "How does he come to a conclusion? By having personal conversations with police officials. And you are basing your findings on these?"

In his report Sawani had noted that he listened to and read the transcripts of audio tapes in possession of Delhi Police of conversations between Sreesanth and the alleged bookie. "If you want to read these audio tapes, which are part of the Delhi Police [evidence] in a criminal trial, the link is so tenuous. You will believe it only because the Special Cell of Delhi Police is saying you will have to believe it in a particular way. In any case these are allegations which have to be assessed, processed and a finding has to be determined by a court of law," John said.

According to John Sreesanth is on bail only because "prima facie" Delhi Police had not managed to press a foolproof case against him. "The only reason the life ban was imposed - Mr Srinivasan was very keen to tell the public and the people of India he was treating [the issue] with a heavy hand and some people had to be made scapegoats," John said.

"What is more annoying form the point of the view of the players is that they have let the big fish get away. What happens to Mr Srinivasan. He is owner of Chennai Super Kings and there is a case of conflict of interest pending in the Supreme Court against him. The Bombay High Court recently had called the two-member committee illegal after it cleared Gurunath Meiyappan and Raj Kundra [part of Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals] from corruption charges.

"Now when the BCCI, of which Srinivasan is the de facto or de jure head, conducts itself in this kind of fashion and then it hands over these sentences to players, who are soft targets, it is a little bizarre," John said.

The Sreesanth In All Of Us

The story of the demise of India’s angriest cricketer is the story of an average man who dreamt big, had a taste of a glamorous world, never established himself, kept fighting to stay in that world, and, in the process, threw it all away. By Shiv Visvanathan 

Posted on June 19 Wed, 2013 in Man's World India By Editor

A wise old friend watching my hysteria over the spot-fixing scandal silenced me by saying, there is a bit of Sreesanth in all of us. “What went wrong with Sree was what could go wrong with any one of us. Sreesanth is the boy next door. Only, he does not go to IIT but becomes a professional cricketer.” 

Sreesanth looks like an overgrown teenager. “Look at him,” she said, “he looks like a Malayali Dennis the Menace, impudent, scruffy and desperate for attention. Instead of a hapless Joey, who followed Dennis lovingly, Sree gets a calculating Jiju. Jiju fixes Sreesanth’s life.”

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Sreesanth - A Modern Day Valmiki

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It is not easy to be a Sreesanth. Sreesanth, like most of us, is a process, a rite of passage. He has not arrived yet. Occasionally, he gets a peck at the Holy Grail, but the next moment, he is dropped from the team. To have not yet arrived, like a Dravid, Zaheer or a Kumble has, is a painful thing. You always feel an extra desperation for a cameo role. You want to be a personality, a character, memorable beyond a game. Modest people do not have to have modest dreams. Sreesanth dreamt big. He wanted to be seen and heard. 

In cricket, substance could always do with style. Like any teenager — and remember, most Indian males are teenagers till 40 — Sreesanth enjoyed building hype around himself. He grimaced, he threw tantrums, he created a new dialect in sledging. His encounters made news. He was funky and spunky. He was a caricature of a cricketer, whose adrenaline drove his judgments. Sometimes, when your juices flow and you stand up to artful sledgers, such as Andrew Symonds, you become, even feel like a man. 

You have to watch Sreesanth’s performances from an ethological perspective. He grimaces like a gorilla, beats his chest; when he gets a wicket, he runs, screaming, across the pitch and glowers triumphantly at the batsman. It is animal aggression displayed like a tribal ritual. Of course, one has to be careful. When you encounter a bigger, more violent animal, such as Bhajji, retreat and humiliation is in order. A tear or two makes you human. 

In cricket, like in hunting, you have to go for the kill. Without victory, your antics become a distraction, a sideshow. Being a sideshow is painful when you are on stage. Off stage, you get more leeway. You are seen as entertainment; you command attention. Cricket and B-grade Bollywood have a wonderful affinity for each other. The sports pages are hand in glove with Page 3. For someone like Sree, the world of bars, night clubs and women becomes an appendage to your status as a cricketer. The distractions become the attractions. Late nights chew into your discipline. 

Time eats into sportsmen like a termite. You can be precocious at 20, not five years later. Your fans behave like accountants; they demand a list of your exploits on the field. Your team-mates shrug off the hype, they only want to kill. Suddenly, sledging is not entertainment; it is a distraction, time lost. 

It is not that you do not try. You push yourself hard, but regular results are not easy. You watch senior cricketers such as Dravid and Tendulkar rework their bodies, their styles. There is steel in their temperaments, they deliver like metronomes, and you watch with awe. You know you cannot be them, but you want to play alongside them. You realise that cricket, like character building, is hard work. Practice is a way of life for these stalwarts. 

You start keeping a diary. You promise to keep your cool. You work at it. But your temper bursts like an unwelcome pimple, when you least want it to. Worse, when success is elusive, people sense the buffoon in you. You are laughed at. Life suddenly seems unfair. 

The social world outside does not see all this. On the field, you might be a lesser player, but off the field, you are still a star, a name. Then, the other talents that you have nurtured come into play. You can sing, you have dreams of being a rock star. A film or two might enhance your world, especially if you have two nubile women cast alongside you. The romance of cinema blending with the romance of cricket is your ultimate dream. Suddenly, life and its possibilities appear like fun. It matters little if you have to produce the film yourself. 

You realise that walking the ramp, with a model in tow, is a bit like running up to bowl. Adrenaline pumps through you. The applause is heartening. Instead of drab national colours grimed in sweat, your costume smells of scent. You dance and sing, your body moves with ease and the fantasy of a new spectacle takes over. A star like Sreesanth should be twice born, once in cricket and again in film. It is heady. 

Meanwhile, you work desperately on yourself, at anger management. It just means you have to avoid brawls in public, not beat up intrusive passengers at airports. After all, you have a status to maintain. You are still Sreesanth the star, a man known to chief ministers. Shashi Tharoor, your secret hero, has called you the pride of Kerala. 

Playing for the nation is a heady experience. But then there is the magic world of IPL, part circus, part gladiatorial game, part hype. It is the greatest spectacle of all. Lalit Modi makes Barnum sound second rate. 

IPL is finance capital. Everything is a commodity. Every ball, every run is commoditised and auctioned by punters. An over can provide the earnings of a decade. The trouble with IPL is that it is ruthless. Yesterday’s stars are forgotten. You live in the instant. Everything has to be bigger, better, quicker. You live only as a spectacle, and you need spectacles in daily life. You want the best of women and entertainment. Sadly, life gets inflationary. The more you enjoy this, the less you count in the world of cricket. 

Yet, you feel good in this social world of bars and night clubs and starlets. The juices flow. Your ego inflates as people salute you. Sreesanth is still a star. You are seen as fun, even if friend Jiju helps get the women. Giving in to temptation always appears fail-safe. You cannot go wrong. Match-fixing is sinister. Spot-fixing seems like a cleverer world: a win-win world in which the punter and the fan are both happy. It is like rewriting a tiny part of the script; the integrity of cricket remains untouched. All it requires is a few coded signals. A few minutes become a lifetime investment. It reduces anxiety. Money to throw around is always welcome. Jiju and he convince each other that it is a perfect move. 

Problem is, life is full of reverse-swings. Idiot cops outsmart you. The Delhi police paint you as the artful dodger. A world collapses. One minute you are high on the game and your companion, and then cops pick you up. You think it is a mistake. You ask them to call your political friends. They seem implacable. Life as a joyride is over. You look in the mirror and the sledger has become a sleazeball. You wish time had stopped a year ago. 

Suddenly, you are dirt, contaminated stuff, an object to be analysed. You cannot huff and puff and blow your opponents away. You have destroyed other people’s fairytales. That is what no one will forgive you for. The press performs postmortems on your career. People take your world apart looking for reasons and causes. 

There is only one thing Sreesanth will not be able to forgive himself for. It is the television interview in which his mother and sister protest his innocence. He has destroyed their fairytale too. One can smell sadness like rot in the air. The dream has ended. 

Tamasha and a quick buck

by Girish Menon

Today, Sharad Pawar joined the rising crescendo of voices asking for N Srinivasan the BCCI chief to demit office. He is, i.e. Pawar, the latest bigwig who has provided ballast to the 'Srinivasan must go' campaign. And since most of reported opinion is of bigwigs, this writer suggests that news organisations should attempt to lift their wigs and examine what motivation underlies these utterances.

To this writer, opportunism is the premise that seems to unite both the supporters and opponents of Srinivasan. From Farooq Abdullah to Gavaskar to Scindia to Pawar, all of them appear to have a 'dog in the fight'. Hence their views are based on ulterior motives and not really with a view to clean the Augean stables. Yet, news organisations refuse to highlight views of the non big wigs. This author wrote a piece, 'Sreesanth - Another Modern Day Valmiki?' but Cricinfo refused to publish it.

In short the debate appears to be an incestuous fight between a group governing the BCCI and another group who wish to replace them. And news organisations seem to be taking positions based on which group will get them a seat at the trough?

The disenfranchised cricket loving Indian public realise that their own views do not count. Hence, like the Saudis who turn up for the Friday post prayer beheading, they turned up in large numbers for the IPL final realising full well that the result of the game could have been pre ordained. They looked on the event as pure tamasha (theatre) and maybe some may have even bet on the underdog to win because that is the only way they and the omnipotent bookie can both make a sure buck.

Sreesanth - Another modern day Valmiki?

by Girish Menon

Sage Valmiki's life has been emulated by many robber barons of the world and it provides a prototype for Sreesanth to emulate in order to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the Indian public.

Valmiki, the writer of the Indian epic on ideal behaviour The Ramayana, was a low caste robber who preyed on victims in order to feed his family. In latter life, probably after accumulating wealth, he turned into a philosopher and his diktats on ideal behaviour for an individual are still recognised as the right way for a Hindu.

Valmiki's transformation is a theme, recognised by David Mandelbaum in his treatise 'Society in India', that shows dynamism and upward mobility in what was once considered a stratified and calcified Indian caste system. Mandelbaum's thesis has been that contrary to prevalent mythology the Indian caste system provides an opportunity for mobility in two major steps. Firstly, the individual has to attain secular wealth and this should be followed by copying the social mores of the prevalent elites.

Mandelbaum talks about the Kayastha caste, scribes by trade, who were very low in the Hindu hierarchy before the period of Muslim rulers in Indian history. The Kayastha's writing and translation skills came into demand during the Muslim rule, and this helped them acquire secular wealth and power in the courts. Thus over time and after learning the mores of their social superiors they ascended to a status that is high even today in modern India.

The Ambani family's history has parallels to Valmiki too. Dhirubhai Ambani fell foul of the law on many occasions during his wealth accumulation period. Today, the Ambani empire resembles the Mughal empire in its heydays. And all the celebrities and wannabes look to them for patronage. One of the Ambani scions even owns a cricket team, the Mumbai Indians, which has some of the greatest cricketers on its payroll.

Mohd. Azharuddin, former Indian cricket team captain, is another Indian Valmiki. Today, he is a Member of Parliament from the ruling Congress party. There may also be many other Valmikis who have not been publicly found out, but who having amassed secular wealth find it imperative to advise others on the ideal behaviour in life.

So all is not lost for Sreesanth. He could take a leaf from Suresh Kalmadi's book and stay away from the public eye for some time in a protected environment like Tihar jail. When released he could don some saffron robes, get a BJP endorsement and end up as a Member of Parliament. Given that the lotus is its election symbol, image consultants and spin doctors will find it easy to draw a parallel between the flower's development and the transformation of Sreesanth.

This writer plays for CamKerala CC in the Cambs league.

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MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING - Why the IPL’s critics are mean and wrong

Mukul Kesavan

The uproar about the IPL following the ‘revelations’ about S. Sreesanth and his erring teammates threatens to become farcical. Sting-meister Aniruddha Bahal of Cobrapost suggested on a television show that franchises ought to be punished for the misdemeanours of contracted players. Bahal reached for and found a precedent for his prescription from a different game in a foreign country: the relegation of the Italian football club, Juventus, to a lower league because some of its players had transgressed. Are we seriously citing Silvio Berlusconi’s country as a model of corporate governance? Please. We can do without Serie A as a moral exemplar. Punishing companies for the criminality of their employees… what will these hacks dream up next? The other storm in this teacup is the suggestion that an isolated instance of spot-fixing is symptomatic of a more general shadiness in the IPL. Instead of celebrating the league as the beating heart of cricketing livelihood and hailing the BCCI as the gruff but golden-hearted uncle who bankrolls the global game, you have jealous (foreign) cricket boards and their Test-loving lackeys in the (white-and-Western) press, trying to characterize Sreesanth’s misdemeanour as ‘systemic’. In this bilious narrative, the IPL is a sinful Oriental honeypot where corruption is inevitable. This isn’t reportage, this is racism. These Anglo dead-enders and their self-hating henchmen in the Indian media have a favourite word: ‘opaque’. So the IPL is evil because its ownership structure is opaque. Throw in dark mutterings about ‘benami’ or anonymous shares in the principal franchises and you can dress up unsourced speculation as investigative journalism. Is there any sporting league in the world where it’s clearer who the owners are? Shilpa Shetty, Preity Zinta, Shahrukh Khan, Nita Ambani, and so on, are on television rooting for the players they own every night of the week. Instead of the corporate anonymity typical of business, with the IPL you can literally put a face to the franchise. Unable to fault the cricket, the IPL’s critics have targeted the cheerleaders on the field and, especially, in the studio. The easy badinage that makes Extraaa Innings so deliciously different from the po-faced pre-shows that just talk cricket is condemned as male lasciviousness by killjoy critics. The best answer to this pious accusation is to ask, in what world would professionals like Navjyot Singh Sidhu and Ravi Shastri and Harsha Bhogle and Kapil Dev, role models all, with reputations to lose, use women’s bodies as cues for double entendre and innuendo? The answer is obvious: they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t even allow themselves to be complicit in someone else’s demeaning banter: they would just get up and leave. So if they aren’t doing that, it’s not happening. N. Srinivasan, the BCCI president, is a special target for dead-ender venom. Everything he does is designated nefarious. The fact that he is in charge of the BCCI and the owner of an IPL franchise is deemed a wicked conflict of interest. When Srikkanth wore two hats, one as the chief selector of the national team and the other as brand ambassador for the Chennai Super Kings, the franchise owned by Srinivasan, journalists sang the conflict-of-interest ditty like a theme song. Srinivasan’s decision to make Dhoni a vice-president of India Cements Ltd, a company he happens to own, apparently compounds this conflict-of-interest problem. This carping has got to the stage where not even a man’s business is his own business, if you see what I mean. If men are known by the company they keep, Mr Srinivasan is in very good company; Anil Kumble has had exactly the same problem with sanctimonious critics. India’s greatest bowler, its most pugnacious captain, a man who has a traffic landmark in Bangalore named after him, had his integrity called into question merely because he started up a player management company at the same time as he became president of the Karnataka State Cricket Association. He couldn’t understand the objections to this double role and the reason he couldn’t is that ‘conflict of interest’ is an arcane Western notion born of an alien business culture where everything is premised on contract, unlike India where a man’s word is his bond. Cricket is Kumble’s dharma; it’s inevitable that he will seek to involve himself in every aspect of the game. He has to be judged by what he actually does, not by some theoretical constraint upon his judgment, glibly labelled a ‘conflict of interest’. And the same courtesy must be extended to N. Srinivasan, distinguished cricket administrator, successful businessman, paterfamilias and pillar of Chennai society. ‘Conflict of interest’ as an insinuation has been used to tar the reputations of Indian cricket’s greatest commentators. Men like Ravi Shastri and Sunil Gavaskar, who have been saying the same things in unchanged sentences with iron consistency for years, are now being criticized for tailoring their views to the BCCI’s prejudices, of being the BCCI’s paid publicists. Why should pundits lucky enough to sign a contract to be the BCCI’s in-house commentators be stigmatized in this way? Why can’t we accept their explanation that the reason they agree with the BCCI on nearly everything is a coincidence rather than a sign of being compromised? Harsha Bhogle couldn’t even tweet the distinction between spot-fixing and match-fixing without following up immediately with another tweet anxiously clarifying that he saw both forms of fixing as equally culpable and bad, in case some swivel-eyed loon online thought he was carrying water for the IPL. This intemperate talk of embedded journalists and gelded commentators destroys the sacred bond between fans and broadcasters so essential to the health of the game. Can’t the critics see that it is their reflexive, corrosive suspicion that is destroying Indian cricket, not the alleged excesses of the proprietors, players and publicists of the IPL? The answer to this rhetorical question is, no, they can’t, because modern hacks hold nothing sacred, not even the cardinal principle in law that a man is innocent till proven guilty. Cowardly articles have made references to Ajay Jadeja without naming him. Jadeja has been a regular on the IPL pre-show and the self-appointed guardians of cricketing morality have insinuated that the BCCI’s willingness to accept, on its authorized telecasts, a former cricketer accused of match fixing in an earlier era is symbolic of the IPL’s fudging of past wrongdoing, its less-than-zero tolerance for corruption. The problem with this argument is that Jadeja wasn’t found guilty of match-fixing by any court in India. Ergo, by the principles of natural justice and our republic’s laws, not having been charged and convicted, he is innocent. As Sunil Gavaskar sagely said on television after the Sreesanth story broke, there should be no rush to judgment. These are wise words: if the past and precedent (and the ability of the Indian police to secure a conviction) are a guide, it isn’t just possible, it is likely that Sunnybhai might find himself some years from now sharing a commentary box with a shiny, new, exonerated Sreesanth. The IPL is a golden Ganga in spate; it gilds everything that it touches.

Lord Ram’s Story: Many Tellings

By Ram Puniyani

04 November, 2011
Countercurrents.org

Recently Delhi University Academic Council (Oct 2011) decided to drop the scholarly essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas” of A.K.Ramanujan, on different telling of Ram’s story from the syllabus of ‘Culture in India’ for BA Honors students. Of the four experts on the committee, one of them, whose opinion was finally accepted, said that undergraduate students will not be able to tolerate the portrayal of divine characters in the different versions given in the essay. In response to the ban while Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, which is an affiliate of RSS, and company celebrated, the staff and many students protested against this ban. Just to recall earlier in 2008 ABVP activists had protested against the introduction of this essay, and indulged in vandalism on the issue.

This essay by the much acclaimed scholar, A.K.Ramanujan is part of his "The Collected Essays of A.K.Ramanujan (Oxford 1999). Earlier in the aftermath of Babri demolition, a Sahmat exhibition on different versions of Ramayana was attacked by RSS combine's goons in Pune in 1993. This was done on the pretext that one of the panels based on Jataka (Buddhist version) showed Ram and Sita as brother and sister, and it is an insult to their faith. Ramanujan's essay talks of different versions and presents five of them as an example.

It is known that there are hundreds of versions of Ramayana, Buddhist, Jain, Valmiki etc. Paula Richman in her book Many Ramayana's (Oxford) describes several of these. And again there are different interpretations of the prevalent Valmiki Ramayana, many of which are not to the liking of those who are indulging in politics in the name of their faith. Surprisingly all this intolerance is shown by those who assert that Hinduism is tolerant and other religions are intolerant.

It is a fascinating exercise to go through various tellings and interpretations of Ramayana. Even the other renderings acceptable to this intolerant but currently dominant political force are not uniform. Valmiki, Tulsidas and later the one adopted by Ramanand Sagar for his serial Ramayana have their own subtle nuances, which are very different from each other.

Ramayana has been rendered in many languages of Asia in particular. Ramanujan points out that the tellings of Ram story has been part of Balinese, Bengali, Kashmiri, Thai, Sinhala, Santhali Tamil, Tibetan and Pali amongst others. There are innumerable versions in Western languages also. The narrative in these is not matching. Those opposing this essay take Valmiki as the standard and others as diversions which are not acceptable to them for political reasons. The version of Ramayana, the communalists want to impose has the caste and gender equations of pre-modern times so it is hung up upon only that version as the only one acceptable to it.

Interestingly one can see the correlation between the class-caste aspirations of the narration-interpretation. In Buddhist Dasharath Jataka, Sita is projected both as sister and wife of Ram. As per this version Dashrath is King not of Ayodhya but of Varanasi. The marriage of sister and brother is part of the tradition of glorious Kshtriya clans who wanted to maintain their caste and clan purity. This Jataka tale shows Ram to be the follower of Buddha. Similarly Jain versions of Ramayana project Ram as the propagator of Jain values, especially as a follower of non-violence. What do both Buddhist and Jain versions have in common is that in these Ravan is not shown as a villain but a great spiritual soul dedicated to quest of knowledge, endowed with majestic commands over passions, a sage and a responsible ruler. Popular and prevalent "Women's Ramayana Songs" of Telugu Brahmin Women, put together by Rangnayakamma, keep the women's concern as the central theme. These songs present Sita as finally victorious over Ram and in these, Surpanakha succeeds in taking revenge over Ram.

In Thai Ramkirti, or Ramkin (Ram's story), there is a twist in the tale and Shurpanakh's daughter decides to take revenge attributing her mother’s mutilation primarily because of Sita. More interestingly here the focus is on Hanuman, who in this telling is neither devout nor celibate but quite a ladies’ man, looking into the bedrooms of Lanka. In Valmiki, Kampan and Tamil tellings Hanuman regards seeing another man’s sleeping wife as a sin, but not in this Thai version. Incidentally he is a very popular Thai hero even today. Also like Jain Ramayana this Thai telling focuses on genealogy and adventures of Ravana and not of Ram.

In recent times Jotiba Phule who stood more with the interests of Dalits and women, was amongst the first to interpret this mythological tale from the perspective of those subjugated by caste-varna-gender hierarchy. Phule points out that upper castes were descendents of conquering Indo-Europeans who overturned the original egalitarian society and forbade the conquered from studying texts. His mythology is woven around King Bali, who could invoke the image of peasant community. Needless to say his murder by Lord Ram from behind is condemned and is seen as an act of subjugation of lower castes by the upper castes. And Ram is seen as an avatar of Vishnu out to conquer the land from the Rakshasas (those protecting their crops) for establishing the hegemony of upper caste values of caste and gender hierarchy.

Dr. Ambedkar and Periyar's commentaries are more an alternative reading of the Valmiki's text rather than a separate version. There is a good deal of overlap in the interpretation of both. Dr. Ambedkar focuses his attention on the issues pertaining to Ram's killing of Shambuk for violating the prevalent norm where a low caste has no right to do penance, tapasya. Like Phule he also castigates Lord Ram for murdering the popular folk king Bali. He questions Ram's act of taking Sita's agnipariksha, trial by fire, and his patriarchal attitude towards her. After defeating Ravan he tells Sita that he had done all this battle not to get her released for her own sake but to restore his honor, and his banishing her in response to the rumors about her chastity when she was pregnant comes for severest criticism from Ambedkar.

Periyar is basically taking the same line but in his interpretation the North Indian upper caste onslaught-South Indian resistance becomes the central theme. Periyar the initiator of ‘Self Respect Movement’ was the pioneer of caste and gender equality in Tamilnadu. In one of the movements, which is very less known, on the lines of Dr. Ambedkar burning Manusmriti, he planned to burn the photo of Ram, as for him Ram symbolized the imposition of upper caste norms in South India. This was a part of his campaign against caste Hinduism. Periyar also upheld Tamil identity. According to him the Ramayana story was a thinly disguised historical account of how caste ridden, Sanskritic, Upper caste North Indians led by Ram subjugated South Indians. He identifies Ravan as the monarch of ancient Dravidians, who abducted Sita, primarily to take revenge against the mutilation and insult of his sister Surpanakha. In his interpretation Ravana is practitioner of Bhakti, and is a virtuous man.

It seems the dropping of the essay from syllabus is under indirect political pressure of communal forces. RSS and affiliates who have reaped rich benefit from the campaign around Lord Ram are also giving the political message of caste and gender hierarchy, through the version upheld by them, the one of Valmiki and presented in current times by Ramanand Sagar’s tele serial Ramayana. And the politics claiming to be tolerant is intolerant about scholarly renderings of ‘Many Rams: Many Ramayanas’ prevalent World over!