The ideal Hindu woman? Representations of Sita in Yael Farber’s Ram – The Abduction of Sita into Darkness

Abstract

abstract Expectations of chastity have been placed upon Indian women for centuries. This article seeks to analyse why such prejudice continues to persist in Indian society, both in India and across Indian communities globally, namely South Africa. An answer to this question can be found in the Ramayana. This epic Sanskrit text is the reason Hindus across the world celebrate Diwali, lighting lamps to guide Rama and Sita home after years in exile. As a Hindu, I grew up believing that Rama and Sita were the ideal man and woman, the ideal husband and wife. I was never aware of one controversial part of the Ramayana, known in the text as the agni pariksha or fire ordeal, in which Sita after being rescued from King Ravana by her husband, must prove her sexual purity by walking through a blazing fire (Hess, 1999). This test of chastity has been defended, criticised and even deliberately ignored in various analyses and reinterpretations of the Ramayana. One example is the work of Yael Farber, a South African woman theatre practitioner. Titled Ram – The Abduction of Sita into Darkness (2011), Farber makes Sita the focal point of her play and challenges patriarchal expectations. This article investigates, through Farber’s play, the reasons and complexities behind why the Indian female body and chastity is deemed imperative to the preservation of Indian society. Many South African Indians see India as their ‘motherland’. Through family and Indian communities in South Africa, notions of Indian identity in India pervade our society at home. Fatima Meer explains that, “Indian societies in South Africa have not abandoned ‘the Sita myth’” (1972: 37). This article is thus an investigation and challenge of the patriarchy that has always troubled me about my religion and culture as a South African Indian Hindu woman.