Rama's Act
Another famous accusation for Rama was that HE sent Sita to
the forest when she was pregnant. As if giving her an agni pariksha was not
sufficient, he fell prey to the low minded thought of his own people. Didn’t HE
have the confidence in Sita’s chastity? Was it not wrong on his part to suspect
her purity?
A king must always know the state of affairs of the people
and the kingdom regularly so that he can be a just and a good king. When Rama
asked his ministers what opinion his subjects had about his rule and if his
people were happy, his ministers updated him about it. Apart from the positive
side of his rule, they also mentioned that people were wondering how Rama, the
great and just king took back Sita who was touched by Ravana. How did HE accept
Sita who was in Ravana’s kingdom for a year. The citizens felt that they were
given a free hand to overlooking any wrong deeds done by their wives and women
could get away with all misdeeds as their own king had accepted his wife.
Now, what do we expect a king to do? Ignore these words and
sacrifice his dharma for the sake of the love for his wife? Allow the society
to behave as it wants by setting an example of being one. Rama always stuck to
dharma. Any doubt he had, he would refer to the rule books of dharma shastras for
clarity. In order to protect a family, one must give up the member of the
family, to protect a village, you must sacrifice a family, to protect a
kingdom, one must sacrifice a village and so on. If for example, the son of PM
is kidnapped by terrorists and ask the release of a highly wanted terrorist as
ransom, would we agree to the prime minister accepting the deal and release the
hard core terrorist. Emotions always
take a back seat in a country’s administration.
Rama was not just a husband. HE was a king. And a king must
put his subjects and their welfare before anything in this world. If he had
ignored the people’s comment, then HE would set a bad precedent to his successors.
A society flourishes only when women in the kingdom are chaste, respected and
protected. That kingdom ceases to be a prosperous land where women have lost
their character and live as they want. We must not think in terms of Sita’s
feelings as a human being. She is Mahalakshmi thayar who has come to this world
to show how a woman must conduct herself
as a daughter, as a wife and as a mother. So, Rama did justify his act as a
king. Let us go beyond petty human emotions and look at it as an act done in
the interest of the kingdom.
One must also appreciate the emotional pain Rama had to
undergo after having separated from his beloved. HE was caught in between the
love for his wife and his duty as a king. In the absence of Sita, he conducted
an ashwamedha yaga. A yaga is not complete without the wife. If he wanted, he
could have married again and fulfilled the yaga. But Rama made a golden statue
of Sita. As a Kshatriya he is eligible to marry more than one princess. But he
stuck to his “Eka patni vrata” and proved that he was a husband who never
doubted his wife but did his duty alone. We don’t seem to sympathize with Rama
as we consider women to be more emotionally affected. But Rama suffered more
than Sita in silence and solitude.
There is another side to it too and an interesting one.
Generally, women go to their mother’s house for her delivery. Sita was the
daughter of the earth. She indeed went to valmiki’s ashram which is, in a way
her mother’s place because valmiki, as a sage, emerged from the ant hill which
is a part of the earth. Sita also emerging from the bhoomi, valimiki becomes
her maternal side and Sita was rightly sent to her home. And as she wanted she
spent her whole pregnancy in the ashram with positive vibrations all round,
Rama fulfilled that wish too.
In the next occasion, Rama again asks Sita to prove herself
when she comes to return Lava and Kusha to Rama. This must be considered as a
fitting end to Sita’s avatar. IT was time for her to go back from where she
came. Every Avatar has its own kind of end. For example, Krishna was shot by a
hunter to mark the end of his avataram. In the same way, Rama saw to it that
Mahalakshmi went to her abode before he retires to vaikuntam after his time in the
earth.
So, Rama was dharma incarnate and what he did was always
right. Not to blame him and make this as a topic for debates.
RAM RAM
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