All The Myriad Ways

Ramanujan’s essay on the many Ramayanas argues for a truer scholarship

01 November 2011
AK Ramanujan’s essay elaborated on a relationship between the many tellings of the Ramayana.
AK Ramanujan’s essay elaborated on a relationship between the many tellings of the Ramayana.

“And as nothing in India occurs uniquely, even this motif appears in more than one Ramayana.”

—Ramanujan, ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas’

WHEN YOU CONSIDER the great value placed in a democracy, both normatively and nominally, on diversity and on multiculturalism, to hear that diversity threatens, that multiplicity taunts, or that multitudes are unruly, unknowable and unpredictable sounds strange. We’re told to believe in the will of “the people” and are made to listen to paeans about our differently cut, brightly hued diverse clothing.

Manan Ahmed Asif  is the author of Where the Wild Frontiers Are: Pakistan and the American Imagination.

Keywords: history censorship texts curriculum Delhi University diversity multitudes Three Hundred Ramayanas Ramayanas AK Ramanujan
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