Tulsidas’s Ramacharitamanasa and Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

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Tulsidas’s Ramacharitamanasa and Mahatma Gandhi

 

Tulsidas was a famous poet and saint. He writing Ramacharitamanasa was very famous. Mahatma Gandhi loved the holy book very much. He quoted it many times in his speech and writings. You have all learnt something about Tulsidas’s Ramayana. The most stirring part is that about the companionship of the good. We should seek the company of those who have suffered and served and died. One such was Mr. Gokhale. He is dead, but his work is not dead, for his spirit lives. 1 I want, not Banabhatta's Kadambari but Tulsidas's Ramayana. I have my doubts whether Kadambari will be with us forever, but Tulsidas's work will certainly endure. Let us at present get just rotli, ghee and milk from our literature. Later on we shall add almonds, pistachio nuts, etc., and produce something like Kadambari. 2 I believe that the spirit of compassion which I have learnt to value as a Vaishnava and of which I have drunk deep from Tulsidas's Ramayana teaches me to pray for nothing else but this. The cruel oppression of the Antyajas in the name of Hinduism is intolerable to me; it ought to be so to every Hindu. 3 

Have you ever read Tulsidas’s Ramayana? If you do not know Hindi fairly well, probably you have not read it. The great saint wrote his Ramayana in my opinion, to glorify Rama’s name. For me it has been a talisman. My nurse, whom I used to love as my mother, and in whose company much more of my time was passed in childhood than in my mother’s, used to tell me that if I thought of evil spirits at night and dreaded them, I could ward them off by repeating the name of Rama. Having faith in the nurse, I followed her prescription, and whenever at night vague fears seized hold of me, I used to recite the sacred name, and it answered the purpose. As I grew old, the faith weakened. My mentor, the nurse, was dead. I ceased to take the name of Rama, and my fears revived. In the jail I read the Ramayana with greater attention and still greater devotion than ever before, and whenever I felt lonely or felt the pride in me rising and telling me that I could do something for India, to give me due humility and to make me experience the presence of the Almighty, and thus to remove my loneliness, I used calmly to recite the name Rama with all the halo that Tulsidas has surrounded it with. I cannot put in words the indescribable peace that then came on me. As you know, Mr. Banker was torn away from me for some time. When he rejoined me, he related his own experiences to me. He used to experience all kinds of dreadful things after the cell-door was cruelly locked upon him. But he related to me graphically how the recitation of the name calmed him and gave him strength also to shed all those unbecoming fears. I, therefore, send you the much-tried prescription. Think, whenever you feel you are excited, of Rama and the peace giving nature of the recitation. Continue to recite the name slowly, forgetting everything, and considering yourself as one of the tiniest atoms in the mighty universe, and God willing the excitement will subside, and you will experience a blissful peace. The sages of old knew from experience what they were saying when they prescribed for troubled souls Ramanama, Dwadash Mantra and such other things. The more I think of them, the more true all those mantras appear to me today. I wish you could have faith enough to repeat Ramanama or such mantra which memory might have hallowed for you, and I know that you will soon be yourself again. 4

You might be acquainted, if you have known Tulsidas’s Ramayana, with the fact that Ramachandra, Sita and Lakshmana had very affectionately embraced the untouchable Guha and I want to see the same repeated once again in India. Let even those who are known as Chandals eradicate the evils in them and become the devotee’s of Shri Ramachandra. I would also request you to shun the use of foreign clothes and take to the use of hand-woven clothes made of hand-spun yarn. You should bear in mind that, in the days of Shri Ramachandra, neither rich nor poor used any foreign cloth nor the khadi produced in the country was in the general use of all. 5 Tulsidas’s Ramayana is one of the greatest works because its spirit is that of purity, compassion and devotion to God. An evil fate awaits one who beats his wife because Tulsidas has said in his work that a Sudra, a dull-witted person, a beast and a woman merit chastisement. Rama only never raised his hand against Sita; he did not even displease her at any time. Tulsidas merely stated a common belief. He could never have thought that there would be brutes that might beat their wives and justify their action by reference to his verse. May be Tulsidas himself, following the practice of his time, used to beat his wife; what even then? The practice does not cease to be reprehensible. In any case, his Ramayana was not composed to justify men beating their wives. It was composed to display the character of a perfect man, to tell us about Sita, the noblest among chaste and devoted wives, and to delineate the ideal devotion of Bharat. The support which the work seems to lend to evil customs should be ignored. Tulsidas did not compose his priceless work to teach geography. We should, therefore, reject any erroneous statements of a geographical character which we may find in it. 6

 Tulsidas’s Ramayana and a text on Arithmetic, both in Gujarati. You should get the books through Maganbhai.” At this point I woke up from the dream. There was something more still, but I do not recollect it. That is, I had forgotten it even when I woke up at 3.30 a.m. I like the advice I gave in my dream. Manilal may read what he can, and what he finds interesting, from the above. Or, rather, it is Mahadev who has awakened Manilal’s interest in reading. He should, therefore, be guided by Mahadev. I should not hold on to an opinion expressed in a dream; and, moreover, I cannot at present think out a reading list for Manilal. I would give the same advice to Ramdas. I attach no importance at all to the dream. Manilal’s problem was in my mind. I had also been thinking about Devdas’s letter. It is not, therefore, surprising that, owing to some disturbance in the stomach, I got such a happy dream. Write to Brijkrishna and tell him that the understanding is that, as far as possible, I should not write to prisoners and hence I do not write to him. I think about him every day, all the same. Tell him that he should take the utmost care of his health. He should make the best use of every minute and keep note of how he spends his time. Let him take this as a letter to him. And he should continue to write to me. 7 The story of Rama and Ravana is to my mind an allegory. In my preface to Anasaktiyoga I have explained what I understand by ‘incarnation’. What Rama used were spiritual weapons, i.e., Satyagraha against the material weapons of the ten-headed Ravana. There is intrinsic support in Tulsidas’s Ramayana for this interpretation. 8

We believe in the equality of all religions. I derive the greatest consolation from my reading of Tulsidas’s Ramayana. I have also derived solace from the New Testament and the Koran. I don’t approach them with a critical mind. They are to me as important as the Bhagavad Gita, though everything in the former may not appeal to me everything in the Epistles of Paul for instance, nor everything in Tulsidas. The Gita is a pure religious discourse given without any embellishment. It simply describes the progress of the pilgrim soul towards the Supreme Goal. Therefore there is no question of selection. 9 And then since our recent penetration into the villages we have readings from Tulsidas’s Ramayana which is one of the gems of our religious literature. It is known to millions of villagers in North India, and its music is such that even listening to its chant will uplift you. 10 Then the last thing is a recitation from Tulsidas’s Ramayana. This is a later introduction; since the village movement has been started, it has been found necessary to take some such thing to the villagers. Tulsidas’s Ramayana is known to millions of Indians north of the Vindhya Range. I regard this Ramayana as one of the richest spiritual treasures that humanity possesses. Its music is lofty and its language equally lofty. 11

 

References:

 

1. The Ashram, handwritten monthly magazine of Shantiniketan, June & July, 1915
2. Navajivan, 4-4-1920
3. Navajivan, 1-5-1921  
4. Letter to D. R. Majli , March 23, 1924
5. The Searchlight, 20-9-1925
6. Navajivan, 11-10-1925
7. Letter to Narandas Gandhi, October 23/28, 1930
8. Letter to S. V. Kowjalgi, November 6, 1935
9. Harijan, 5-12-1936
10. The Epic of Travancore, pp. 251