When I was growing up in India, I was instilled into me a notion of “god” for Rama, Krishna, along with many other characters of Hindu stories. Both good and evil characters had a purpose to serve in the story and they were part of this grand plot that God himself orchestrated. The stories immediately lost relevance for me in my own mind, and I only viewed them as idealistic stories filled with characters that model perfectionism, which was hard to replicate in real life. However, when I started reading “Ramayana” as purely a fictitious story, I started to admire the characters and see the “godliness” in them. One becomes more forgiving for the mistakes the characters make, try to justify their behavior, and understand how one can take that analysis, and learn to live one's own life if one thinks of it as a story instead of "God's way of living". I present to you here one such analysis built on the most infamous character of the story “Ramayana” – Kaikeyi.
“Why did Kaikeyi send Rama to Forest?” – this question always lingered in my mind every time I heard of Ramayana story or watched Ramayana movies. In the movies, Kaikeyi character is portrayed to be a bipolar woman who insists on sending Rama to the forest and right after him going, retracts her wish. Does that mean, Rama who is supposed to be this ideal human being is following the orders of a seemingly selfish, fickle minded woman and showing us that’s the way of life to follow the orders of parents regardless of their intentions? As I was growing up watching the movies, Rama’s character seemed too idealistic and not something that you could follow in real life, especially the interactions between him and Kaikeyi. Why does he obey her? Rama shows quite a bit of ownership and leadership when dealing with major life decisions across Ramayana except for this one very important place – he yields to Kaikeyi which on the face of it seems like blind modesty. He doesn’t once question her intentions, nor does he tend to convince her so he can stay back with his severely old father. The explanation that was always given for this was Rama doesn’t cross his parents’ orders. That explanation doesn’t hold good if you take the time to read Valmiki Ramayana, where Rama’s dad, Dasaratha asks and orders him explicitly to stay back, and take over the throne. Kausalya, Rama’s birth mother begs him not to go and asks to be accompanied with him to the forest. In both these cases, Rama wouldn’t hesitate to not obey their orders/wishes. He even advises one of Dasaratha’s ministers who were driving him to the forest to lie to Dasaratha that they couldn’t hear him calling to stop the chariot from driving away. Once we establish the fact that Rama doesn’t blindly follow the orders from his parents, one wonders why he followed Kaikeyi’s seemingly selfish wish in a heartbeat?
Once you read the real Valmiki Ramayana Ayodhya Kanda (not watch the movie depictions of the story), you not only understand Rama’s virtue but also understand how amazing of a role model Kaikeyi is.
Kaikeyi – Is the youngest queen of King Dasaratha and she is
supposedly his favorite. Dasaratha seemed to have habituated to discussing all
political, family, and financial matters with Kaikeyi more than any of his
other wives. He in fact goes to inform Kaikeyi of his decision of wanting to
coronate Rama as part of his daily routine. Dasaratha – was a justful king
himself. In spite of what was portrayed in movies, though his favorite queen
was Kaikeyi, he gave her the least amount of the Puthra kamesthi prasadam. He
trusted Kaikeyi with most of his personal and important matters. Kaikeyi, also
seem to have gained and held on to this trust and there were no proofs of her
misusing this power throughout Ramayana.
Then, why does she act so out of character that night before
Dasaratha passed away? Why did she need to be so adamant to send Rama away? Is
it pure jealousy or the influence of her maid, Mandhara? Or is it something
else? What were her true intentions?
I’ve stumbled upon a satisfying answer to these questions in
one of the Ramayana discourses by Sri Mallapragada Srimannarayana Moorthy
(please find the link to his full discourse on Ramayana below in references). And I’ve
built up further explanations based on his analysis. His analysis was that
Kaikeyi is the only wife of Dasaratha who knew of Dasaratha’s curse (to die of
grief for his sons) and to protect Rama and Lakshmana from any danger, she made
the wish to send them away from him. Let’s examine this explanation further and
see if this satisfies the questions above.
What does she ask for?
She asks for Rama to leave for the forest for 14 years and she
also asks for Bharatha (her birth son) to be coronated the next morning. She
very well knows that Bharatha is at her maiden home, and it takes way more than
two days to get to Ayodhya for them. Even if we assume that she has the least
amount of geographical knowledge, she would've known how long it would take to get from
Ayodhya to her maternal home. She had absolutely no intention of making
Bharatha the next king. Her focus was to introduce great grief for Dasaratha by
sending Rama, and Lakshmana away so he has a notion of impending danger for his
sons, gets an opportunity to pass away out of the grief as per his curse at the
same time all the four sons were protected from any real harm.
Then why does she ask him to go to the forest? She could
send him to the Himalayas, send him on a sea voyage, or any other places if she
intended real harm for him. When I try to think of explanations, a few thoughts
come to mind. The first one is Rama was blessed by Viswamithra, had gained
experience on how to deal with monsters dwelling the forest in the past. Even
as s a teen, he came back victorious and was trained by one of the most
powerful teachers at the time. As a fully grown adult, Rama is more powerful.
Kaikeyi seems to have confidence in Viswamithra’s teachings, Rama’s experience
that she trusts him to navigate perfectly safely through the perils that a
forest has to offer. She even sees the prospect of Rama slaying the monsters in
the forest there by protecting the sages that live there – which he wouldn’t
personally be able to do once he becomes a coronated king. She also knows Lakshmana
never leaves Rama’s side, so asking Rama to leave organically ensures Lakshmana’s
safety as well.
She seems to be quite pushy and in hurry to have Rama leave
for the forest, however she has not once pushed for Bharatha’s coronation. In
fact, she uses reverse psychology tactics on him, so he refuses the throne
himself. Knowing Bharatha, who loved his father and brothers, Kaikeyi pretends
to not care about Dasaratha’s demise and talks about how she secured the
kingdom for him. Her acting this way ensured that any remote desire for Bharatha to become the king gets totally wiped out. Disgusted by her actions,
Bharatha does exactly what she wished him to do - takes oath to not ever take
Rama’s rightful place on the throne. Once she gets that promise from Bharatha,
she never pushes him nor brings up any of the boons that Dasaratha granted her
as her work of protecting her four children and ensuring Rama gets to the
throne rightfully were accomplished.
When you look at Kaikeyi’s intentions from this perspective,
one realizes that she isn’t a bipolar woman who was influenced by an evil maid,
and her later actions in Ramayana seem quite aligned with her character and
love for Rama - She never says anything about Rama coming back, she purely
rejoices at his coronation 14 years later. It’s hard not to admire her
strategy, internal strength, and prioritization. She didn’t care about what the
world, her husband, family thought of her, she did the right thing for the
right reasons. She protected her children, even if that meant her reputation is
tarnished, and an entire kingdom hated her.
Once we understand Kaikeyi, it really helps to internalize why
Rama doesn’t question her orders. Rama is the only one who didn’t judge Kaikeyi
by this one isolated incident. He had his whole childhood experience of living
and interacting with her. He knows that she is smart, intelligent, and always
had his best interests in her heart. Even though it was out of character for
her to push for this wish, Rama understood that she would probably have had a
good reason to do so. Since she rushes him to leave for forest immediately, he doesn’t
waste any time in seeking further explanation and leaves right away. As against
the popular preaching, the lesson to be learned here isn’t obeying elder’s
orders blindly. It is when you have a history with someone and you think someone
is acting out of their character, give them that benefit of doubt. Use your
judgement carefully and not give into emotions in the moment. It was probably
Kaikeyi’s intelligent training that Rama received through his upbringing that made
him make the right decisions when the time came. How can one not draw inspiration from such a
dedicated, impartial woman and impart jealousy and stubbornness to her character?
It’s highly surprising when Karna, an evil character from Mahabharatha, who is
one of the main orchestraters of trying to strip Draupadi of her clothes in the
middle of a royal court, is revered to be a saint as he has the virtue of
charity (questionable!), but Kaikeyi, who was brave and righteous in all her
life, stands up to protect her children and we are all so quick to judge her
and tarnish her reputation! Double standards of judging a woman’s character vs
a man's in our society have existed long enough that it’s time to start
questioning and breaking the bias.
Resources:
- - Valmiki Ramayana
- - Ramayana Nakshatramala | Pravachanam.com
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