Society with Indian characteristics: caste, class, and species in contemporary retellings of the Rāmāyaṇa

• Author(s): Oliveira, João Pedro
• Date: 2024
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/44477
• Origin: Veritati - Repositório Institucional da Universidade Católica Portuguesa
• Subject(s): Caste; Class; Deva; Rākṣasa; Rāmāyaṇa
• Document Type: Journal article
• Language: English
• Contributor(s): Veritati

Description

This paper analyzes the construction of Indian society in retellings of the Rāmāyaṇa published in India between 2010 and 2020. I focus on the concepts of caste, class, and mythological species. Through discourse analysis of a corpus of retellings, nonfiction works by the same authors, and comparisons with secondary literature, I show how specific castes, classes, and species are assimilated to one another and contrasted with competing identities. I also show how such representations define positive traits of Indianness and contrast them with the opposite negative traits of Otherness. I conclude that, despite differences in style, the retellers imagine an ancient pre-colonial India imbued with the modern neoliberal values of freedom of choice and social mobility.