As the good word of Ram spread across centuries and continents, its narrative changed. It crossed the Vindhyachal, for example, and the Ramayana absorbed elements and motifs of the south Indian folklore. The language in which the epic was translated also made its presence felt: Sita in Sanskrit and Sitamma in Kannada have different shades of meaning which lead to different stories about her birth. Since culture is not a one-way street, the Ramayana also impacted the host environment. For example, “nothing else of Hindu origin has affected the tone of Thai life more than the Rama story”.
 
This is one way of summarising AK Ramanujan’s completely uncontroversial essay. One can read it as an excellent introduction to the epic as well as to the plural traditions of Hinduism. Or as a text from a scholar who is equally well informed in religion, literature, culture and languages. One area, however, he was not well versed in is politics. Still, he might have known what misinterpretations his essay might have to face, when he remarked that a “story may be the same in two tellings, but the discourse may be vastly different. Even the structure and sequence of events may be the same, but the style, details, tone, and texture—and therefore the import—may be vastly different.”
The Delhi university’s move to drop the text from the syllabus ignores the “style, details, tone, and texture”.

In the emerging area of religious offence-taking, there are broadly three scenarios. When an author, painter or cartoonist unambiguously sets out to offend a religious community, the affected party may have little patience for any advice of restraint. That was the case, for example, with Danish cartoons. Very often, the material is quite offensive though the artist may argue he or she did not intend to do so. Intentions are difficult to prove, open to interpretations and identity politics. This is the Husain scenario. Then there is this interesting option number three: the author is not only not seeking to hurt anybody’s religious feelings, he is actually enriching religious scholarship – except that some folks are out to take offence whenever their recruitment drives go slow.

They have done disservice not only to Ram, but also to Saraswati, the goddess of learning in the Hindu pantheon. In this latter achievement, they were ably supported by the country’s premier academic institution. It based its decision not on the advice of four experts, but on a one-liner caveat from one of them. If this is how we govern higher education, all you can say is: He Ram.