Myth-o-mania: A pandora's box for audiences

Indian mythology is having a moment. Is this one of those short-lived obsessions of popular culture?

Hidden Hindu by Akshat Gupta

Kantara poster

Sita's Sister by Kavita Kane

Brahmastra poster

As its stunningly shot climactic scene ends and the audience is still in some sort of a trance, the words ‘Kantara-A legend’ blaze across the screens as they do at the beginning of the movie. It is a legend, the director seems to be reminding the audience, which mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik interprets in his tweet as “a belief with political implications, unlike myth which is a belief with cultural and spiritual implications...[legend] does not yearn to be ‘history’.”

Myth, legend, or history. Call it what you will or argue endlessly about the semantics of it all, the reality is that today for audience and readers both, the Pandora’s box of Indian mythology has well and truly opened. Moviemakers and popular fiction authors got a taste of the audience’s undiminished interest in our epics when Doordarshan’s reruns of ‘Ramayan’ and ‘Mahabharat’ during the 2020 lockdowns garnered huge TRPs. While established mytho-fiction writers like Ashwin Sanghi and Amish Tripathi continue to churn out bestsellers, many others have joined the fray and are tasting success. Authors like Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, and more recently, Kavita Kane, Utkarsh Patel and others have used the genre to propagate feminist narratives by telling the tales we all know from a woman’s perspective, giving her a voice much denied.

Take the silver screen in just 2022. We have seen Ayan Mukerji’s ‘Brahmastra’ making it big while Akshay Kumar’s ‘Ram Setu’ is not doing very badly despite critical reviews. In the pipeline are ‘Adi Purush’ featuring Prabhas and Saif Ali Khan (which got trolled for its 90s’ animation), ‘Draupadi’, a multi-part series featuring Deepika Padukone, Vicky Kaushal’s ‘The Immortal Ashwatthama’ which was shelved and now is being revived and S S Rajamouli’s grand plans of retelling the Mahabharata.

Film historian and national-award-winning writer Amborish Roychoudhury expresses surprise at why it took so long for us to discover the immense potential for entertainment that our mythology has. “Of course, the current socio-political climate is also responsible for the surge in interest but perhaps the time has indeed come for popular culture to mine the rich stories from our vast mythology.” He believes this is not a fad anymore and mytho-based movies and books are here to stay.

While he says he is happy there are now percipient attempts at retelling epics and many genuinely entertaining fantasy off-shoots, he stresses that any straight-jacketing and rigidity in approach must be resisted. “Artistic freedom is paramount — you want to troll ‘Adi Purush’ for its animation, please do so, but do not question the maker’s interpretation of how Rama looks, for instance.” For context, purists had trouble with Prabhas (playing Rama) sporting a luxuriant moustache!

Author Saksham Garg, who has recently written a mythic-fantasy novel ‘Samsara’, says reactions can get worrisome and he did extensive research before he dared to embark on such a project.

“Mine is a fantasy work and yet, I have taken care to treat the stories that inspired me with respect,” he says. Author Akshat Gupta believes our mythological heritage is part story-part history. “People look at intentions...it is not that they oppose retellings; they understand who is showing respect and who is not,” echoing Amish’s views on the topic.

That said, the resurgence of interest has sparked a debate on social media about what is myth and what is history with films like ‘Kantara’ that fuse both, complicating the narrative further.

Myth & history: A thin line?

Devdutt Pattanaik, in his book ‘Mith=Mithya’, defines myth as a truth “which is subjective, intuitive, cultural and grounded in faith.” He goes on to explain that while ancient Greek philosophers distinguished Mythos (intuitive narrations) from Logos (scientific explanations), ancient Hindu seers distinguished ‘Mithya’ (truth through a frame of reference) from ‘Sat’ (truth independent of any frame of reference).

At a recent cultural fest for children organised by a well-known temple, one of the judges of a competitive event told an audience full of children that mythology is a “misnomer”.

“Everything is clubbed under mythology, but this is our history (she was referring to stories from the Bhagavata Purana). All this has happened.”

Her certitude was striking, as were the enthusiastic nods from the parents. (The children were uniformly deaf to the speeches, of course). Later, a cursory Twitter trawling confirmed what I suspected — she was not in the minority. Anecdotally at least, a large number of people believe that our mythology is also our history and those who oppose this view or demand a deeper analysis are dubbed ‘sickulars’.

Perhaps beliefs of this sort existed all along and it is only now, mostly due to social media, that we hear them being aired. To be fair, there is also some historical background to this melding. In his seminal work, ‘An Indian Historiography of India’, well-known historian Ranajit Guha says, “myth or Purana used to be an integral component of the history in India until the 19th century.”

As several historians have recorded, colonial historiography and archiving demanded sources and facts and promoted the separation of myth and history. This was quite in accordance with the belief among Greek Enlightenment philosophers that myths were “fabrications” and “allegories”, as author and philosopher David Bidney writes in his paper ‘Myth, Symbolism and Truth’, published in the Journal of American Folklore.

When asked about the blurring lines between myth and history in popular perception, bestselling author Amish Tripathi trod the middle path by saying it is hard to know what is truth and what is not and one can never be certain of anything (see interview)

He is probably right though, and indeed, there must be several bits and pieces of history that have become legends and several myths that chronicle what perhaps occurred. But how many are looking for nuance anyway? While there have been several sagacious retellings of our inordinately rich cache of myths and legends, especially in books, let’s not forget that this is also the age of Ravana drowned in kohl (evil! evil!!) riding what looks like a malformed bat and a Rama weighed down by his bulging biceps, staring furiously into the camera.