Reading Tulsidas in the age of Hindutva

Shiv Kumar Bharti was 27 years old when he burnt a copy of the Ramcharitmanas in Kanpur.

It was April 1978, and the Arjak Sangh, an anti-caste organisation in Uttar Pradesh of which he was a member, had called for a protest against Tulsidas’s 16th-century Awadhi retelling of the Ramayana.

“We had published a small pamphlet about the event, but news had spread,” said Bharti.

A counter-mobilisation followed. “Posters had come up, saying ‘Dharm ki raksha hetu Kanpur Dehaat chalo’.” Head to Kanpur Dehat to protect your faith.

“But we went ahead and burnt the book,” said Bharti.

At first, the authorities denied that such an event had taken place. “Then the Delhi reporters arrived, and photographs of burnt pages of the Ramcharitmanas and Manusmriti made national news,” said Bharti.

Among his possessions is a certificate from the Arjak Sangh that commends him for leading the protest against the texts, which are described as “bahusankhyak ke shoshan ke janak” and “Brahmanwad ke poshak” – the books that gave birth to exploitation of the majority, which nurture Brahminical exploitation.

The Arjak Sangh’s protest in the 1970s was one among many examples of how anti-caste groups have critiqued the tradition of Ramayana and Tulsidas’s text to mobilise subaltern groups against a Brahmanical social order.

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