“Rama is born in countless ways,
And there are ten millions of Ramayanas.”
Tulsidas, Ramcharithamanas (1; 33; 6)
The summer of 1988 witnessed a unique strike by the sanitation workers in north India, who refused to work until the state agreed to bankroll more episodes of the televised version of the Ramayan. More than eight million Indians would flock in piety before their television sets on Sunday mornings; some bathed and garlanded their devices, not for the “ham acting and tinselly sets”. But, as Pankaj Mishra argues, for “Ram, the embodiment of righteousness, triumph over adversity”.
Since then, Ram has lived many popular lives on television and continues to wield “profound emotional and psychological resonance for Indians”. As Romila Thapar puts it, the Ramayan is not shackled to “any one moment in history”. Over time, we see the tranquil, benevolent godhead evolve into the “ugra, angry, and exercised” macho man “pulling his bowstring, the arrow poised to annihilate”.
The many lives of Ramayan on screen
The epic's popularity, too, remains undiminished. For instance, Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama is slated for re-release in theatres on January 24, 2025, more than three decades after it hit the screen. A collaborative project between India and Japan that skilfully blends three animation styles, it is an easy winner against 700 crore adaptations (cough, cough, Adipurush).
Stills from Adipurush and Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama
There were attacks on the skin tones of the characters and the “Samurai-like” movements when the film fist released in 1993. If you think this way, it’s your problem, as the many Ramayans of southeast Asia make it clear that it was never envisioned for a monolith. Directed by Koichi Sasaki, Ram Mohan and Yogo Sako, the anime embodies the true spirit of the Ramayan, in A.K. Ramanujan’s words, “an endemic pool of signifiers,” malleable in a million ways.
If you are a true lover of the epic, you might want to take that aspirin before watching Adipurush, the most popular adaptation for all the wrong reasons. You also have Singham Again, which uses the Ramayan plot as a ventilator to sustain the cop universe that is better off dead. You can absolutely trust Akshay Kumar to disappoint, for no amount of allusion or namesake can save Ram Setu from sinking.
Raavanan, the 2010 Tamil retelling, is without peer and without question in Ramayan adaptations. The Tamil film (ignore the Hindi version like Mani Ratnam ignores the few redeeming qualities of Ram) is, as someone called it, “the Aishwarya Rai of films”. The beauty of this retelling is such that you ignore the exceptional making. To put it simply, this is the only near-perfect Ramayan on screen.
RRR also carries vestiges of the epic, but I doubt anyone would care about the subtle storytelling against its extravagant making. Hanuman, the 2005 animated feature, also won in terms of fanfare and was the country’s first fully animated, full-length feature to be released theatrically. Sri Rama Rajyam explores the epic after the battle, starting with the exile of Sita.
Another unapologetically brilliant and subversive retelling is Nina Paly's Sita Sings the Blues, which rubbed a lot of right-wingers the wrong way. The film, available on YouTube, weaves a parallel between Nina’s divorce and “the greatest break-up story ever told”. Much like Raavanan, Sita Sings the Blues is a must-watch.
The Ramayan is not a static text; it is a living, evolving system that continuously grows in response to the community and cultural traditions with which it engages. While films like Adipurush and Singham Again make it to popular culture, any act of retelling the Ramayan is the rejection of a canon. Touting one version as authentic tends to create a dangerous trend—the homegenisation of culture, and as Thapar puts it, a “national culture” that is easy to control and manipulate. There are no grand narratives, nor are there any grand narrators with autocracy over the narration. Ramayan belongs to all. Let there be more Ramayans.
