Yuddha ke Drishtikon

Yuddha ke Drishtikon began from a difficulty of reading. Coming to the Valmiki Ramayana for the first time, we found Yuddha Kanda difficult to approach as a continuous whole—not simply because of the scale or intensity of war, but because of its diversity and interruptions: battle by conversation, action by counsel, advance by reversal, death by grief.

We stepped back and returned to the index, creating provisional groupings through which we could enter smaller parts of the Kanda with greater attention. These groupings were our scaffolding; we did not understand them as categories belonging to the text itself.

The Drishtikon arose from this need for a limited place from which to look and listen without claiming to hold the whole. We began with conversations before entering more fully into the battlefield. That sequence was both our choice and our limitation: the text itself repeatedly pauses war for counsel, disagreement, reassurance, recognition, grief and other encounters.

As the series progressed, we increasingly found ourselves staying with how different beings conducted themselves within the circumstances of Yuddha.

The Drishtikon was therefore not a definition of Yuddha or a framework through which Yuddha Kanda ought to be understood. It was a way for us, as students of the text, to enter something larger than we could initially hold—and to remain prepared for the text to disturb, enlarge or redirect the structure with which we had entered it.

For Yuddha ke Drishtikon, we chose to stay within the Valmiki Ramayana. We were not trying to construct a composite account of war from different Ram Katha traditions. We wanted to encounter one text closely enough to notice its people, conversations, battles, interruptions, relationships, grief and conduct within its own narrative movement.

Staying with one text also helped us distinguish what we were encountering in the Valmiki Ramayana from what we already knew or remembered from elsewhere.

Our familiarity with Ram Katha, including our earlier work with the Ramcharitmanas, inevitably travelled with us. We could not pretend otherwise. But we could refrain from using that familiarity to fill what the Valmiki Ramayana did not say, resolve what it left unresolved, or make one text explain another.

Choosing one text was therefore an act of restraint, not a claim of textual exclusivity. Other Ram Katha traditions may open entirely different Drishtikons. We were only defining where this particular listening would remain anchored.

We began by listening to people within Yuddha. This was one reason we initially stayed with conversations: to hear how different beings advised, disagreed, warned, reassured, entrusted responsibility and responded when choices were becoming increasingly consequential.

We were not trying to classify them as right or wrong, courageous or fearful, dharmic or adharmic. Nor did we begin with a definition of conduct against which their actions could be measured. We wanted to stay first with the circumstances the text placed around them and with what they said and did within those circumstances.

This listening was not limited to Shri Rama or those aligned with Him. Ravana, Kumbhakarna, Indrajit, Vibhishana, Sugriva, Angada, Lakshmana, Hanuman, Matali, Mandodari and others could become places of attention when the text gave us reason to stay.

As we entered the battlefield, conduct also became visible without conversation—in restraint and intervention, responsibility, encounters with an opponent, responses to injury, death and grief. The battlefield did not replace what we had been listening for; it enlarged the circumstances in which we could encounter it.

We began with conversations within Yuddha. We gradually found ourselves listening to conduct within Yuddha. And increasingly, Yuddha itself exposed circumstances in which conduct became difficult for us to overlook.

We did not begin with a list of important characters or major events to cover. Our provisional groupings gave us smaller fields within which to begin listening, with conversations providing the first.

The unit of selection was often a moment rather than a person. A warning being given, advice being rejected, responsibility being entrusted, an army being reassured, an opponent being recognised, or grief changing the space after death could give us reason to stay.

Selection also became progressive rather than merely planned. One episode could leave behind a question that changed how we approached another. The battles involving Ravana’s commanders, for example, began drawing our attention to the progressive removal of layers around Ravana, changing how we subsequently encountered Ravana entering the battlefield himself.

Our original structures therefore remained aids, not checklists. When the text drew our attention elsewhere, we could follow it; when an episode fitted a grouping but gave us insufficient reason to stay, we did not present it merely for completeness.

We did not attempt to include every battle, warrior, death, conversation or major event. Some possibilities were deferred, some not pursued, and others became important only later.

Omission was not a judgment of importance. An episode not selected did not mean that we found nothing there—only that this particular journey through the text had not given us sufficient reason, or perhaps not yet given us sufficient reason, to foreground it.

Conversations gradually drew our attention toward conduct under the circumstances of Yuddha: not only what someone said, but what they understood, what relationships they carried, what choices remained available and what they nevertheless did.

We began noticing that advice did not necessarily determine action; discernment did not remove relationship; disagreement did not necessarily end loyalty; and knowledge of danger did not automatically lead to withdrawal from it.

Once we entered the battlefield, conduct remained visible through permission, entrustment, intervention and non-intervention, reassurance, recognition of an opponent and restraint when action remained possible.

We also began noticing the removal of layers between a person and the consequences of choices. As Ravana’s commanders entered battle and fell, their individual encounters remained important, but their succession also changed how we approached Ravana eventually entering the battlefield himself.

Yuddha and Maryada also began coming closer in our listening. We had not begun with Yuddha aur Maryada as a thesis. Particular moments—permission, responsibility, recognition, restraint—simply made the question increasingly difficult not to ask.

Death, too, did not necessarily conclude our attention. Vibhishana’s lament and Mandodari’s grief carried us beyond death into relationship, memory, enmity, kinship and grief.

These were not themes we needed the text to confirm. They were things the text increasingly made difficult for us not to notice.

We allowed the plan to remain provisional.

Sometimes this meant staying with someone longer than expected. Kumbhakarna’s encounter with Ravana opened into rebuke, reassurance, disagreement and his response to Mahodara. Rather than hurrying toward the battle for which he had been awakened, we stayed with those conversations.

Sometimes it meant remaining after an event we might otherwise have treated as a conclusion. Ravana’s death led us to Vibhishana’s lament and Mandodari’s grief.

At other times, one encounter changed how we approached subsequent ones. The succession of Ravana’s commanders drew our attention to the layers surrounding him; particular battlefield moments brought Maryada into our questions without making it the governing interpretation of the series.

Following an unexpected direction did not mean that every interesting passage became an episode. Sometimes we made a note, carried a question forward, returned to another passage or simply left something unresolved.

When our scaffolding stopped helping us see what was before us, our responsibility was to adjust the scaffolding rather than adjust the text.

Every episode involved selection. We stayed with the portion of the text needed for the encounter being presented, selected the original Sanskrit verses accordingly, and tried to preserve enough of the surrounding circumstances for the moment not to become detached from its context.

Music and visuals accompanied the text without being intended to supply its explanation or conclusion. Intensity did not necessarily require spectacle; an opponent did not need to be diminished to make another person greater; and death did not need to be either celebrated or sentimentalised.

The sequence involved a larger intervention. We did not initially follow Yuddha Kanda continuously. Our decision to listen to conversations before entering more fully into battlefield episodes created our sequence, not the sequence of the Valmiki Ramayana.

As the series progressed, earlier encounters began affecting later selections. Kumbhakarna’s conversations expanded; grief carried attention beyond Ravana’s death; successive commanders changed how we approached Ravana’s own entry into battle. At times we also had to recover chronology after thematic listening, because our structure could help us study but could not replace the narrative movement of the source.

The sequence of Yuddha ke Drishtikon therefore records the history of our attention—where we entered, where we stayed, what one encounter made us notice in another, and where our original structures had to change. It is not a proposed order for reading Yuddha Kanda.

We did not claim that our selections constitute a complete or representative account of Yuddha Kanda. Another reader may stay with different people, notice different moments and ask different questions.

We did not claim that our provisional groupings belong to the Valmiki Ramayana, or that our sequence is the sequence through which Yuddha Kanda ought to be heard.

We did not use the conduct we foregrounded as a measure for judging people against a predetermined ideal. Nor did we require Ravana to be diminished for Shri Rama to be attended to, or reduce Kumbhakarna, Vibhishana, Indrajit, Sugriva, Angada, Hanuman, Lakshmana, Mandodari or others to qualities assigned by us.

We also did not turn patterns that attracted our attention into conclusions about the text. The removal of layers around Ravana became meaningful to our listening; we do not claim that this is what those battles ultimately mean. Maryada became increasingly difficult for us not to notice; we do not claim that Yuddha aur Maryada explains Yuddha Kanda.

Most importantly, Drishtikon was not a claim of privileged sight. It named the limited place from which we were able to begin looking.

An episode omitted was not thereby unimportant; a person not foregrounded was not insignificant; a question we did not ask was not absent from the text.

Our selections show the limits and history of our attention—not the limits of what the Valmiki Ramayana permits one to notice.

Yuddha ke Drishtikon began with a need for structure. We created provisional groupings and began with conversations because they gave us a way to enter a Kanda whose diversity and interruptions we could not initially hold together.

Those conversations gradually changed what held our attention. Conduct became visible not as something we had defined beforehand, but through what people understood, said, carried in relationship and nevertheless chose to do.

Entering the battlefield widened that attention. Conduct could become visible without speech—in permission, entrustment, intervention and restraint, response to injury, recognition of an opponent, death and grief.

The battlefield itself also changed for us. Successive combats began exposing the removal of layers around Ravana. Grief asked us to remain after death. Maryada began appearing as a question within Yuddha without becoming a thesis imposed upon it.

Meanwhile, our relationship with our own structure changed. Episodes could expand unexpectedly; planned ones could be deferred; questions could remain unanswered; and the text could interrupt the categories through which we had entered it.

The series began by creating enough structure for us to enter Yuddha Kanda. As it progressed, the encounter with the text taught us when that structure had to give way.