Amidst the largest population lockdown in history, and a pandemic that will likely affect millions, Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan serial has be...
Amidst the largest population lockdown in history, and a pandemic that will likely affect millions, Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan serial has begun a re-run on Doordarshan, the national television channel that has for many years been slighted by advertisers, because higher ratings and premium audiences go to the private channels.
Ramayan was first televised in January 1987, when secularism was the official policy of the Indian government in broadcasting, and when there was just one television channel in the country. The idea of serialising a Hindu epic came from SS Gill, the Secretary of Information and Broadcasting at the time, who recalled that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had hesitated at accepting his proposal, fearing that the show was meant for a mainly Hindu audience.
Gill, “a strong leftist” as he described himself, told me that he reassured Gandhi that the Ramayan was a national epic, and part of the majority culture; there was nothing partisan about it, he insisted. The intention was not to change the political balance between majority and minority, but to increase the audience for the new medium of communication, and in the process, strengthen the power of the government itself: although television broadcasting was many years old in some parts of the country, there were...
