Shabri Dual Audio Hindi 720p
Oleta Blaylock
Since 2010 the authors have been involved in the production and performance of the Morrisville, North Carolina Ramlila. In 2018 we conducted a participant-ethnography of the production. Many Hindu communities in India and in the South-Asian diaspora have created their own unique Ramlila productions, all of which are to some extent based on Maharishi Valmiki's millennia-old Sanskrit epic, the Rāmāyan.a. The events of the story are dictated largely by religious tradition, but there is surprising variation in the textual and cinematic sources used to generate the performance's spoken dialogues. The Hindu Society of North Carolina began mounting its Ramlila as a small-scale pageant in 2009, but in subsequent years it has grown to be a large-scale production that attracts thousands of audience members. In our study we examine the evolution of the dramatic structure of the play as performed in Morrisville, the group dynamics of the production team and actors, gender roles in the cast and production team, and the aesthetic and political debates that inform the work. We argue that not only does this drama play an important role in forging community identity among North Carolinian South Asians, but also sometimes works to inscribe deeper tensions within the community concerning the meaning of the epic with respect to gender, ethnicity, and transmitted moral values.
Afroz Taj is Associate Professor of South Asian culture, literature, and media in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Taj's research interests include Urdu poetry and poetics, South Asian theatre, cinema, and media. He is the author of several books including The Court of Indar and the Rebirth of North Indian Drama, and Urdu through Hindi, as well as many poems and songs in the South Asian styles of ghazal, gīt, dohā, and short stories. His current projects concern the "Urdu Public" and Urdu popular culture including musical theatre, film magazines, and pulp fiction.
John Caldwell is Teaching Associate Professor in South Asian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and also a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill working on his dissertation in Musicology entitled "Songs from the Other Side: Listening to Pakistani Voices in India." In 2017, Caldwell spent seven months in India on a Fulbright Dissertation Research Fellowship. Caldwell's other research interests include South Asian film and media culture, comparative musicology, ethnotheory, second language learning, and poetry and poetics. Caldwell also directs the UNC Gamelan Ensemble.
The Morrisville, NC, fire department was already on the scene when the explosion lit up the chilly October sky (see Fig. 1). The towering effigy trembled with the force of the blast, and the gathered crowds gasped in awe as the flames reared into the darkness. The figure's staring eyes, outspread arms, and extra heads were eerily highlighted against the North Carolina pine forest surrounding the parking lot before they began to blister, wilt, and fall into the conflagration. Above the inferno fireworks sparkled and crackled sending showers of multicolored sparks over the heads of the audience. Many adults had small children in their arms or on their shoulders, and older children pressed up against the yellow police tape. In the crowd a glowing constellation of cell phones were held aloft.
What motivates a diasporic community to mount an ambitious program like Ramlila? How is this American Ramlila different from other Indian and diaspora Ramlilas? In our participant-ethnographic study we examine how the Ramlila story has been adapted for the Triangle audiences by looking at the evolution of the dramatic structure of the Morrisville production and some of the controversies that have arisen in the process. In this essay we argue that not only does this drama play an important role in forging cultural identity among North Carolinian Indians, but also reflects the context and assumptions of one particular diasporic Hindu community.
This is a participant-ethnography. By way of disclosure, we the authors, Taj and Caldwell, have played the roles of Ravan and Hanuman, respectively, since 2010. (See Figs. 2, 3, 7, 8 and 11.) We have also been involved in editing and producing the sound files for the characters' dialogues. Initially, we were recruited for this production as actors, not as academics, prior to beginning our ethnographic work on the production.
Diaspora Ramlilas tend to differ from Indian Ramlilas in several important ways. From a brief YouTube survey we observe that unlike their Indian counterparts,1 North American Ramlilas are usually presented more as community cultural activities and less as extended acts of worship. This bifurcation of purpose is itself a significant feature unique to the diaspora performances. Diaspora Ramlilas are also generally more compressed in format, lasting hours instead of days, and are often more inclusive with regard to participants. For example, many include women playing the women's roles, something still fairly uncommon in productions outside of Delhi, and children playing all or some of the important roles, something mostly limited to amateur productions, and that too with children mostly serving as extras, in India.
Looking at the other Ramlilas and Dussehra observances around the United States, we can trace correlations between the socioeconomic [End Page 204] composition of the South Asian community in a given city and the style of its Ramlila. Ramlilas tend to take place in areas where large numbers of South Asians have settled, for example in the suburbs of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Raleigh-Durham, New York City, and of course northern New Jersey. They largely seem to be temple-based, and range from amateur productions featuring children's pageants and dances, to professionally produced dance-dramas. Some more effectively capture the informal, chaotic style of Ramlila in India, while others seek to emulate Broadway shows. But where wealthier diasporic communities live, Ramlila productions tend to be more professionally produced, intellectually engaged, and dramatically nuanced.
Our article is informed by other studies of diaspora Ramlilas, particularly those on Ramlilas of Trinidad (Richman 2010; Riggio 2010; Mahabir and Chand 2018) and London (Richman 1999, 2007). In Richman's 2010 article "We Don't Change It, We Make It Applicable," she discusses various controversies that have emerged in Trinidad's century-long history of Ramlila, and argues that differences of opinion are an inevitable part of the process of adapting Ramlila for an evolving diaspora community. Such questions have concerned the materials used to construct the Ravan effigy, the language used, whether Ramlila can be performed "out of context" in a regional arts festival, the caste of the performers, and the name for the genre itself (Richman 2010: 77 ff.). Despite their very different historical trajectories, North American Ramlilas share the dynamic and negotiated nature of Trinidad's Ramlila productions.
Milla Riggio's study investigates how the performance spaces of Trinidadian Ramlilas are laid out physically and spiritually, as well as the role of darśan, the divine seeing of God, in the performance (Riggio 2010). She argues that the journey of Ram in exile maps into both spiritual and geographical space, and that the Indo-Trinidadians use the annual Ramlila to rebuild a new Ayodhya in the land of their exile, thus accomplishing an allegorical "return."
Mahabir and Chand trace the evolution of the Trinidad Ramlila from the 1880s to the present, with special attention to how the Ramlila contributes to Trinidadian Indian society (Mahabir and Chand 2018). They argue that the annual performances help sustain "family-like" bonds within the Hindu community, while inculcating Hindu moral values and behavior (Mahabir and Chand 2018: 68). Further, the performances have always attracted spectators from the Muslim Indo-Trinidadian community and thus serve to break down religious boundaries. The authors go on to discuss how the content of the Ramlilas have evolved to suit new social realities, and cite Bridget Brereton's observation that the character of Sita has changed to be [End Page 205] more "assertive, [and] morally self-directed" (Mahabir and Chand 2018: 68). In our own study we will demonstrate that the Morrisville Ramlila also includes an assertive, empowered Sita, albeit within the framework of the traditional story.
Beyond her work on the unique environment of Trinidad, Paula Richman's overlapping studies of Ramlilas in London shed important light on questions of context and interpretation. In her article "A Diaspora Ramayana in Southall, Greater London," Richman describes how a feminist group called the Southall Black Sisters created a Ramlila in response to the experience of racism against immigrants in the United Kingdom (Richman 1999). In her article "Ravana in London," Richman points out the connection between the notion of exile in the Ramayan and the immigrant experience in England (Richman 2007: 166). Richman also introduces the concept of "multivocality" with respect to Diaspora Ramlilas:
As a performative act, staging a Ramlila in the diaspora can express many experiences, all the way from feeling alienation from the host community to asserting the value of one's cultural roots. The play can be multivocal, conveying one meaning to insiders and another to those outside the community. Diasporic performances of Rama's story tend to include reinterpretation or additional commentary, in order to mediate between an ancient story and its new setting.
In this article, Richman discusses how the character of Ravan is a locus for this multivocality, and how he can be "semiotically refashioned" to represent a range of social evils. For example, in the Southall production, Ravan represents embodied racism. Other instances of such "semiotic refashioning" include Ravan as Fijian plantation owner, and as the Muslim other, citing the work of John Kelly (2000), Sheldon Pollock (1993), and Richman (2007: 168). This latter claim by Pollock is particularly resonant in the Morrisville Ramlila in which Ravan is played by a Muslim actor (author Taj). While the Morrisville production does not explicitly portray Ravan as Muslim, the identity of the actor is no secret, and in an era when communal awareness is on the rise both in India and the diaspora, the irony is not lost on the audience. But while Ravan is dehumanized in Pollock's formation, it is important to note that the Morrisville production humanizes him and brings out his complexities.
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