By: Azmat Ali

The Ramayana—one of the two great epic poems of Hinduism—has been central to South Asian literary, religious, and cultural traditions for over two millennia. Originally composed in Sanskrit and dated to before 300 BCE, the Ramayana is attributed to the sage-poet Valmiki. It is the source of two major Hindu festivals: Dussehra and Diwali. The former celebrates Rama’s victory over Ravana, while the latter commemorates Rama’s return to Ayodhya after exile.

Over the centuries, the Ramayana has been adapted and reinterpreted in numerous regional and vernacular traditions. Among the most prominent are the versions by Tulsidas in Awadhi and Krittibas Ojha in Bengali. Yet the epic has also been subject to dissent, subversion, and radical reinterpretation. One of the most significant examples of this is Chandrabati’s Ramayana, composed in 16th-century Bengal in the Bengali language. Chandrabati’s version stands out as one of the earliest and most radical feminist retellings of the epic, told from Sita’s perspective and offering a critical lens on patriarchal norms.

In her essay “Lady Sings the Blues: When Women Retell the Ramayana,” Nabaneeta Dev Sen writes: “Just as the Rama myth has been exploited by the patriarchal Brahminical system to construct an ideal Hindu male, Sita too has been built up as an ideal Hindu female to help serve the system. … But there are always alternative ways of using a myth. If patriarchy has used the Sita myth to silence women, the village women have picked up the Sita myth to give themselves a voice” (Dev Sen, 1991, p. 19).

Chandrabati holds the distinction of being the first known female poet in Bengali literature to rewrite the Ramayana. Born in 1550 in the village of Patuyari, on the banks of the Fulesshori River in Kishoreganj (present-day Bangladesh), she was the daughter of Dij-Banshidas Bhattacharya, a prolific writer known for composing Manasa ballads. After being abandoned on her wedding day by her childhood friend and lover Jayananda—who married another woman—Chandrabati chose to remain celibate and devote herself to the worship of Shiva. This personal crisis became the impetus for her literary project. She began composing her Ramayana both as a spiritual offering and a response to the social threat of ostracization.

She writes: Chandrabati bole, Pita, momo bakya dhoro / Janmena koribo biya roibo ayibor / Shib-puja kori ami Shib-pode moti / Dukkhinir katha rakho dhoro anumoti.
(Chandrabati says, O father, please heed my words. Allow me to remain unmarried and worship Shiva. Please heed the plea of this unfortunate victim) (Sen, 1923, Vol. I, Part I:12).
Her father replies: “Shib-puja koro aar lekho Ramayane” (“Worship Shiva and write the Ramayana”) (Sen, 1923, Vol. I, Part I:12).

Unlike dominant Ramayana traditions that open with Rama’s lineage and divine birth, Chandrabati’s narrative begins with Sita’s lament, thereby decentering Rama from the center and reconfiguring Sita as the primary lens through which the story unfolds. Sita’s pain—rather than Rama’s heroism—structures the emotional and ethical core of the epic.

While Valmiki’s Ramayana opens with Janmalila (the divine birth of Rama), Chandrabati devotes six sections to Sita’s birth and only two shorter, later sections to the births of Rama, his three brothers, his sister, and the scheming Kaikeyi—whom she names “Kukuya,” repeating the syllable ku, which denotes evil in both Sanskrit and Bengali.

In Chandrabati’s version, Sita is not found in a furrow by King Janaka as in Valmiki’s text. Instead, she is the daughter of Mandodari, Ravana’s wife, who, in a state of sorrow and neglect, drinks poison to end her life. In a miraculous twist, Mandodari gives birth to an egg. Fearing Ravana’s wrath, the egg is placed in a golden casket and set afloat in the sea. It drifts across the Bay of Bengal and is discovered by a poor, honest fisherman named Madhab Jalia. His wife, Sata, is visited by the Goddess Lakshmi, who instructs her to deliver the egg to Queen Sunaina, King Janaka’s wife. The child born from the egg is named Sita—a name derived from “Sata.” This miraculous and divinely ordained birth, devoid of a male progenitor, marks Sita as a uniquely feminine figure of power, positioning Chandrabati as one of the earliest feminist voices in South Asian literature.

In classical Greek epic, the narrative is structured around a heroic code that centers on a virtuous, masculine figure with martial prowess. Chandrabati breaks this convention entirely by granting narrative centrality and divine origin to Sita, thus subverting not only the patriarchal ideology embedded in the Ramayana tradition but also the very structure of classical epic form.

Although composed in the medieval period—a time of significant socio-religious flux in Bengal—Chandrabati’s Ramayana exhibits a proto-feminist sensibility. It interrogates the cost of patriarchal morality, exposing how women’s suffering is sanctified as virtue in epic traditions. As Nabaneeta Dev Sen argues, Chandrabati reframes the Ramayana as a “woman’s epic,” where Sita’s sorrow, not Rama’s righteousness, is the narrative engine (Dev Sen, 1991).

By glorifying Sita above Rama and foregrounding the voices of marginalized female characters, Chandrabati not only critiques patriarchal values but also challenges the authority of epic tradition itself. Her Ramayana is both an act of resistance and an enduring literary achievement that continues to resonate with feminist, literary, and cultural debates across centuries.

References:

·         Dev Sen, Nabaneeta. (1991). Lady Sings the Blues: When Women Retell the Ramayana. In Paula Richman (Ed.), Many Ramayanas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia (pp. 17–28). University of California Press.

·         Sen, Dinesh Chandra (Ed.). (1923). Eastern Bengal Ballads, Vol. I, Part I. Calcutta: University of Calcutta.