He refuses his brother Bharatha's urgent entreaties to ascend the throne once their father dies of grief. Bharatha rules as regent while Rama is in the forest. It is very instructive however that when he returns, the wise Rama sends Hanuman ahead to ascertain if fourteen years on the throne have corrupted Bharatha, and he is disposed to hang onto the crown. This note of caution is amazing, flying as it does in the face of the popular perception that the two brothers were bonded together in a state of gooey sentimentality, rather like living in a tub of melted chocolate. Rama's intelligence was only too aware of what can happen to people in changed circumstances, and it is one of the more mature passages in the Ramayana.

The Shoorpanaka episode, is the first cloud on the idyllic forest life. Sita insists on coming along, overruling Rama's objections, and even going to the extent of saying that her father had married her to a woman by mistake when he tried to insist upon his point of view. This should put paid to any lingering doubt that she was a doormat. The forest life is one long uninterrupted romantic episode and there is nothing like it in all literature. Since the Hero in Indian culture is expected to be an expert in love too, Valmiki obliged. Rama's love for Sita is the real thing, strong and fierce and touching. It is not a conventional romantic interaction that so bedevils Sanskrit literature. Other heroes sigh and sob and declaim romantically but Rama alone meant it and to this one woman alone. It is a constant source of wonder, even now.

After the kidnapping of Sita, Rama makes an alliance with Sugriva, the younger brother of the monkey king of Kishkinda, Vali. Rama promises to kill Vali and have Sugriva crowned king, so that the royal forces could help in the search for Sita. This episode has remained a controversial one, and there are many people who feel that it was a great lapse of Rama's part to have so struck Vali down, who was after all not a bad king. It was undoubtedly a regrettable action, but there was nothing in the nature of a moral or ethical lapse in it. Vali tried repeatedly to murder his younger brother over a genuine mistake, and he also forcibly dragged Ruma, wife of Sugriva, in to his harem. His pride in his virtues and accomplishments had turned rancid and he thought he was beyond any code. Rama struck him down from hiding with his arrow, not in the back as many seem to think, and it was perfectly justified. For in the days of his virtue, Vali had been granted the boon that anybody who walked into his sight would instantly lose half their strength, which would be transferred to Vali. He was therefore invincible, even for the gods. There was no other way to kill him. Had Rama gone mano-a-mano against him in the stupidity that is sometimes called bravery, he would have died a foolish death.It is one of the first principles of Myth that a hero may sometimes act like a villain but never like a fool.

There is another aspect to this Vali killing that people in India do not realize, used as they are to regarding childish and fantastic descriptions of battle as the real thing. In that context Rama's killing of Vali is the best and most heroic thing he ever did. This is my proposition. There is no moral, ethical, spirituality-inducing or virtue-developing way to kill. The only question is whether it is right to kill or not, and the usual answer to that is no. Some circumstances justify it however, but the act of killing itself can never be sanitized. Killing therefore is like excretion, a necessary evil to be got over with as efficiently and quietly as possible, and not explored for its ethical potential. Once the decision to kill Vali was taken - the moral imperative overruled for the sake of the ethical imperative - it does not matter how it is done, except that it was done quickly and well. Rama's choice of ambush therefore is a truly heroic choice, a refusal to flinch away from unpleasant reality and larger obligations because of some specious notion of valor. If India had fought its fights as Rama did Vali, the history of the country would have been a lot healthier.

That Rama was not a coward or a lazy fighter is proved when he lets Ravana off later, when the demon king was weaponless. This episode is much admired by the unthinking as the real, generous Rama, unwilling to fight a foe who is disarmed. Actually, Rama had a deeper agenda here. If he killed Ravana at that stage, enough powerful demons would be left to recover and regroup at some later stage. His mission was to forever remove the Rakshasha plague from the universe. He let Ravana off, and the slaughter of demons continued until Ravana was the only one left! The surviving Rakshashas were not of the same vicious propensities as their brethren and the Rakshasha menace was finally crushed. Individual demons continued their bad ways till the times of the Mahabharahta, but Rakshasha society would never again have the numbers to become a nuisance to the world at large. It was a stroke of political genius, not that of a pious softy, and it has gone totally unremarked till now.

The trial by fire episode, in which a suddenly grouchy Rama casts aspersions on the chastity of Sita during her captivity, makes for painful reading. However, if we accept the fundamental truth that nobody can be psychologically inconsistent, we can understand his point of view. We may not agree with it, but it is valid. Like Caesar's wife, Ikshavaku queens too had to be seen to be above suspicion. It was the social imperative he was worried about, the same reason why he accepted his father's insane promise - the people had certain expectations from their ruler and that could not be set aside. In one case his action wins him admiration, in the other it generates condemnation, - but he was operating from the same set of premises in both circumstances. In Valmiki, the fire vindicates Sita and that is the end of it. Rama returns to Ayodhaya and rules in what is nostalgically remembered as the Perfect Age, Rama Rajya - the Rule of Rama.

The Uttara Kanda with its banishment of a pregnant Sita is not the work of Valmiki. Even worse was the subversion of India's national hero to caste agendas by later interpolators. There is a repulsive episode involving the killing of a shudra named Shambuka, for the 'sin' of learning the Vedas and practicing austerities. Rama was used in every age to serve the needs of the time and this nasty little tale was foisted upon him by an India in deep intellectual and spiritual decline. Rama, who was the friend of boatmen and tribals, who actually ate and slept with them, would not have done such a vile action, but some people felt that his prestige was a useful stalking horse for their casteist agendas.

These apparent blemishes have only served to illuminate the bright spots of Rama even further. He is without doubt the Pre-eminent Hero of the nation, Best Amongst Men. It is interesting to note that in the Valmiki version, he is fundamentally a Great Hero, he is not aware of his avatar status. No matter how many times it is pointed out to him he never acts like god on earth. The later regional variations make him out to be a fully aware Avatar. The most important of these texts is the Ramacharitmanas of Tulsidasa, which has literally displaced the Valmiki version as the story of Rama in the Hindi speaking areas of India. Kalidasa wrote a Rama story too, the Raghuvamasham. Strangest of all Rama stories in Sanskrit is a long palindrome of a poem by an unknown author. When read forward it tells the story of Rama. When read backwards it recounts the Mahabharatha! There is a Sanskrit spiritual version of the Ramayana popular in Kerala, called the Ramaneeyam, which eliminates all but the spiritual aspects of the story of Rama. Many English versions have been written this century. The hold of Rama over India's imagination is not likely to dim any time soon.