Sita: The Hero of Nandini Sahu’s Retelling of Ramayana

Abstract

Generation after generation has heard the story of Ramayana as the epic battle or dharmayudh between Rama and Ravana. Sita is mostly presented as the damsel in distress whose honour is protected by her husband and who is supposed to prove her chastity in order to find a place in society. However, her life before marriage, her natural gift, resilience, courage, and ability to detach from everything that is close to her are many times overlooked. The hero is Rama, and the villain is Ravana. Sita is the victim. Nandini Sahu’s Sita is not a victim. She is the true warrior of the epic Ramayana who deserves to be called the hero. She is the faithful daughter, wife, and mother who performs all the three roles with devotion and dedication. However, most importantly, she is a woman of substance who never loses hope in adverse circumstances and resiliently faces every challenge that life throws her way. This paper is an attempt to reconstruct Sita’s identity as the warrior of the epic instead of the victim by referring to Nandini Sahu’s rendering of the story of Ramayana from Sita’s perspective. This analysis will be done from the postcolonial perspective in which the story of the subaltern Sita will be the highlight, and her actual contribution to the action of the epic will be brought to the forefront to show that she is the hero and not the victim.