Sita’s Trial By Fire
A comparison of Sita and Draupadi and a critical analysis of the role of women in mythology.
Written by Neha Hosangadi and Tanvi Bendigeri.
As central characters from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, Sita and Draupadi stand out as pivotal female figures whose stories emphasize deep cultural beliefs about duty, honor, and the role of women in Vedic society. While they existed at drastically different points in the mythological timeline, they both shared the fate of being mistreated and exploited by the men around them. By drawing parallels between the two characters and their individual storylines, we can study the role of women in mythology and their subsequent impact on society.
Sita and Draupadi hail from different backgrounds and have distinct childhood experiences, yet there are several similarities in their narratives. Both are born from the earth: Sita emerges from a furrow while Draupadi is born from a sacrificial fire, signifying both their divine origins and strength. Throughout their lives, these two women face challenges in societies where gender norms are strictly defined. Both Sita and Draupadi undergo a swayamvar to choose their husbands— a ceremony where their fathers marry them off to Rama and Arjuna, respectively, after they complete seemingly impossible tasks. From the very start, much of their autonomy and agency is stripped from them. This treatment continues in their individual marriages. In the Ramayana, Sita represents the perfect example of a loyal wife who is supposed to follow her husband’s commands without question. On the other hand, Draupadi in the Mahabharata fights to conform to expectations of modesty and obedience as a woman of high status.
Sita’s trial by fire and Draupadi’s disrobing become the crux of this argument, illustrating the objectification and mistreatment of women. Sita’s trial, often interpreted as a test of her purity and fidelity, becomes a means to assert male dominance and control over her. Despite emerging unscathed, her integrity is questioned by society, and she faces exile and abandonment by her husband, Rama, as a consequence of societal suspicion. Similarly, Draupadi’s disrobing in the royal court of Kuru serves as a brutal display of power and humiliation, where she is stripped of agency and dignity.
Both Sita and Draupadi’s stories draw attention to a recurring theme in world mythology: the use of women as pawns in the games of men. Sita is abducted as an act of vengeance against her husband, and Draupadi is gambled away like property by her own husband. However, this trope is not unique to Indian mythology; similar motifs appear in various myths across the globe. Be it Helen of Troy or Medusa, women have always been used as instruments of war. Female figures are often the catalysts for larger conflicts, tools to propel the story further, yet they are never given any real power of their own. This exploitation reflects a broader pattern of gender-based violence and subjugation perpetuated by systems of patriarchy and male entitlement.
Despite Sita and Draupadi’s differences, their stories challenge us to reflect on the passive roles traditionally assigned to women in mythology and question how these narratives influence current perceptions of women’s roles in society. Their objectification and victimization at the hands of male figures highlight the systemic inequalities and power imbalances that persist within patriarchal structures. Moreover, their stories serve as cautionary tales, exposing the dangers of reducing women to mere objects of desire or instruments of political intrigue. As we continue to revisit and reinterpret ancient epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, it is imperative that we approach them with a critical lens, acknowledging their cultural significance while also questioning and challenging the norms and values they propagate.
Sita and Draupadi:
The Unmaking and Remaking of India’s Mythological Heroines.
Written by Urmi Bhattacheryya
Now, imagine the stupidest of interjections: a figure of authority of some sort—an elder brother, a great-aunt, a father, an uncle—stop you at the door. Won’t you consider changing out of that into something less conspicuous, s/he asks? The interjection is so deferential that you’re almost convinced that they are only concerned about your well-being.
Subtext wide open for anyone to read: you don’t want to look like that other girl.
That other girl is a common trope used by patriarchs, and one that is challenged and confronted by feminists worldwide. It’s a trope as old as the stories of Sita and Draupadi, the two leading heroines of India’s most popular epics, Ramayan and Mahabharat, respectively.
Does it matter that, out of the chaotic scene of men and god, the names of these two solitary heroines bubble up often, only because they far outweigh the mention of any other woman in the mythological realm? Not at all. Does it matter that the two fighting for podium are only as alike as chalk and cheese? Not in the slightest. Does it matter, also, that both the Ramayan and Mahabharat, in which the two women supposedly play a central role, miserably fail the Bechdel test? It doesn’t.
But it should. It should also bear significance that the contrasting characteristics and unrealistic binaries of Sita and Draupadi—fiery vs. docile, all-sacrificing vs ever-destructive—were painted by two men. Valmiki and Vyasa’s women have been compartmentalised by traditionalists and modernists for centuries now. (You probably know your Sita-Draupadi origin stories like the back of your hands since, when your grandparents wanted to teach you about super-heroic women in the epics, it was slim pickings!) But suffice to say, it’s funny how traditional writers (and their readers) have venerated Sita and scoffed at Draupadi, while the modern ilk have made a darling out of Draupadi and turned their noses up at Sita.
Sita vs. Draupadi. I feel like I’ve had the title thrown at my face my whole life, an inescapable battle between two of Indian literature’s most famous women. I would pick up anything about the two. Or maybe that’s just me. Or maybe that’s just me pretending to be self-referential to stroke the literary shmuck of an ego. It’s a lot like the Madonna/whore complex. A ‘girls like you’ and a ‘girls like them’ complex. The girl that wears the short dress and the one that doesn’t. A girl like Sita, or a girl like Draupadi.
It should also bear significance that the contrasting characteristics and unrealistic binaries of Sita and Draupadi—fiery vs. docile, all-sacrificing vs ever-destructive—were painted by two men. Valmiki and Vyasa’s women have been compartmentalised by traditionalists and modernists for centuries now.
But Who ‘Wins’?
If you typed in Sita versus Draupadi on the net, you’d be astonished at the helpful nudges Google provides: Who’s greater? Who’s more beautiful? And even the blasé ‘Who’s better?’
Kavita Kane—who authored Sita’s Sister and Lanka’s Princess (among others)—makes a case for both women as “feminist icons, though different in situation and character”. Kane, whose own novels have revolutionised the way modern readers re-read previously overshadowed or reviled women, wrote in an essay for The Indian Express of how “...each woman rose above her status in society to show free will and courage to stand up against injustice”.
In late 2013, a powerful dance-drama took stage around the theatres of New Delhi, bringing together—for the first time, in pseudo-celluloid—the characters of Draupadi and Sita to engage in gut-wrenching conversations about shared trauma and sisterly solidarity. Aptly called Face to Face, this depiction of the two women most-talked about in mythological literature surprised many with its conciliations for both. “We all perceive Draupadi as this multifaceted fiery beauty, and Sita as an embodiment of loyalty and courage,” said choreographer and auteur Jyotsna Shourie of the feat de accompli at the time. “However, it would be wrong to infer that Sita was more submissive and Draupadi more aggressive. Their personalities were moulded by the times in which they lived, and this is a piece which deals with just that,”
Sally J Sutherland attempted to understand this in a poignant piece she wrote in 1989 for the Journal of the American Oriental Society called “Sita and Draupadi: Aggressive Behavior and Female Role-Models in the Sanskrit Epics”. At the time, Sutherland , without preamble, announced her intent to investigate “a recent survey taken of one thousand young Indian men and women in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh” which had revealed that “from a list of twenty-four goddesses, literary heroines, and famous women of history, an overwhelming percentage chose for their ideal female role model Sita, the heroine of Ramayana”.
Sita—Sutherland surmises—is revered by mainstream Hindu society as a wife acquiescent to her husband’s every whim and fancy. But this, despite the fact—argues Sutherland—that both women’s roles “depict...the basic attitudes of a patriarchal and male-dominated society towards women”. Thus, more than 30 years ago, Sutherland had hit the nail on the head, that the women’s seeming-submissiveness and apparent-chutzpah are just two limited archetypes of femininity, created, playdough-like, by two epic redactors, Valmiki and Vyasa. True to fallible human form though, we compartmentalise them into black and white extremes each time.
It isn’t just us, though. Sita and Draupadi have been studied with increasing fascination by feminists around the globe. Halfway across the world, at the University of Botswana, Motswapong Pulane Elizabeth published a piece called “Understanding Draupadi as a paragon of gender and resistance”. How Elizabeth understood her, however, was to juxtapose one woman in contrast to the other—her selected heroine Draupadi was a “pioneer of feminism”, unlike Sita whom she analysed as more true to the tenets of “normative Hindu society”.
The Unmaking and Remaking of Heroines
But that ‘normativity’ attacks and eats away at the characters of both Sita and Draupadi. The latter, too, despite all her famed fieriness, is blamed as a catalyst for vengeance (even reared to be one). Ultimately, she is punished by the very writer who creates her by being insignificantly dropped off the face of a cliff. None of her brave Pandava husbands chase after her.
Sita, of course, leads that unilateral life awarded to her by her narrator, loving, then leaving Ram, her avatar husband, but only after her heart is broken at being asked to stand a “purity test” by him. Isn’t each woman’s choice—if such a thing even exists—a mere illusion created by men of their time, to be read by men of all times, as black-and-white prototypes of what women should and shouldn’t be. They are reduced to the version preferred by the reader: the traditionalist or the modern.
And in such a case, shouldn’t one reclaim their stories—making and unmaking and remaking them, according to the times?
Draupadi’s polyandry—despite it being a prevalent practice of the times—is treated with toxic censure; Sita’s fealty held to high esteem, despite no one displaying the same fealty back to her.
Still Relevant Today
In recent years, that very unmaking and remaking that we spoke of, has been ventured, to great success, by a spate of new authors.
In The Palace of Illusions, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni places her heroine front and centre, announcing her intent to right the epic wrongs (pun intended) of treating women’s machinations as secondary to a plot. Draupadi is vengeful, yes, but she is far more relatable as she soliloquises for our benefit, dissecting her every thought. She acknowledges her fallibility, but she is willing to live with herself, thereby giving herself something the Mahabharat did not: self-acceptance.
In Aditya Iyengar’s Bhumika (2019), Sita—a heroine forever benumbed—gets a voice of her own, and choices galore. Her story is told from where the Ramayan largely forgets her: the point of the sacrificial fire.
Turns out, there was plenty to write about; only no had cared to ask.
The number of Quora hits, Reddit sub-threads and re-imaginings of the Mahabharat and Ramayan probably tell one enough about the contemporary appeal of both. It is a debate/dichotomy we need to smash. Epics—from the Iliad/Odyssey to the Ramayan/Mahabhara—have always been the mouthpieces of victors, stories told by upper caste/higher-up men about the spoils of battle, many of which/whom are often women.
It is a trope still existent, with women who act outside “codes of conduct” held up as cautionary tales for other women, boxed in and compartmentalised. If you want to take anything from the tales of Draupadi and Sita today, refuse the labels and cut up the boxes. Refuse the ‘othering’ of women, the comparison of one with the other. Refuse to be separated into ancient patriarchal polarities that continue to permeate modern society in how women act, live, or dress-up. Sita and Draupadi—as all women—aren’t one or the other, black and white, but complex in all shades of grey.
Glimpses from a Feminist Perspective.
Written by Debanjali Bhattacharjee
It was Saraswati Puja this week – a day when Hindus in several parts of India and the world worship Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and arts. As several Hindu men and women seek blessings of this goddess, I take this opportunity to share a few glimpses of one of the oldest religions in human history, from a feminist perspective.
The Origin Of Hinduism
“Hinduism never originated as a religion. It simply referred to the way of life of people settled along the river Indus or ‘Sindhu’ as they called it”.
Our first lecture in Political Geography at Delhi University twenty years ago was intriguing and myth- busting. If Hinduism was simply a ‘way of life’ over 5000 years ago, where and how do I fit in the rituals, the practices and the philosophies I hear in the name of this religion today? I started looking at my own life and the world around me to find some of the answers.
There is no one singular text or one single leader who founded Hinduism, not a one-size-fits-all code of practice. Among my extended family and friends, there are polytheists, monotheists and pantheists, ravenous carnivores as well as strict vegetarians, all of whom call themselves ‘Hindu’. Heated debates on what is Hinduism and what is not are commonly heard; there are no fixed definitions of what makes a ‘good Hindu’, no strict guidelines defining a ‘Hindu way of life’. It is this openness and flexibility I find liberating and empowering. I imbibe what inspires me, challenge and discard what I find unscientific, inappropriate or unsuitable for my life.
Hinduism and its Worship of the Feminine
One of the most fascinating aspects in my eyes as a child was the concept of the divine in Hinduism. I saw worship of female and male idols as goddesses and gods. Durga, the Mother Goddess, is benevolent, protective, fierce and compassionate. Well-known for her symbolic ten hands which hold several weapons as well as a lotus and a conch shell, she destroys evils and protects the innocent. Durga Puja is the autumn festival celebrating mother goddess Durga; in several parts of India the festival is comparable to Christmas in the West.
Durga’s two daughters- Laxmi, the goddess of wealth and Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and all forms of arts- are worshiped too. As Hinduism spread over the vast, geographically diverse Indian sub-continent and beyond, various other forms of the feminine came to be worshiped. Some of them are delicate and pale, some bold, fearsome and dark. It is the worship of the female power in various forms, figures and colors I find unique, fascinating and empowering.
Hindu Mythology and Epics
I grew up listening to numerous stories from the Hindu mythology that, later in life, I could unpick, interpret and analyze in ways more than one. I learnt about the erudite women philosophers Gargi and Maitreyee from 6th-8th centuries BC who challenged the learned men for academic debates. I read and watched child-friendly, animated versions of the two famous Hindu epics Ramayana and Mahabharata that centered around wars and victory of good over evil. Interwoven within the tales of the epics were narratives of women’s lives within a complex structure of class and caste hierarchies. There was the ‘swayamvar’ – the practice of princesses challenging, testing and finally choosing their husbands from a royal court filled with potential suitors. Alongside, as in the narratives of Sita and Draupadi, were stories of insult, coercion and control of women, once their fairy-tale weddings were over.
Meandering through centuries and millennia, diverted by the confluence by invaders from middle east, far east and Europe, several religious practices in the name of Hinduism seem to have evolved, adapted, diversified or disappeared. Buddhism and Jainism were two separate religions born as protests to the upper-caste hierarchical structure of Hinduism about 2500 years ago. Both matriarchy and patriarchy prevailed within Hinduism, in differing timescales and sometimes contemporary in varied geographic locations within the Indian subcontinent.
The Medieval Era
Within Hinduism itself the ‘Bhakti movement’ originated from southern India in the 7th century AD. Based on the concept of ‘bhakti’ or devotion to God who dwells within each individual, this movement challenged upper-caste patriarchy and empowered women to bypass gender rigidities through numerous strategies – refusing marriage to a human being, walking out of marriage or refusing motherhood. The roots of contemporary Indian feminism are often traced back to the Bhakti Movement within Hinduism 1300 years ago, just as patriarchy extended its reach and control.
As invasion and warfare continued in the Indo-Gangetic plains of northern India and beyond, patriarchy manifested itself in ways more than one. There evolved stronger gender stereotyping and a glorification of the sacrificial nature of women which, with distortion and patriarchal manipulation, created room for the heinous practice of ‘Sati’ in the 12th-18th centuries AD predominantly in the northern and central parts of India. In the process of protecting their ‘honour’ from invaders, upper-class women in Rajasthan learnt warfare as well as were encouraged to take to ‘Jauhar’, a practice of mass-suicide. In contrast, I also heard stories and read about some of the brave Hindu queens in parts of India during the medieval era – Queen Didda (958- 1003 CE), Rudrama Devi (13th century) and Rani Durgavati (16th century) are a few names that come to my mind.
Colonial Oppressions and Uprisings
The arrival of European colonial powers – Dutch, French, Portuguese and English- into the Indian subcontinent since the 17th century seems to me to have had a few interesting impacts on the Hindu women in India. On one hand was the protest or uprising towards freedom from a ‘common enemy’; notable Hindu queens such as Velu Nachiyar in southern India in the 18th century or Rani Lakshmi Bai in central India during the 19th century fought the British armed forces. It gained momentum in early 20th century in the anti-colonial movements as women actively cooperated with militant rebel men, participated in protest marches, joined the army or participated in Gandhi’s famous non-violent movements.
On the other hand, we saw the establishment of infrastructure and academic institutions intended to serve colonial interests, and women from upper as well as middle classes left their protected domestic spaces. Women from privileged backgrounds are known to have traveled across the globe to study medicine and science as early as late 19th/ early 20th century.
Also worth mention here is the fact that practices such as ‘Sati’ were challenged by the learned Hindu social reformers, and, empowered by support from colonial rulers, abolished altogether during the colonial rule. While child marriages could not be legally prohibited yet, the reformers ensured that young widows could be remarried, instead of being forced into a life of seclusion and austerity.
Independence and Beyond
Decolonization and the Partition of India into India and Pakistan in 1947 along religious lines was one of the greatest socio-political upheavals in South Asia. More than 10 million people were uprooted almost overnight, nearly a million people killed in the violence that was unleashed. It had a catastrophic impact on women from Hindu, Muslim and Sikh backgrounds alike. Rape, abduction, so-called honour-killing, forced marriage and several other atrocities comprise the gruesome tales we have grown up listening to from our grandparents.
It is important to note that by this time, the Indian sub-continent had become a melting pot of seven different religions – Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism and Zoroastrianism. In post-colonial India during early 1950’s, the birth of the Indian Constitution with its promise of a ‘sovereign, secular, democratic republic’ brought in universal adult franchise and the fundamental right to equality.
Hindu women, along with women from all other religious backgrounds in India studied medicine, engineering and mathematics, researched astronomy as well as anthropology, made their marks in history, politics, physics and the languages. Many women experimented with various forms of arts and literature, acted and directed in Bollywood and vernacular language films and have won international acclaim.
Women in post-colonial India flew aircrafts, joined the armed forces, swam across the English Channel and contested parliamentary elections. The famous Chipko movement in northern India– where women hugged trees in their non-violent resistance against deforestation brought eco-feminism to the forefront in global conversations.
Hinduism and Feminism in Today’s World
Against this vast, complex backdrop of the Hindu ‘way of life’, where do women like me position ourselves in today’s world? How do we draw strength from Hinduism and all that it offers to strengthen our resolve to end violence against women? We raise voices against the objectification of women in media and its biases in reporting; we challenge everyday sexism and misogyny and demand strict legal measures for atrocities against women; we hold hands with our sisters from every other religion, just as Indian women are at this point of time, in one of the biggest political uprisings in India.
As Hindu women, we need to constantly remind ourselves of the symbolism of Durga with her ten arms, fiercely protective and delicately nurturing at the same time. While we strive to create an equal world, we look back at the ancient Hindu imagery of the “ardhha- narishwar” where the masculine and feminine are respected as two halves of one being, complimenting each other in a perfect balance.