The Creative Process: The Arts of War (Spring 2017)

The Creative Process
independent of selfish desires. For Rāvana, the intent seems to be to
promote conflict—it is thus self-serving and hence condemned.
However, Rāmā falters here as well. The desire to get his wife back
(which is what the intention seems to be at first glance) is selfserving,
for all intents and purposes. However, in many places in the
Rāmāyana, Rāmā mentions that he is not retrieving his wife out of
affection for her; rather, it is to redeem his lost honor. He carelessly
mentions this in the Yuddha Kāṇḍa, when Sitā is brought out to
him, all decked up. He tells her that she is free to go, now that the
prestige of his clan has been restored. He further goes on to say that
she could now choose to be with Sugrīva, Vibhīshana, or even his
brothers –clearly all lesser beings (pardon my usage of the term) than
him. Rāmā thus redeems himself by waging war, and then seeks to
absolve himself of any blame in Sitā’s misfortunes by disassociating
himself from her. Further, the suggestion that she should now
associate herself with less-godly men is something that I see as a
mark of arrogance and an indication of the fact that Sitā was merely
a tool for self-preservation; now that the job is done Rāmā has no
use for her anymore, and in fact would leave her to beings less
accomplished than him. I feel that leaving her to lesser-beings also
indicates that he cares only about himself, it does not matter if others
have to face the consequence of having an unchaste (since that is
what Rāmā presumes about Sitā) wife. Many would justify this by
saying that as long as the cosmic balance of the universe was
restored, such individual actions need not matter. I would, however,
prefer to discard this utilitarian notion with respect to this point. I
feel that both Rāmā and Rāvana waged war with the wrong
intention. This criterion of the just war theory has been violated.
LAST RESORT
More important than that, however, is whether war was absolutely
the last resort. Were all prior attempts at peace exhausted before the
parties turned to war? It is interesting to note that when Rāmā is
exiled by Dasharatha, he calmly accepts his fate, while Lakshmana
13