Jai Shri Ram: Ram bhakt Hanuman

Hindi for “Victory to Ram”, the slogan references one among the foremost popular gods in Hinduism. Given its wide usage over the past weeks, in situations as diverse as Parliament and mob violence, the slogan clearly has an intense political hold on India.

In spite of this popularity, however, the mass use of “Jai Shri Ram” is sort of new – probably being just three decades old. Its popularity charts the astonishing spread of Hindutva over much of India, a spiritual nationalism that places great emphasis on the god Ram as a political symbol of Hindu mobilisation.

Turks invade
While both the mass use of “Jai Shri Ram” and indeed the ideology of Hindutva could be new, the political trope of Ram isn't . during a fascinating 1993 paper, “Ramayana and Political Imagination in India”, Sanskrit scholar Sheldon Pollock connects the increase of the epic within the 12th century to the profound changes that accompanied the Muslim Turkic invasions of India starting with the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni in 1001 AD. The invasions eventually resulted within the establishment of the primary sultanate in 1206 at Delhi.

While “the evidence before the twelfth century that Rama may are the thing of worship is scanty”, writes Pollock, this changed by the mid-12th century with a sudden rush of temples built for Ram. This process culminated within the 16th century, with what the paper calls the “vast vernacularisation of the epic”. during this period, versions of the Ramayan in various local languages become widespread, culminating within the creation of the Awadhi-language Ramcharitmanas during the reign of Mughal Emperor Akbar – the foremost popular version of the Ramayan till Ramanand Sagar’s 1987 television series.