SHIVA IN POPULAR CULTURE: READING AMISH AND DEVDUTT PATTANAIK

Abstract

The study deals with the legend of Shiva in popular culture and literature with special reference to the two most popular writers of our time, Amish Tripathi and Devdutt Pattanaik. The thrust of their works has Shiva mythology at its centre which delves into the problematics of contemporisation for addressing current problems of the world. However, there is a substantial corpus of books on the legend of Shiva where he has been reimagined and represented in various forms keeping in view the tempo and tenor of representations, Amish Tripathi and Pattanaik revisited the Shiva mythology to proclaim its existential utility in a contemporaneous landscape awash with crises unique to the times. Despite an abundance of literature, primary and secondary, available on Shiva, there is an apparent dearth of a critical study that examines the representations of Shiva in the cultural frame of reference taking up the works of two different genres attempted by Amish Tripathi and Pattanaik respectively. The study titled Shiva in Popular Culture: Reading Amish and Devdutt Pattanaik is an endeavour in the direction of a comparative study of the two well-known authors who have gained phenomenal success in the field of popular culture and literature. Mythology has become part of popular culture which can be seen in visual media with serials like Vighnharta Ganesh, Sankatmochan Mahabali, Devon Ke Dev Mahadev, Mahabharat, Ramayana, Sankat Mochan Hanuman, Siya Ke Ram, Baal Shiva, Karamphal Data Shani, vii Radha Krishna, Suryaputra Karn etc. to name a few. Mythological fiction is one of the genres of popular literature and the sway of this genre can be seen in the works of Ashok Banker, Anand Neelakantan, Chitra Divakaruni, Amish Tripathi, Devdutt Pattanaik, and Kavita Kane to name a few. Besides entertainment, these retellings of epics, characters, and episodes serve as a moral guide for the readers facing a peculiar paradox of choice in today’s time. Moreover, with the advent of generative AI, such literature is particularly significant in reminding us of the utility of our ancient wisdom in resolving grave socio-cultural issues. The proliferation of mythological fiction in different Indian languages and its absorption by visual media is a new trend sweeping in its reach and impact. This new trendsetter in Indian Writing in English has created waves and attracted writers to revisit mythology from an uber-modern perspective. The thesis speculates on the various cultural and socio-economic dynamics for the proliferation of mythological fiction from the second decade of the millennium by eclectically applying ideas from several theories like popular culture theory, subaltern theory, post-feminism, post-diaspora, and ecocriticism. Retellings of legends are triggered as much by critical requirements as by the creative verve of the authors. The protagonist of their selected works is highlighted in the context of popular culture. The legend of Shiva is revisited and re-represented by both authors in different genres. Amish Tripathi’s Shiva is an ordinary tribal chief of the Guna tribe who is frustrated by the frequent attacks of a rival tribe which makes him agree to leave his native land along with his tribe to migrate to Meluha for a safer life. His destiny takes him to Meluha, a near-perfect Kingdom of the Sapt Sindhu region. Shiva is given a superhuman role to eradicate evil and help marginalized people which eventually leads to his being deified with time by the people of India. The shrewd king Daksha of Meluha is in search of the Neelkanth, the legendary saviour who will save Meluha from their rivals. When Shiva’s neck turns blue after Somras is injected into his body he is declared to be the long-awaited Neelkanth who will save Suryavanshis/Meluhans from their viii enemy Chandravanshis and Nagas. He fights against the evil of Somras which harms the environment and causes cancer, plague and physical deformities in children. In his journey as a saviour, he includes Vikarmas and Nagas into the mainstream of society and disowns King Daksha who abandoned his own children for power and pelf. In his struggle after great personal loss and disillusion, he fights against evil and attains godhood. Pattanaik’s Shiva is not fictional he is from the scriptures and epics but his way of interpreting the legend of Shiva is tinged with the influence of Western writers like Stella Kramsrich and Wendy Doniger. In his three books on the legend of Shiva, he has interpreted abstract concepts in simple language for the uninitiated readers who cannot understand Sanskrit texts. His Shiva is kind to everyone, from ascetics to hunters, gods to Asuras, divine to humans, he obliges them with boons without any prejudices. Although a substantial volume of works on the representation of Shiva is available an integrated critical work of the two authors with different genres is hardly available. The proposed study intends to fill this gap of critical requirement by critiquing the two popular authors on Shiva, namely Amish Tripathi and Devdutt Pattanaik. As such, the larger rationale of the study is marked by the need to analyse the treatment of modern-day problems like environmental crisis, identity politics, parenthood, and discrimination based on caste, culture, and physical features as contained in Amish Tripathi’s Shiva Trilogy. The study has also attempted to gauge the extent and impact of rendering mythological fiction to fulfill purely commercial objectives at the expense of the essential principles that form the very core of these popular texts.