By Ravi Ranjan*
By Ravi Ranjan*
Senior poet Kumar Ambuj, the creator of seminal works such as Krurata (Cruelty) and Nagrik Parabhav (Civilizational Defeat), remains one of the most distinct and morally fortified voices in contemporary Hindi poetry. In an age that the medieval poet Vidyapati once characterized as gehe gehe kalau kāvyam (in the Kali age, there is a poet in every house), Ambuj’s work stands apart due to its ideological clarity and subtle artistic sensibility. His collections—Kivād, Krurata, Anantim, Atikraman, and Ameeri Rekha—serve as an unbreakable testimony against the socio-political hypocrisies of our time. His recent poem, ‘Uttar-Katha,’ is a soul-piercing document of the cruelty permeating civil society and the "cultural abduction" carried out by the invisible machinery of power in our post-truth era.
The foundation of ‘Uttar-Katha’ is Karuna (compassion), echoing the classical spirit of Bhavabhuti’s Uttararamacharita. However, while Bhavabhuti centers compassion on the personal grief of Rama, Ambuj identifies a compassion that is social and political—a compassion for the citizen whose cultural existence has been snatched by power. Bhavabhuti famously declared compassion as the "only rasa" in Sanskrit literature, suggesting that just as water appears as whirlpools or bubbles but remains water, compassion assumes various forms but remains one. In ‘Uttar-Katha,’ Kumar Ambuj attempts to reclaim this essence from today’s political distortions. He views our present as an "after-story" where power has severed the epic from its human concerns, transforming it into an aggressive, noisy spectacle.
The poem begins in the nostalgic twilight of a neighborhood lane. Ambuj revives a world where the Ramcharitmanas was not a political tool but a living process of moral reflection. The sound of the harmonium, the chanting of Chaupais and Sorthas, and the collective empathy for King Dasharatha’s paternal agony created a "sacred stability." In this shared past, the Leela (divine play) included the "fallen flowers," the gardens, and the faints of the battlefield. Crucially, Ambuj notes that the Ashvamedha—the grand sacrifice of imperial expansion—was absent from these humble recitations. Today, however, that which was once avoided is now played "day and night," marking a shift into what Jean Baudrillard calls Hyper-reality.
In the Valmiki Ramayana, the Ashvamedha was a path for the cleansing of sins and the purification of the soul. In Ambuj’s poem, it has been politically abducted. The "monkey-troops" (vanar-dal) no longer represent selfless devotees but serve as a satirical metaphor for today’s aggressive, intolerant nationalism. Using Guy Debord’s theory of the Society of the Spectacle, we can see that religion has been reconstructed as an "unrealism of the real society." It is no longer about looking within; it is about representation and power.
Baudrillard’s concept of the Simulacrum explains this further through various stages: first as a basic reflection of reality, then as an imitation that hides reality, followed by an imitation that claims to be the reality, and finally as a pure simulacrum where the imitation has no relationship to reality at all. Today’s symbolic victories and constant staging of sovereignty are "Alternative Facts"—a term famously coined by Kellyanne Conway—which create a fabricated parallel reality that the public eventually accepts as the only truth.
Antonio Gramsci’s theory of Cultural Hegemony is vital to understanding ‘Uttar-Katha.’ The ruling class establishes its ideology as "Common Sense" through culture and religion. Ambuj’s poem is an act of Counter-Hegemony. It exposes how a specific ideology has captured the epic, turning a pluralistic tradition of "Three Hundred Ramayanas" into a rigid, weaponized text. The "monkey-troops" in the poem represent the vigilante groups and troll armies that spread chaos under the guise of protecting religion. As Meera Nanda argues in The God Market, this "religious capitalism" allows emotion to swallow fact, resulting in a majoritarian dominance where the "other" is demonized and dissenting voices are marginalized.
To understand the dual nature of the epic in this poem, we can apply Jacques Derrida’s concept of the Pharmakon—something that is simultaneously a remedy and a poison. In the traditional past, the epic acted as a remedy; the medium was the low harmonium and soft singing, the emotion was a reflective compassion, and the outcome was moral stability. In the hyper-real present, it has become a poison where the medium is aggressive noise and 24/7 drama, the emotion is a frenzied arrogance, and the actors are "monkey-troops" and troll armies. This Rama-story, once a medicine that united society, has been turned into a toxin used to justify violence and territorial claims.
Ambuj highlights a profound moral crisis where language betrays its meaning. Words like seva (service) and bhakti (devotion) have been kidnapped by power. When language becomes a medium of repetition rather than dialogue, it loses its soul. The "noise" of the troops signifies the death of language. The poem repeatedly mentions "faints" (murchha). In the epic, a faint was a moment of profound human vulnerability, but in the present, it represents a collective "paralysis" of the citizen. Hannah Arendt warned in The Origins of Totalitarianism that when the distinction between fact and fiction is eliminated, the public enters a state of hypnosis. They become silent spectators to a "new drama" that stands tall before life every single day.
Ambuj concludes with a dark warning. The "Ashvamedha horse" is no longer just crossing physical borders; it is leaving hoofprints on the mental maps of every citizen. The fear is that the "spectacle" will fill every empty space, making real human sensitivity irrelevant. The poet’s moral responsibility is to recognize this cruelty in its nakedness. By unmasking the violent nationalism hidden behind the "monkey-troop," Ambuj attempts to break the collective faint. He insists on standing compassion against cruelty, reminding us that the resonance of our culture has shifted from the "cry of paternal attachment" to the "slogans of victory."
The real emphasis of the poem is that as long as we keep considering the victory-sagas of Ashvamedha as our only reality, human sounds like the compassionate cry of paternal attachment will not be heard. Ambuj concludes that the erasure of cultural memory and the moral crisis of language are two sides of the same coin. When words lose the compassion within them, they become the noise of the monkey-troop. The future apprehensions that emerge at the end of this poem are meant to wake us up, strengthening the belief that even if today's life stands numb before an endless drama, the courage to call that drama a spectacle will be the first ray of future resistance.
Kumar Ambuj’s linguistic and structural framework also requires analysis. He creates a contradiction by mixing ‘Tadbhav’ and ‘Tatsam’ words that jolts the reader, contrasting the "edge of the lane" and "boats" with "Ashvamedha" and "Brahmastra." The displacement of space is an essential part of this poem; the old neighborhood was an ethical space with a balance between privacy and collectivity, whereas the current space has become a political crossroads filled with grand and aggressive displays. This displacement is actually the story of dialogue turning into spectacle.
This work by Kumar Ambuj is a milestone in contemporary Hindi poetry that will repeatedly remind us of that edge of the lane where truth is still safe like the sound of a low harmonium. It is a resolve to save memory, to save the meaning of language, and to save that life which beats in the real world of dust and sweat, outside the artificial lights of the stage.
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*Professor (Retd.) & Former Head, Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad. This is the abridged version of the author's original article
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