Even when India’s freedom struggle was happening in the early twentieth century, Mahatma Gandhi went on talking about creating a Ram Rajya. That means a kingdom where, irrespective of caste, creed, colour, or whatever else, everyone lives as equal human beings, and everyone has equal opportunity. Even now, in vernacular languages, when someone wants to refer to “an ideal nation,” he says Ram Rajya.

But there are arguments from some people these days that Ram is a male chauvinist who, because of his pride or insecurity, sent his wife back to the jungle. During the Youth and Truth campaign, in one of the premier educational institutions in the country, one young man asked me, “The way Ram treated his wife, he brought her back from Sri Lanka and then sent her to the forest again – I think he was insecure about her being elsewhere for some time…..”