Racist Side Of Ramayana
Opinion | Now now before you Hindu extremists start getting all offensive in the comments, just hear me out. Ramayana might be the earliest piece of racism ever recorded and I have all the logical evidence to support my theory. I by no means intend to undermine the epic but if I did so in the process, well I just couldn’t help it.
To those who don’t know, Ramayana is one of the two great ancient Indian epics and the establishment of Hinduism as a religion was believed to have took place after the events following it. To many Ramayana is the symbolism of way of life, and a reason to riot for others (topic for another day).


If we divide India in terms of races, the north India consists of people belonging to Indo-aryan race which are generally fair and speak dialects of Hindi then Sanskrit. The southern India is inhabited by Dravadians who were true natives to the Indian subcontinent and have features like dark skin, curly hairs and a totally different language from that of the Aryans. Lord Rama being from Ayodhya was an arayan. He started his journey from north India and met Hanuman in the the middle of his journey to the south. Hanuman remember was half human-half monkey and could communicate with the Vanersena as well as Lord Rama and there were more like Hanuman. And finally, the Vanersena the organized army of monkeys who followed every instructions of the humans and built a literal bridge in the sea between India and lanka. I just can’t help but wonder was this army truly of monkeys.
To me and in my opinion they were not. They were humans and to be particular they were Dravidians from southern India. They were described as monkeys by the writers of Ramayana because of their features and the fact that they spoke different languages. Hanuman and other similar characters were from middle India, possibly Maharashtra. The reason they are represented the way they are, is because they spoke both languages and might be originally from south but were living among the aryans and have learnt to speak their language.
All this may sound really offensive and most of you will differ from my opinion. But if you just think logically and geographically it all adds up. Racism in India could be traced long back in time and even exists till date. So, it may very well be the case with the epic of Ramayana as well. If the super smart monkeys with their own kingdoms did actually exist then where are they now? Where are the beings like hanuman? There might be other spiritual and religious explanations but logically I can’t think of any better explanation.
In my opinion Ramayana, one of the most important scriptures in Hinduism has a racist side which is being celebrated for centuries.
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