The tragedy of Yugo Sako, the anime Ramayana, and India’s failure to capitalise on Indic stories as soft power.
Examples of national policy to use art and culture as soft power across the world
Sometime in the first decade of the 21st century, South Korea dedicated 1% of its GDP to fuel it’s arts and culture scene across the board — a fund of a staggering $1 billion. This meant it would fund universities, agencies and film studios in cash and low interest loans to further Korean culture. The main objective was to increase Korean influence across the world and hence project it as soft power.
The policy has been giving bumper harvests in form of critical acclaim and money. In the last year itself, South Korea brought in $85 BILLIONas a result of this policy.
This can be seen everywhere. Parasite won the best picture at the Oscars in 2020. A Korean actor was nominated for best actor this year. Kpop is growing as a craze. Kdrama is catching up.
They even have a quota system in Korean Cinema, where theaters are required to show a fixed number of Korean films and only after that imported movies.
This policy was thought to duplicate American and Japanese policies.
Japanese anime is all pervading today, and if you see any movie by a famous director, for example Hayao Miyazaki, Japanese culture is highlighted in every movie. Ditto with American soft power. Comics of Captain America, the novel the hunt for red October, movie Argo are all examples of how USA pushes its cultural narrative.
Erosion of Indic culture from popular sphere
Back at home, there has been little effort to further Indic art and culture, and whatever little effort had been made was thwarted by malicious agencies or fizzed out due to inaction by the Indic wing of the political spectrum.
The best example of this is the anime Ramayana, The Legend Of Prince Rama. The film’s creator, Yugo Sako was a self professed Hindu, being an avid follower of Indic stories. The anime itself is beautiful, replete with melodious and memorable songs and dazzling fight sequences showcasing Sri Rama’s and Ravana’s military prowess. Additional points can be given for the film’s dialogue that has been crafted in pure Hindi, with no adulteration with Urdu. The anime had few flaws, the immediate being the color of Sri Rama himself. He was protrayed as fair skinned, when he was quite dark in color. But that can be easily overlooked since it captures Sri Rama’s essence accurately.
The movie was doomed since it’s conception. It was supposed to be co-produced by Japanese studio and Indian government. But the then Congress government did not want any part in it, because of the Rama Janmabhoomi movement led by LK Advani. The troubles didn’t end there.
After making the anime, the release was halted by Vishwa Hindu Parishad, who thought that a cartoon depiction was an insult to Sri Rama. This doomed the film to never release in India.
Add to this, the Hollywood release also fell through. The film cost 131 crores to make, the highest budget cinema by Indian film industry ever. It had a stellar cast consisting of Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad fame, and James Earl Jones of Star Wars repute.
Yugo Sako, who was as good as a Hindu, wanted to make many more movies on Indic history. He died in 2012, writing a movie about Sri Krishna. There has been no awards by Indian government towards Sako nor any appreciation by the film fraternity here.
Another good example would be the Chanakya TV series on doordarshan. Given a run of just 47 episodes by Doordarshan, it still made a huge impact with its historical accuracy, chaste Hindi and cerebral monologues by the creator, director and actor Chandra Prakash Dwivedi.
Dwivedi spent 9 years researching the history only for Doordarshan to axe the show because they termed it as propaganda. TV shows like Tipu Sultan were however permitted to continue.
It is interesting to note that it is alleged that the series was rejected by Bhaskar Ghose, the father of Sagarika Ghose.
Chandra Prakash Dwivedi himself has highlighted this problem in a lecture during a RSS conclave where he highlighted that the Indic literature was enjoyed and consumed by more foreigners than Indians, Shakuntala being a prime example. He insisted that Hindus have to stem this cultural rot, even as they fight with external threats.
A policy was needed yesterday.
Dwivedi is right. The youth of this generation have all heard the hackneyed expression -” influenced by Western culture”. But what real option do the youth have when there is no Indic literature to consume across ages. Kids outgrow Panchatantra tales as soon as they go beyond 10 years of age. Ramayana and Mahabharata are viewed as spiritual texts. The awe-inducing feats of Sri Rama are overlooked for his spiritual qualities. The youth get bored with it and soon fall prey to Western culture.
And so begins the phase where wearing dhotis is uncool, touching feet of elders is “cringe”, lying prostrate in front of a deity is impossible. Visiting a temple is out of question.
This erosion has to be stemmed by the government. Modi has identified this problem and has spoken about producing video games with Indic stories, but no more intent is shown in terms of policy.
Meanwhile Bollywood continues its unabashed attempts to malign Hinduism, demonize it’s rituals, and hence brainwash a whole generation.
A national policy is needed to transform Indic texts into a popular form and then project it as soft power. Yoga itself is not enough. Especially how it has been desercrated as a gymnastic exercise by the west instead of being a spiritual exercise to find “God”.
Yugo Sako’s second movie was supposed to be called Lord Krishna — The Celestial Cowherd. It’s depressing to know that it never saw the light of the day. We do not even have an HD version of Ramayana anime, forget a remastered version.
Let’s hope that the government wakes up before Indic history actually becomes a myth and we are consumed by an identity crisis caused by cultural bankruptcy.
That’s it.
Namaste.
Source : Post on r/IndiaSpeaks by u/AsliIndianErotica
