Recovering a masterpiece: The Ramcharitmanas is luminous in new light
I have written in this space before about how technology artefacts can be used as instruments of power. Privacy is dead, and people the world over have become pawns in Big Tech’s relentless move to commoditize and sell human beings and their data. At the same time, image recognition algorithms baked into artificial intelligence (AI) systems have proven problematic.
They harbour the biases of their programmers. This is not new; even the construction of US road bridges in New York state has been shown to have racist or discriminatory undertones in their design. This time, I want to focus on how technology artefacts can be used well in an unusual context.
I recently visited the breathtaking reconstruction of the Ramcharitmanas of Varanasi at the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP) in Bengaluru. MAP is the brainchild of Abhishek Poddar, an old friend who donated all his art and built this museum in a labour of love. I was so taken with the work that I asked Poddar if I could see MAP’s chief technology officer (CTO), who technologically curated the reconstruction.
Mayank Manish, founder of Opezee, volunteers his time as MAP’s CTO. He and his teammate Raghava Kumar walked me through what the team had done. The Ramcharitmanas of Varanasi originated in that culturally rich city and is also known as the ‘illustrated’ Ramcharitmanas.
Like Kamban’s re-creation in Tamil of the original Sanskrit epic by Valmiki, the Ramcharitmanas was written by the saint poet Goswami Tulsidas in a local language for a broader audience. His version is a 16th-century epic. Like Valmiki’s and Kamban’s epics, it narrates the story of Lord Rama, focusing on his trials, triumphs and moral teachings.
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