This chapter analyzes Bhavabhūti's eighth-century Uttararāmacarita (The Later Deeds of Rāma, henceforth URC ),1 a text that dives deeper into Śambūka's death than any considered so far. Aside from it being a beautifully crafted piece of literature, I choose to focus on Bhavabhūti's play because it ties into developments related to Śambūka's depiction in Kālidāsa's RaV. In creating the URC, though, Bhavabhūti was not beholden to political oversight in the way Kālidāsa was, nor was he involved in a large-scale revisionist project like Vimalasūri. He did, however, have a framework within which to work as he redesigned not only how we are to understand Śambūka, but how we are to understand the entire Uttaraka ̄ṇḍa.

The URC is a Sanskrit drama, a genre with its own conventions. Characters, plot, and structure all follow elaborate formulae most clearly laid out in the Nātyasāśtra, a dramaturgical text compiled around the time of Kālidāsa (Gerow, 1984). The aesthetic effect of a Sanskrit drama relies on an intricate system of poetics centered around the theory of rasa, which Edwin Gerow summarizes in the dramatic context as being “a resolution of sentiments sufficiently general to abolish the mundane distinctions between audience, actor, and author” (ibid., p. 43). In blurring these boundaries between a work of art, the artist, and the audience, rasa is a poetic tool that underpins the enjoyment and appreciation of art.

Briefly, rasas—of which there are eight or nine, depending on the theoretician—are the various emotional catalysts in a work of art that exist as a product of the play's composition and the actors’ portrayal as well as their ability to resonate with a person's inherent experiences and emotions. The universally acknowledged eight rasas are śrṅgāra (erotic), hāsya (comic), karuṇa (piteous), raudra (furious), vīra (heroic), bhayānaka (terrifying), bībhatsā (disgusting), and adbhūta (wondrous); the debated ninth rasa is śānta (peaceful). While a drama may utilize any number of these rasas as the context warrants, it will have a single dominant rasa that best relates to the overarching plot.

Each year, many residents of the small town of Ramtek, Maharashtra gather at a modest temple (Figures 6.1 and 6.2) about halfway up the large, steep hill at the center of town to celebrate Maha Shivaratri—“The Great Night of Śiva.” For this annual festival of devotion to Śiva, the image inside this temple—a śivalinġ a known by the name Dhūmreśvara (Figure 6.3)—becomes the focus of attention despite there being several other similar images scattered about town. Śambūka and Dhūmresv́ ara are, in fact, one and the same. Though worshipped by a different name, Śambūka's identity as Dhūmreśvara is on full display on signs and posters and in pamphlets and inscriptions, leaving visitors to the temple fully aware that when they approach the śiva-linġ a, they are approaching Śambūka. I will outline in this chapter how Śambūka came to be known by this name and how, of all places, Ramtek Hill came to house the world's only temple to Śambūka. To do so, I focus on four historical periods of development in the area: the Vākāṭaka period, the Yādava period, the Marāṭhā period, and, finally, Ramtek today. Literature and structures from these periods provide us with an amalgamation of historical layers on Ramtek Hill spanning over one thousand years. In following this pathway through the area's history, we see how the early literary and material foundations associated with the town's central hill primed the area to welcome Śambūka as a permanent fixture of local Hindu religious life.

Ramtek and the Vākātakas

Kālidāsa has already proven himself crucial to our unfolding narrative about the evolution of the Śambūka story through his innovations to the episode as it appears in his Raghuvaṃsá (RaV). Chapter 3 outlined a changing and increasingly institutionalized Vaiṣṇavism emerging in the Gupta Empire and Kālidāsa's contribution to this. In his RaV, Kālidāsa reimagined Śambūka's path after death through a paradigm of redemption, a striking departure from Śambūka's fate in the VR.

I commend Aaron Sherraden's Śambūka and the Rāmāyaṇa Tradition to you. This monograph takes as its starting point a terse account of Śambūka's decapitation, found in the earliest, extant, full literary telling of the life and deeds of Rāma in the ancient Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa attributed to Sage Vālmīki. One of Hinduism's two preeminent ancient epic narratives, Vālmīki's Rāmāyaṇa and its subsequent retellings have played key roles in later devotional practices to Viṣṇu and his avatāras. Textual historians generally date the text (which first circulated orally in several recensions) as taking its fixed form starting approximately the mid-sixth century BCE and ending no later than the second or third century CE. Śambūka's story appears in the final of the seven books of the Rāmāyaṇa attributed to Vālmīki, which many philologists consider a later interpolation.

Over time, however, Śambūka's story has grown into a narrative tradition of its own. During the last two thousand years, its events have appeared in multiple literary retellings characterized by literary strategies such as elaboration, concision, major reinterpretation, and alternate endings. These retellings depict Śambūka variously as a miscreant and enemy of the social and moral orders, a victim of upper-caste prejudice and violence, a pioneer who engaged in ascetic practices previously monopolized by upper castes, a recipient of Rāma's divine grace, one who has achieved release from the cycle of death and rebirth, a social and political revolutionary, a wise teacher and moral exemplar, and a venerated martyr in the cause of Dalit liberation. Accounts of Śambūka's rigorous asceticism have appeared in both cosmopolitan languages (e.g., Sanskrit and Prakrit) and regional literary ones (e.g., Tamil, Awadhi, Malayalam) across India from ancient times to the present. Moreover, in addition to Hindu texts, his story also appears in a lineage of texts composed by Jain authors in which Rāma does not kill Śambūka. Sherraden reveals how Śambūka's story continues to perform its cultural work in the twenty-first century, serving as the basis for ritual devotion, modern poetry, and even cover art for publications envisioned through a range of religious and social lenses.

Behind mercantilist and neo-mercantilist policies is the implicit notion that international economic transactions tend to be zero sum in nature. In many expressions of economics nationalism, for example, exports are a win, while imports are a loss. This formula is largely at variance with the results of international economics, but this kind of zero-sum thinking seems to be hardwired into human psychology. As it turns out, this is a field of inquiry in psychological sciences, and it shows that zero-sum thinking, if not universal, is a very real phenomenon with implications for understanding economic nationalism.

Game theory has been one of the most fundamental developments in the social sciences, and it had its origin in a paper by the mathematician John von Neumann on two-person, zero-sum games. In zero-sum games, the available resources and rewards are fixed, and one person's gain is another's loss. Subsequently, however, this original contribution was generalized to the possibility of non-zero-sum games by von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern in their book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. In this more general context, resources and rewards can increase, and there are win-win outcomes that can be achieved via cooperation.

Among researchers across many different fields, actual zero-sum games are considered to be rare. The problem is that even if a game is non-zero sum, it can be perceived as zero sum, limiting win-win outcomes and cutting off cooperative strategies. The possibility and perhaps prevalence of this zero-sum bias has profound implications. As stated by one set of researchers:

Economic nationalism is largely a zero-sum enterprise, and it can dramatically shape impressions and beliefs at both the individual and collective levels. This can have significant impacts in the form of lost potential gains in international economic relations and even in domestic political coherence. We will explore some of these implications in this chapter.

Market Transactions

Basic economics shows that, under a set of assumptions, market transactions provide gains for participants. These transactions also tend to provide positive social welfare.

Introduction

Despite the variety of interpretations brought to bear on Immanuel Wallerstein, the sociological contours of his thought remain virtually axiomatic starting points in scholarship. Receiving far less attention are the international relations (IR) aspects, which continually wend their way throughout his writings. These IR dimensions have implications for how we interpret Wallerstein. In this chapter, we diverge from the reception of Wallerstein as a sociologist simpliciter and propose that he is better understood as (among other things) a leading representative of critical international political sociology (IPS). IPS, which has emerged as an active subfield since the early 2000s, focuses on the space where the two disciplines of sociology and IR overlap or meet (Nabers and Stengel 2019). It takes from the former a central concern with social orders and social processes broadly defined; from the latter it takes a broadly political focus on the international, transnational and global dynamics and features of actors within and across state borders. IPS studies the historical development of a myriad of social forces often ignored or sidelined by the modern study of IR, and the international and transboundary dimensions of relations between social sites and political institutions that sociology in the past neglected. A central proposition of IPS is that the “domestic” and the “international” cannot be considered as sequestered spheres but should be treated as part of a single field of enquiry—even if states and the interstate system serve as pivotal points of connection between the two (Guillaume and Bilgin 2017). Critical IPS scholarship—covering a broad range of theoretical sensibilities (Marxist, Foucauldian, Bourdieuan, feminist and decolonial, to name a few)—also interrogates how contestations over power, profit, ideology, exploitation and inequality have helped to forge the modern international realm and the social relations that underpin it (Lawson and Shilliam 2010). Critical IPS not only problematizes the formation and reproduction of the sovereign state but emphasizes that the modern international order cannot be treated as a predetermined given. In short, IPS and critical IPS in particular generate fruitful “transversal lines that cut across conventional planes of scholarship” (Basaran et al. 2017, 1) to conduct sustained reflection on “world politics as a social activity” (Nabers and Stengel 2019, 1).

This chapter will consider the character and role of antisystemic movements in Immanuel Wallerstein's theorization of the modern world-system. It will trace Wallerstein's engagements with this question particularly since the appearance of the “movement of movements” against neoliberal globalization in the late 1990s, when he argued that the struggle for a better social world could be framed by the alternative between the “spirit of Davos” and the “spirit of Porto Alegre.” The chapter will consider Wallerstein's twenty-first century arguments relative to his classical elaboration of the subject and consider their contributions and limitations for this era of antisystemic social mobilization.

Throughout his long life, Immanuel Wallerstein was attentive to what he called “antisystemic movements” as central to diagnosing prospects for progressive transformation in and beyond the current world-system. World-systems analysis (WSA), as it has been constructed by Wallerstein as its leading architect, is normative, strategic and politically invested in its historical analysis and its prognoses for the future of antisystemic struggle. Antisystemic movements are thus central to what Wallerstein termed utopistics, or “the serious assessment of historical alternatives” to the current world-system (Wallerstein 1998, 1).

In this chapter, I review the character and role of antisystemic movements in Wallerstein's theorization of the modern world-system as they appear in his classic treatment (1990; as well as 2004, 2014). Through a comparative dialogue with the “contentious politics” tradition which has come to dominate the field, I consider the contribution of WSA to analyzing social movements, while also observing that Wallerstein replicates some problematic patterns and assumptions common to modern social theory, notably its Eurocentrism. I then turn to Wallerstein's later writings in the context of the Global Justice movements, especially his engagements with the World Social Forum (WSF) process, where he was confronted with a recomposition of the global left (Santos 2006), including “indigenista” movements arising from the exteriority of modernity or “colonial difference” (Mignolo 2002; see also Escobar 2007).

The WSF is the historical reference point for Wallerstein's exhortation of the “spirit of Porto Alegre” over against the “spirit of Davos” in contemporary struggles over a successor world-system.

A ravenous jackal emerges from his den at the edge of a cremation ground and observes a vulture speaking to a grieving family as they prepare to leave the corpse of a young boy to be cremated. As the sun sets, the vulture rushes the family along lest he be forced to resign the boy's body to the nocturnal creatures of the cremation ground, including the jackals. Reminding the family of the inevitability of death, the vulture tells them, “You’ve stayed long enough in this dreadful cremation ground, teeming with vultures and jackals and filled with skeletons—a terror for all beings. Nobody who has been subjected to the rule of Death has come back to life, be they friend or foe. This is the way of all beings” (MBh 12.149.8–9). With their hopes dashed, the family leaves the boy's body to the delight of the famished vulture.

The jackal, hoping to stall the family until darkness falls over the cremation ground so that he can claim his next meal, challenges the family's affection for the boy, and questions how they could give up hope so quickly. The vulture and the jackal go back and forth, commanding and manipulating the emotions of the lamenting family as they each seek to dine on the boy's flesh. The jackal urges them to wait a bit longer—anything can happen. Perhaps the boy is alive, or perhaps he could even be revived. In an attempt to instill hope in the family, the jackal tells them that he knows of a time when a deceased boy did, in fact, come back to life.

“There is nothing to stop you in your affection or your weeping lament,” the jackal explains, “but you will constantly ache from abandoning this dead boy. It has been heard that the child of a Brahmin was revived because Rāma, courageous and true, upheld righteousness and killed the Śūdra Śambūka” (MBh 12.149.61–62). The jackal and the vulture debate at length about the fate of the boy as the family wavers between surrendering their child to the cremation grounds and turning back to wait for any sign of life. As the arguments rage on, Śaṅkara, the god Śiva, appears before them all, prepared to grant everyone present a boon. For the grieving family, he restores the boy back to life, and he eliminates the hunger afflicting the two flesh-eating scavengers.

Kālidāsa and Vimalasūri mark some of the earliest and most consequential landmarks in the expansion of the Rāmāyaṇa tradition. I might argue that these two poets were the first to widen the boundaries of Rāmāyaṇa tradition as we know it today—boundaries that encompass an extensive amount of variability and adaptability as the epic enters new contexts. Through their poems, each demonstrated techniques on how to receive a narrative, push the limits of its messaging, and introduce a new take on an old story. Their respective presentations of the Śambūka episode are prime examples of such poetic dynamism. These two pioneering poets helped imbue the Rāma narrative with a flexibility by which others could cater the Rāmāyaṇa to their own audiences.

In the centuries leading up to and immediately following the turn of the first millennium CE, poets wrote several new Rāmāyaṇas. The current chapter focuses on this late classical and early medieval period of development in the Rāmāyaṇa tradition. With the various ways of handling the Śambūka episode acting as our gauge, it becomes clear that the Rāmāyaṇa tradition has many vectors of influence that are deeply intertwined with prevailing socioreligious trends, geography, and language. The pathways of that influence, however, are not always what one might expect. A dogmatic adherence to a specific way of telling the Rāmāyaṇa based on religious affiliation, for instance, does not seem to reflect the reality of how the Rāmāyaṇa traveled across India. By way of example, narratives originating in the Jain tradition went on to find their place in the Hindu tradition and it becomes increasingly clear that we should take geographic proximity and the influence of literary communities therein just as seriously as poets’ potential desire to stick close to a narrative produced in their own religious community.

Here, I will chart a course through the various modes of telling the Śambūka story moving into medieval India. Some older modes of presenting the episode have survived deep into this period, though almost always with some sort of modification to better reflect the sentiments of the intended audience. There are also some new ways of dealing with the issue of Śambūka that originate in this period.

One of the most polarizing moments in India's recent history came with the central government's attempts to implement the recommendations of the Backward Classes Commission, also known as the Mandal Commission. The Commission was set up in 1979 headed by B.P. Mandal and, a year later, it issued its recommendation that just under 50% of available seats in educational institutions and government jobs be allocated to India's OBC, SC, and ST populations—Articles 15(4) and 16(4) of the Constitution prevent the totality of reserved spots from exceeding 50%. Acknowledging that the recommendations will cause some pain to those who fall outside the reservation schematic proposed by the Commission, the report's authors question whether it is appropriate that “the mere fact of this heart burning be allowed to operate as a moral veto against social reform” (1980, V.1, p. 58). Speaking in the context of OBC reservations, the Mandal Commission attempts to argue that a top-heavy practice of reservation that favors the higher castes has always been in practice in India. In the process, the Commission even refers to Ekalavya and Śambūka, two oft-cited examples of caste-based violence in situations where one wishes to illustrate the injustices of the caste system. The document reads:

The Mandal Commission's recommendations remained dormant for nearly a decade before Prime Minister V.P. Singh attempted to implement them in 1989. The shift from a purely merit-based (and upper-caste dominated) system of admissions to this legally ordained positive discrimination ignited a controversy that engulfed India's urban centers, Delhi in particular. In addition to widespread riots, the Mandal Commission protests were famously characterized by multiple cases of self-immolation.

In February 2020, US president Donald Trump paid a state visit to India. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi organized a welcome for him at the world's largest cricket stadium with a crowd of 100,000. As President Trump entered the stadium to be greeted by Modi, the crowd was treated to the Village People's 1978 hit song Macho Man. The two macho men hugged at center stage, and two versions of ethnonationalism met in an expert piece of performance art. President Trump led a long-standing ethnonationalist project in the United States, while Prime Minister Modi led a similar project in India. Both emphatically embraced political performance, intuitively knowing that they were leading projects in political psychology. This is a rather widespread practice, both historically and geographically. With its close rela-tionship to stochastic violence, it is also a potentially dangerous one.

Economic nationalism is a form of nationalism, and nationalism is about the “nation.” Nations, however, are not states or governments. They are something different. Nations are most often conceived of in terms of an in-group and an out-group. As one researcher put it many years ago, “the concept of ‘us’ requires ‘them.’” More recently, a team of business researchers put it this way:

It would be nice to claim that economic nationalists are free of such discrimination, but this is often not the case. These authors also note that “hostility toward the out-group may be augmented during conditions of instability in the relative economic fortunes of nations” and that, during such episodes, pressure increases to maintain in-group solidarity. Such hostility is usually combined with a sense of crisis to strengthen its political psychology impacts. As noted by The Economist, “nearly all drawbridge-up parties argue that their country is in crisis and explain it with a simple frightening story involving outsiders.” This can be a volatile and sometimes lethal formula of political mobilization.

What Is a Nation?

Before delving too far into the subject of ethnonationalism, it is important to mention and to keep in mind that it is primarily cultural, linguistic and psychological.