Desdemona was killed by Othello

WRITTEN BY LONDON SWAMINATHAN

Post No. 13,651

Date uploaded in London – 10 September 2024                 

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Hindus got two great epics Ramayana and Mahabharata because of jealously of two characters; both Duryodhana and Kaikeyi were embodiments of envy. They caused two wars which led to the destruction of Ravana gang and Kaurava gang.

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Right Honourable Srinivasa Sastri delivered 30 discourses on Valmiki Ramayana at Sanskrit Academy in 1944. Here is what he says about jealousy and Othello comparing characters in Ramayana.

“ It is extraordinary how great poets have treated the subject of  jealousy nearly the same way as they analyse the progress of  this feeling and study it, as it advances from step to step corrupting  the soul and making it capable of black thoughts, black plots and black deeds. The progress of this jealousy in the human heart is the same, and great poets not only have shown  the same sentiments but they have sometimes used the same language. I just want you to see how another Dhiratidhira character in tragedy feels. What if he comes from the West and from English literature? All first-class literature is human literature and belongs to the whole of mankind.  In this great play of Othello where Shakespeare depicts the passion of jealousy in its worst form, how it degrades the great character Othello, for he was a big fellow, brave on the field of battle, unsuspicious generally speaking. This is from the soliloquy of Iago.

Iago has played on the heart of Othello, has put suspicion, confirmed it by various tricks, fanned the flame until it burns violently and threatens to consume everybody. Then speaking of jealousy, he says himself,

Kaikeyi with Dasaratha 

Trifles light as air

Are to the jealous  confirmations strong

As proofs of holy writ.

Othello III.iii.322-4

 When we deal with this great passion of jealousy as worked out by Valmiki in his great epic, it would be useful, it would be helpful, in fact, it would facilitate  a better understanding of our nature if we see how in another great man’s character similar things happened  then he goes on to say what is true of Rama himself. Othello at least had something, a handkerchief; he had heard something, seen something. Rama had nothing at all. Alltat he could say is ,

You are an angel and Ravana is a wicked person. When you were in his control, how is it possible for things to have been right? that was all he could say, a kind of negative attitude. In the case of Othello ,

326   Dangerous conceits are, in their natures, poisons.

327   Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
328   But with a little act upon the blood

329   Burn like the mines of sulphur.

—Othello III iii. 326-9

Then Lodovico asks Othello at the last moment , when everything is over and Desdemona has been choked and all is found out and the trugh has come out.

What shall be said to thee? And listen to the answer. How true, how natural, how exactly a parallel to what Sri Rama says,

Othello :-

Why , and thing:

An honourable murderer, if you will?

For nought I did in haste, but all in honour

Othello V ii 293-5

Then at the end, at the very end Othello says taking leave as it were not only of Lodovico but of the others also, of the world, instructing the world as it were, as to the havoc wrought by jealousy

342   Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, 

343   Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak
344   Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
345   Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought

346   Perplex’d in the extreme; of one whose hand,

347   Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

348   Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdu’d eyes,

349   Albeit unused to the melting mood,
350   Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
351   Their medicinable gum

—Othello V ii. 342-351

Othello, the great warrior, a stern man, who has seen men falling round him and yet not moved an inch, that man says,

“I have never cried in my life. I do not know what tears are”.

“of one whose subdued eyes

Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Drop tears as fast as Arabian trees

Their medicinal gum”

Now I must take your leave- I hope it is not too late – to show you the reverse side of the human character. We have jus now seen, ladies and gentlemen, how jealousy corrupts our nature, makes us see things that are not there, shuts our eyes to clear evidence, makes beast of us – yes, that is what it does.

Then Sastri compared Lord Tennyson’s King Arthur of the Round Table………………………

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My comments

Before the quoted paragraphs given above,  Sastri said Rama also , under the influence of jealousy, abandoned Sita. Not many people would agree with Mr Sastri I don’t Think Valmiki ever said Rama sent Sita to the forest because of jealousy. He heard what the dhobiwala et al thought about Sita’s stay in Asokavana. He wanted to prove to the world that she was pure  and acted as a king. Even in Tamil Puranas we see Manu Neethi Choza crushing his own sun under the chariot, because a cow complained that king’s son crushed her calf by rash driving. The moral behind the story is a king should apply the laws of the land to all equally. Even Rama’s killing of Vali from behind a tree is justified Vali himself. If Valmiki wanted to hide it, he could have easily cut that part. So, my point is, in Valmiki’s Ramayana, Rama never acted under jealousy towards Sita. But Kaikeyi did something out of envy.

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Queen Kaikeyi’s mind was poisoned by her wicked hunchbacked maid, Manthara;  a seed of suspicion planted in the queen’s mind led to Ram’s exile from Ayodhya and wreaked havoc in the royal family. In Othello, Iago acted like Manthara.

The manipulation game in Othello, one of William Shakespeare’s four great tragedies, is like that in Kaikeyi’s story from the Ramayana. The contexts are very different, though. In the play, Iago plants a seed of suspicion in Othello’s mind about the fidelity of his wife, Desdemona. So masterful is Iago’s psychological manipulation and his exploitation of sexual jealousy that Othello is driven to strangling his wife.

–subham—

Tags – Jealousy, Envy, Othello, Shakespeare, Valmiki Ramayana, Rt Honourable Srinivasa Sastri, Talk, Iago, Wicked Manthara, Kaikeyi, Desdemona