INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR INNOVATIVE RESEARCH IN MULTIDISCIPLINARY FIELD

Abstract: The last book in Ashok K. Banker's Ramayana series, Sons of Sita, recounts the well-known story of Sita's banishment and the eventual rise to power of her offspring, Luv and Kush. The story in the book is flipped from Rama's victorious ascent as Maryada Purushottam to an imperial conqueror who develops an obsession with conquest and political power. This study uses the case of India to analyse Sons of Sita from the standpoints of R.W. Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity and Nancy Chodorow's theory of mothering. In light of this, Chodorow's theory helps explain the significance of Sita's maternal absence and its effects on Luv and Kush, as well as the boys' emotional development, given that it has shaped their psychological transformation through maternal memory, a missing parent, maternal absence, and an inherited dharma. The story's conflictive conceptions of masculinity—Rama's regal masculinity, Bharat and Shatrughna's rebellious brotherly opposition, Bejoo's ostracised masculinity, and Luv and Kush's emerging moral/ethical masculinity—are the main subject of masculinity theory. By combining those two theoretical stances, the paper makes the case that Banker both critiques masculinist militarism and exposes flaws in a patriarchal form of kingship, undermining the very essence of Rama's epic of heroic action. Ironically, it appears that the sons' moral courage has improved as a result of the mother's disappearance. Still, Rama's quest for hegemonic masculinity ultimately causes him to distance himself from dharma and family. Sons of Sita transforms the Ramayana from an antiquated narrative into a politically charged discussion of the relationship between family, gender, and power in contemporary India by using maternal and masculine viewpoints.