On Fire Ordeal. Who and Why? Ācārya Tulsī’s Agni-parīkṣā or a Modern Jain Telling of the Rāmāyaṇa

This paper deals with Agni-parīkṣā, a Hindi poem rooted in the Jain Rāmāyaṇa tradition, published for the first time in 1961. Its author, Ācārya Tulsī, a famous Jain leader, features Sītā as the main character of the story and truly sympathizes with her as the epitome of women let down by their men and society. In 1970, the poem provoked agitation among sanātanī Hindus. The ensuing court judgement found some passages of the poem to be offensive and eventually all its copies were confiscated by the State Government of Madhya Pradesh. After court battles, also defending the poem, its revised version was published in 1972. This paper firstly offers a contextualized analysis of the poem’s narrative and its characteristic features drawing on Jain Rāmāyaṇas. Secondly, it discusses the relevant passages of Agni-parīkṣā’s 1961 and 1972 versions, seeking an answer to the question why and how this telling composed by Ācārya Tulsī, who did not intend to insult anyone’s feelings by his poem, was found offensive by traditionalist circles of contemporary Indian society.