How the ‘Ramayan’ TV show made history
Mint · Raja Sen ·
Ramanand Sagar's ‘Ramayan’ was not mere entertainment. It helped create a shared visual vocabulary of religious identity
India took its shoes off to watch this show.
On Sunday mornings in 1987, television momentarily became a place of worship. The TV set was wiped clean, the living room was rendered free of ashtrays, and in far too many households across the country, footwear was parked outside the door. Nobody had instructed the nation to do this. There was no government circular, no religious injunction, no promotional campaign by Doordarshan. It simply seemed appropriate. The remarkable thing about Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan is not that it was watched by an extraordinary number of Indians. It is that it changed their behaviour.
India watched Ramayan less like a serial and more like a cricket match: with pre-existing devotion and accompanied by much chanting of the Lord’s name. The 78-episode series, which started in January 1987, attracted audiences of 80-100 million for its most popular episodes. Sure, India had only one TV channel at the time, but even in 2020, during the pandemic lockdown, Ramayan returned to Doordarshan and recorded 77 million impressions on 16 April alone, according to BARC India. The government then cited this as the world’s most watched entertainment programme.