Ramayana 2026 and Ram: Dharma Not Manufactured Values

The Ram I Know v/s the Ram on the Screen

A personal view on the new Ram of cinema

Why I am writing this?

I love my Ramayan. I have loved it since I was a child. I did not love it because someone told me to. I loved it because Ram stood in it like a mountain. Everything moved around him. He did not move.

Now a new Ram has come to the screen. The film is Ramayana by Nitesh Tiwari. Ranbir Kapoor plays Ram. Sai Pallavi plays Sita. Yash plays Ravana. The first part is called Ramayana: Rise of a Legend. It opened in theatres on 6 November 2026. The makers call it mankind's greatest story coming to life. A very big claim.

I will say plainly what I feel. I feel a gap. The Ram I know is not the Ram that modern storytelling keeps trying to build. That is my view. I am not here to balance it. I am here to say it in my own words.

My argument is simple. Ram does not manufacture values. Ram upholds Dharma. These are two different things. Most retellings mix them up. When they mix them up they shrink Ram.

The two words people confuse

People say values and Dharma as if they were one word. They are not.

A value is a thing we pick. Honesty is a value. Kindness is a value. Loyalty is a value. A story can choose which values to show. A story can add a new one tomorrow. A story can even drop one when the market changes.

Dharma is not picked. Dharma is what holds the world together. It was there before the story. It will be there after the story. A king does not invent it. A king serves it.

Ram is the one who serves it. That is why he is called Maryada Purushottam. He is the best of men within the limit. The limit is not his own. The limit is Dharma.

When a film shows Ram learning a value in scene 1 and teaching it in scene 20 it has made Ram a student of the script. But Ram was never a student of a script. He was the measure.

The Ram of Valmiki

I go back to Valmiki. He is the first poet. He wrote about a man of his time. He asked one question at the start. Who in this world today is full of good qualities and valour and Dharma? Narada answers with one name. Ram.

See what Valmiki does. He does not say Ram will become that man. He says Ram is that man. The qualities are already there. The story only tests them.

That is the heart of it. The Ramayan is not a growth story. It is a testing story. Fire tests gold. It does not make gold. The forest tests Ram. It does not make Ram.

When a modern film treats the epic as a journey of becoming it changes the nature of the hero. Ram is not becoming. Ram is being. Everything else in the epic changes. Kings fall. Cities burn. Allies come and go. He remains.

Valmiki also shows that Ram feels. He weeps. He grieves. He is angry at the sea. He is shaken by loss. But his feeling never overturns his Dharma. His heart is full and his path is steady. That is the difficult balance. Most films fail at it. They either make him a statue with no tears or a man with tears and no spine.

The same Dharma in Ayodhya

Take Ayodhya first. The coronation is ready. The city is happy. Then the order comes. Go to the forest for 14 years.

What does Ram do? He does not argue. He does not sulk. He does not make a speech about values. He bows to the word of his father. The word was given to Kaikeyi long before. A promise had been made. A promise is a Dharma. A king who breaks his word breaks the order of the world.

Notice what Ram does not do. He does not call his father unfair. He does not turn against Kaikeyi. He does not use the people who love him to raise a rebellion. Lakshman is ready to fight. Ram stops him. This is not weakness. This is the strongest act in the whole Ayodhya Kanda.

The same Ram will later raise a bow against a mighty king of Lanka. The man who stops Lakshman in Ayodhya is the man who fights Ravana. There is no contradiction. In both places he follows one rule. Keep the word. Protect the right order.

This is what I mean by one Dharma. In Ayodhya it looks like obedience. In Lanka it looks like war. The Dharma underneath is the same.

The same Dharma in the forest

In Dandaka the sages come to him. They are troubled by the demons. They ask for protection. Ram gives his word.

Sita is worried. She tells him a warrior in the forest should not take up arms without enmity. She asks him to be careful. Ram does not brush her aside. He listens with love. But he tells her he has given his word to the sages. He can leave her. He can leave Lakshman. He cannot leave his promise.

Here again no value is being invented. The forest does not teach Ram something new. It only asks him whether he will hold what he already holds. He does.

The forest years show a quiet side too. He lives simply. He treats the tribes and the birds and the animals with respect. He eats what the forest gives. He accepts fruits tasted by Shabari. The world remembers this not because Ram was trying to send a message. He was simply the same Ram in every hut and every hall.

A film that stops to underline each of these moments with music and a close up is telling me that the moment needs help. But Ram never needed help. The act itself is enough.

The same Dharma in Kishkindha

Kishkindha is the hardest place for many modern minds. Vali is killed from behind a tree. People ask hard questions about it. I will not run from them.

In the epic Ram gives his own reasons. Vali had taken the wife of his younger brother. He had driven his brother out. In the order of that time that was a grave wrong. Ram is the keeper of the order. He judges as a king of the Ikshvaku line with the duty to protect the right.

You may agree or disagree with that judgement. But see what it shows. Ram is not acting out of a new value he picked up in the forest. He is acting from the same principle. A wrong must be set right. A refuge must be given to the one who comes in need. Sugriva came to him in need. He gave him refuge.

The epic does not hide the debate. Vali himself questions Ram. The poet lets the question stand. That honesty is the glory of Valmiki. He is not manufacturing a neat lesson. He lets Dharma be hard.

A modern film wants to smooth this. It wants the audience to leave the hall with a clear moral. But Dharma is not always a clear moral. It is sometimes a heavy choice. Ram carries that weight.

The same Dharma in Lanka

Then comes Lanka. Vibhishana arrives. Ravana's own brother. Ram's allies are afraid. Some say he is a spy. Some say do not trust him.

Ram says a vow of his. Whoever comes to me once and asks for my refuge I give him freedom from fear. That is my vow for every creature. He says it even if the one who comes is Ravana himself.

This is the whole Ram in a few lines. He does not check the politics first. He does not calculate the risk first. He holds to the Dharma first.

And then the war. He fights Ravana. Yet when Ravana falls Ram tells Vibhishana to perform the last rites. Enmity ends with death. This is the rule of the dharmic warrior. He fights to correct. He does not fight to hate.

Put Ayodhya and Kishkindha and Lanka side by side. One man. One vow. One order.

Janani and janmabhoomi

There is the famous line attributed to Ram in many tellings. The mother and the motherland are greater than heaven. Ram says it to Lakshman after Lanka is won. Lakshman admires the golden city. Ram is not moved by it. It tells me what kind of warrior Ram is. He has just won the richest city of the world. He does not want it. He gives it to Vibhishana. He turns his face home.

This is the difference between a conqueror and a protector. A conqueror wins and stays. A protector wins and returns. Ram returns. Ayodhya is his home. His mother is his heaven.

The line also shows something else. Ram does not need Lanka to prove anything. He does not need victory to feel complete. He fought because Dharma asked him to fight. When the fight ends he is the same quiet son.

A story that makes Ram hungry for glory has missed the line. A story that makes Ram a performer of greatness has missed the line. The line says that a true hero is already at peace.

A warrior who never meant to weave values

Here is the heart of my objection. Ram is a warrior for Dharma. He is not a teacher of values. He has no plan to improve the world with lessons. He does his duty. The world is improved as a result.

This matters for storytelling. When a screenwriter sits down to write Ram they usually begin with a question. What value should this Ram stand for in this decade? Then the scenes are built to deliver it. Respect for women. Unity. Pride. Courage. Whatever the season asks.

But the old poet did not begin there. He began with a man whose life was whole. He let the scenes fall where they fell.

The difference is not small. In the first method the value is the master and Ram is the vehicle. In the second method Ram is the master of his own life and the values are simply what we notice when we watch him.

The first method gives us a sermon. The second gives us an epic.

What the new film has said about itself

I should be fair to what is known. The makers describe the story as one where darkness spreads and Lord Vishnu takes the form of Ram to restore peace and protect humanity. That is a clean line. It places Ram as a divine protector. Good.

Ranbir Kapoor has said that telling the Ramayana truly would need ten parts and that fitting it in two was very hard. I respect that honesty. Whoever tries this task meets a wall of material.

But here is where my worry starts. When you must fit an ocean in two cups you choose what to keep. And the choice shows what you think the story is for. If the story is for display then spectacle stays. If the story is for Dharma then Dharma stays. I can only watch what stays.

I also note that the film has been built as a very large franchise with modern tools and IMAX and a worldwide release in Hindi and English. This is not a sin. But a large machine needs a clear message that sells in many places. And a clear message is exactly what I fear. Dharma does not fit neatly into a message. My concern is about the whole approach to Ram in popular retellings. The film is the occasion. The approach is the subject.

The manufactured value

Let me describe how manufacturing works. A story needs a point. A big budget story needs a point that travels across borders. So the writers ask what point will land with the widest crowd. Then they shape Ram to fit that point. This is not evil. It is simply how large cinema works. But the result is a Ram who exists to serve a message. The message comes first. The man comes second.

The old tellers did the reverse. They never asked what message the crowd needed. They asked what happened. Then they told it with love. The message was in the telling without being placed there.

When you place a value on Ram it also becomes a fashion. Fashions change. A value that sells today will look strange in 20 years. Ram's Dharma has stood for thousands of years because nobody had to fit it to a season.

There is another harm. Manufactured values make the audience passive. They sit and receive the lesson. But the Ramayan was never meant to be received like a lecture. It was meant to be lived with. Families grew up with it. Villages staged it for nights. Children learned it by hearing it again and again. A film that hands you the lesson in 3 hours cannot do that work.

The ego that the story is made to serve

Now I come to the part that troubles me most. It is about who the story is serving. In our time there is a type of person who has declared himself a guardian of Sanatan. He does not wait to be asked. He does not do the quiet work of living Dharma. He wears the name like a badge. He wants the epic to flatter his image.

A Ram made for such a person is a flattering Ram. He is loud. He is proud. He wins every argument. He is built to make the viewer feel victorious. The epic is turned into a mirror for the ego.

But the real Ram does not flatter anyone. He asks for sacrifice. He gave up a throne. He gave up comfort. He bore the pain of separation. He accepted a hard public duty. If you meet him honestly he makes you smaller before Dharma. He does not make you bigger before your rivals.

This is the great gap. The ego wants a Ram who confirms it. Dharma wants a Ram who corrects it.

I am not pointing at any one person. I am pointing at a mood that has grown around the epic. A mood that wants the heroes to be brands and the gods to be mascots. A mood in which devotion is measured by volume.

When films are made to please that mood they lose the silence of Ram. And without silence there is no Ram. People often ask me why no film has really captured Ram. I think the answer is hidden in all that I have said.

A film needs conflict inside the hero. It wants a flaw. It wants a turn. It wants the hero to be different at the end than at the start. That is the grammar of modern storytelling.

But Ram has no turn of that kind. He is not a man trying to fix a flaw. He is a man holding a standard. The grammar does not fit him.

So filmmakers do one of two things. They add an inner flaw that is not in the text to make him a modern hero. Or they add a loud strength that is not in the text to make him a mass hero. In both cases Ram is changed to suit the grammar.

A third way is rare. It is to trust the stillness of the original. To let Ram be steady while the world shakes. To let the audience feel his steadiness as the real drama. That needs courage. Few producers have it because stillness is hard to sell.

I also think the problem is size. When a film is built as the biggest ever it begins to fear silence. Every second must be filled. Yet the most powerful moments in the Ramayan are small. A word to a father. A hand extended to a boatman. A pause before a vow.

The memory of the old Ram on screen

Many of us carry another screen memory. The television Ramayan by Ramanand Sagar in the 1980s. People stopped their day to watch it. Streets went quiet. Whatever its limits it did one thing. It treated Ram with stillness. It did not rush him. It did not try to explain him. It let him speak slowly and act simply.

It is a small detail but worth noting that Arun Govil who played Ram in that serial now appears in this new film as King Dashratha. The wheel has turned. The old Ram has become the father of the new one. I find this strangely moving. Whether the film intended it or not.

I am not saying that the old serial was perfect. I am saying that it understood something. Ram is not a character you decorate. He is a presence you honour.

That is also why I am not worried about technology. Computers can draw Lanka. They can draw the sea and the bridge and the flying army. That is fine. What no computer can draw is the quality of Ram's inner calm. That depends on how the writer and the director understand him.

The three roles in one frame

There is one more thing to mention. The cast listing for this film names Ranbir Kapoor in the roles of Ram and Parshuram and Vishnu. This points to a design in which the avatar and the sage and the divine are shown through one face.

I do not wish to judge a design I have not seen in full. But I will say what nthe epic suggests. Ram of Valmiki is a man who does not announce his divinity. In the text people around him sometimes see it and sometimes do not. Ram himself says he considers himself a man the son of Dasharatha. The humility is part of the glory.

If a film pushes the divine side too hard it may lose that humility. If it pushes the human side too hard it may lose the weight. The path between is narrow. It is the same narrow path Ram walks in the text. Strong and simple at once.

Sita and the question of fairness

I cannot write about Ram without Sita. She walks into the forest by choice. She is not a shadow. She argues with him. She advises him. She endures Lanka with her own strength.

Modern films often use Sita to prove a value. Look how this Ram respects women. Look how this Ram is progressive. But this is the same manufacturing again. Respect for Sita is not a value that Ram adopts in a scene. It is the very ground of his marriage. He loves her from the start.

The hard parts of the story remain hard. The fire test and the later abandonment are debated by scholars and devotees. Some tellings hold the last book to be a later addition. Some defend it as a king's painful duty. Some reject it entirely. I do not need to settle this here. I only say that a film should not smooth it into a cheap lesson in either direction. If the story must carry that pain let it carry it honestly.

What I fear is a version that turns Sita into a symbol for the audience of the day. She is far bigger than a symbol. She is the earth's daughter. She is the equal of Ram in her own Dharma.

Ravana and the danger of a glamorous enemy

Yash plays Ravana. Posters set Ram and Ravana face to face. I understand why. Cinema loves a great rival.

But there is a danger. In the epic Ravana is brilliant. He is learned. He is mighty. He is also fallen. His pride and his hunger undo him. The point of the epic is that none of these gifts could save him from Adharma.

When a film makes Ravana too glamorous the scales tilt. The audience may start to love his style and forget his sin. The contest then becomes a contest of charisma and not a contest of Dharma. That would be a quiet loss.

I do not say this about the film itself. I have not walked through its scenes. I say it as a caution that applies to every modern telling. Glamour is the enemy of clarity. A hero must stay clear.

What Ram is not

It helps me to list what Ram is not.

Ram is not a slogan. He is not a campaign. He is not a symbol of one side against another. He is not a mascot for any season. He is not a hero who needs a crowd to chant for him.

Ram is also not a man of weakness. He is not soft because he is calm. His calm is the calm of a man who has no doubt about what is right. It is a very hard thing to have.

Ram is not a teacher who lectures. He teaches by standing in his place. When Lakshman rises in anger he is calm. When Bharata offers the throne he is firm and loving. When Hanuman falls at his feet he lifts him. These are not speeches. They are acts.

And Ram is not the property of anyone. Not of a party or a studio or a platform or a self declared guard. He belongs to the one who keeps his word and walks his path. That is a quiet fellowship without a membership card.

My request is only this. Watch it and then open Valmiki or any faithful retelling. Compare the steadiness of the page with the speed of the screen. Ask yourself which Ram you meet when you are alone and sad and need guidance. You will know.

Also ask yourself a hard question. Am I loving Ram or am I loving how the film makes me feel about myself? The two are very different. One leads to Dharma. The other leads to pride.

The epic has survived thousands of years of tellers. It will survive this one too. It does not need a film to protect it. It needs only people who quietly try to live a little more like Ram. That is the only box office that matters.

Ram is a warrior of Dharma. His Dharma does not change between Ayodhya and Kishkindha and Lanka. He does not weave values. He lives a single truth and the world learns from it.

When storytelling narrows itself to manufacturing values it loses the very thing that made Ram a lamp for so many centuries. And when the story is bent to please the ego of a few self declared guardians it loses even more.

So let the new films come. Let the new faces come. Let the new tools come. I will not stop anyone. But I will keep my Ramayan. I will keep the steady man who walked into the forest with a smile. I will keep the king who gave refuge to his enemy's brother. I will keep the son who looked toward home from the golden city.

I still love my Ramayan.