'Sita inspired govt to pass women’s bill'

Episodes like Sita’s fire ordeal in the Ramayana helped the government firm up its resolve on the women’s reservation bill, Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily said on Thursday.

Episodes like Sita’s fire ordeal in the Ramayana helped the government firm up its resolve on the women’s reservation bill, Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily said on Thursday.

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“Now, coming to Sita’s fire ordeal. It is instances like this which firmed our resolve for the women’s reservation bill,” he said after receiving the Moortidevi Award of Bharatiya Jnanpith from President Pratibha Patil for his five-volume Shri Ramayan Mahanveshanam.

Defining the “process of quest”, Moily gave the instance of Sita’s ‘fire ordeal’, in which Mandodari, Ravan’s wife, talks to Sita. “Are you not satisfied with the fiery ordeal of life we have tolerated and endured as women till now? Only a man of the epoch can put an end to women’s ordeal,” he quoted from his work.

Moily said the epic poem in Kannada was an attempt to “discover, or rediscover, the values and ways of thinking, which make it possible for mankind to move upwards in the path of creative evolution”. He said his busy schedule had not affected his writing. “It is my oxygen and I will keep writing till my last breath.”

The President congratulated Moily, “He has tried to explore the principles of an ideal state in modern times.”