The Geopolitics of the Ramayana

I always wondered: Why was the story of Rama elevated into one of the great epics of the subcontinent? Why was his reign in particular immortalized? What made his kingdom ideal? Why was his victory over Ravana cast as an act of God?

My findings are simple: The Ramayana is neither a spiritual nor moral tale.
It is a record of an unprecedented tectonic shift in geopolitical power.

It’s the story of a Northern plains chieftain who managed, for the first time, to traverse the dense, rich forests of the South and extend his reach all the way to Lanka.

This record has, of course, been hyperbolized and made surreal over millennia of retellings, as happens with many mythologies. Yet between the lines, there are fascinating nods to bioregional realities. Seen through the lens of geography and ecology, the Ramayana is a tale of a bioregional and geopolitical conquest.

The Bioregions of the Subcontinent

The Ramayana unfolds across distinct ecological zones:

✦ To the North lie the Himalayas, a mountain system that serves as home-source to several rivers feeding the Gangetic plains.

✦ The riverine plains at the foothills of the Himalayas, home to villages, towns, and agricultural communities.

✦ Beyond the Himalayan watershed lies the Deccan Plateau, ranging from desert to arid land that stretches into the center of the subcontinent.

✦ The Narmada River marks a new shift: The landscape thickens, forests take root and mountains range. The soil grows waterlogged and rivers multiply.

✦ Deeper South, the land is lush. Bounded by the ocean on three sides, and protected by forest, the Deep South is culturally unique and economically sovereign, tapped into Oceanic trade routes.

✦ Offshore, Lanka gleams: A tear-shaped island positioned at the center of Indian Ocean trade routes, connecting African, Austronesian, East Asian, and Melanesian worlds.

Exile and Opportunity

It was in exile that Rama headed South. With no throne to defend and no kingdom to administer, he had the time - and perhaps the desperation - to attempt what few Northern rulers had managed.

Returning a hero could win his peoples’ fealty. Making inroads South could help him save face when he returned, having survived lands and peoples long imagined by his fellow Northerners as grotesque, even demonic.

Here lies a racial subtext: The Vanaras, Yakshas, and Rakshasas, all Southern tribes and forest peoples, are portrayed as monkeys or monsters. This is the case across the Brahminical mythos.

The irony here is stark, as Rama could not have advanced without their guidance. What to him was wilderness was for them simply home.

This dynamic of exploiting locals echoes other settler-colonial histories: Lewis and Clark would not have survived without their Shoshone guide to identify plants, safe passages, and communicate with other Indigenous peoples and tribes on the journey.

Surpanakha and the Spark of War

One episode that deserves closer attention is the encounter with Surpanakha. In the normative telling, she is cast as a demoness, a sorceress, a temptress. Her sin is approaching a married man with open desire, her beauty unveiled. For this, her nose and breasts are sliced off.

Let’s consider the bioregional context: This encounter takes place in the South, close to her home ground. Rama and Lakshmana are the intruders here. They are exiled, having no claim to their own lands nor to societies of the South.

Surpanakha was no nameless demoness - She was a royal princess of Lanka! Ravana’s own sister.

This act of violence is also an act of diplomacy (or lack thereof), antagonizing Surpanakha’s lineage. To mutilate Surpanakha was to attack the dignity of an entire dynasty. Knowing this, Ravana’s abduction of Sita reads not merely as lust, but as retaliation for his sister’s assault. The involvement of Ravana and Surpanakha’s uncle Maricha further suggests the premeditated and calculated nature of Ravana’s abduction.

Surpanakha’s openness can also be read as a reflection of Southern social norms differing from those of the North, where womens’ sexuality was more controlled and regulated by patrarchal norms. In the South, evidence from ancient and historic formations suggests more matrilineal, egalitarian, and sexually liberal frameworks. Surpanakha’s frankness may have been culturally acceptable here. Furthermore, the fact that no bodily harm came to Sita during her time as a prisoner of Lanka speaks to a level of respect shown to women.

In many ways the violence begins with this incident: A liberated Southern woman of privilege and power, punished by regressive Northern men hungry for the riches of her homeland.

Conquest in Disguise

The Ramayana presents Sita’s abduction as the motive for war.

Yet, from a geopolitical view, her captivity provided the perfect cover. Rama’s exile placed him far beyond the reach of Northern obligations, mores, and codes of conduct.

His wife’s abduction gave him cause to push South, forge alliances through deceit, and finally wage war on Lanka. Sita’s beauty and chastity are weaponized, making for excellent justifications for bloodshed, while the first shot fired in mutilating Surpanakha is glossed over.

Less about marital devotion, and more about opportunity: Feudal lords of the North had long coveted the South’s wealth and resources. Here was the chance to seize them.

Divide and Conquer

To realize his conquest, Rama’s alliances required intervention in local politics.

Most telling is his deception in the blood feud between Vali and Sugriva, two Southern brothers and leaders of their people: The Vanaras.

Rama sided with one against the other, fracturing their bond and securing troops for his campaign. This was strategic, not dharmic. It’s a classic case of an invader using divide and conquer as a strategy to ensure safe passage, an army, and regional loyalty.

Kubera and Lanka’s Wealth

Before Ravana, Kubera originally ruled Lanka — and Lanka’s wealth was legendary. Its golden gardens, courtyards, palaces, sacred groves, and fountains are exalted and revered across retellings of the Ramayana. He is said to have designed the legendary city with the immortal architect-deity Visvakarma.

Under Kubera’s rule, Lanka’s merchant fleets and naval trade blossomed, linking East Africa, Arabia, the Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and even Oceania. Again, the strategic position of Lanka at the heart of Indian Ocean trade cannot be overstated. The island had access to unique crafts, materials, and creations from across the region.

There is also the matter of the Pushpak Vimana, or flying bird-chariot, which originally belonged to Kubera. This early mythical helicopter allowed Lanka’s ruler to traverse the sky, granting speedy travels and access points across the region. In this way, Kubera stewarded the island.

When Kubera is attacked by his half-brother Ravana, he is forced into exile.

To save his own life, Kubera fled north to the Himalayas.
Here, he built a new base with his accumulated wealth.

It is not hard to imagine Kubera forging ties with nearby kingdoms like Ayodhya, who salivate at the kinds of riches Kubera has access to. Kubera could have easily calculated how Rama’s own exile and Southward campaign offered a chance to humble his usurping brother.

Later traditions remember him as “Guardian of the North”, deifying him as the God of Wealth, rather than maintaining his legacy as a king of Lanka. This too is a choice — It gives Kubera a place in the Northern pantheon, rather than centering the seat of Wealth itself in the South.

If he were remembered as a Lankan king, that could undermine and complicate the Norther plainsmens’ claim to the island, after all.

Ashwamedha: Ritual as Power

At the end of his exile, after returning victorious having annexed Lanka, Rama conducted the Ashwamedha Yagna. This ceremony solidifies his legend and promotes him from a local feudal lord to an “emperor”.

In this ritual, a horse adorned in royal regalia roamed freely. Any kingdom it passed through was expected to acknowledge Rama’s sovereignty. Stopping this horse was considered a declaration war, which would be waged by the standing army that followed it.

The choice of a horse is striking. Horses are not indigenous to the Southern Subcontinent.
They entered relatively late in the Subcontinent’s history, through Indo-European migrations from Central and West Asia. In the thick forests and ghats of the South, horses were foreign.

It’s interesting to note that the horse is a signifier of Rama’s annexation of regions where horses did not naturally belong. The horse likely would not have journeyed into the deep South, as those landscapes are more challenging to traverse by hoof. This means the pageantry of the horse was largely for fellow local Northern plainsmen, whose fealty was demanded by the Ashwamedha Yagna. This would create a unified geopolitical bloc in the North, and the early makings of a nation-state.

“Ram Rajya” and Contemporary Geopolitics (Or, Rama Was A Gujju Guy)

The legacy of the Ashwamedha endures in the modern Indian nation-state. The notion of Ram Rajya is invoked as an idyllic imaginary, weaponized by right-wing politics. The current ruling party’s stronghold lies in the very regions Rama hailed from.

Gujarat, birthplace of the present Prime Minister who has presided over communal massacres, and Ayodhya, Rama’s legendary town, are both flashpoints. Ayodhya itself was the site of the Babri Masjid’s demolition, justified by the claim that Rama was born there over 7,000 years ago. While today’s tensions are less oriented North-South, and more Us-Them, the accumulation and consolidation of power through deceit originally led by Rama reverberate today.

In this way, the Ramayana’s geopolitical drama is continually redeployed as the foundation myth of a Hindu nation, sanctifying violence, war, and conquest in both the past and present.

Dates and Archaeology

The Ramayana is believed to have been composed between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE.
Some estimates based on astronomical events described in the text place Rama’s lifetime far earlier, between 5,000 BCE and 7,000 BCE.

Archaeology adds another dimension.
Recent discoveries suggest that the Iron Age began in the Southern Subcontinent between 2900 and 3300 BCE - far earlier than once thought, and much earlier than in many other parts of the world. For example the Mediterranean civilizations’ Iron Age began in 1200 BCE. This points to a deep technological and cultural flourishing in the South long before the epic was written, and long before the North crystallized its cultural narrative in the story of Rama.

Even gesturally, the story is telling: The Ramayana narrates a shift in regional power at a time when the South already possessed advanced tools, weapons, and technologies. The conquest it speaks to is as much about bridging an economic, technological and civilizational gap as it is about crossing a forest or an ocean.

Conclusion

Through this lens, the Ramayana is not a tale of divine war or noble duty alone, but a record of conquest and expansion. It tells of a Northern plainsman who, through exile, deception, and chance, achieved what others in his region had only imagined: The riches of Southern forests, the annexation of resource-rich lands, and the conquest of Lanka, the richest island on Earth by contemporary standards.

Mythology remembers Rama as an avatar of god.
But history, folded and retold as myth, suggests something more human: a regional chieftain elevated to legend because he succeeded in opening the South.

In this retelling I’ve attempted to refute nationalist imaginaries of this story, and humanize some of my favorite characters like Surpanakha and Kubera. I’ve tried to read between the lines, through the eyes of the land itself: A geographic and bioregional gaze. From here, the Ramayana is a chronicle of shifting regional power, dressed in the language of divinity — One that continues to be weaponized for geopolitical interests to this day.