An Ideal Man??

Yesterday, I went to see Geet Ramayan with my family. Ramayan is the story of the Hindu God Rama, who was born in Ayodhya. You can get the whole story on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramayana).

Geet Ramayan is the same story narrated through songs. The one I went to see/listen to yesterday was sung by Shri. Shridhar Phadke, composed by Shri Sudhir Phadke and lyrics by G.D. Madgulkar, also know as Gadima. Almost every Indian knows the story, as did I. But as the story came to an end, I realised that there were some parts of the story that i hadn't paid much attention to. The war with Ravan is over. When Ram sees Sita again, he asks her to prove that she is pure even after being in the clutches of Ravan for whatever time. Sita steps into a fire and is unscathed. This horrified me (just to clarify, not the comes out unscathed part but the request obviously). On the one hand, people sing praises of Sita as the ideal woman, and on the other hand, her husband, who was said to be the ideal man, doubts her integrity.

However, the story on wikipedia cleared my doubts about this. It says:

Ram tells Lakshman that when Sita arrives he will have to make her pass through fire. To this Lakshman gets angry saying that it is a sin to be cruel to a woman. Ram explains that Lord of Fire has taken Sita with him to keep her safe from Ravan. He has created another Sita, A shadow of Sita that will remain with Ram in the forest. This way Ravan has taken away this shadow of Sita. Upon return of Sita, Ram will have to make her pass through this fire to bring her back from Lord of fire. This act will also make people trust Sita as a pure goddess.

Ok. ideal man indeed.

But then in the next paragraph it says that :

Ram and Sita perform their duties as King and Queen. However the people of the kingdom have doubts in their mind about their Queen. In the interest of his people Ram has to take another harsh step, to send Sita to the forest. For Ram Duty for his people was more important. He himself went away to forest in the past. Thus once again he had to take this step to keep the honor of the Kingdom.

This got me outraged. Whta kind of honour are they talking about if you can't put faith in someone tested by fire? What duty was Ram performing by banishing his wife, who he knew to be pure, to the forest? Sita had willingly gone to the forest with her husband when HE was exiled. She dint HAVE to go. She CHOSE to go. So how could he banish her because of what some people thought?

According to me, Ram would have been ideal if he had stuck with his wife regardless of what people thought.

It is very easy to say that he was human and the to err is human. But the thing is, He is not human. He is worshipped as a God. But this is a very big and stinky skeleton in his closet that noone seems to have thought about.