Work

Rearticulating Dharma: Just Sustainabilities and the Bees Quarter in Amish Tripathi’s Ram Chandra Series

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: The Bees Quarter episode in Amish Tripathi’s Ram Chandra Series rearticulates dharma by relocating it from a transcendent cosmic mandate to a framework enacted through spatial and procedural ethics. Traditionally understood as a sustaining principle of moral and social order, dharma in Tripathi’s narrative is reconfigured through the spatial reorganization of Mithila, where environmental vulnerability and infrastructural design shape the conditions of ethical governance. Interpreting this transformation through the framework of just sustainabilities, the article argues that the episode reconfigures dharma not as a transcendent principle but as a practice grounded in resource equity, institutional responsibility, and the consistent application of law. The crisis surrounding the Battle of the Bees Quarter and Ram’s subsequent self-exile further dramatizes a dharmic dilemma between sovereign authority and procedural justice, foregrounding tensions between power and legitimacy. Read through this lens, Tripathi’s retelling situates dharma within contemporary debates on sustainability and justice, reframing it as a normative response to ecological precarity and institutional fragility.

Source: Religions

DOI: 10.3390/rel17030399

Author: Dongwon Lee

Institution: Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

Language: English

Topic: Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature

Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,172

Funder: Hankuk University of Foreign Studies