12 Years a Slave: A Kali Yuga Vanvas
- Tharun Kumar
- 17 minutes ago
- 5 min read
What do Solomon Northup's 12 years in slavery have in common with the Pandavas' 12-year exile and 1-year incognito in the Mahabharata? Lord Shri Ram's 14-year exile in the Ramayana?
On the surface—nothing. Different continents. Different centuries. Different worlds. But through the lens of Yuga Dharma, they echo the same karmic wound: forced removal from rightful identity, the slow erasure of truth, and the long road back to dharma. In every age, the time needed to erase a person’s legacy grows shorter.
In the Treta Yuga, if you went missing for 14 years straight, you would lose access to your legal claims. That is why Kaikeyi had chosen the number 14 for Lord Rama's Vanvas. In the hopes that when Lord Ram returned, Bharatha would be king for 14 years already. Evil - yes!
In the Dwapara Yuga, that number had reduced to 13. That's why the Kauravas chose a 12-year exile and a year of incognito for the Pandavas. Evil - yes!
In each age, the exile shortens—not because justice improves, but because society’s memory, attention, and moral bandwidth weaken. In Kali Yuga, a person can be erased for 12 years, and the world simply forgets. But karma doesn’t. The soul remembers.
I have been reading "12 Years a Slave" by Solomon Northup. Solomon Northup, a free Black man living in New York in the 1840s, was a skilled violinist, husband, and father. In 1841, he was kidnapped under false pretences by two men who promised him work. Drugged and shackled, Solomon woke up in Washington, D.C., and was sold into slavery under the name “Platt” with no legal identity. He had to endure physical and psychological torture for twelve long years before the intervention of friends and legal support. Solomon was finally freed in 1853 and reunited with his family.
Like Lord Rama and the Pandavas, he was stripped of his identity, witnessed injustice and had to fight for righteousness.
Is "12 Years A Slave" by Northup the only novel that explores themes of exile - literal or metaphorical? "12 Years a Slave" does not stand alone. Although not 12 years, the themes of "exile" are prevalent in other novels on my shelf, including:
Mother of 1084 – Mahasweta Devi
Sujata is the only one mourning the loss of her Naxalite son while her family moves on without him. She and her son face exile in the sense that nobody wants to see them for who they truly are or why they chose a specific journey.
Untouchable – Mulk Raj Anand
Bakha, the protagonist, offers the reader a glimpse into what daily life looks like for him, where dignity is stripped away, and his exile consists of stigma and caste-based violence. Bakha must also navigate the attempts of colonisers trying to convert him by guilt-tripping and bribing him. He dreams of an equal society where man produces goods himself instead of relegating others to do his dirty work.
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
Written as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre", "Wide Sargasso Sea" explores the backstory of the "madwoman in the attic" named Bertha Mason, formerly Antoinette Cosway. While Bronte wrote Rochester to be a man who had to marry Bertha by circumstance, Rhys wrote him as a manipulator who married Cosway under false pretences and took her away to England, stripped of her identity and agency.
Things Fall Apart – No Longer at Ease – Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
A trilogy of colonialism fracturing an entire culture, with colonisers and bureaucracy systematically defeating the protagonist. A young native of his land is turned into an outsider. Another young man, divided between tradition and modernity, collapses brutally under systemic pressure. A priest faces his own downfall in a world where his culture is overthrown by another man's culture.
Okonkwo (Things Fall Apart), Obi (No Longer at Ease), and Ezeulu (Arrow of God) are exiled of their true selves and identity.
Animal Farm – 1984 – George Orwell
Where exile isn’t marked by banishment or distance—it is internal. Characters remain physically in place, but their minds, choices, and truths are exiled from them. They are trapped in familiar landscapes, but their very sense of self is under siege. When your narrative is controlled by others, and you're exiled from yourself, you have to fight harder just to be yourself.
When the animals overthrow Mr. Jones, they believe they are birthing a just society. But under Napoleon’s rule, the revolution turns inwards. At one point, there is no difference between the pigs and the humans, since both resort to greed, manipulation, corruption, deceit, and propaganda.
Winston Smith doesn’t escape from Oceania—he’s not even trying to flee physically. His thoughts are always monitored, his past is constantly rewritten, and his truth is not even his reality.
Loyalties – John Galsworthy
When Ferdinand de Levis, a wealthy Jew, accuses a gentleman of theft, the elite circles close ranks—not around truth, but around "class loyalty". De Levis is not exiled by geography, but by the invisible walls of race, class, and power. His truth is unpalatable to those who prefer the preservation of reputation over justice. He is reminded that wealth cannot buy dignity in a world where the systems are rigged. He’s excluded from the moral circle, and his pain is rendered inconvenient.
Dance Like a Man – Mahesh Dattani
Jairaj, an ageing male Bharatanatyam dancer, grapples with his unfulfilled ambitions, a controlling father, and a fractured identity. The play revolves around whose dream is allowed to thrive, and whose identity is sacrificed at the altar of family, patriarchy, and society. Jairaj is exiled from his passion, emasculated by cultural expectations that see classical dance as unfit for men. He is denied the right to choose, the right to create, the right to exist as he is. Gender expectations become the demons he must fight. The battlefield is his family. The Kurukshetra is personal.
Night – Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel’s Night is not just a Holocaust memoir. It is a chronicle of spiritual erosion, where men, women, and children are stripped of their dignity, liberty, and autonomy. It recounts Elie Wiesel’s teenage years under Nazi persecution, a sharp and unforgiving contrast to his peaceful childhood in Sighet. The exile is brutal, inhumane, and permanent, and Wiesel becomes a lone survivor at the end, much like Otto Frank after the deaths of his wife, Edith, and two daughters, Margot and Anne.
Why This Comparison Matters:
In our epics, evil tries to exile dharma—to the forest, to obscurity, to silence.
In our world, systems exile people—from themselves, from society, from memory.
Being forcibly removed from your rightful place, living where your name isn't yours, and suffering invisibly are ever-present forms of exile.
Conclusion:
You might ask why I am drawing these comparisons. What is the purpose of linking our sacred epics to modern novels?
The answer to that, my friend, is that exile has merely changed names today. The language of injustice has changed, but the story hasn’t. Exile has many forms: forced silence, gaslighting, stigma, cultural erasure, trauma, caste, race, and history.
You may not even know if the person sitting next to you in the bus or standing behind you in the supermarket is facing their own kind of exile. Be a little less judgmental of people today. Spread kindness. And when possible, raise your voice against suffering in any form. For more insights, check out my blogs below! Like, share, and subscribe!
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