Sita vs. Mandodari: Why Do We Worship One and Forget the Other?

The stories we choose to celebrate say more about us than we realize. They shape how we see virtue, power, sacrifice, and even love. Sita and Mandodari—two women from the same epic, bound by the same war, yet remembered so differently. One is deified, the other barely spoken of. Why? Is it because we only honor the women who suffer? Or is it because we struggle to recognize strength when it doesn’t look the way we expect? This isn’t about questioning faith. It’s about questioning why we see things the way we do.

Sita is not just a woman in our mythology—she is the woman. The template. The ultimate symbol of devotion, patience, and sacrifice. She is the wife who follows, the woman who suffers, the queen who endures. And for that, we built temples in her name.
But if you look closely, it’s not her strength we worship—it’s her suffering. Sita is tested, doubted, abandoned, and yet, she remains perfect. She is what generations have been taught to admire in a woman: not just love, but love proven through trials by fire. Not just loyalty, but loyalty that persists despite betrayal. Would we still worship her if she had walked away from it all? If she had refused to prove herself over and over again? If she had, instead, demanded the world to answer for its cruelty?

And then there’s Mandodari. A woman just as loyal, just as devoted, just as strong. But history doesn’t write songs about women like her. She was the queen of Lanka, the wife of Ravana—the man who triggered a war by kidnapping another man’s wife. She wasn’t just married to him; she repeatedly advised him, urged him to return Sita, warned him of the destruction he was inviting. She was wise, rational, and deeply moral—trapped in a palace that didn’t listen.
She stayed. She loved. She grieved. But unlike Sita, she didn’t suffer for righteousness—she suffered because of someone else’s arrogance. And we, as a society, have never quite known what to do with women who don’t fit the narrative of victimhood or saintly suffering. So, we erased her.

Here’s where it gets uncomfortable. We don’t just worship people; we worship ideas. Sita represents the kind of woman that patriarchy rewards—one who endures, who forgives, who stays. Mandodari, on the other hand, is inconvenient. She speaks up. She resists. She does everything “right” but still loses, and that’s not a story we like to tell.
If Sita had defied the world instead of submitting to it, would she still be divine? If Mandodari had been on the winning side of history, would she have been revered?

The way we treat these two women says a lot about us. We have been conditioned to admire not strength, but suffering. Not wisdom, but endurance. Not defiance, but sacrifice. Maybe it’s time we ask ourselves—should a woman’s worth be measured by how much pain she can bear? And if the answer is no, then maybe Mandodari deserves to be remembered, too.