Bali returns and exiles Sugriva is the reversal in which Sugriva’s provisional rule gives way to his brother’s violent restoration of power. Recounted by Sugriva as an explanation of his present condition, the episode moves from Bali’s return after a demon has been slain to the killing of the lords who made Sugriva king, and finally to Sugriva’s banishment and separation from his wife. What had been a temporary arrangement becomes a rupture of authority, kinship, and security.

The Return and the Reversal

Sugriva remembers the moment as beginning with Bali’s return, joyous after the demon’s death. Bali found Sugriva ruling in his stead. The account does not present the brothers meeting as a negotiated transfer: Bali’s eyes grow red with rage, and he kills the lords who had made Sugriva king. His return therefore immediately overturns the political order that had formed during his absence.

Sugriva’s rule had been undertaken in a situation in which the city was without a king; the people made him its lord for its defence. Yet when Bali came back, Sugriva says he checked his own claim out of respect for the rights of birth. His deference is important to the sequence: even while ruling, he did not treat the kingship as an entitlement that superseded his elder brother’s claim. Bali’s response, as Sugriva recounts it, is not a reciprocal recognition of that restraint. It is anger, the killing of those who had elevated Sugriva, and the destruction of the arrangement that had protected the city.

From Petition to Banishment

Sugriva says that he approached Bali humbly and sued for consideration. The plea does not restore his standing. Bali reviles him in fury, turning the exchange between brothers into an assertion of power rather than a hearing of Sugriva’s account. The surviving recollection emphasizes this contrast: Sugriva’s meek respect and humble speech meet Bali’s rage and contempt.

The punishment strips Sugriva of both place and protection. Bali leaves him a single robe and sends him into banishment. Sugriva also says that his wife is torn from his side. These are distinct losses: he is expelled from the kingdom, reduced to what he can carry, and separated from his wife. The account does not describe the circumstances of that separation further, but its placement alongside the banishment makes clear how completely Bali’s return changes Sugriva’s life.

Sugriva’s Account and Its Aftermath

Sugriva recounts the episode in the first person, presenting his former rule, his deference to birthright, his plea, and his expulsion as the history behind his current fear. He describes himself afterward as roaming through lands of woods and seas, fearful and ill at ease. The return that might have ended an absence instead leaves him displaced and insecure.

Because the episode reaches the reader through Sugriva’s recollection, its emphasis falls on the sequence as he experienced and explains it: a brother returns, a substitute ruler is removed, a plea fails, and exile follows. The account gives Bali’s anger and actions, but does not supply his reasoning beyond his fury at finding Sugriva on the throne. That imbalance keeps attention on the consequences Sugriva identifies: political dispossession, humiliation, and separation from his wife. The event is thus not merely a change of ruler. It is the rupture that leaves Sugriva without a kingdom or a settled home, and makes his present condition intelligible.