The vices of ego, such as vanity, anger & greed, have to be tamed if Ravana has to be annihilated

So yet another Dussehra is over. Dussehra, the festival signifying the triumph of good over evil for the umpteenth time, has been celebrated with the same traditional gaiety and religious fervour as in the past. Except for that tragic incident of Patna resulting in loss of several lives, rest of the things have not changed much. The same huge effigies of Ravana, the demon king who is supposed to be the incarnation of evil, were being destroyed amidst full public glare. While ecstatic crowds cheered frenetically with every loud burst of crackers blowing to smithereens the parts of the gigantic effigy of Ravana’s body, a feeling of complacency also seemed to set in. Of having destroyed Ravana. But have we really destroyed himIJ

Thinking more deeply, we may realise that Ravana persists. He lives on despite being burnt year after year. And as we ponder over this, a sense of deja vu, of things remaining the same, engulfs us. Why have we not been able to kill RavanaIJ The question must be answered as we look around us to find various manifestations of Ravana symbolising evil of all kinds affecting society at a nauseating frequency. In the epic Ramayana, Rama also did not succeed in killing Ravana till Vibhishana disclosed the secret of the demon king’s invincibility. Thus, only when the arrow was shot at the right spot did Ravana perish. We too need to understand the nature of Ravana. Only then can he be killed. Who or rather what is RavanaIJ

We are not talking about that Ravana the demon king slain by lord Rama in thetreta yuga, the period when Rama lived. That Ravana is no longer the issue. The issue is the evil that persists. The demonic tendencies that seem to influence incidents all around us. The attitude that leads to undesirable behaviour. It is this Ravana that we try to kill through the burning of large sized effigies symbolising the evil traits that the demon king of the yonder age represented.

What were those undesirable traitsIJ They were ahankara or vanity, vaasna or lust, lobha or greed, irshya or envy, krodha or anger, and above all, the false belief of invulnerable status which blurred the line between the right and the wrong. As long as these exist, Ravana exists. The unfortunate reality is that these traits are found in all of us, with just one difference that their influence on behaviour varies from person to person. They are all vices of the ego that affect our desires and direct our behaviour. This ego has to be tamed if Ravana is to be annihilated.

The ritual of burning effigies of Ravana can hardly be effective if the Ravana that exists within us is not killed. There is thus a need to understand that the way to finish Ravana is not through the ritual but the spiritual. Rituals can only work if they lead us to the spiritual path, the path of dharma. We must learn to tame our negative feelings that often provoke us to travel the path that is not desirable. Ravana was representing adharma and can only be killed bydharma.

The writer is a professor, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad (Jharkhand). He can be reached at ppathak.ism@gmail.com