By Fareez Farook –

Fareez Farook

In the tales told by firelight, the sages bow to Rama and paint Ravana in the colours of sin. Yet when I turn my gaze inward, I find Ravana clothed in a grandeur Rama could never wear. Ravana was a monarch of brilliance, a scholar who mastered the Vedas, a poet who sang to the heavens, a ruler who made Lanka gleam like a golden star upon the seas. Rama bent a bow; Ravana bend the world with his will.

When I read the old epics, I cannot help but feel that Ravana has been wronged more by storytellers than by gods. Rama, they tell me, is dharma embodied, but to me he feels cold, bound by rules so rigid they crush the very heart they claim to uphold. Ravana, in contrast, burns with the contradictions of humanity. Perhaps that is why I find myself drawn to him.

In the collective consciousness of much of South Asia, Ravana stands tall,  ten heads, twenty arms, and an image forged in fire and fury. He is the great villain of the Ramayana, the abductor of Sita, the arrogant king who dared to oppose the gods. Yet, to many in Sri Lanka, he is something else entirely: a misunderstood monarch, a patron of the arts, a master of science, and perhaps, above all, a gentleman who kept his honor even in war.

The myth of Ravana has for centuries echoed across cultures, recited in verses, etched into temple walls, burned in effigies, and passed from one generation to the next. But in this retelling, often dominated by North Indian tradition, Ravana is flattened into a one-dimensional antagonist, while the complexity of his character and the dignity of his actions are lost. As we revisit this ancient epic, we must ask: has Ravana been cursed not by gods, but by history itself?

A Scholar-King in the Shadow of Ashoka Trees

According to Lankan folklore and alternate tellings of the Ramayana, Ravana was no demon, but a brilliant ruler of Lanka, a city said to rival the heavens in beauty and design. He was a master of Ayurveda, a veena player, a devotee of Lord Shiva, and the author of works like the Ravana Samhita, which explored astrology, medicine, and philosophy.

When he took Sita to his kingdom, after the controversial mutilation of his sister Surpanakha, he placed her not in his palace, but in the garden of Ashok Vatika, watched over by female guards, never once crossing the line of physical consent. This restraint, rarely emphasized in mainstream narratives, stands in stark contrast to the image of a lustful tyrant. Sita, though a prisoner, was never harmed, and even the gods in some regional retellings commend Ravana for his discipline and nobility.

Rama, by contrast, the revered hero of the epic, rescued Sita only to demand she prove her chastity by walking through fire. Later, despite her successful trial, he banished her while she was pregnant, doubting her purity in the eyes of his kingdom. If Ravana’s greatest sin was taking Sita from her home, then Rama’s was not trusting the woman he claimed to love, even after divine vindication.

Who then upheld dharma?

The Curse of Misremembering

The idea that Ravana was cursed may not lie in ancient divine retribution, but rather in the way his legacy has been remembered, or deliberately rewritten. In many North Indian versions of the Ramayana, composed by Brahmanical scholars like Valmiki and later Tulsidas, Ravana serves as the necessary antagonist: powerful but arrogant, brilliant but doomed by pride.

But cultural memory is not neutral. As power shifted across centuries, from Dravidian dynasties to Northern empires, from oral traditions to written Sanskrit texts, the character of Ravana transformed. In the process, Sri Lanka’s own indigenous hero was turned into a rakshasa, and his moral complexity stripped away. It is a pattern familiar to colonized lands: the victors write the myths, and in doing so, demonize the defeated.

To many Sinhalese and Tamils today, the myth of Ravana’s “curse” is symbolic. It is the curse of being misunderstood, of having one’s story told by others, often enemies, with no right of reply. It is the curse of being painted monstrous for resisting an invading force.

A Legacy Reclaimed

In modern Sri Lanka, Ravana is being reclaimed, not as a counterpoint to Hinduism, but as a celebration of native heritage. Statues of Ravana rise in places like Ella and Nuwara Eliya. Stories of his aerial vehicle, the Dandu Monara, and his engineering feats are taught with pride. Some scholars even posit that Sigiriya, once believed to be King Kashyapa’s fortress, may have links to Ravana’s mythical kingdom in the sky.

This re-evaluation is not unique to Sri Lanka. In parts of South India, especially among Dalit and Dravidian movements, Ravana has become a symbol of resistance against Aryan dominance. Political leaders have publicly questioned Rama’s actions, particularly in his treatment of Sita, and have elevated Ravana as a more ethical, more complex character.

Even in global pop culture, we are seeing new representations, ones that interrogate the binary of good and evil, and instead embrace the grayness of ancient stories. In these retellings, Ravana is not the monster of the past but the mirror of our present moral ambiguity.

Heroism, Villainy, and the Power of Perspective

To paint Ravana as flawless would be as misguided as portraying him purely as evil. He was proud, perhaps even vengeful. But he was also loyal, learned, and by many accounts, honorable even in enmity. And that is what makes him profoundly human.

Perhaps that is the real reason Ravana continues to endure, not as a demon to be burned, but as a figure worthy of remembrance and reflection. His story challenges the simplicity of hero worship. It asks whether those we revere have always acted justly, and whether those we condemn were truly villains, or simply narrated that way by history’s dominant voices.

In revisiting Ravana, we are not just retelling a myth. We are reclaiming a memory. We are recognizing that mythology is not fixed, it is alive, shaped by who tells it, when, and why. And sometimes, the most important act of justice we can perform for a maligned figure is to simply ask: what if we got it wrong?