Dussehra celebrated with religious farvour all over India

By Editor in Chief On Oct 13, 2024

Dussehra in India was celebrated with much religious fervor and gaiety throughout the country, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

It culminated following the symbolic killing of Ravana by Lord Ram following the battle.

The occasion was celebrated amid Navratri offerings to goddess Durga, the greatest and the most powerful female deity in Hindu religion and culture.

On one hand, street corners and open fields and parks witnessed an unaccounted number of pandals where Durga idols were colorfully decorated and offerings made, the occasion also marked the staging of Ramlila….the life and times of Lord Ram.

Dussehra, in Hinduism, holiday marking the triumph of Rama, an avatar of Vishnu, over the 10-headed demon king Ravana, who abducted Rama’s wife, Sita. In the epic Ramayana, Rama, with the assistance of the monkey-general Hanuman, attacks Lanka to rescue Sita and slays Ravana. The festival’s name is derived from the Sanskrit words dasha (“ten”) and hara (“defeat”).

The culmination of Navratri and Durga Puja celebrations

Symbolizing the victory of good over evil, Dussehra is celebrated on the 10th day of the month of Ashvina (September–October), the seventh month of the Hindu calendar, with the appearance of the full moon, an event called the “bright fortnight” (shukla paksha). Dussehra coincides with the culmination of the nine-day Navratri festival and with the tenth day of the Durga Puja festival. Both Navratri and Durga Puja involve prayers offered to the goddess Durga, a principal form of the supreme goddess in Hinduism. A collective of nine avatars of the deity, called Navadurga, is worshipped during Navratri. Durga Puja honors the goddess’s demon-slaying form, known as Mahishasuramardini. The coinciding days of Dussehra and Vijaya Dashami mark the victory of Rama over Ravana for some, and of Durga over Mahishasura for others. For many, it marks the beginning of preparation for Diwali, which occurs 20 days after Dussehra.

Ram Lila and the burning of Ravana effigies

Dussehra is celebrated with great fervor and fanfare. In North India, it incorporates Ram Lila, a gala theatrical enactment of Rama’s life story. Effigies of Ravana—often along with those of Meghnada (Ravana’s son) and Kumbhkarana (Ravana’s brother)—are stuffed with firecrackers and set ablaze at dusk in open fields.

Rama is the na, the shorter of the two great epic poems of India, the other being the Mahabharata (“Great Epic of the Bharata Dynasty”). The Ramayana was composed in Sanskrit, probably not before 300 BCE, by the poet Valmiki and in its present form consists of some 24,000 couplets divided into seven books.

The poem describes the royal birth of the god Rama in the kingdom of Ayodhya (Oudh), his tutelage under the sage Vishvamitra, and his success in bending Shiva’s mighty bow at the bridegroom tournament of Sita, the daughter of King Janaka, thus winning her for his wife. After Rama is banished from his position as heir to the kingdom through a palace intrigue, he retreats to the forest with his wife and his favour half-brother there, Lakshmana, to spend 14 years in exile. There Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, carries off Sita to his capital while her two protectors are busy pursuing a golden deer sent to the forest to mislead them. Sita resolutely rejects Ravana’s attentions, and Rama and his brother set out to rescue her. After numerous adventures, tallying tallying, king of the monkeys, and, with the assistance of the monkey-general Hanuman and Ravanown’s brother, Vibhishana, they attack Lanka. Rama slays Ravana and rescues Sita, who undergoes an ordeal by fire to clear herself of suspicions of infidelity. When they return to Ayodhya, however, Rama learns that the people still question the queen’s chastity, and he banishes her to the forest. There she meets the sage Valmiki (the reputed author of the Ramayana) and at his hermitage gives birth to Rama’s two sons. The family is reunited when the sons come of age, but Sita, after again protesting her innocence, plunges into the earth, her mother, who receives her and swallows her up.

The poem enjoys immense popularity in India, where its recitation is considered an act of great merit. Little is known of Valmiki as a historical figure, though he is described as having been a thief named Ratnakbeforer to becoming a sage. Many translations of the Ramayana into the vernacular languages are themselves works of great literary artistry, including the Tamil version of Kampan, the Bengali version of Krittibas, and the Hindi version, Ramcharitmanas, of Tulsidas. Throughout North India the events of the poem are enacted in an annual pageant, the Ram Lila, and in South India the two epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, make up the story repertoire of the kathakali dance-drama of Malabar. The Ramayana was popular during the Mughal period (16th century), and it wafavoriterite subject of Rajasthani and Pahari painters of the 17th and 18th centuries.

The story also spread in various forms throughout Southeast Asia (especially Cambodia, Indonesia, and Thailand), and its heroes, together with the Pandava brothers of the Mahabharata, were also the heroes of traditional Javanese-Balinese theatre, dance, and shadow plays. Incidents from the Ramayana are carved in bas-relief on many Indonesian monuments—for example, at Panataran in eastern Java.