Myth to Realpolitik

Will the competing images of Ram and Raavan influence India's political future?

- Abhik Bhattacharya

ON October 6 last year, the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) official X handle uploaded a poster of Rahul Gandhi dressed as Raavan, sporting metallic war-guards and seven heads. The muscular image of the Congress leader accompanied a politically charged caption: "The new age Raavan is here. He is Evil. Anti-Dharma.

Anti-Ram. His aim is to Destroy Bharat." Interestingly, this poster popped up just three months before the consecration ceremony of the Ram Temple, which was presided over by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.

The contest over the portrayals of Ram and Raavan in Indian political narratives is not new. In December 1974, a year after the death of Dravidian activist-scholar Periyar, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) supporters organised a Raavan Leela in Chennai (then Madras), where they burnt effigies of Ram, Lakshman and Sita. This Raavan Leela was a political response to Indira Gandhi's participation in a Ram Leela event.