India, Sept. 28 -- On Dussehra, a few days from now, effigies of Ravana will be burnt, but it is important to remember that, in the vast repository of India's mythological and epical consciousness, few figures loom as enigmatically as him. For the casual devotee, he is the ten-headed villain, the very embodiment of evil, whose abduction of Sita leads to his ultimate destruction at the hands of Lord Rama. Yet, as with many characters in our epics, Ravana resists simple classification. He is not merely a foil to Rama's divinity, but a figure whose life, motives, and personality are riven with moral and philosophical complexity. The question that then arises is a provocative one: was Ravana truly the villain he is so often made out to be?

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