by Tyron Devotta
Ravana, or Ravan, as he is known across the Palk Strait, means different things to different audiences. In Sri Lanka, he is a figure with multiple, sometimes competing identities. Some traditions describe him as being of Dravidian origin; others place him among the ancestors of the Sinhalese, linked through the Raksha lineage. These interpretations coexist uneasily, reflecting the island’s layered history and contested past.
In India, the picture is far less ambiguous. Ravana is firmly positioned as the villain of the Ramayana, his defeat marked annually in public festivals celebrating the victory of good over evil. His central offence, abducting a woman of immense symbolic importance to the subcontinent, defines him to this day. Transposed into the modern world, it is not difficult to imagine Ravana as the subject of an Interpol Red Notice. But according to them he's dead, so this is a matter done and dusted.
A complex story
Yet, Sri Lanka tells a different story. In and around the old citadel kingdom of Kandy, and in villages at the foothills of the Knuckles mountain range, Ravana remains a living presence in popular memory. Local narratives speak not of a demon vanquished, but of a powerful ruler wronged; one who never truly disappeared and may yet return to reclaim his place in history.
Academic scholarship, however, remains largely skeptical by far and large. Anthropologists, historians, and archaeologists tend to treat Ravana as a mythological construct, sustained by folklore, political agendas, and selective readings of the past rather than material evidence. Stories that lack social relevance rarely endure. Ravana’s continued presence, in tourism narratives, political discourse, and popular belief, suggests that the story serves a function well beyond the pages of an ancient epic. The question, increasingly, is not whether Ravana was real, but why he continues to matter.
The Colombo Institute for Human Sciences (CIHS) recently convened a small, closed-door conference titled “Move Your Shadow: Rediscovering Ravana, Forms of Resistance and Alternative Universes in the Tellings of the Ramayana.” The gathering brought together scholars, artists, and researchers to examine Ravana not as a fixed mythological figure, but as a shifting cultural and political symbol across Sri Lanka and South Asia.
Ravana scholarship
Jagath Weerasinghe, Sri Lankan artist and archaeologist affiliated with the Theertha International Artists Collective and formerly of the Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology, examined the subject through a post-war lens. He opened the discussion with a paper titled, “The Politics of the Ravana Myth in Post-war Sri Lanka,” explored how Ravana has been mobilised in contemporary cultural and political discourse, often reflecting anxieties around identity, sovereignty, and historical grievance.
Justin Henry, a PhD candidate and Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, presented a paper titled “The Sri Lankan Ramayana Tradition: The Interface of Sinhala and Tamil Literature and Folklore.” His presentation traced how Ravana appears across overlapping Sinhala and Tamil narrative traditions, highlighting the fluid movement of stories between languages, regions, and communities.
The institutional and sociological dimensions of the Ravana narrative were taken up by Sasanka Perera, Chairman of CIHS and former Professor of Sociology, in his presentation titled “The Invisibility of Rama, the Visibility of Ravana and the Heroic Construction of Ravana in Sri Lanka.” Perera argued that Sri Lanka’s cultural landscape has increasingly foregrounded Ravana while marginalising Rama, producing a distinctive local reconfiguration of the epic tradition.
Sasanka Perera, Chairman of CIHS
Political readings of the figure were further developed by Dileepa Witharana of the Open University of Sri Lanka, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Philosophy of Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering Technology. His paper, “Ravana in Sinhala Political Space,” examined how Ravana functions as a symbolic resource within Sinhala political thought and rhetoric.
The commercialisation of Ravana formed the focus of Pooja Kalita, a researcher at CIHS with a PhD in Sociology from South Asian University. In “The Salable Ravan: Heritage Tourism and Marketised Aesthetics of the Evil ‘Other’,Kalita analysed how Ravana has been repackaged for heritage tourism and visual culture, transforming a complex figure into a consumable brand.
The conference concluded with a performance-centred perspective from S. Jeyasankar, Senior Lecturer at Eastern University, Sri Lanka, whose presentation “Reformulation of Ravanan from the Clutches of Sanskritised Colonisation: The Journey of a Performer” traced how artists and performers have reimagined Ravanan outside dominant Sanskritic frameworks, reclaiming alternative traditions through embodied practice.
There was also an interpretation of Ravana in the film screening of “In Search of Ravana.” A Devised Dance Film, Performed by Sudesh Mantillake, University of Peradeniya. Co-directed by Sudesh Mantillake and Gayan Chathuranga Rajapaksha.
Taken together, the conference underscored how Ravana continues to operate not merely as a character from an ancient epic, but as a contested symbol, shaped by politics, performance, scholarship, and markets, within Sri Lanka’s contemporary cultural landscape.
Closed doors
Sasanka Perera, the convener of the mini conference says, The objective of this small, closed-door academic gathering was not to affirm belief in Ravana as a historical figure, nor to rehearse conventional readings of the Ramayana. Rather, its long-term aim is to contribute towards a publication that examines non-mainstream but widespread alternative understandings of Ravana, and more importantly, to ask why the Ravana narrative has survived so powerfully, and how it continues to function in the present.
Ravana is not simply a mythological character frozen in an ancient epic, Perera says. He plays an active role in contemporary politics, identity formation, and cultural power, particularly in Sri Lanka and India. In India, dominant North Indian interpretations foreground Rama as the civilisational ideal. In the process, Ravana becomes the embodiment of evil, and alternative traditions, Adivasi (“original inhabitants” or indigenous people),regional, and minority narratives, are marginalised or erased.
Perera insists, “Sri Lanka presents a more complex picture. Here, Ravana is neither uniformly demonised nor universally celebrated. There are Sinhala traditions that claim Ravana as a Lankan king, alongside Tamil traditions that interpret him differently, and still others that situate him outside rigid ethnic identities altogether. These plural narratives resist a single authoritative version, and it is precisely this plurality that the conference sought to foreground.”
Recently held mini conference on Ravana
Hegemony
Sasanka Perera says “the concern raised is that the more powerful and audible North Indian interpretations are increasingly eclipsing Sri Lankan Ravana traditions, even within Sri Lanka itself. Tourism narratives, state-sponsored heritage trails, and cultural promotions, such as airline branding and official media, often reproduce the North Indian Ram-centric version, quietly erasing local Ravana stories.” He says, the indigenous narratives exist in local areas unless they are tempted by tourism related business to subscribe to the north India version.
Crucially, the discussion was not about proving Ravana “existed”. The academic interest lies elsewhere: Why has this figure endured for millennia?
What roles has Ravana played at different historical moments? How does he function today—in politics, ethnic identity, tourism, business, and foreign policy?
Folklore
Oral tradition is central to this inquiry. As anthropology and sociology remind us, not all history is written. Many social memories, migration, conflict, power shifts, are preserved through stories rather than texts. Ravana, like other legendary figures, may encode fragments of historical experience, but these cannot be read literally. They require interpretation, cross-referencing, and caution. The question remains, however, whether anthropologists, historians and archaeologists would consider examining such a space which does not fully qualify to be scientific. And perhaps create a new genre of research, one that is subjective and has its place in the current world we live in! Sasanka Perera says this has already happened in anthropology (in some cases) where myth is taken seriously, possibly as the coded messages of the past.
The point, ultimately, is this: myth has to be factored into research in this case. Ravana is not merely a character from an ancient story. He is a living symbol that continues to shape cultural hierarchies, political alignments, and regional tensions. To ignore this is to misunderstand how narratives operate in our modern world.
This gathering sought to open that space of inquiry—not to replace one orthodoxy with another, but to insist on plurality, complexity, and critical engagement in how Ravana is understood today. Let us hope that they will approach the subject with an open mind.