Just wait, he has only three more months and then we will teach him a proper lesson,’ the Ravana Balakaya convenor charged.” He has arrested 28 army officers including captains and majors and colonels. ‘Across the road there is a fellow called Shani. Pointing in the direction of the CID offices, the monk threatened SSP Abeysekera, saying that he would be taught a ‘proper lesson’ in three months. Behold a news report on it: “When guards prevented the hardline monk from entering the HQ with his mobile phone, he stood outside the building and threatened to surround the building if his complaint about Minister Rishard Bathiudeen was not investigated by ‘Wednesday or Thursday’ next week. Earlier this year, Sri Lankan researchers at the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan launched a satellite called Raavana-1.Įarlier this year, the monk who leads the Ravana Balakaya - a nationalist hate group with parliamentary affiliations - stood in front of the police headquarters, threatening to surround the building if his complaint against a Muslim minister was not acted upon. Another friend, a rapper-poet, recently did a skit in Germany about how Ravana was the better lover. A friend once wrote a novel about Ravana during his school days, briefly holding the dubious title of being the youngest published author in the country. On YouTube, the Ravana brothers are producing rich, lyrical music, fusing old Sri Lankan styles with new beats: I have no idea who they are, but they’re good. One would assume this is an obsession of an older generation. Stray a little bit beyond these officially sanctified waters and theological debates and you run head-first into the ominous-sounding Sri Ravana Research Institute and the Sri Ravana Central Intelligence Agency, both of which seem to be involved in some Illuminati-level plot of unlocking the mystical potential of humans and getting us to Mars. A 19th century Company School painting of Ravana from Patna. It was said that Valmiki, the author of the Ramayana, did a con job on a great man. A venerable monk claimed that the Yakka language - an ancient indigenous dialect - would have been the lingua franca during Ravana’s times, and that we should dig deeper into those legends. The head of the archeological institute of a prominent university, and a professor of geography, were firm in their opinions that Sri Lankans flew 5,000 years ago, thanks to Ravana, and that adequate scientific detail could be found. The forum argued about why Indian historians never talk about the Pushpaka Vimana (or, in Sinhala, the Dandu Monara Yanthraya: the Peacock Machine). In fact, the Sri Lankan civil aviation authority, in a bid to investigate this very question, launched a project in August to probe deeper into the matter. It was Ravana who ran the first, technologically superior kingdom here in Sri Lanka, say others read the Ramayana carefully, does this part not sound like a nuclear power plant? It was Ravana who first had powered flight - how else did he get Sita down here from India? It was Ravana who invited the Kashyapa Buddha to Sri Lanka, say some. If anything, Rama pales in comparison - a golden boy written in straight lines and with little subtlety.ĭepending on who you ask, the stories get ever more fanciful. The villain of the story, after all, is painted in extraordinary colour, a king with 10 heads to represent his knowledge of the shastras and the Vedas, a dab hand on the veena, an astute political scientist and sage, with a boon from Brahma. The Ramayana I was reading seemed to nod its head. A great scholar, well-versed in mathematics and urban design, who ruled his kingdom and did well and that like the British king Arthur, he passed from history to legend, from legend to myth, and ended up being unfairly cast as the villain in a domestic squabble. Speak to monks and scholars of history and you see a theory - that Ravana was a real king who ruled Lanka around 2517 BC. Return to those schoolchildren and ask them: was Ravana a tyrant? They’d probably be surprised. Except, this supposed villain weaves himself into my native Sri Lanka in a distinctly un-Voldermort-like pattern.
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