Who Killed Ravana?

The answer is obvious. Even a school kid will answer this question as the story of Ramayan is so much interwoven with Indian culture.

But for people who seek deep knowledge from Ramayana, this would be a new avenue of thought to ponder on. 

Lets start from the obvious answer first. Rama killed Ravana.

Now few questions that comes to the mind are

1. If Ravana would have chosen to fight Rama first without abducting Sita, would Rama had won? (Remember the fact that help of Vibheeshan and Hanuman would not had available)

2. If Ravana would have killed Sita before coming to war with Rama, would Rama had killed Ravana ?

3. This question may sound very crazy. If Sita would had chosen to live with Ravana during her stay in lanka, Would Rama had succeded in killing Ravana?

Like these, one can ask so many questions. From all the three questions, the reader would have noticed that the name of Sita was repeating. I feel that's one of the important part in the equation which is often missed (the reasons can be explored in a different post)

Let us explore the episode of abduction of Sita more from Ravana's perspective. From the words of Soorpanaka, Ravana indeed fell in love with Sita. One of the obvious way to get her is to kill Rama. At that time, Ravana was the most powerful person in the world. All the devas and asuras served him and he had all the riches in the world and lot of divine boons and weapons. Also, he had fought lot of wars and won most of them. Rama was very young and yet to prove his prowess. In today's world term, he was a underdog. So, it is quite understandable for Ravana to think that he would win the war.

But that would be pointless as there was a high possibility that Sita would die as soon as Rama die. So, the logic of killing Rama to get Sita would be a futile effort from Ravana's perspective.

In other perspective, while taking Sita, she condemned Ravana saying that he was not fighting and defeating Rama. Now assume the scenario if the Ravana had asked a question to Sita, "If I kill Rama, will you marry me?" and what would be Sita's response. "Hell!! No" would have been the response from Sita. 

So, if fighting Rama was not an option, what was the option that Ravana had left with. Consider there was a woman who was born and brought up in a palace and got married to a prince. And, the prince had been banished to forest by the king and she was living in a forest without any so called "wordly pleasure" for 13 years.  There was a very high chance that the woman was very frustrated. Now, someone thinking that taking the woman to world's richest place (Remember Kubera was serving Ravana) and showing all the beautiful things of the world to impress her was not very absurd. In one way, it sounds logical as well. And, that was the tactic used by Ravana. May not the right one by looking at it, but Ravana might have thought that if Sita got impressed with him or his wealth, then the idea would become right. And, that's not a bad gamble.

Unfortunately, Ravana had to face his worst nightmare. Sita stayed in Lanka for almost 12 months. And Lanka was the most beautiful place in the world. It was wonderfully described by different poets during the episode when Hanuman enters Lanka to search for Sita. Ravana had showed all his wealth, power, strength to impress her but nothing worked. He tried to induce fear through words or by keeping some raakshashis near by. But all ended in vain. Sita is great not because of she had not accepted Ravana but for those 12 months, she lived exactly the same way she would live in a forest. None of those wealth had any impact on her. That's exactly Ravana had not planned for and never expected to happen as well. It was a behavior of a true yogi. When the event happened, Sita was around 30 years of age. So, someone of such a young age showing the maturity of a yogi was unthinkable. (only a handful of people achieve that in the whole world)

So, during those 12 months, Sita had gradually destroyed the pride, ego, self-worth of Ravana and eventually crushed his soul. Ravana had very well convinced that Sita would not accept him. So, when he entered the war with Rama, he had no point or motivation to win it. But if the war had happened without abducting, Rama would have fought for love of Sita and Ravana would have fought with lust (or with love) for Sita. Though in the fight between love and lust, love will win, that fight would have been total annihilation in both the sides as both are powerful forces of motivation (but in different direction). But after those 12 months, Ravana realized Sita would remain as a dream to him. So this time, Rama had the same motivation but Ravana had nothing to fight for.

Rama did destory Ravana's strength and power but it's Sita who destroyed his motivation and the very soul.