Onam of the Demon King

 

Image Source: India.com

Kerala is celebrating Onam, the grandest festival of the state. Onam is a festival of colours, flowers, music and abundance. In my childhood, Onam was projected as a harvest festival thus making it absolutely secular. The mythical legend of Mahabali (or Maveli as he was popularly and affectionately called by Malayalis) played relatively little role in the actual celebrations. The festive mood tended to supersede the legend though images of a pot-bellied Maveli made their presence felt ubiquitously.

Perhaps people aren’t too keen to scrutinise the Maveli legend because the legend doesn’t put the gods in any good light. Maveli is an Asura (demon) king who turns out to be far better than the gods. The gods, therefore, become jealous of him and an avatar of Vishnu descends to decimate the beloved king of the humans.

In her scholarly book, The Hindus – An Alternative History, Wendy Doniger says that the relationships between humans, gods, and asuras in the history of Hinduism can be grouped into three alliances. At first, in the Vedic period, the gods and asuras are opposed to each other and the gods prefer to unite with humans against the asuras.

The second alliance begins in the Mahabharata and continues through the Puranas. In this period, certain asuras and even humans become threats to the gods by virtue of their ascetic powers.

In the words of Doniger, “The balance of power changed again when, in the third alliance, devotion (bhakti) entered the field, repositioning the Vedic concept of human dependence on the gods so that the gods protected both devoted men and devoted antigods. This third alliance is in many ways the dominant structure of local temple myths even today.”

Maveli belonged to the second phase. He was a threat to the gods because of his goodness. To be too good is to tempt the gods. And the gods sent him to the netherworld but granted his wish to return once a year to visit his beloved subjects. Onam celebrates that annual return of his.

Personally, I find Maveli a charming figure merely because he is the quintessential rival of the gods. He shows that even the demons (asuras) can be better than the gods. He hurls a huge question mark on the very worth of the gods. He renders divinity ridiculously absurd. This is what makes Maveli a real hero. This is also why he should come every year to remind us of the absurdity of our gods and their religions.

 

Previous years’ posts on Onam

Dear Maveli [2018]

The abundance of Onam [2017]

Onam – celebration of human longing for utopia [2016 – most read]

 

PS. Floods subdued Onam celebrations in 2018 and 2019. Covid did something worse in 2020. Maveli would do better to stay in his Patalam. What we have done to our planet and its environment is far worse than what the gods ever did to anyone, even to Maveli. We are the Vamanas now, sending goodness down to the netherworld day in and day out.