9 heads, 300 years of worship: Ravana gets police protection in this MP town

In Madhya Pradesh's Satna district, a 300-year-old Ravana idol is preserved inside the Kothi police station.Bhopal: While police across the country oversee Dussehra celebrations that culminate in Ravana's effigy going up in flames, a police station in Madhya Pradesh's Satna district does something rather unusual, it protects the demon king who's worshipped here by devotees.Inside the premises of Kothi police station stands a 25-foot-tall, 22-foot-wide Ravana idol, believed to be at least 300 years old, where generations of a priest's family have performed rituals on Dussehra.Unlike the familiar 10-headed depiction, this Ravana has nine heads. Local belief has it that he offered one of his heads to Lord Shiva, earning the unusual form in which he is worshipped here. And while the idol predates the police station by centuries, it has remained within its compound since the new police station was built around 19 years ago."The idol was built by the local rulers around 300 years ago. My ancestors were Rajpurohits in the court of Kothi rulers and have been worshipping the idol since then. I remember at least four generations of my ancestors who performed the rituals. My father, grandfather and great-grandfather worshipped it on Dussehra, and now I carry on the tradition," said 56-year-old priest Ramesh Mishra.The tradition is rooted in local myth linking the region to the Ramayana.'More Ravana idols believed to exist' Mishra said he had heard from his forefathers that a small river once flowed near the idol, with a 'Ram Chabootra' on the opposite bank. The Kothi rulers would organise Ramlila there, during which Lord Rama would symbolically shoot arrows at Ravana's idol from across the river. A bridge over the water was said to represent Ram Setu, while the land on Ravana's side was known locally as 'Lanka'.Mishra also cited local lore about Ravana deploying informers along the borders of the forest where Lord Rama spent a considerable part of his life in Chitrakoot. He said similar Ravana idols were believed to exist in Chitrakoot and Pali in Umaria district.With Dussehra falling on Oct 20 in the region this year, Mishra and his family will once again perform the rituals at the idol - inside a police station that, unusually, safeguards a figure whom much of the country gathers to burn.The Kothi idol is not the only exception to the Dussehra tradition in Madhya Pradesh. In Vidisha district's Ravan village, devotees worship the demon king as 'Ravan Baba' and 'Kul Devta', with locals estimating that the reclining, 10-headed idol is over 500 years old; in Mandsaur's Khanpura, Ravana is revered as a son-in-law because Mandodari is believed to have belonged to the town.