Terrorist beats demon-king this effigy-burning season

Every October, the religious festival of Dussehra kicks off the countdown to Diwali, India's biggest Hindu celebration, with the buring in effigy of the demon king Ravana. The kids love it.

And this year's countdown begins today, roughly 10,000 years after which it's believed that the Hindu mythological figure Lord Ram defeated Ravana, the great symbol of evil in the world.

Only this year (cue Hollywood voiceover vet Don LaFontaine) ... evil's getting an upgrade.

The Indo-Asian News Service filed a story today, reported by Sify News, on a major break from tradition in which "an Indore-based organisation would burn the [100-foot-tall] effigy of Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist of the 26/11 Mumbai attack, instead of the demon-king Ravana.

“The present day’s biggest enemy is terrorism and thus we have decided to burn the effigy of Kasab instead of Ravana,” Nikhil Agrawal of Khatiwala Tank Dussehra Utsav Samiti told IANS.

“Since the government is unable to punish the terrorist," the report says, "we could give a message regarding the feelings of the citizens,” he added.

Mumbaikers may have sensed that their pain was felt by the whole country, but now they know it. For Hindus to change a 10,000-year-old tradition, he's got to be one evil S.O.B. Let's hope he doesn't take it as a compliment.