No deity in India is more widely present than Hanuman. He stands at the edge of villages and at the entrance of cities, in roadside shrines and great temples, painted on the backs of trucks and tattooed on the arms of wrestlers. He is the most worshipped of all, perhaps because he asks for nothing for himself, and because what he represents, strength placed entirely in the service of something higher, is something everyone understands and few achieve. ## The figure from the Ramayana Hanuman enters the great epic in its later half. Ram, searching for the abducted Sita, reaches the kingdom of the vanaras, and there meets Hanuman, minister to the vanara king Sugriva and a being of immense strength and intelligence. From that meeting, Hanuman gives himself entirely to Ram's cause, and the Ramayana's most celebrated feats are his. He leaps across the ocean to Lanka to find Sita. He locates her in captivity, comforts her, and allows himself to be captured so that he can take the measure of Ravana's court, then burns the city with his blazing tail and returns. When Lakshman falls in battle, mortally wounded, it is Hanuman who flies to the Himalaya for the healing herb, and unable to identify it, carries back the entire mountain. Each feat is strength, but strength directed by devotion and intelligence, never for its own sake. ## What he represents Hanuman is the perfect bhakta, the ideal devotee, and this is the heart of why he is loved. His power is without limit, yet he holds none of it for himself. Asked once where Ram dwells, he is said to have torn open his own chest to show Ram and Sita seated within his heart. That image is the whole of him: the strongest of beings, who has made himself a vessel for another. He is the union of qualities rarely found together. Immense physical strength and deep learning, for he is a master of the scriptures and grammar. Fearlessness and humility. Power and perfect obedience. He shows that true strength is not domination but service, and that the greatest of beings is the one who makes himself the servant of the good. He is also Chiranjivi, one of the immortals, believed to be present still wherever the story of Ram is told. This is why his image guards thresholds: he is the protector, the remover of fear and obstacles, ready to be called. ## How he is worshipped Hanuman's worship is among the most accessible in all of Sanatan dharma. Tuesday and Saturday are his days. The Hanuman Chalisa, the forty verses composed by Tulsidas, is recited by millions daily, one of the most widely known devotional texts in the country, valued especially as a refuge in fear and difficulty. Offerings of sindoor, the orange-red with which his images are coated, and of laddus, are made to him. He requires no elaborate ritual and no intermediary. A frightened person reciting the Chalisa, a wrestler touching his feet before a bout, a traveller bowing at a roadside shrine, all approach him directly, and that directness is part of his appeal. ## Why he endures Hanuman lasts because he is the most human of the divine figures, and the most aspirational. He was not born a god in the ordinary sense; he became what he is through devotion and service. He gives ordinary people a model they can actually follow: to be strong, to be fearless, to be learned, and to lay all of it at the feet of something greater than oneself. Jai Hanuman. The strongest one is remembered, above all, for whom he served. ## Related reading - [Hanuman Jayanti: The Birth of the Devotee](/sanatan-katha/hanuman-jayanti) - [Ram Mandir Ayodhya: Two Years After Pran Pratishtha](/sanatan-katha/ram-mandir-two-years) - [Rameshwaram: where Ram worshipped Shiva](/sanatan-katha/twelve-jyotirlingas-guide)