Asursas are not exactly Villains!
Do you think asuras are those evil red-horned monsters shown on TV? Not exactly & here’s the tea.
Our OG creator Brahma who made up a lot of kids with his mind called as Manasputras, among which the Rishi Marichi’s son Rishi Kashyap had a lot of wives, with whom he created many of the classes of beings living in our universe today. Aditi gave birth to the Adityas, Diti gave birth to the Daityas & Danu he gave birth to the Danavas.
In the initial sections of the Rigveda, the word Asura is neutrally describing chiefs with a lot of power, magic & a force to command. So you’ll also see so-called “Gods” are also called asuras. As per some claims, the Danavas & Daityas ruled Earth while the Indra from the Adityas claimed the skies, pushing the Asuras below to the underworlds.
You’ve got these half-siblings collabing on projects like the Amrit Manthan or the churning of the cosmos to get Soma, or nectar, too.
Now things get complicated as in later sections of the vedas, we start seeing hints of duality, with Asuras being described as more materialistic chasing power for the sake of power, ruled by tamas, hence rejecting the Adityas now called “Devas” or beings with divine light or sattva & rajas qualities. Deva here means beings driven by “divya” or spiritual light.
Also, with people from India migrating all over the world, Asura or Ahura Mazda worshippers possibly get seen as the enemy & that’s why in much later scriptures like the Bhagavad Gita, “asuric” is used as an adjective to describe someone who’s full of greed, lust, hunger & anger.
Hinduism doesn’t have good & evil, so asuras & devas represent our internal battle between chasing the material short-term darkness filled with ignorance or selfishness & the long-term peace & serenity driven by seva or social service.
Like yin & yang have parts of yang & yin, you have good asuras like Ghatotkatch & Gods like Indra or Chandra, who’ve done nasty things, too.
This gets more complicated when you realise that the rules only apply to this Manvantra or “cycle of time,” so in the next Manvantra, we might have roles & names changing.
So don’t just hate on the asuras - it’s not that simple.