Hindu ethical literature names six enemies of the self, the arishadvarga, that a person must master to live rightly: kama, krodha, lobha, moha, mada and matsarya. Kama stands first, and the placement carries a deliberate irony, since kama is also one of the four legitimate aims of human life, the purusharthas, alongside dharma, artha and moksha, meaning Hindu ethics does not condemn desire itself the way some traditions treat the body's appetites as inherently corrupting. What the arishadvarga names is kama's excess, desire that has slipped its proper place within dharma, the framework of right conduct meant to govern when and how it is pursued, and become instead a force that governs the person.
The Bhagavad Gita gives the clearest statement of the danger in its third chapter, where Krishna identifies kama, born of the passionate quality, rajas, as the all consuming enemy of wisdom that conceals knowledge the way fire is concealed by smoke, and the same chapter locates its operation specifically in the senses, the mind and the intellect, the three faculties through which desire distorts judgement before a person even recognises it has taken hold. P.V. Kane's history of dharmashastra literature situates the enemy within the wider disciplinary aim of that literature: correct performance of dharma requires desire that serves one's station and stage of life rather than desire that overrides it.