Why are the gods so old? All of them seem to predate the industrial revolution. After that, there have been few godlike figures to worship, with the possible exception of Gandhi and Mother Teresa. But they never became gods because deification died with the machine age. The Victorian era marked the end of human dependency on religion. Technology was the new god.

India, however, did not find the gods dispensable. Here, politics realigned the balance of power between gods and men. Even the all-time greats like Rama became mere pawns, as the events of December 1992 proved.

Stop here, and think about Rama the man, in whose name we had some rabid and completely unnecessary controversies. A bit of a dreamer, with a touch of transcendental wisdom. An existentialist, he was bothered by the whos and the whys.

He was a statesman in the mould of Alfred the Great, Julius Ceasar and Jesus Christ, all of them men who thought beyond the ken of other men. He was an ancient-day Jawaharlal Nehru. At that juncture in the history of the still virgin country, he was only the prince of a small kingdom. No one in his extended family had the inclination to imagine a greater destiny for themselves. Petty politicking had bogged them down. One of them was Rama's stepmother, whose thirst for power exceeded any love she felt for her husband's other family.

Rama's father was old, weary and too far gone to help the rightful heir, who was in his turn strangely apolitical. Of course, Rama wanted to be king, but he was beyond the temporal, conniving effort required of him. So he let his stepmother do what she wanted, not really believing that she would do him harm.

When at last the exile orders came, he was shocked but willing to go, not tamely but with the greater vision that all great men possess, the knowledge that he would return one day. Paradoxically, the exile freed him. Tied down in politics, he was unable to realize his dream of seeing the country to the south of the Vindhyas. Now, with 14 years at his disposal, he set out on a journey that took him across the ocean to the little island-state of Lanka.

Rama's entourage staged a coup of the mind. Southerners, -- everyone except Ravana, were charmed by this northern nobleman. He had not come as a conqueror. He was on a mission to study culture, religion, to bow before their gods. He was the first of many to give shape to a pan-Indian philosophy.

And when he returned to Ayodhya, he brought back with him a united pantheon of gods. He had begun the first cross-Vindhyas exchange of ideas. Meanwhile Rama, with his strong sense of posterity, was obsessed with recording his concepts. So he commissioned Valmiki, his friend and guide in all matters of philosophy, to disseminate the new Indian vision. Valmiki wove his friend's deeds into the fabric of fiction. The story was powerful, racy and remained stayed on the bestseller list for thousands of years. And along the way, story-tellers began to add their own masala to the tale. The story grew, became larger than life and Rama's deification was complete.

As the tale traveled from ear to ear and perhaps as a reminder of our Indo-European legacy ancestral myths brought from the old homeland were custom-made for the Vedic people and added to the saga, just as the Greeks had once re-crafted their tales. Local colour and gods were introduced and hey presto, Helen of Troy became Sita. By then the real Sita was far too long dead to object to the fictionalisation of her life. That explains why the Ramlila is so different from the Ramayana.

Rama was probably as human as you or me. He became a God through an ancient natural process which will never happen again. Speed has invaded Heaven; wily Satan may have had his revenge after all. This time there will be no Paradise Regained.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.