Ultimately, Ramayana and Mahabharata are war stories. These stories became popular after the Aryan invasion in the region which is called India today. The beauty of these stories came from the fact that hundreds of creative minds were involved in the process of shaping such oral literature in different times in history in different ways. Perhaps, Mahabharata is a more beautifully crafted story than Ramayana, if one analyses the sheer number of characters and the complexity of internal conflicts involved among most of them. From a caste angle, Ramayana has been more useful for asserting the Brahminical control in this subcontinent. The terms `Asura’ and `Rakshasa’ were meant to facilitate the control over the Dalits and Adivasis. In the process, the traditional Gods were reshaped or abandoned. Among the threatened and vanished species that our environmentalists are bothered about, I would appeal to include the list of lost Gods in our subcontinent also. The success of the Brahminical stories is on the fact that they filtered into the imagination of Dalits, Adivasis, Dravidians and even other religious communities like Muslims. Therefore, we have Adivasi Ramayana in Wayanad and Muslim Ramayana in Malabar. But one question that remains in my mind is: How come war heroes became Gods in this subcontinent? Every war is an opportunity to crush the marginalised and the innocents. If Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik were bron in those periods, they would have definitely started an anti-war group. Unfortunately, history does not necessarily travel according to our imaginations alone.
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