Once upon a time, a man sculpted a statue of God—chiseled not from divine vision, but from the contours of human imagination. He gave it form, shape, and posture based on what he thought God should look like. And just like that, God descended into the world—not as an infinite force, but as a stone idol molded to fit human convenience.
That’s where the real story begins.
Soon, a particular clan took charge of this newly minted deity. They claimed lineage, tradition, and ritual rights. Their survival began to depend on daily aartis, temple donations, and the divine monopoly they now wielded. Religion, they said. Legacy, they claimed. Livelihood, in truth.
A few years later, the entire village began to revolve around the temple. Shops selling incense sticks, coconut offerings, and framed portraits of the same idol sprung up like mushrooms. The tea stalls and sweet shops nearby whispered divine gossip with every glass of chai. Tourism came. Money came. Development came—but all with folded hands and temple bells.
Enter the politician.
He stood at the gates, not to pray, but to poll. He garlanded the idol not with devotion, but with calculation. He bowed not to the divine, but to the crowd watching him. He promised development wrapped in saffron. He assured protection of the “faith” while quietly slipping a caste calculation underneath. The God sculpted by a man now had a vote bank sculpted by a party.
And so the cycle continues.
What began as a stone figure of imagination is now a full-blown ecosystem. A man-made statue fuels a clan, feeds a village, funds a party, and sustains an illusion.
Is it faith?
Is it commerce?
Is it politics?
Or is it all three neatly sewn together in the name of the divine?
In the end, perhaps the real God still watches silently—far away from temples, clans, villages, and ballot boxes—wondering if He was ever invited into this arrangement in the first place.