The essay “Three Hundred Ramayanas” by indologist A K Ramanujan was never intended as an iconoclastic exercise. It spelt out the interesting variations in the “Ramayana” story in India and Southeast Asia with a great measure of quiet reverence. In fact, Ramanujan concluded his essay with a tale of the mental and social elevation of a village dolt after he actually listened to a recitation of the “Ramayana”. Yet, because some philistines had objected to the essay being in the list of prescribed texts, the culture war was transformed into a political war.