Our Gods are not Permanent!
You’re going to be shocked to know that many of our Gods are not permanent or fixed & here’s the tea.
One of the core concepts of Hinduism is that time is cyclical - the world ends & starts again. So like a school headmaster has a set of teachers every year, many of the devtas we worship are actually demigods kept in charge of administration to fulfil our specific needs & wants.
They are more positions or designations like Prime Minister or President, than fixed entities & the person sitting on these designations actually keep changing, being given to souls on their karmic merit, good deeds & penance.
If you take Indra for example, in the current Vaivasvata Manvantara, which is a period of time lasting 306 million+ years, this position is occupied by a guy called Purandara. In a future Manvantara, we’ll have the demon king Bali get promoted to the position because of his deeds & Vishnu’s blessings.
As per the Vedas, Indra is the source of all energy in the cosmos. He is the royal king position responsible for rain, natural forces, agriculture, and administration of all the demigods in the heavens, which we call swarga loka.
The image of how Indra is as a God depends on the doings of the person taking up the position in that manvantara, so probably the reason we don’t worship the current Indra anymore is because, according to some stories in the Puranas, he has ran into problems with his ego or greed, and there has been an increase in worship of other deities like Vishnu & Shiva, too, leading to him going into the backdrop, but that said, he remains a prominent figure in the larger story.
Like him, the Seven Rishis responsible for passing down holy knowledge through the vedas, as well as other positions like Agni, Vayu, Kubera, and Varuna are designations that keep changing.
While certain Gods are usually fixed, like Ganesha, Hanuman, Vishnu, Shiva - they, too, take dozens of different forms, avatars, versions & types across time, making our pantheon of Gods innumerable & endlessly fascinating to explore.
But wait, does this mean, even you can become a God or devta if you have enough karma points?