The Mahabharata - Supatha Articles - 3

The Mahabharata – Its Meaning and Its Relevance Today

Prof. V. V. S. Sarma

Part VIII

         The Great War – Issues and Lessons

4. The Bhagavad Gita

No discussion of the Mahabharata war or that of the epic itself is complete without a reference to the Bhagavadgita. It is in several ways the real kernel of the great epic. “The Song Celestial” is placed at the beginning of the great battle between the Kauravas and the Pandavas and the occasion is the show of reluctance on the part of Arjuna to fight with his elders, gurus and close relatives in the opposing army. It gave rise to a psychological conflict of the type “To be or not to be”. Arjuna felt like walking away out of the conflict and renouncing the worldly life rather than being the cause of the destruction, which is going to result. Krishna knows that Arjuna’s mood of despair is but a passing emotion and that his real nature will prevail compelling him to fight, as he is destined to. The Gita, can of course, be interpreted at several levels such as the mundane plane, the ethical plane and the metaphysical plane. As per the description in the text, Arjuna sees all the people assembled in the war on both sides and is momentarily overcome by great grief. He says

Na kankshe vijayam Krishna na ca rajyam sukhanica

Kim no rajyena Govinda kim bhogairjeevite na va

Krishna brings Arjuna back to his senses through the Gita. He characterizes Arjuna’s sorrow as “hridaya daurbalya” and “kshudra”. He summarizes his teaching by saying

Tasmaduththista Kaunteya yudhdhaya kritaniscaya.

The fact every one has to remember here is that Krishna is not teaching dry philosophy to Arjuna. A great Kshatriya hero, a person, whose advise is sought earnestly by several who know his real nature even during his life time and a man who is recognized by every one as an extra-ordinary person of his time is advising another Kshatriya hero to take up his swa-dharma. It is true that the Gita in later days has been accepted as a Upanishad teaching the paths of Jnana Yoga, Karma Yoga and Bhakti Yoga to humanity at large. The question that continues to occur to many even till this date, is whether a text like Gita on Yoga Sastra will provoke people to war and the himsa that goes along with it. The answer to this question appears clearly in the writings of Lokmanya Tilak and Sri Aurobindo during the struggle for India’s independence. Arjuna clearly asks Krishna the following question:

            Tat kim karmani ghore mam niyojayasi Kesava

If you say jnana is more important than karma as you said earlier, why are you encouraging me to take up this act of fighting in the war, which is a ghora karma. Even after 5000 years, Krishna’s response is clear:

            “Kalosmin lokakshaya kritpravriddho

            Lokan samahartu mihapravrittah

I am “Kala” (Death) destroyer of the world and engaged now in annihilating all the beings.

           

            Mayevaite nihatah poorvameva

            Nimittamatram bhava savyasacin

These men have already been slain by me. Be only an apparent (instrument) cause, O Savyasachi!”

5. The Struggle for Indian Independence:

Views of Sri Aurobindo

            In this section, we see how Sri Aurobindo shaped his views on the Indian situation and its independence struggle with inspiration from the Mahabharata. He returned to India at the age of twenty after a thoroughly Western education in England in 1893. This was eleven years after Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s work Anandamath was published. This work contained the famous hymn to motherland, “Vande Mataram”. The Indian National Congress was established eight years prior to this in 1885 by the Anglicized upper classes of Indian Society, which had full faith in the fair-mindedness of the British and a clear quarter century before Mahatma Gandhi entered the Indian political arena. 

Aurobindo’s vision of Mother India as he perceived it in 1904 was as follows:

What is a nation? What is our mother country? It is not a piece of earth, nor a figure of speech, nor a fiction of the mind. It is a mighty Shakti composed of the Shaktis of all the millions of units that make up the nation, just as Bhawani Mahisha Mardini sprang into being from the Shakti of all the millions of gods assembled in one mass of force and welded into unity. The Shakti we call India, Bhavani Bharati, is the living unity of the Shaktis of the millions of people, but she is imprisoned in the inertia and ignorance of her sons.

To deserve freedom and to rule the country ourselves, we should regain the strength of Kshtriyas. Aurobindo writes in 1907:

Politics is the work of the Kshatriya and it is the virtues of Kshatriya we must develop if we are to be morally fit for freedom. We reiterate with emphasis that the Kshatriya of the old must again take his rightful position in our social polity to discharge the first and foremost duty of defending its interests. The brain is impotent without the right arm of strength. Excessive good nature, the desire to be always pleasant and polite will never do serious politics. Open attack, unsparing criticism, the severest satire, the most wounding irony, are all methods perfectly justifiable and indispensable in politics… The first need at the present moment is courage, a courage, which knows not how to flinch or shrink.

There has been a tendency in India and elsewhere to preach that war is something evil. This has been particularly so after the World War II and the deployment of nuclear weapons by USA in Japan. While every effort should be made to stop a war, it must be remembered that a war has to be fought when needed to uphold the dharma, and this point was constantly emphasized by Sri Aurobindo.. This is the main lesson of the Mahabharata War.  He wrote in 1908

A certain class of minds shrink from aggressiveness as if it were a sin. Their temperament forbids them to feel the delight of the battle and they look on what they cannot understand as something monstrous and sinful. “Heal hate by love, drive out injustice by justice, slay sin by righteousness” - is their cry. Love is a sacred name, but it is easier to speak of love, than to love. The Gita is the best answer for those who shrink from battle as sin and aggression as a lowering of morality.  The sword of the warrior is as necessary to the fulfillment of justice as the holiness of the saint. Ramdas is not complete without Shivaji. Therefore, Sri Krishna says in the Mahabharata that God created battle and armour, the sword, the bow and the dagger for the same purpose. [1]

The same theme repeatedly occurs in Santi Parva and Anusasanika Parva, when Bhishma appraises Yudhistrira of raja-dharma. Aurobindo wrote in 1909 on Ahimsa in the following way:

The virtue of the Brahmin is a great virtue. You shall not kill. This is what Ahimsa means. If the virtue of Ahimsa comes to Kshatriya, if he says I will not kill, there is no one to protect the country.  Injustice and lawlessness will reign. The virtue becomes a source of misery and you become instrumental in bringing misery and conflict to the people.

Compare this attitude with that of modern day communists wanting to protect the so-called human rights of terrorists, naxalites and “jehadis” and proclaiming that “the state shall not kill” against the backdrop of enormous violence perpetuated by these groups in contemporary India.

6. Views of Tilak

            Tilak (1856-1920) was one of the greatest freedom fighters India had produced. In Maharashtra, he brought Sanathana Dharma into public life. He published in 1914, in Marathi “Srimad Bhagavadgita Rahasya – The Science of Karma Yoga”. He took his inspiration from the Mahabharata and also the life of Shivaji. According to Tilak, the basic question of Arjuna was to justify his participation in the fight and to interpret the oft-repeated dictum – Ahimsa Paramo Dharma. Gita’s main teaching, according to Tilak, is to teach Arjuna to perform his swa-dharma, which is his doing his prescribed karma of fighting the war. Tilak identifies various types of karma, or activities that are prescribed for various individuals in society. The possible results of the act of participation in the war may be analyzed taking into account the risks and benefits along Adhibhautika, Adhidaivika and Adhyatmika dimensions. Arjuna is also informed of the risk as:

            Swadharme nidhanam sreyah paradharmo bhayavahah

7. Gandhi and the Gita

            It may be noted that Mahatma Gandhi also got his inspiration from the Gita. His non-cooperation movement and his satyagraha concept are both conflicts with the British rule in India. Gandhi, of course, stressed passive resistance and preached ahimsa.  With the result, India got independence by peaceful means but the independence itself was immediately followed by bloodbath at the time of partition. Even creation of Pakistan did not solve any problem, but had been the source of several problems and bloody-conflicts continuing till today. There is need to reexamine the concept of ahimsa-based struggle of Gandhi and its results in post-independence India. This was followed by the bungling of Kashmir and Tibet/ China issues by Nehru with his misconceived Panchasheel philosophy in foreign relations.

In the words of Sri Aurobindo in 1920:

People now want to spiritualize politics – Gandhi, for instance – but they cannot get the right way. Making a hodge-podge called satyagraha out of ahimsa paramo dharmah, Jainism, hartal, passive resistance etc. bringing a sort of Indianised Tolstoyism into the country.  Gandhi is a European – truly a Russian Christian in an Indian body. The Upanishads or the Gita – he interprets in the light of his own ideas influenced by Tolstoy and the Bible. He has a strong Jain tinge in his teachings.

Aurobindo was of the firm view that Ahimsa – or nonviolence preached by Gandhi only worked with the British, with the typical British character of wanting to have their conscience at ease. If it were Germans or Russians, they would have eliminated him long ago.

Reference:

Sri Aurobindo, India’s Rebirth, Institute de recherches evolutives, Paris 1994.

End Notes:

1. This passage was seized by the police of the British government at the time of arrest of Sri Aurobindo and produced as evidence in the Alipore Bomb case in 1908. The prosecution hoped to show that Aurobindo advocated violence to overthrow British rule in India. The then viceroy of India, Lord Minto attributed the spread of seditious doctrines to Aurobindo than to any other single individual in Bengal or the rest of India.