The Difficulty of Being Good-The Subtle Art of Dharma (Part II)

(Continuation of the previous post)

Krishna, the 'noble' charioteer.

Krishna giving counsel to Arjuna

Be intent on the action

Not on the fruits of the action 

Krishna gives this advise to Arjuna to prod him to take up his arms and to fight the enemy. When Arjuna realized that he would have to kill his own cousins, uncles and teachers to win the war, he developed a cold feet and he put down his weapons. At this juncture, Krishna gives his counsel to Arjuna, which is available to us in the form of Srimad Bhagvad Gita. Krishna says that one can attain moksha or salvation by doing his karma or duty. While performing the duty, one should not be bothered about its consequences. When a man dwells in his mind on the object of sense, attachment to them is produced. From attachment springs desire and from desire comes anger. So duty bound deeds should be done without letting the nature of results to affect one's actions. 

Krishna, was advocating an alternative way to attain salvation. The other ways are through jnana yoga, wherein one through the employment of his intellect tries to gain knowledge about the supreme being and  through bhakthi yoga, wherein one through utmost devotion and love attains oneness with the cosmic soul. But these two ways are not easily adoptable for a man of world. These two calls for solitude and  renunciation of world. So, by suggesting that one can attain salvation through a detached and religious performance of one's duties, Krishna was opening the doors of salvation to a man of world. 

Krishna tells Arjuna that being a kshatrhriya he has the duty to fight for his kingdom. Moreover, the war was not merely for the reclamation of kingdom. It was a fight for justice. So Arjuna has the duty of punishing the unjust and eliminating evil. Therefore he should not let his personal affections to come in the way of his duties. 

But this philosophy of 'nishkama karma' can also be problematic at times.German philosopher Hegel recognized the moral attractiveness of 'doing one's duty for duty's sake', and agreed that this was a great moral intention but also pointed out the practical difficulty in knowing what one's duty is(p.134). The moral law of acting disintrestedly does not necessarily lead one to virtuous acts. For example  Adolf Eichmann,Nazi SS Officer, considered by many to be the 'architect of holocaust', during his trial in Israel sought to justify his evil acts on the grounds that he was not acting for selfish ends;he was doing his duty to his country.  He implied that he generally felt sympathy for the jews. However, he steadfastly stuck to his job because he believed that everyone should do one's duty unaffected by sympathy. He was obeying the highest law by doing his duty.

                                                                                                     Adolf Eichmann

This sort of extreme, if not absurd, extrapolation of the philosophy of nishkama karma  could be arrested with the theory of consequentialism. It suggests that acts, per se, do not have any morality attached thereto. The morality of the act is judged from the consequence of it. It is an extension of the doctrine of utilitarianism, which was devised by Jeremy Bentham and was developed by J.S.Mill. It suggests that an act which promotes pleasure is good and an act which promotes pain is bad. All deeds should be seeking to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest numbers.

During the Kurukshetra war, Krishna too employs this philosophy. It forms the edifice for the aphorism 'ends would justify the means'.  Thus he prods Yudhishtira to  deceive Drona into believing that his son Ashwatthama is dead. He encourages Arjuna to kill an unarmed Karna. He also encourages Bhima to kill Duryodhana through foul play. All these acts were blatant violations of the recognized rules and norms of war. Krishna says 'Casting aside virtue,ye sons of Pandu, adopt some contrivance for gaining victory'(p.185). This causes Duryodhana, during his dying moments, to accuse Krishna of perfidy. He states that the victory was achieved through deceit and trickery and had it been a fair fight Kauravas would have won comprehensively. 

Duryodhana may have had good reasons to denounce Krishna, but Krishna believes that Duryodhana is really the guilty one. He blames him for the failure of peace talks. He firmly believes that once you make the fateful decision of going to war, then you must win at any cost. As he sees it, the Pandavas cause is just, and once the war begins the only thing that matters is victory. Ends justify the means. We can see a manifestation of moral relativism in Kurukshetra. And one would not be wrong in presuming that Krishna would be the first one to breach  the Geneva Conventions, if  it is a jus ad bellum(just war).

Karna's insecurities

    Arjuna killing Karna

Karna is often perceived as a 'wronged hero'.He had an unfortunate birth. Despite being born as a kshathriya, he had to live as a charioteer, a low-caste. His apparent low-caste origin caused him a lot humiliations throughout his life. Dhraupadi shunned him during her swayam-vara by stating 'I do not choose a charioteer'. His utmost adherence to his virtue causes him to voluntarily relinquish his boons. And at the war, he gets killed through foul means .

In this book, the author tries to examine the psychology of this tragic-hero. He suggests that Karna might have been suffering from 'status-anxiety'.Mahabharatha is set in a rigid social order regulated by the varna system and Karna is eager to establish his place in the society. He is conscious of his skills and talents and that leads him to think that he deserves a more worthy position in the society. But the tag of 'charioteer's son' dogs him all his life. And when a beautiful woman like Dhraupadi delivers the snub, it is unbearable. 

Like most people, Karna wants to be 'somebody'. It must have hurt him to sit in the stands at the tournament where Pandavas and Kauravas exhibited their skills. Later when his own skill is discovered and he is praised by the crowd, Karna begins to feel worthy. Anxiety about one's place in the world tends to distort one's character. It makes Karna excessively proud and boastful(P.156). The shrewd Duryodhana is aware of Karna's insecurity, and he seeks to exploit it for his ends. He renders Karna the much coveted recognition and place, and that makes Karna loyal to him, till the end. Karna's loyalty is blind and unquestioning and he connives at Duryodhan's misdeeds. When Dhraupadi was getting humiliated, Karna supports it by stating that a woman who sleeps with five men has no dignity and that she ought to be humiliated(p.40). While doing that Karna was avenging the humiliation he suffered at Dhraupadi's swayam-vara.

Karna can be characterized as an 'others-centric' person. He is too conscious about others' perception about him. He values fame and reputation above everything. When Surya, his father, cautions him about Indra's ploy to snatch the boons of immortality and invincibility from him, he is categorical that he would not resist that, for he fears 'infamy than death'(p.172). He does not pay heed to his father's counsel that there are other things in life that matter more than fame, such as the 'human duties of the living'. Even Surya's parting words, 'What use is fame to a dead man?It is like a garland on a corpse', could not shake his resolve.

Karna was suffering from an ego problem. He was favourable to anyone who appeased his ego(Duryodhana). And he was vindictive to anyone who scorned his ego(Dhraupadi). This ego-centric attitude blinds his objectivity and impairs his reason. His eagerness to inflate the leaky balloon of ego which was susceptible to tiny pin-pricks of neglect led to his predicament. Karna's search for his identity reminds one of the terrible mistake society makes in assessing a person on the basis of his origins. Even now, we have not redeemed ourselves completely of the scourge of casteism. So the rigid social hierarchy, which does not value a person on the basis of merit but on the basis of origin, is equally culpable for Karna's follies. At the root of status-anxiety is an excessive concern about what others think of us. At this juncture, Albert Camus' wise words could be helpful. 'To be happy one must not be too concerned with the opinion of others. One should pursue one's goals single-mindedly, with a quiet confidence, without thinking of others'.

Revenge and Remorse

Revenge, the primitive yet potent emotion is an underlying theme of the epic. Most of the events in the epic are a manifestation of it. Most of the characters succumb to it. Dhraupadi's need to avenge her humiliation is one of the factors which led to the war. Arjuna avenges the gruesome killing of his son Abhimanyu. Ashwatthama's vendetta against the Pandavas for killing his father Drona in an unfair manner goads him to effect the brutal decimation of Pandavas' sons. So revenge, in all its superlative forms, recurs throughout the work. This has tempted many to think that the main theme of the work is revenge. The recent movie 'Rakht Charithra', directed by Ram Gopal Verma, sought to attribute its theme 'Revenge is the purest emotion', to the epic. This is either a result of selective reading of the epic or selective quoting(And the Censor Board, rightly, admonished the producers of the film for this distortion, and they diluted its impact by including a quote by Mahatma Gandhi.)

                                                                

One who is besotted with this crude emotion will not think about anything else, and would be bent on realizing it at any cost. One can adopt any desperate measures, can stoop down to any reprehensible level, for the sake of retribution. The fate of Ashwatthama is illustrative of this. Hence, society has institutionalized this emotion through it's criminal justice system, wherein state would be carrying out retributive justice on behalf of its wronged subjects. This mechanism is imperative for preventing the social fabric from withering.

From a holistic appraisal of the work, one would understand that the epic never attempts to glorify revenge. It also highlights the dire consequences which arise therefrom. After the war, a sense of hollowness assails everyone. The winning of war does not lead the Pandavas to any form of satisfaction or contentment. It is a pyrrhic victory for them. On the contrary, the immense wreckage and irreparable loss caused by the war make them remorseful. And, the virtuous Yudhisthira is the one who gets tormented by remorse the most. 'There are no victors in war' he laments. Even the Mauryan emperor Ashoka also underwent similar feelings after the Kalinga war. Yudhishthira, who is vulnerable to dogmatic morals, wants to abdicate the kingdom which was won through violence, and wants to lead the rest of the life as an ascetic repenting for his horrific sins.

                                                     

                                                       Bhishma advising Yudhisthira(Mughal Painting)

At this juncture, Bhishma, who was felled by Arjuna and had been lying on a bed of arrows since then, advises Yudhisthira about the dharma of a king.He suggests that renouncing kingdom would amount to cowardice and escapism. He also states that a king has to use danda or force for protecting his state. Society exists because it is in everyone's interest to have peace and peace can prevail only if there is a sovereign authority to punish those who breach it. And Yudhishtira, who is always at a loss to reconcile the duties of being a kshatrhriya and the words of his conscience, again adopts a pragmatic middle path and ascends to the throne.

What is Mahabharata all about?

Mr. Das observes that Mahabharata is not a tale intended to celebrate and romanticize royal valour and war heroism. If that was the case, the epic should have ended right after the victory of Pandavas. But the epic does not stop there. A mood of voidness permeates the epic after that, and it goes on to suggest the futility of war and other acts of human vanity. Krishna, the strategist of Pandavas, who is accursed due to the wrath of Gandhari, dies a banal death like an animal in the forest. One should behold that Krishna is an incarnate of God, and he is also depicted as vulnerable and fallible. The Pandavas, after ruling the kingdom for a while, gets disenchanted with worldly affairs and embarks upon a journey for salvation.

So what is it suggesting?One can sense nihilistic undertones in the epic which is announcing that life is inherently meaningless. Shakespeare was also suggesting this when he said 'Life is a tale, told by an idiot. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'(Macbeth Act 5 Scene 5). After all the sound and fury of Kurukshetra war, the characters in the epic grapple with this feeling of nothingness. They realize that all the coveted values and cherished possessions of the world, be it glory,happiness, wealth, beauty or talent, everything is transient and ephemeral. As Yudhishtira says 'time cooks all of us', and in that the texture of everything changes. So in search of something eternal, something which is not susceptible to the change of time, they set out. One may recall that the author of the book, like the Pandavas, felt disenchanted with the success in corporate life, and quit the job and embarked upon a journey for gaining knowledge and enlightenment. 

Commentators throughout the ages have wrestled with the overall meaning of Mahabharata. Among the most celebrated was Anandavardhana, who lived in Kashmir in ninth century A.D. He suggests that epic's world-weary message is that we should cease to desire and should seek liberation from the worldly life. The miserable end of the Kauravas and Pandavas suggests that the great sage who was its author meant to convey a disappointing conclusion with a poetic mood of peace. The aim of this work is to produce disillusionment with life and point us towards the human aim of liberation from the worldly life.(p.297-298).

But at this age, I do not possess the transcendental wisdom to understand the spiritual and metaphysical connotations of the epic. The epic, to me, appears like a wonderful portrayal of all human characteristics, its vanities and frailties, thereby validating the claim which it makes in the beginning. What comes in the way of engaging creatively with the world is human vanity, whose many faces are displayed in abundance. Vanity in the form of mischievous ego or ahamkar, enslaves human beings and is sometimes expressed as Duryodhana's envy, Dhritharashtra's hypocrisy, Karna's status anxiety or Ashwatthama's revenge. Vanity is an irresistible aspect of human condition and invariably spoils our engagement with the world(p.280).

Mahabharata is a series of precisely stated problems imprecisely and inconclusively resolved, with every solution raising a new problem. To say the least, it leaves us with an awareness of possibilities of life. What my understanding is that, a sort of moral ad-hocism is more desirable than a form of moral dogmatism. It could be a hasty, if not immature conclusion. One thing is quite clear. Morality is something which eludes concrete definition. And it is quite difficult to identify goodness and therefore it is difficult to be good. Even the epic shares this thought.

               Because of its subtleness, the deeply hidden dharma cannot be discerned. At first sight it appears in the form of a fairyland city, but when scrutinized by the wise it dissolves again into invisibility. Because people are inclined to abide by the principle of political advantage, no kind of generally beneficial behaviour presents itself, by which one person profits, grieves another. Modes of behaviour are universally characterized by diversity. For this reason one should seek true dharma and not follow the ways of the world. (p.294)

And what is this true dharma? It is for all of us to find out in our own individualistic way.

(Concluded)

Disclaimer

1. The author of the blog has not read the original text of Mahabharatha. The views expressed in the blog are the inferences drawn by the author from the interpretation given to and understandings derived from the epic by Mr.Gurucharan Das.
2. Some of the views expressed in the blog are the personal conclusions of the author of the blog. They may not be reflected in the book by Mr. Gurucharan Das.

References

1. All page references are taken from the hard bound edition of 'The difficulty of being good' published by Penguin India in the year 2009 
2. The statements in italics are taken from the English translation of the text of  Mahabharatha. The page numbers mentioned next to the statements refer to the book under review here, and the original source of the statements could be traced from the said book.