Leadership and Managing Power

Insights from Mahabharata

Urdhvabahurviraumyesa na ca kashcicchrnoti me /
Dharmadarthashca kamashca sa kimartham na sevyyata //

“I raise my arms and I shout – but no one listens !

From dharma comes success and pleasure : Why is dharma not practised?”
– Svargarohana Parva [“Ascent to Heaven”] [ 1]

Six figures etched on the Himalayan skyline. As they inch up the steep bleak heights,
suddenly the last figure, a woman, crumbles. A slight pause, then the five labour on
upwards. One by one, four fall. “Why? Why?” the shrieking wind whistling down the icy
gorges tears the question to shreds. The lone survivor does not look back. He vanishes
from sight on Mount Meru—Exeunt, followed by a mongrel.

‘The first spectacle that Yudhishthira saw when he entered heaven was Duryodhana
gloriously esconced in a beautiful seat and radiating a heroic sun-like
splendour….Yudhishthira said, “This is not heaven.”’ [2]

Alone on the slopes of Meru, dragging in the thin, icy air in short agonizing gasps,
waiting for the end, Yajnaseni-Draupadi watches the past flash by in iridescent vignettes.
Finally empress of Bharatavarsha indeed: all children and kin slaughtered;sakha Krishna
and his clan decimated in internecine strife, the Yadava women abducted by staff-
wielding robbers from the custody of Gandiva-wielding invincible Arjuna; mother-in-law
Kunti retiring to the forest and dying in a forest fire; and now not one of her five
husbands has turned back to be with her in her last moments.Nathavati anathavat, five-
husbanded indeed, but ever without protection! What was Kurukshetra all about? A
struggle for power, a wreaking of vengeance, a righteous war to establish dharma?

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images…. [3]
Power is craved because of the pleasure it brings, but the history of kingship recounted
in the epic brings home a very different perception: individual power has to be given up
in the interest of public welfare.

The epic tells us that when the unhindered play of individualism led to the strong
oppressing the weak [matsyanyaya], with none enforcing the rules agreed upon, the
vexed people decided to give up their individual power in the interest of general welfare
and approached Vaivasvat Manu for assuming overlordship. For his pains they offered
one-fiftieth of their herds, one-tenth of their agricultural produce and one-fourth of the
merit that the subjects would accrue by observing dharma.[4] The massive corpus of
the Shanti Parva is devoted to Bhishma’s discourse on the intricacies of Raja dharma,
the way of the king, in which the key pronouncement is:
 Atma jeyah sada rajna tato jeyashca shatravah /
Ajitatma narapatirvijayeta katham ripun //

“First the raja shall conquer enemies.

He who has not conquered himself, how will that raja succeed in conquering enemies?”5]

In another account the epic throws significant light on the implications of exercising
power in governance. The first king was Ananga, and it is with his grandson Vena that
we come across the record of what power brings in its wake: one cannot have enough of
it. That is why power is said to corrupt, and when it is absolute in nature, the corruption it
brings about is also total. Vena became a tyrant, oppressing the people so that they slew
him and in his place chose Prithu as king, for he had mastered the science
of danda [chastisement] that upholds dharma. It is Prithu who cultivated the earth, made
it yield its fruits so that it was called “Prithivi” after him. Because he protected all from
harm, he was called Kshatriya, and because he pleased all the people he was renowned
as raja

Ranjitashca prajah sarvastena rajeti shabdoyate // [6]

From one point of view, Vyasa’s epic is a study of the use and abuse of power. It is not
that in itself power is good or bad. It is essentially a force, a weapon, that can be used to
save and foster or to harm and extort: “Desiring power first as an instrument for the
achievement of other ends, he falls in love with and retains it as an end in itself … the
man who has drunk of the draught of power loses his wisdom and , forgetful of the end
which power should have achieved, dictates for the sake of dictating.”[8] This, indeed, is
what Vyasa recounts.

Essentially what the epic depicts is the fortunes of the dynasty founded by Yayati, and
the struggle between his descendants for the hegemony of Bharatavarsha. As a dynast,
he is a watershed in Pauranik history. Of his five sons the Yadavas, stemming from the
disinherited eldest son, Yadu, and the Pauravas descending from the youngest son Puru
who gets the throne, are the most important. One branch of the family establishes itself
in Hastinapura, while another rules in Magadha. The Kauravas, Pandavas and
Panchalas are all Pauravas, battling amongst themselves on Kurukshetra with the
Yadava Krishna presiding over it all.

The first attempts to establish tyrannical supremacy are made by Jarasandha of

Magadha (modern Bihar). He makes Kansa, son of the head of the Mathura oligarchy,
his son-in-law, and then manipulates him into imprisoning the titular head, his father
Ugrasena. Kansa becomes tyrant of Mathura. One by one Jarasandha imprisons
eightysix princes, his goal being to sacrifice a hundred to Shiva to celebrate his
coronation an emperor, samrat. Around him he builds a circle of like-minded abusers of
the people’s trust: Dantavakra of Karusha and Sishupala of Chedi in central India,
Bhishmaka of Vidarbha in the south-west, Kalayavana beyond the western borders, the
ruler of Kashi (Benares), Paundraka Vasudeva of Pundra (Bengal) in the east, Naraka of
Pragjyotishapura (Assam) in the north east. The only person with the statesman’s vision
to perceive Jarasandha’s design is Krishna. To save the Yadavas from being enslaved,
he persuades them to abandon Mathura, which was being repeatedly attacked by
Jarasandha, and to re-establish themselves in the fortified city of Dvaraka on the
western seashore. From here he cast an eagle eye over Bharatavarsha, seeking
desperately for a countervailing force.

In the natural course of things, this force should have been available in Hastinapura, for
it was here that the great righteous monarch Bharata had ruled, after whom the country
took its name “Bharatavarsha”. But here, again, personal lust was allowed to cloud a
ruler’s vision of public welfare. Bharata the eponymous dynast had displayed the true
qualities of greatness. Finding all his sons unworthy to rule, he discarded blind
adherence primogeniture, adopted the Brahmin Bharadvaja and, renaming him Vitatha,
gave him the kingdom. This over-riding concern for the welfare of the people instead of
caring for the claims of one’s progeny is what sets Bharata apart. It is precisely the lack
of this in his descendants Shantanu and Dhritarashtra that heralds the doom of the
dynasty. The contrast Shantanu presents to his ancestor Bharata is astonishing. In
pursuing the gratification of his personal desire for the intoxicatingly fragrant and dark
fisher-maiden Kali Shantanu is blind to the paramount consideration of the welfare of his
subjects, who already have in Devavrata a completely qualified heir-apparent. He
eagerly concurs in Gangadatta-Devavrata’s vow to abjure the throne and marriage. By
way of appreciation he confers on his son the boon of choosing the moment of his death.
And this becomes the bane of Bhishma’s life.

Shantanu dies before his sons from Satyavati reach majority. The eldest, Chitrangada, is
killed fighting a Gandharva, with no sign of his invincible foster-brother fighting at his
side. Vichitravirya becomes king as a minor, makes no mark whatsoever, and is
prematurely provided by Bhishma, at the insistence of queen mother Satyavati, hungry
for progeny, with two voluptuous brides. Vichitravirya dies without issue, as “driven by
passion, (he) became/a victim of his own lust.” These are words which will be echoed by
his foster-son, Pandu who laments:

Noble blood is of little help

Deluded by passions, the best
of men turn wicked, and reap
the evil that they sow.
My father was born noble,
his father was noble too.
Lust was his ruin, he died
while still a youth.
And in his lustful field
I was sown by Krishna Dvaipayana.
And I am a victim of the hunt !
My mind is full of killing,
shooting down deer.[8]

Bhisma: Power Unused

It is the death of Vichitravirya that leads to the first exposition of Bhishma’s superhuman
qualities. When Satyavati pleads with him to satisfy the craving of Ambika and Ambalika
for sons (a typical case of desire transference, for it is she who is desperate for
grandsons), and thereby save the dynasty from extinction, this is his response:
 I will give up the three worlds
I will give up heaven,
I will give up more than the three worlds and heaven,
But I will not give up my truth.
Earth may give up fragrance,
Water its wetness,
Light clarity,
Wind movement,
Sun may give up splendour,
fire its heat,
moon coolness
sky either,
Indra, Vritra-slayer, may give up valour,
Yama the just, justice,
But I will not break my vow.

Now comes an extremely revealing comment:

Let doom overtake the world !
Immortality cannot tempt me,
nor lordship of the three worlds !
I will not break the vow. [9]
This is the essence of Bhishma’s dharma. His attachment to the vow of celibacy takes
over-riding precedence over everything else, including the public weal. He is not
bothered about the chaos that will occur in Hastinapura with no one to inherit the throne.
His major concern is that his vow must remain intact. The motivation is highly complex,
for in it play a number of factors: resentment against his mother Ganga for depriving him
of paternal love from birth and then of maternal love from the crucial adolescent age
onwards; disgust for a father who dotes on a teenaged fisher-girl oblivious of his
obligations to the people; anger against Satyavati, the cause of the terrible sacrifice he
has had to make. Once more, the end result is self prized above service.

What is the nature of this famous vow? It is not only the giving-up of a Crown Prince’s
right to the throne [which had been done by some of his ancestors like Yati and his uncle
Devapi] but also the incredible sacrifice of a Kshatriya right to beget progeny in order to
subserve a father’s infatuation for a fisher-girl. The futility of it all is that the vow is
adhered to long after its purpose has been served and even when it becomes
dysfunctional to the extent of threatening the very existing of the dynasty of which
Bhishma is the sole remaining representative.

Of a piece with this obstinate adherence to his vow is Bhishma’s peculiar attachment to
Hastinapura itself. He is the same age as Satyavati, if not older, but she does not follow
her into vanaprastha in the forest after the death of Pandu, when Vyasa advises his
mother and her two daughters-in-law not to be witnesses to the suicide of their race.
Bhishma is entombed in a perpetual brahmacharya ashrama, the first of the four stages
in a human being’s life. He eschews the stage of a householder, does not retire to the
forest, and fails to become a sanyasi. With this goes an obsession with Hastinapura, so
strong that he can bring himself to support the Pandavas only verbally, but needs must
ally himself physically with the Dhartarashtras despite knowing them to be in the wrong.
And that he does to the extent of leading their armies against the Pandavas in a cause
which he believes to be wrong! Truly, he is a man divided against himself. The only
rationale he provides for his behaviour is that he and Drona are borne on the
Hastinapura monarch’s exchequer and hence bound to serve him. Yet, Yuyutsut, son of
Dhritarashtra, has no hesitation in rising above loyalty to his brothers to cross-over to the
side he knows to be in the right. It is Gandhari who points out to her husband at the time
of Krishna’s peace-mission that the warriors on whom their son foolishly depends will not
lead him to victory because, although they will fight on his side being rajapinda
bhayat[borne on the state’s payroll], their hearts will not be with him.[10] Bhishma
himself echoes this when he tells them that he, along with Kripa and Drona, are bound to
the Kauravas “by need”, that is, they are borne on the Kaurava exchequer.[11]

It is Bhisma who is instrumental in bringing about the deaths of the successors to the
Hastinapura throne, albeit unwittingly. We have already seen that his over-eagerness to
provide his stepbrother with a surfeit of brides resulted in Vichitravirya’s premature
demise. This was followed his going out of his way to procure a second bride for Pandu,
whose very name indicates the state of his wife. It is significant that the blind
Dhritarashtra was not provided a second wife by Bhishma. Pandu had gone to
asvayamvara (bridegroom-choice ceremony) on his own. No Kuru king is found
attending any previous to this. Bhishma paid considerable bride price to procure Madri
who becomes the direct cause of Pandu’s death.

It is significant that when Pandu leaves Hastinapura on a self-imposed exile, Bhishma

does not protest. Nor does he ever enquire after the welfare of this scion of the dynasty
in the Himalayan wilderness. Even news of the birth of the sons to Pandu, cursed with
death in intercourse, does not arouse curiously or lead to any embassy from the capital
to the forest to celebrate the birth of hairs to the sterile throne. The same indifference
was displayed during the battle in which his stepbrother Chitrangada died. It is an though
Bhishma were pleased to have the consumptive Vichitravirya engrossed in his wives,
and then blind Dhritarashtra on the throne, as titular monarchs with himself as the all-
powerful Grey Eminence actually his alone. Unfortunately, the coming of Shakuni,
accompanying his sister to her life-long immurement in darkness in Hastinapura
compelled by Bhishma, changed the entire completion of the situation. Is it not
symptomatic of Bhishma’s insensitivity to human feelings that he should never have
enquired of Gandhari the reason for bandaging her eyes permanently, or have asked her
not to do so? It is as though, having suppressed his strongest urge and failed to
sublimate it, Bhishma became the ultimate misogynist, automatically stonewalling
against awareness of feelings of others, particularly women. This is consistent with his
indifference to the predicament in which he places Amba that ends in her suicide. The
price has to be paid by Hastinapura, whose vitals Shakuni worms into, exuding that
poison which corrodes the dynasty. Incredibly, Bhishma yet again remains a silent
spectator to the poisoning of Bhima, the gutting of the House of Lac, the division of the
kingdom, the cheating in the dice-game, the disrobing of Draupadi, the refusal to restore
Indraprastha after the exile is over. It is the supreme example of the “Witness” stance,
suddenly broken when war begins. Then the Witness unaccountably turns into the
Fighter against those in whose cause he believes, yet whom he will, perversely, not
support.

“In tragic life, God wot, no villain need be;

Passion spin the plot. We are betrayed
By what is false within.” [12]
It is supremely ironic that the prince who earned the sobriquet of “Bhishma” and came to
be renowned as the greatest of renouncers should be so hopelessly bound to his
father’s throne as not only to preside over the suicide of the dynasty, but to actually
participate in it on the side he knows to be in the wrong! Indeed, Devavrata-Gangadatta-
Bhishma is another Prometheus, bound in adamantine chains to the icy Caucasian
peaks of the Hastinapura throne, wracked in immortal agony as the Dhartarashtra-
Pandava fratricidal strife eats into his vitals endlessly. For, perversely, he cannot, or will
not, die till liberation comes in the form of mortal arrows showered by a grandchild who
loves him.

It speaks volumes for the much-vaunted wisdom of Bhishma that he never cast a glance
eastward of Hastinapura towards the alarming imperialistic ambitions of Magadha’s
Jarasandha despite the phenomenon of nearly a hundred kings having been captured
and nearby Mathura attacked repeatedly. A contingent from Hastinapura even
accompanied the Magadhan army’s onslaught on Mathura. One gets a sense of
Bhishma presiding over a small and weak kingdom, worried only about the traditional
enemies, the Panchalas [which is why Drupada’s sworn enemy Drona is immediately
taken into employment in Hastinapura], and blind to the growing threat of the
Jarasandha-Shishupala-Dantavakra-Kashi-Paundraka-Naraka-Kalayavana combine
gathering forces to the south, the east and the west. Bhishma merely made sure of the
north-western border through marital alliances with Madra and Gandhara, and the west
by marrying Dhritarashtra’s daughter Duhshala to Jayadratha, the Sindhu King. He was
unaware that the tenuous link down the Ganga with Kashi, whose princesses were the
Queen-mothers of Hastinapura, was already snapped by Magadha. It is young Krishna
who puts paid to these imperialistic designs by killing each of the tyrants separately,
without any assistance from Bhishma, renowned as the greatest statesman of the age.

This failed statesman, and this misogynist par excellence who abuses his Kshatriya
prowess to ruin the lives of Amba, Ambika, Ambalika, Kunti, and watches, without
protest, the attempted disrobing of Draupadi, is also a Commander-in-Chief who
deprives his army of its best warrior, Karna, by insulting him so grossly that he withdraws
from battle. Further, he announces that he will not slay any of the Pandavas and will
befriend them in his thoughts at night, although he will fight against them during the day.
What a splendid morale booster for his army! Over a period of ten days he kills
thousands of innocent soldiers but not a single Pandava. Unlike Drona, Bhishma does
not even think of capturing Yudhishthira as a way to end the war. It is as though he were
trying to tire out Duryodhana till he agrees to a truce. Repeatedly Duryodhana voices his
anguish over Bhishma’s half-hearted leadership, which he will not relinquish. A peculiar
dharma indeed!

It is a fact that Bhishma bestrides the epic like a colossus and it is because of this that
he has been celebrated over millennia as the repository of statecraft and the
embodiment of the warrior code, dharma-dharma, to be looked up to by all succeeding
generations. This aura is like the upanishadic golden lid veiling the face of truth. What
Vyasa shows us is Bhishma standing as the last bulwark of the ancient dharma in which
loyalty to the clan over-rode all other claims; in which fidelity to one’s word was the be-all
and end-all; into which considerations of the larger public weal did not enter. The
deceptive aura of perfection is ruthlessly dispelled in the Draupadi-
vastraharana episode. Never have the limitations of Bhishma’s way of life been exposed
so mercilessly as when Draupadi challenges him to stand by those very tenets of nobility
which the Kuru court supposed to uphold.

Let us listen to that traumatic exchange of words:

Draupadi said:

“It is most wrong, most wrong

to drag me in my period
before the Kuru heroes. But none
here finds it wrong.
Oh the shame of it! If all
these great Kuru heroes
Find nothing wrong here, then
the dharma of the Bharatas
Is dead, the dharma of the
Kshatriyas is dead.
Drona, Bhishma, Vidura,
and the great monarch
Have lost their greatness—else
why are they silent?…
There is no sabha without elders,
no elders without dharma
there is no dharma without truth,
no truth without honesty.”

Bhishma said:

“Noble lady…. What can I say?

It’s all very puzzling.
Dharma is very subtle…
Very confusing.
I don’t know what to say.” [13]

Here is Bhishma prefiguring Hamlet in mulling over a philosophical dilemma while a

queen’s honour is at stake! Within Bhishma plays, subconsciously, that deep seated
grievance against mother and stepmother because of which he treats women as chattel.
He is wholly oblivious of his obligation, as the patriarch in society, to set an example for
others to follow. That is why, pointing to his silence, Karna argues that Draupadi must
have been duly won and orders watch in a silence that is stupefying for its callousness.
As she is about to be dragged away to the servants’ quarters, Panchali makes a last
attempt to arouse the sopoforic manhood of the Kuru Court whose guardian Bhishma is
supposed to be:

Never before have we heard of

a wife forced to stand
Before a sabha. The Kurus have broken
that ancient rule…
Something must be very wrong
if the Kurus let their
 Innocent daughter-in-law
suffer in this way!
Where is your sense of dharma ?

Bhishma said, “Shining lady,

I have already said
that Dharma is subtle.[14]

What Bhishma says now is of very great importance, for it speaks of the breakdown of a
system of values, of dharma having become an empty shell:

“What a strong man says often

becomes the only dharma;
A weak man may have dharma on his side
but who listens to him ?
To tell you the truth
I don’t know what to say.”[15]

The face of Truth is hidden by not a golden lid but a sadly tarnished one. Here is the
greatest of patriarchs enmeshing himself in the dialectics of reason: whether Draupadi
has been won or not. As if that issue is of more importance than protecting her modesty
and saving the reputation of the Kuru Court whose code enshrines protecting the weak
as a central tenet. The confusion in Bhishma becomes evident as he abruptly swings to
asserting that the family which has taken Draupadi as daughter-in-law will not stray from
the path of dharma. Yet he does not lift a finger to free her from brutal Duhshasana’s
clutches. Instead, he voices a meaningless approval of her stance:

“Your conduct now, O Panchali,

is worthy of you—
Though you suffer, you appeal to
the truths of Dharma.
Our elders, learned-in-dharma
Drona and others, sit
Here with lowered eyes like dead men
with life-breaths gone.”[16]

Indeed, the life-breath of this dharma is gone. What exists is a putrefying corpse kept
artificially alive, shown ultimately in Bhishma’s death-in-life on the bed-of-arrows. It is
revealing that explicit prohibition, disgust at the proceedings and warning is voiced finally
not by the Kshatriya Bhishma, protector of Hastinapura, but by the son of a mixed-caste
sage and a maid servant, Vidura:

“Now they insult a woman

Nobility is dead.
The Kauravas conspire sinfully…
Dharma violated in a
sabha, destroys the sabha…Kurus,
do not abandon dharma.”[17]
The problem is that Vidura is powerless. He can merely advise, exhort, and plead with
the blind Dhritarashtra who, obsessed by his desire that the throne must be his son
Duryodhana’s, is deaf to all appeals. In the very beginning of the epic we are told that
the Kauravas are a giant tree of passion whose root is the weak-minded Dhritarashtra.
Its seed is infatuation, its branches are anger and pride rooted in ignorance.[18] The state
power remains reined in, for

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of a passionate intensity.”

Bhishma’s failure as a leader of the polity lies in his never having practiced the raja-
dharma he speaks of at length to Yudhishthira on his bed-of-arrows which seems to
become his penance for inaction. In a Kshatriya the “witness” stance only brings about
the destruction of the policy. The Kshatriya must use power to protect the rights of the
weak, for that is his dharma, the truth of his nature. To abjure this because of a self-
imposed vow and turn into the Egotistical Sublime of the age brings destruction and
misery in its wake not only for oneself, but also for the entire society of which such a
person is the corner stone, the pillar of strength. Withdrawal from the rightful use of
danda and exercising state power for lokasamgraha, holding together the people in the
way of dharma, is abdication that betrays the Kshatriya code. Indeed, in Bhishma,
between the ideal and the reality falls the shadow. Here is a leader fallen by the way.
When the celestial sage Narada visits Dhritarashtra, he tries to instruct him in the
dangers that wielders of state power are prone to. In this attempt he recounts the
example of Yayati, the founder of the dynasty. In Yayati’s own words:
I have lived in many realms,
I was adored by the gods,
I shone like the gods,
I was powerful like the gods
for millions of years I made love
to apsaras in the Nandana-gardens,
under clustering, lovely trees
ornamented with flowers
shedding delicate scent upon us…
Then a fearful-faced messenger came
And shouted loudly, thrice:
‘Lost! Lost! Lost!’
And I fell from Nandana. [20]
Yayati states the reason for his fall: his overweening pride in the merit of his virtuous
acts and his self-love:

“Ill deeds cancel good deeds.

Pride is the road to hell…..
I was virtuous once---
All gone-- irrevocably.”[21]

It is, therefore, not enough to be virtuous. Once must also be wise:

“Be wise and virtuous--- learn from me/who finds heaven?”
Here it is important to recall that Yayati need not have learned all this the hard way. His
father was Nahusha, the only human selected by the gods to rule over them. The power
surrendered by the gods to Nahusha is manipulated by him into a means for satiating his
craving for Indra’s wife. Those qualities of head and heart which had led the devas to
elect Nahusha to rule over them are submerged in the tidal waves of arrogance and lust
that obliterate all nobility and lead to loss of the celestial throne. Strangely enough, the
son does not learn a lesson from his father’s predicament. Instead, he repeats that tragic
tale of pride and lust and the doom to which they drive men, particularly those who wield
power over others. Yayati gives in to the advances of his wife Devayani’s friend-turned-
maid Sharmishtha, daughter of the asura king Vrishaparva. The result is the terrifying
affliction of instant decrepitude visited upon him by the furious sage Shukra. But the king
is inveterately prey to the hungers of the senses, ad pleads pitifully with son after son to
take on his senility and gift him youth for some time more. It is only Puru, the youngest,
who agrees and inherits Yayati’s throne, with the people being summoned and explained
at length why primogeniture has not been followed. Yayati frolics in the forests
with apsaras till he realizes that desire cannot be quenched, and comes back to return
Puru his youth, accepting his own senility. Yayati is extremely important to us as an
archetypal symbol of Lust in Action, and his words to Puru pulsate with a wisdom born of
anguish and tortured experience:

“Desire never ends,

Desire grows with feeding.
Like sacrificial flames
Lapping up ghee.

Become the sole lord of

The world’s paddy-fields, wheat-fields,
Precious stones, beasts, women –
Still not enough.

Discard desire.

This disease kills. The wicked

Cannot give it up, old age
Cannot lessen it. True happiness
Lies in controlling it.” [22]

What follows is of extreme importance to each of us imprisoned for birth after birth in
“This earthly hell/which seems to offer no release” [23]. For, Yayati is Everyman who has
reaped the fruits of his toil, but then falls victim to his innate hubris and loses all that he
has so painfully built up, till fellow-men come to his rescue. This is the essence of the
wisdom Yayati has extracted from his vastly varied experience of life here and in the
hereafter, which he narrates as answer to the question, “Who finds heaven?”

He who has wealth yet does yajna,

He who is learned yet humble,
He who, knowing the Vedas, is ascetic.
Shun pride of wealth,
Shun vanity of Veda-knowing …
Power, effort, are vain and useless.
 Fate is the lord—remember this,
And shun pride, and cast off grief. [24]

But from this fatalism, Yayati progresses to the equanimity celebrated generations later
by one of his descendants, Krishna:

The wise are always equable,

Not sorrowing in sorrow, not rejoicing in joy…
O Ashtaka, I do not fear fear,
I do not grieve over grief. [25]

Yayati’s attack is squarely on pride:

The wise say: Seven gates,
Asceticism, charity, serenity,
Self-control, modesty, simplicity,
And kindness, lead to heaven…
Pride cancels all these..
Study, control of speech, respect
For ritual, performance of yajna—
These remove fear. Mixed with pride,
These four create fear, O king…
‘I gave so much,
I performed many yajnas
I am learned,
I keep my vows’ –
All vanity, all pride.
Fearful.
Give it up, absolutely. [26]

When we study Mahabharata for lessons in the use of power, it is three male figures who
spring to mind side by side with three women. Bhishma is flanked on either side by
Krishna and Karna. Similarly, Satyavati forms a trio with Kunti and Draupadi.

Karna: I am myself alone—self-destructive power

Karna, like Bhishma, harbours grievance against his mother and is chained by an
outdated concept of loyalty to a benefactor, regardless of the innate merit of the situation
and the superordinate goal of lokasangraha. The mainspring of his actions I, however,
not even this dharma, but an obsession with himself. For Karna it is social status and
recognition that constitute the source of power. Indeed, he is the true counterpart
of Bhishma’s Egotistical Sublime. The fact of his inferior birth is a poisonous ulcer
eating into his soul and impelling him to acts of incredible prowess, conquering single-
handed for Duryodhana all the territories that the four Pandavas had won for
Yudhishthira’s rajasuya yajna. Once he had even worsted the mighty Jarasandha, who
gifted him the town of Malini in appreciation. For the same reason he took the vow of
never refusing a mendicant, and thereby knowingly deprived himself of his invulnerability
and his benefactor Duryodhana of sure victory.

Thus, as in the case of Bhishma, it is inflexible determination to stick to one’s word,

whatever the consequences, which leads to doom. In both their cases, their own self is
prized above all else [in the case of Karna, even above his much vaunted loyalty to
Duryodhana and his goal of slaying Arjuna]. Although Karna does not emerge victorious
in his encounters with Arjuna and even with the Gandharvas when Duryodhana is
captured. Yet he alone saves the Kaurava host from annihilation at the hands of
Ghatotkacha. It is of him that Yudhishthira is the most apprehensive. Krishna sets much
store by Karna, Knowing that if he stands aside Duryodhana would not dare go to war.
On more than one occasion Krishna tries to persuade Karna to join the Pandavas, the
last being just before the battle when Karna, Achilles like, had withdrawn from the battle
because of Bhishma’s insult. Even Bhishma regarded him as a great warrior ad
deliberately insulted him to take advantage of his hypersensitive self-image and keep
him from fighting his brothers. Bhishma provides a valuable psychological insight into
Karna’s character when he informs him that because of his birth against the law of
nature—supra-human and mortal intercourse not sanctified by marital rites—he
developed an unhealthy envy of nobility of character which was accentuated by his
keeping company with a mean individual like Duryodhana.

But, it is this warrior who publicity terms Draupadi a harlot, asks that she be stripped,
and joins six others to attack the teenaged Abhimanyu jointly, against all canons of fair
battle. It is Karna who seals the fate of this mighty teenager by cutting his
bowstring from behind. Unfortunately, Vyasa does not tell us of the inner workings of
Karna’s mind and heart. In lending a hand in killing his rival’s son did he feel he
was in some way avenging his many defeats at Arjuna’s hands? In calling
Draupadi a whore about whom it is of no concerns whether she is clothed or
naked, was he taking revenge for having been publicly rejected by her in
the svayamvara on account of his caste?

All this shows his confusion over what dharma and power are all about, and it is
this confusion about dharma that is flung back at him by Krishna when he entreats
Arjuna to wait till has extricated the chariot wheel from the mud, and can take up arms
again. Karna, too, is a man divided against himself, yet undoubtedly noble in his silence
about his mother’s secret and wise in his judgement. For, he tells Krishna not to reveal
the secret to Yudhishthira who will invariably offer the kingdom to him and he will
inexorably hand it over to Duryodhana. All his tremendous power has throughout been
put in the service of adharma because of his profound sense of a lacerated ego. Here is
a hero who knows, like Bhishma, that he is on the side of wrong, but is a slave of
his word and will not shift to support what he knows to be the right. His greatness
as a man shines radiantly in the fact that while he knows that he is battling his blood
brothers, and is promise-bound not to slay them, they are all eager to kill this
charioteer’s son! His slicing off the skin-armour and flesh earrings is an external symbol
of the inner splitting-in-two of his very psyche. One part of him knows that Duryodhana’s
plans are evil. This part in Karna is all that is admirable in a human being. It is the
“Surya” part of him, shining in an effulgent glory which rivets all attention on him right
from the beginning. This it is that catches the eye of Duryodhana who grapples Karna to
his breast with hoops of steel. It is this part of him that defeats each of his brothers in
turn, except Arjuna, and lets them go unharmed (even with a kiss on the infuriated but
helpless Bhima’s cheek) although by killing them or by capturing Yudhishthira for
Duryodhana [as Drona had planned] he could have ended the war.

However, a miasma of intrigue and evil envelops this sun in Karna. The chariot-wheel of
Karna’s life is, as it were, entrapped in a quicksand, being sucked under slowly but
surely, as he connives in the heinous abuse of state power by Shakuni and Duryodhana,
with the blind monarch Dhritarashtra eagerly acquiescing. The helping hand of succour
offered by Krishna is rejected on egotistic grounds alone. As Krishna points out:

“The world is doomed because you do not accept

my advice.
When the world’s doom nears, my friend,
wrong appears right,
wrong gets embedded in the heart
and stays there.” [27]

All that Karna is concerned about is that his reputation must remain unsullied at all costs
and he must find out who is better: Arjuna or himself. Karna has waded in too far by now
to return. Perhaps death is his only salvation.

Krishna: Power used to change the polity

Krishna presents a total contrast. He has no hesitation in surmounting loyalty to kith and
kin in slaying his maternal uncle Kamsa who has become a tyrant and his cousin
Shishupala who has allied himself to the imperialistic ambitions of Jarasandha. Free
from greed for personal aggrandizement, Krishna refuses to become the ruler of the
Yadavas, and puts old Ugrasena back on the throne. The opposite of Jarasandha in his
goal, Krishna would be no samrat, for his status is that of svarat, he removes the tyrants
and aggrandisers of public wealth. Finally, the killing of Jarasandha restores
independence to nearly a hundred chieftains and frees the Yadava clans and indeed of
the country as a whole, of the spectre of the all – constricting Magadhan python. Here is
the idea of lokasangraha exemplified. Krishna’s use of power is precisely what should
have engaged Bhishma: protect the virtuous and destroy the wicked, paritranaya
sadhunam vinashayaca dushkritam. 28

Krishna respects Bhishma, but prefers to stay with Vidura, for he is aware of the narrow
confines of the old dharma which he has made it his mission to demolish. In this task the
unknown Pandavas are chosen by him as the instruments for setting up a state founded
upon the ancient principle of the raja being the person who ensures the welfare, the
happiness, of the people. They are linked to him through their mother Pritha [his paternal
aunt] and are free from dysfunctional traditional concepts of dharma because of the very
nature of their diverse paternity. He binds them closer to himself by arranging his sister
Subhadra’s abduction by Arjuna, and by training their son Abhimanyu to become a great
warrior. He not only builds up the numerous Yadava clans into a confederacy to be
reckoned with by the time of the battle of Kurukshetra, which is why both sides vie for
their patronage, but also gifts considerable wealth to the Pandavas and guides them into
becoming rulers in their own right. He gets them recognized as benevolent, righteous
rulers because of their role in the removal of Jarasandha. He ensures that in each
conquered kingdom they restore the ruler to his throne, asking for his allegiance only
through presence in therajasuya yajna. After the exile is over, he advises a peace-
mission, despite the vociferous protests of his favourite sakhi Krishnaa, so that the
Pandavas cannot be faulted for having precipitated a war.

Krishna’s leadership in the war itself is too well known to need recital. In each case the
over-riding concern is that those who use power rightfully for the new dharma
oflokasangraha must be victorious. He does not suffer from the limitations of Bhishma or
Karna regarding attachment to a vow as a be-all and end-all. Where necessary, he
breaks his vow of not taking up arms and rushes to kill Bhishma. It is again Krishna who
dexterously finds a way to prevent Arjuna killing Yudhishthira out of blind adherence to a
vow. Knowing that a fresh Karna may overwhelm Arjuna, he avoids a confrontation till
Karna is tired, and then browbeats Arjuna into killing him when afoot and unarmed,
regardless of what others might say, because with Karna alive the Pandavas cannot win
the war. For the same reason, he gets them to pursue a tired–out Duryodhana, denying
him time to recuperate. With unerring instinct he takes the victorious brothers away from
their camp, otherwise they would also have been slaughtered by Ashvatthama in his
manic frenzy. It is he who saves Bhima from being killed by the Narayana weapon, from
losing to Duryodhana in the final duel and being crushed in furious Dhritarashtra’s
embrace at the end.

Yet, this supreme leader of men failed with his own people. The confederacy he had so
laboriously built up destroyed itself. In an internecine strife as tragic and as totally
annihilating as the Kurukshetra holocaust. Its seeds lay in the unrestrained indulgence in
liquor and the arrogance of wealth that led to flagrant insults to sages. Once again it is
unfettered individual liberty that spells doom. We are reminded of Plato’s discourse that
it is the “democratic man” who is the source of the tyrannical man, for in him all impulses
are allowed free indulgence and he considers himself entitled to indulge whichever
solicits him most powerfully at the moment instead of being ruled by a superordinate
marshalling vision that pursues ends valuable in themselves, namely goodness, beauty
and truth. Of these the power impulse is the strongest and establishes a tyranny over the
rest. [29]

The intensely human nature of Krishna’s own predicament is revealed in an amazing

disclosure to Narada (my translation):-

“I live listening to the bitter comments of kinfolk, despite having given them half my
wealth. As one anxious to obtain fire keeps rubbing the kindling, similarly my kinsmen
are constantly churning and scorching my heart with their harsh words. Sankarshan is
mighty but drunk; Gada is delicate and averse to labour; Pradyumna is engrossed with
his own beauty. Despite such persons and others among the Andhakas and Vrishnis
being on my side, I am helpless passing the days. Ahuka and Akrura are excellent
friends of mine, but if I show affection for one, the other becomes furious. Hence, I do
not express affection for any. And because of friendship it is very difficult to discard
them… whoever has Ahuka and Akrura on his side is miserable beyond compare, and
he whose cause they do not espouse is also immeasurably sorrowful…O Narada!
Because of the need to control them, I suffer like one forced sail on two boats at
one.”[30]

The utterly human nature of Krishna’s dilemma does not, surely, need any gloss. Krishna
himself states [31]

Aham hi tat karishyami param purushakaratah/

Daivam tu na maya shakyam karma karttumkathancna//

“I can express human prowess to the utmost;

but I do not have the slightest power to alter what is fated.”
It is the very human-ness of Krishna which is part of the secret lying behind the
irresistible fascination he exercises over millions even in the closing years of the
twentieth century. Even without going into the Gita, reading of the epic brings out
powerfully the remarkable qualities of head, heart and hand which make Krishna pre-
eminent among leaders of men. The finest account of this is given by Bhishma himself
when he announces why Krishna ought to be honoured above all during therajasuya
yajna:

“The sun shames all shining things,

So Krishna shames all with his
wisdom, strength, and fame.
Like the sun shining where
there is no sun,
like the air blowing where
there is no air,
Krishna comes among us,
illuminates and gladdens..
Some of the greatest Kshatriyas
have been defeated by
Krishna in battle…
Which is why we revere Krishna
though there are other
great kings and elders..
O king of Chedi, do not think
we are whimsical in
Revering Krishna, or that we
want benefits from him,
or that we think of him
as a relative…
We revered him first keeping
his heroism, success,
and glory in mind…

There are two reasons for

revering Govinda Krishna
All the Vedas and Vedangas
are known to him,
and he has shown boundless prowess.

Who else but Keshava can boast as much?

Generosity, shrewdness, immersion in
shruti, bravery, gentleness,
humility, enterprise, intelligence, handsomeness,
firmness, joy and success – are Krishna’s.” [32]

And yet, what is the end of this supreme human, “Purushottama”? The Empire of
Righteousness he has established is a veritable field of ashes, peopled by wailing
widows and infants, which Karna had so vividly figured forth in a dream related to
Krishna:
 “Powerful Yudhishthira climbed a hill
Of human bones,
smiled and ate sweet ghee-curd from
a golden cup.”[33]

Did Duryodhana have the last word when he told the Pandavas and Krishna, after being
felled by a blow below the belt (my translation) [34]:

“I have studied the scriptures, given away gifts as prescribed, ruled over the sea-girted
earth, placed my foot on the heads of enemies, possessed the greatest wealth, and
enjoyed that rare pleasure savoured by the gods which is the envy of other kings, and
ultimately won that death in battle which is prayed for by Kshatriyas following dharma.
Hence, who can have a better end than mine? Now I leave for heaven with my brothers
and friends, while you all stay behind on this earth, the living-dead, with hearts wrung
with sorrow.”

Here it is Duryodhana who appears to represent the successful leader! We recall the
undying loyalty of Karna and Ashvatthama, and of those hundreds of kings who willingly
laid down their lives in his cause. The Pandavas are overshadowed by the radiance of
Duryodhana’s nobility as he rises to the defence of Karna when his supposedly low birth
is laughed at, and his rousing defence of innate worth as the true measure of nobility
instead of judging it by one’s birth. This is precisely the beauty of Vyasa’s epic. There
are no easy answers in life. But we must not be swept away by the grandeur of
this dying speech. His end itself depicts what happens when power is used for
serving egotistic urges. It may bring immediate, illusory success. Ultimately the
misuser has to share the ruinous fate of Nahusha and Yayati.

Women: the true leaders

Satyavati
Among the women, Satyavati virtually takes Hastinapura by storm and ensures that it is
her blood which runs through its rulers. She is the cause of Devavrata turning into
Bhishma, and she fulfils her foster-father’s – and doubtless her own – desire of having
her progeny on the throne in a way that Shantanu had never dreamt of while agreeing
with indecent alacrity to meet her father’s conditions for the marriage. By having her
illegitimate son Vyasa father children on the widows of her son, she has descendants
who carry in them nothing of Shantanu’s royal blood at all. She is the unquestioned
authority in Hastinapura and has, in common with her grand daughter-in-law Kunti, an
eldest son born out of wedlock. Unlike Kunti, however, Satyavati is not ashamed to own
her unmarried motherhood before society, for that is the advantage of belonging to a low
caste and not having to keep up appearances. As an adopted daughter, any exposure of
misdemeanour would bring opprobrium on the Shurasenas, as Kuntibhoja makes amply
clear while warning Pritha (significantly, he calls her by her original name) to please
Durvasa punctiliously. After Pandu’s death, Satyavati gracefully retires to the forest,
unlike the obsessed Bhishma, accepting Vyasa’s advice not to be a witness to the
suicide of her race. In successfully using the power of her sexuality to ensure she gets
what she wants Satyavati reminds us of the earliest queens of the Chandravamsha:
Devayani and Sharmishtha. She is also like Shakuntala not only in having an apsara as
her mother, but particularly in insisting, before giving in to the amorous advances of the
infatuated king of Hastinapura, that her son alone must inherit the throne. It is she who is
responsible for the chronicle of the Dynasty of Puru becoming the biography of the
descendants of the dark complexioned fisher-girl Kali through her dark and ill-favoured
illegitimate son fathered by a sage. Thereby, she is a revolutionary figure who upsets the
entire mystique of royalty. Through Satyavati it is a parvenu dynasty that takes over the
ancient seat of the Chandravamsha. The Shudra Nandas of Pataliputra are not,
therefore, the first low caste dynasty to rule over a kingdom. To Satyavati must go the
credit of founding the first mixed caste dynasty, and that too of such importance as to
have the greatest of epics written about it.

Kunti

Satyavati’s daughter-in-law Pritha-Kunti is the epic’s most remarkable study in

leadership and the use of power. Given away in childhood by her father Shura to
Kuntibhoja, she is, as a nubile girl, placed by her adoptive father at the sole disposal of
the eccentric Durvasa who gifts her an incantation that can summon any god to her bed.
Immediately after Durvasa’s departure, the adolescent Kunti is curious to test the
potency of the mantra and impulsively intones it gazing at the resplendent rising sun.
The Sun God arrives and refuses to leave without enjoying her. Like her future mother-
in-law Satyavati, Kunti displays remarkable presence of mind in obtaining two similar
boons from the important deity: her virginity will remain unimpaired and the son will
resemble his father in glory. She sets her “sun”- child adrift in the river Ashva. In
the svayamvara that follows, she chooses Pandu of Hastinapura, only to find Bhishma
snatching her happiness away by marrying him off to the more attractive Madri. She
insists on accompanying her husband into exile and then faces a situation that is
horripilating: her husband commands her to beget son after son. It is in this husband-
wife encounter [35] that Kunti’s individuality shines out. In response to Pandu’s request
to beget children by soliciting a worthy person, Kunti first primly refuses:

“Not even in touch will I

be embraced by another.”

Though she has already given birth to Karna, it evidence of her firm resolve to preserve
an unsullied reputation after marriage, because of which she does not follow the
example of her mother-in-law in acknowledging her pre-marital son. Despite the
inexplicable exile of Pandu-and possibly because of its peculiar unexplained nature-
Kunti must have had expectations of a rehabilitation. With that in view, she would be
particular not to do anything which might create problems in the hoped-for return to
Hastinapura. That would also explain why she does not tell Pandu about Karna despite
his frantic desire for progeny. Children born with the sanction of her husband would be a
completely different proposition from a pre-marital son born to an unmarried princess.

Then she narrates-perhaps with unconscious irony-the ancient tale of Bhadra who begot
seven sons by embracing the corpse of her husband Vyushitashva who died prematurely
of consumption like Pandu’s father because of over-indulgence. Pandu refuses to invite
death-in-intercourse with Kunti (ironically, that is precisely what he does with Madri ) and
urges that she will only be doing what is sanctioned by the Northern Kurus, that the new
custom of sticking to one man is very recent, [36] and that she has the precedents of
Sharadandayani, Madayanti, Ambika, Ambalika and the scriptural directive of Shvetaketu
(he could have added his ancestress Madhavi, daughter of Yayati). None of these
commands cut any ice with Kunti, whose character is far stronger than her husband’s.
She gives in only when Pandu abjectly begs her:

“Sweet lady,
I fold my palms
joining the tips
of my lotus-leaf fingers
and I implore you
listen to me!” [37]

Look at the sheer grace and power of her answer:

“Best of Bharatas ! Great adharma
it is for a husband to ask
repeatedly a favour; shouldn’t a wife
anticipate his wishes?” [38]
With delightful one-upwomanship, she reveals that where he had wanted her to summon
some eminent Brahmin, she has the power to call any god to her bed. Like her mother-
in-law revealing her final weapon, Vyasa, to Bhishma only in the last extremity, Kunti
shares the secret of her mantra only after bringing her husband literally to his knees.
Thereafter, too, Kunti has the last word where Pandu’s desires are concerned. After
obtaining three sons, when the greedy Pandu (very much like his grandmother
Satyavati) urges Kunti to have more, she bluntly refuses to abuse that rare power for
self-indulgence and quotes the scriptures back to him (as he had quoted Shvetaketu to
her):

“The wise do not sanction

a fourth conception, even in crisis.
The woman who has intercourse
with four men has loose morals;
the woman who has intercourse
with five is a prostitute.”[39]

Although her ready knowledge of the scriptures is admirable, her words are also
tragically ironic, for she actually has had relations with four different men [that word is a
give-away for if she had been summoning only gods, this prohibition ought not to have
been invoked by her, and Pandu surely would have seized upon that flaw to command
her to gratify his hunger for more sons]. Even more tragic is the last statement, for that is
precisely the fate into which she thrusts her daughter-in-law Draupadi. And in the dice-
game it is Karna, her first-born, who, on the basis of this same scriptural
pronouncement, declares Draupadi a whore. In that horripilating scene we cannot but
agree with Naomi Wolf’s condemnation of masculine culture’s efforts to “punish the slut”,
the sexually adventurous woman who crosses the ambiguous lines separating “good”
from “bad”.[40]

Kunti’s inflexible determination is again revealed when she flatly refuses Pandu’s request
to help Madri in having more children. Despite his bravado before Madri [‘I know that if I
ask Kunti/she will not refuse me”], Pandu slinks away before Kunti’s fury:
 “She deceived me”, said Kunti.
“With one mantra I gave her,
she managed to get two sons.
I am afraid she will get
more sons than I. Scheming woman!
What a fool I was!
Had I known, I too
would have summoned the Ashvins,
and obtained twins.
Don’t come to me again, my lord,
saying give her the mantra.”[41]

The motivation, of course, is not to be outdone, because in sexual one-upwomanship

Madri consistently has the better of Kunti who admits this:

“Princess of Vahlika!
You are fortunate indeed –
I never had the chance to see
his face radiant in intercourse.” [42]

Even in death, Madri accompanies her husband. Her tribute to Kunti brings out the
beauty of character which makes her into a leader of men:

“Could I bring up your children

As if they were mine?”

asks Madri [43] lacking that nobility of character which conquers the ego’s petty
jealousies. Madri continues:

“You are blessed. There is none like you…

you are my light,
my guide, most respect-worthy,
Greater in status, purer in virtue.” [44]

How true this description is of Kunti ! A superb instance of the sublimation of the libido
into a single-minded determination to win back her sons’ rights, she brings up five
children in a hostile court, bereft of relatives and allies. We see no signs of either
Kuntibhoja or the Shurasenis coming forward to give her shelter or support. Once
Bhishma has provided her with a roof over her head, it is solely Kunti who guards her
children. The insecurity is of such dimensions that she dare not inform Bhishma of the
attempt to poison Bhima. It is she who gets the Nishada woman and her five sons drunk
in the House of Lac so that no evidence is left of the Pandavas’ escape when it is gutted.
The comment of Professor P.Lal, the epic’s eminent transcreator, is worth noting in this
respect: “Instigating Macbeth-Bhima was Kunti, unerring instinct she is able to rally the
drooping spirits of her sons:

“Hai! I am Kunti, mother

of five sons, and I thirst
for water sitting in their midst!” [45]
Again, where Yudhishthira stops short with preventing Bhima from slaying the infatuated
Hidimba, Kunti with remarkable foresight seizes on this fortuitous occurrence to cement
an alliance for the friendless five:

“I can see no way

of taking fit revenge
for the terrible injustices
that Duryodhana has done us.
A grave problem faces us.
You know Hidimba loves you...
Have a son by her.
I wish it. He will work
for our welfare. My son,
I do not want a no
from you. I want your promise
now, in front of both of us.”[46]

We know how useful the fruit of this union, Ghatotkacha, was for them subsequently
during their exile and as the saviour of Arjuna from Karna’s infallible weapon in the war
at the cost of his own life. It is again Kunti who instructs her first grandchild so as to
ensure his loyalty:

“You are one of the Kurus

To me you are like Bhima himself
You are the eldest son of the Pandavas
Therefore, you should help them.” [47]

Thus, the Pandava dynasty is slowly but surely structured into an entity with multi-racial
affinities. Earlier we have seen how, because of Kunti, Bhima is befriended by the Naga
Aryaka who is her father’s maternal grandfather. Here an alliance with the forest-dwelling
Rakshasas is established. Later, Arjuna will forge other alliances with the Nagas,
Manipur and Dvaraka.

It is profoundly instructive to study how Kunti educates her sons in the proper
use of power. Her abiding concern for the welfare of the common man, which she
inculcates into them, is brought out tellingly in the Ekachakra episode where she
comes forward, over-ruling Yudhishthira’s frantic remonstrances, to depute Bhima to
meet the ogre Baka in place of the Brahmana who has given them shelter. It is
necessary to note this exchange between son and mother, in which Kunti, as earlier with
Pandu, emerges totally victorious. Yudhishthira says pretty harshly,

“The man who gives us

Confidence that one day we will rule
The world’s wealth after
Killing the sons of Dhritarashtra
Mother, what right had you
To expose him like this?
Have you lost your reason?
Have our sufferings unbalanced you?” [48]
Never again will Yudhishthira upbraid his mother in such strong terms. The only other
instance occurs after the war when he gets to know that Karna was his elder brother. It
only shows the inability of the young man to appreciate the profound wisdom and
practical sense underlying this apparently rash decision fraught with life-risk to their sole
protector. After pointing out that they ought to repay the kindness of the Brahmana for
“He indeed is a man whose gratitude/exceeds the favour he receives”[49], she reminds
Yudhishthira of Bhima’s superhuman strength, and then teaches him a lesson in
kingship:

“It’s a king’s duty to protect

even the Shudra if the Shudra
seeks protection.” [50]

As we have seen, it is in failing to protect that Bhishma’s greatest failing lay as a

Kshatriya. Kunti then pulls up her son masterfully:

“I’m not foolish; don’t think

me ignorant; I’m not being selfish.
I know exactly what I am doing.
This is an act of dharma.”

She explains the reasons for taking the decision:

“Yudhishthira, two benefits
will follow from this act –
one, we’ll repay a Brahmin,
two, we’ll gain moral merit…
a Kshatriya who helps
a Brahmin gets the highest
heaven in his after-life.”[51]
Kunti’s maturity, the ability to observe life closely and use the learning from experience
for arriving at swift decisions to benefit simultaneously both society and her children, set
her apart from all other persons in the epic save Krishna.

After staying with a poor Brahmana in Ekachakra, Kunti now puts up in a potter’s house
in Panchala, further down in the caste hierarchy. The point to note is how she is bringing
up her children virtually from the lowest level of society to the status of rulers. In that
process, she turns necessity to glorious gain. For, the enforced exile brings her sons into
close contact with the common people, so that they develop that feeling for the felt
needs of the vast majority which equips them for ruling over them as true rajas, those
who discharge the duty of pleasing their subjects, and share in the merit accrued thus.

Kunti’s intention is to obtain the daughter of Drupada as daughter-in-law and thus gain
the alliance of the traditional enemy of the Kauravas, so that a firm foundation can be
established for the plan to win back her sons’ birthright. Her keen far sight has intuited
the ruination attendant on any splitting up of the united five. Hence she plays that grim
charade of pretending not to know what Bhima and Arjuna are referring to when they ask
her to see what they have brought home. For, in 190.29 we find Yudhishthira and the two
Madreyas have ‘slipped out of the enclosure” the moment the skirmish started over
Arjuna winning Draupadi. These three are already back when Draupadi is brought home
by the other two. Moreover, their very coming to Panchala was with the aim of jointly
winning Draupadi, as advised by Vyasa in Ekachakra. Kunti is fully in the know of Arjuna
having won Draupadi, but she also knows that so long their lives have revolved only
around her. She can be replaced only by a single woman, not five, if their unity is to
remain intact. That is why she deliberately asks that whatever has been brought should
be shared out and enjoyed as usual. After “discovering” her “mistake”, her only worry is
that something must be done so that her spoken command does not become untrue.
[52] Yudhishthira’s speech to Drupada makes it amply clear that the decision is actually
Kunti’s although the brothers are eagerly acquiescing [“Each had her in his heart”] [53]. It
is also a magnificent tribute to the total respect and implicit obedience paid by them to
Kunti, which is unexampled in the epic. Despite all the paeans to Gandhari’s virtues as a
wife, her complete failure as a mother to command any respect from Duryodhana (he
does not hesitate to insult her by stalking out of the court in anger when she admonishes
him) only serves to highlight the qualities which make Kunti pre-eminent among all
women in Mahabharata and indeed among almost all the leading characters:

“My mother’s will is my will

Because I think she is right….
Isn’t it said that obedience
To gurus is a supreme virtue?
What greater guru than one’s mother?
Our mother’s clear command was
“Share and equally enjoy
What you have.” Best of dvijas!
To me this is the highest dharma.[54]

It is instructive to see how keen Kunti is that her stratagem should not be foiled . She
immediately appeals to Vyasa as Yudhishthira finishes speaking:

“What dharma-firm Yudhishthira says

Is right. I fear my words will
Become as pointless as lies.
And if that happens, will I
Not be tainted with untruth?” [55]

As usual, Kunti ensures that she has her way, this time with the help of Vyasa, her actual
father-in-law. Kunti’s ambition for her children is finally voiced openly when she formally
blesses Draupadi after the marriage ceremonies:

“May you be queen of

the kingdom of the Kurus
With your dharma-loving husband
in the capital of Kurujangala.” [56]

Simultaneously, Kunti’s nephew Krishna, son of her brother Vasudeva, comes forward
with Yadava wealth to build up the power of the Pandavas.

The truly powerful do not cling to power. They know when and how to wield it but
also, even more important, when not to use it. Kunti is no queen mother glorying in
her new royalty and ordering her daughter-in-law about. Hereafter she retreats into the
background, silently giving up pride of place to Draupadi. But opportunely thrice she
comes forward using the power that is coiled up within her most effectively for the benefit
of her sons. When her sons are exiled, she decided to stay back in Hastinapura as a
silent but constant reminder to the Kauravas of the violated rights of the Pandavas. She
will not allow Dhritarashtra to forget conveniently what is due to his nephews just
because they are in exile. Then, when Krishna comes with the peace mission to
Hastinapura, she tells him to urge Yudhishthira to fight for their rights as Kshatriyas
must. She compares his obsession with peace to those who, not understanding the true
sense, of the Vedas ruin their intelligence by immersing it in rituals. To inspire him, she
repeats a tactic used in the Varanavata exile:

“Can anything be more humiliating than

that your mother,
friendless and alone, should have to
eat others’ food ?
Strong-armed one, recover the ancestral
paternal kingdom
use gentleness, dissension, gifts, force
or negotiation.—
Follow the dharma of rajas, redeem
your family honour.
Do not, with your brothers, watch your
merits waste away.” [57]

To inspire him further, she bids Krishna repeat to Yudhishthira the thrilling exhortation of
Vidula to her son Sanjaya who is reluctant to face battle with the king of Sindhu who has
already defeated him once:

“Flare up, even if briefly, like

tinduka-wood.
Do not smoulder away in billowing
fireless smoke.”[58]

To these twin spurs to prick them on, Kunti now adds the culminating motivating factor:
the insult to her daughter-in-law, and upbraids her sons in no uncertain terms in order to
arouse their manhood which has gone into hibernation:

“The princess of Panchala followed all dharmas,

yet in your presence
they mocked her – how can you ever
forgive this insult?
The kingdom lost did not hurt me,
the defeat at dice
did not hurt me; the exile of my sons
did not hurt me
so much as the humiliation of Draupadi
weeping in the sabha
as they mocked her. Nothing more painful
than that insult.” [59]
The other instance of her outstanding leadership is the last act to secure the safety of
her beloved sons. Once again it is a conscious decision not to take the easy way out like
Madri had done, but to undergo the traumatic experience of acknowledging to her first-
born the truth about his birth, kept secret so long as her greatest shame. Karna rejects
her, but in having apparently failed, Kunti turns her loss to glorious gain, obtaining his
promise that he will not kill any of them except Arjuna. Moreover, she effectively
weakens him from within. For, while he knows that he is battling his mother’s sons,
Arjuna only knows that this is the detestable charioteer’s son who must be slain for his
crimes against Draupadi and Abhimanyu.

Kunti’s actions are, indeed, quite unconventional and wholly autonomous starting with
her first pregnancy. It is only she who agrees to shoulder the awesome burden of
bringing up five teenagers in a hostile court, without resources but for the tacit support of
Vidura, dependent on the tender mercies of Dhritarashtra and the indecisive ruminations
of Bhishma on dharma’s subtleties. Up to their marriage, it is overwhelmingly Kunti’s
story: the story of her masterly guidance at every step to gather allies around her sons
till they are able to claim their inheritance. And yet, her guiding touch is ever unobtrusive,
yet firm and unmistakable.

Kunti has that rare capacity to surprise us which characterises great leaders who know
how to use power. When everything that she worked for has been achieved—the war is
over, her beloved sons are the rulers of Hastinapura and her daughter-in-law has been
avenged-she astonishes them all by resolving to retire to the forest with, of all persons,
Dhritarashtra and Gandhari to spend her life in ascesis and in serving the old couple
responsible for her sufferings! Her reply to Bhima’s anguished query as to why she
urged them to wade into this river of blood if she was going to leave them is a revealing
insight into the remarkable nature of this greatest of Vyasa’s heroines. Kunti says that
she had inspired them to fight so that they did not suffer oppression at their relative’s
hands. But, having glutted herself with happiness during her husband’s rule [which itself
is an ironic statement in view of Pandu’s rule exceptionally abbreviated tenure as king],
she has no desire to enjoy a kingdom won by her sons. Neither the tears of her sons,
nor the entreaties of Dhritarashtra succeed in changing her mind. Gifted away as a child
by her father like a piece of property, in adolescence callously placed by her foster father
at the mercy of an eccentric sage, her curiosity making her the victim of a god’s lust,
choosing as husband one who never consummated the marriage and made her beget
children from others thrice over, never the recipient of any assistance from her father or
foster-father when in exile, her end, as that of Bhishma, symbolises the angst that
consumed her. Kunti chooses to die as a forest-fire engulfs her.

What is the secret of this remarkable power that flows from within these women of
Vyasa? It is a state of virginity. Even more than Satyavati, Kunti is a virgin in the Jungian
sense. In return for allowing Parashara to enjoy her, Satyavati had obtained boons of
remaining youthful and fragrant forever and of regaining her virginity after the birth of
Vyasa. In that encounter we find a superb instance of the use of her sexual power by an
adolescent fisher-girl of outstanding intelligence [60]

Kunti, too, obtains the identical blessing from Surya. This state of “virginity” is not
merely a physical condition but refers to an inner state of the psyche which
remains untrammelled by any slavish dependence on a particular man. Madri
presents the exact opposite concept of the “married” woman who is dependent on what
others think, and therefore she does what she may not actually approve of. “She is not
one-in-herself but acts as female counterpart or syzygy to some male.” On the other
hand, “The woman who is psychologically virgin is not dependent in this way. She is
what she is because that is what she is.” This “virgin” is “one-in-herself (and) does what
she does not because of any desire to please, not to be liked, or to be approved, even
by herself,.. but because what she does is true. Her actions may, indeed be
unconventional.” [61]

In the ultimate analysis, “all power is really soul-power”, writes Sri Aurobindo, “for
all material energy contains hidden the vital, mental, psychic, spiritual energy and
in the end it must release these forms of the one Shakti, the vital energy.’’[62] How
truly Kunti exemplifies this in all the crucial decisions concerning her sons, and in the
ultimate choice of her life’s ending !

Draupadi

The last of this unique trio of “Virgins” is Draupadi, adept in the chandrayana vrata,
whereby she is able to regain her virginity before changing each husband as Narada
specifically mentions while describing the multiple weddings. She replaces Kunti as the
nave of the Pandava-wheel, and also acts as the axle for the Panchala-Pandava-Yadava
chariot. Wholly unconventional in accepting the opprobrium, along with the staggering
challenge, of having five husbands (her mother-in-law had only temporary encounters
with Surya, Dharma, Vayu and Indra), her success is so complete that she is besought
by the intrigued Satyabhama to share the secret of her success. Right from her birth
from the sacrificial flames, Vyasa gives us a vivid picture of this extraordinary dark
beauty who is the instrument of Drupada’s vengeance on the Kauravas. If she shares
with her mother-in-law the fact of having “known” five men, then like her grand-mother-
in-law she is dark, endowed with enchanting bodily fragrance and rivetingly lovely. [63]

Draupadi shocks her contemporaries by daring to challenge the Kuru elders’ very
concept of Dharma in a situation where any other woman would have collapsed in
hysterics. None can answer her. Can we even imagine any woman who would suffer
attempted in the forest and countenance her husband forgiving the abductor; this to be
followed by public molestation in Virata’s court with her husband reprimanding her for
making a scene; be carried off to be cremated with the dead Kichaka; and then, when all
seems ready for war, to hear her husbands tell Krishna to sue for peace and still remain
loyal to them, and sane! The worst is yet to come, with the decimation of all her sons by
Ashvatthama. Ultimately Draupadi becomes queen, but what does she have left for
herself, we wonder. And at the very end, when she stumbles and falls, dying, on the
Himalayan ridges, not one of the five husbands tarries by her side. Not one even turns
back with a word of comfort. Self-born of the sacrificial flames, Yajnaseni leaves the
world all by herself, nathavati anathavat, five-husbanded yet without a husband.

It is then that we realise that this remarkable “virgin” never asked anything for herself.
Virtually a kritya, an avenging fury, ritually invoked to sate Drupada’s desire for
vengeance, everything she does is with single-minded determination to goad the
Pandavas into destroying the Kauravas. By snubbing Karna publicly, flouting
Dhrishtadyumna’s announcement that the successful marksman would win her hand,
she makes the viryashulka contest where the strongest wins the bride into a
true svayamvara (bridegroom-choice ceremony). Simultaneously, her decisive
intervention plants seeds of the assault on her in the Kaurava court where Karna takes
his sweet revenge. Again, it is her mysterious silence when Yudhishthira announces the
polyandrous decision which cements the brotherhood into an invincible fighting force.

Throughout the exile her bitter recriminations are aimed at ensuring that her husbands
never forget that they have to avenge the gross insult she has suffered. That is indeed
why she insists on accompanying them while their other wives stay back with the
children. The climax of this is seen when she upbraids her intimate
friend, sakha, Krishna in the Udyoga Parva on finding that her husbands (save
Sahadeva) are all in favour of suing for peace. After pouring out her injuries, she takes
up her serpent-like thick, glossy hair and with tearful eyes urges Krishna to recall these
tresses when he sues for peace. Sobbing, she announces that her five sons led by
Abhimanyu and her old father and brothers will take revenge if her husbands will not.
Krishna’s response is precisely what she has been aiming for:

“Consider those you disfavour

as already dead !..
The Himavant hills may move, the
earth shatter
in a hundred pieces, heaven collapse ;
my promise stands..
You will see your enemies killed…”[64]

Who but Krishnaa can upbraid Krishna thus: “No husband have I, nor son, nor brother.
So much so, O Madhusudana, that even you are not mine. “[65] Who else can virtually
lay down the law to Krishna, tell him that he is bound to protect her whenever necessary,
and cite four reasons for this? [66]

Caturbhih karanaih Krishna tvaya rakshyasmi nityashah/

Sambandhad gauravat sakhyat prabhutvena ca keshava//’

[She is his paternal aunt’s daughter-in-law;

she is renowned;
he is her close friend;
he wields power over all.
Hence she depends upon him most of all].

Krishna does not let her down.

Besides this, however, she uses the powers of her unrivalled charms and intellect to
achieve her ends as no other epic character does. After Kichaka has kicked her in
Virata’s court and Yudhishthira’s response has been to direct her not to make a scene,
the manner in which she goes about taking revenge is an engrossing study of how a
beautiful woman in adverse circumstances can turn her sexuality into an irresistibly
powerful motivator. She does not approach Arjuna, knowing him since the dice-game to
be a true disciple of Yudhishthira. Then Bhima alone had roared out his outrage. Now it
is to him that she goes in the dark of the night and finds him asleep in the kitchen.
Panchali presses intimately close to Bhima like a woman driven by sexual desire, as a
wild she-crane snuggles up to its mate and a three-year old cow in season rubs against
a bull. The important word here is “like”: she is not actually sexually stimulated but is
feigning in order to manipulate Bhima. She twines herself round him as a creeper
entwines a massive shala tree on the Gomati’s banks, as the bride of the sleeping king
of beasts clasps him in a dense forest, as an elephant-cow embraces a huge tusker. As
Bhima awakes in Panchali’s arms, she crowns it all by speaking in dulcet vina like tones
pitched at the gandhara note, the third in the octave. Her long speech is a telling lesson
in motivational strategy. To rouse his anger she narrates all her misfortunes, even how
she, a princess, has now to carry water for the queen’s toilet, particularly mentioning
how she swoons when he wrestles with wild beasts much to the amusement of the
queen and her maids who gossip that she and the handsome cook must be lovers.
Finally, in a marvellous feminine touch, she extends her palms to him, chapped with
grinding unguents for the queen. His reaction is all that she had planned for so
consummately:

“Wolf-waisted foe-crushing Bhima covered

his face with the
delicate, chapped hands of his wife,
and burst into tears.”[67]

Kichaka’s death is sealed.

Beyond all this, however, Draupadi seems to have had a profound awareness that
she was an instrument to achieve the annihilation of a dying era and an ancient
dharma, so that a new age could take birth. And being so aware, she offered up
her entire being, her whole life, as a flaming sacrifice in that holocaust of which
Krishna was the presiding deity as well as the motive force and the major
protagonist.

We have seen that those who are celebrated as flawless acmes of perfection to be
looked up to as role models by society are actually flawed, human creatures obsessed
with their individual egotistic needs and pre-occupations.

Bhishma may superficially appear to be representing a sublime ideal of celibacy ad

allegiance to the given word, but actually he is affecting an artificial witness stance out of
a sense of deep hurt and deprivation, which goes against the very nature of the
Kshatriya and results in the destruction of that same kingdom which he considers
himself born to protect. Karna might appear to be nobility and generosity personified, but
actually he is eating his heart out in envy and every act of his is triggered by a sense of
deeply injured merit, a hyper-sensitivity about his low caste, which goes so far as to
drive him to bid a princess to be stripped in public and to term her a prostitute. Krishna,
the purushottama, is desperately lonely, friendless and the victim of those whom he has
constantly gone out of his way to help.

On the other hand, it is the trio of heroines who usually escape our attention who turn
out to be the real Grey Eminences. In them we find validation of Naomi Wolf’s
celebration of women as “sexually, powerful magical beings.”[68]. The dynasty which
Vyasa is concerned with most of all is created by Satyavati, a fisher-girl. One branch of it
is created and carried forward by Kunti, quite on her own. The other branch is
annihilated by Draupadi’s relentless quest for revenge. It is they who are the real
leaders, the true wielders of power in its many forms—sexual, maternal and state—in
this epic which is usually looked upon as a male-preserve and is, in some communities,
banned reading for unmarried women.
A very different type of use of power is depicted in the lives of the sages. One type is
represented in Vashishtha, and the other in Vishvamitra. In Parashurama we have a third
and quite unique type. All the three sages are linked to the epic tale. Vishvamitra is the
father of Shakuntala, and thereby an ancestor of the Bharata dynasty. The very birth of
Bhishma is because of Vashishtha’s cursing the Vasus for their theft of his cow.
Parashurama is the guru of Bhishma in weapon-craft, and also of Drona and Karna. The
helpless condition of Karna before Arjuna is because of the curse of Parashurama.

Parashurama anticipates Krishna in the concept of a mission to root out the decrepit,
effete, and decadent rulers of society. This, of course, is an integral component of the
avatara’s personality. Parashurama belongs to a society where the Kshatriyas have
degenerated into tyrants, who do not scruple to slay Brahmins in their search for hidden
gold. The Haiheyas, descended through Yadu, launch a murderous assault on the
Richika-Bhargavas, to the extent of destroying embryos, till the effulgence of Aurva stops
them. Aurva embarks on a terrifying penance for annihilating all Kshatriyas, exclaiming:

“The man with power to punish

Who does not punish
What he knows deserves punishment
Himself sins.
Many kings and nobles
Could have saved my ancestors
Yet they did not—they chose
Riskless luxury instead
If I, who have power
To punish, do not now punish,
What is to prevent other men
From repeating the crime?” [69]

Aurva is persuaded by the manes of ancestors to cast his fury into the sea, and thus
both the Kshatriyas and the Brahmins seem to have come to an uneasy truce, with the
Brahmin virtue of forgiveness having won the day.

This is, however, a temporary reprieve. The arrogant Karttavirya Arjuna destroys the
hermitage of Aurva’s grandson Jamadagni and kills the sage, which leads to the
declaration of an all–out war against them by Parashurama, in whom the fury of Aurva
seems to have descended. This remains a unique event in Pauranik Bharata, in which a
Brahmin takes to arms to end, once and for all, the oppression of those who are meant
to protect. At the end of twenty-one battles, society is left bereft of Kshatriya males. This
awesome achievement of Parashurama earns him the sixth place in the pantheon of
Vishnu’s incarnations. Parashurama performs the obsequies of his ancestors in five
lakes of Kshatriya, the site of the epic holocaust. The Kshatriya race is given a new
lease of life through Brahmins impregnating the Kshatriya widows. In the process, the
Kshatriyas have been taught a lesson, and the balance between the two superior castes
has been restored.

That virtue of forgiveness which Aurva reluctantly reverts to, and which is foreign to
Parashurama’s nature, is depicted at length as the pre-eminent quality holding society
together in the life of Vashishtha and the story of Vishvamitra’s all-consuming jealousy of
his greatness. The Vishvamitra of the epic is not that great seer of Rig Veda, the
discoverer of the Gayatri mantra. He is shown as a proud monarch who cannot accept
being worsted by a mere forest-dwelling sage. No lessons have been learnt from the
experiences of the power-drunk Haiheyas at the hands of Parashurama. It becomes his
life’s mission to attain the same status as Vashishtha’s, that of a brahmarshi, and to put
him down somehow. Ridden by that obsession, he turns the king of South Koshala,
Mitrasaha-Kalmashapada into a cannibal, who destroys all the sons of Vashishtha.
Despite this, Vashishtha “bore it as Meru bears the earth” [178.43] and decides to give
up his life rather than harm Vishvamitra. When Kalmashapada tries to devour
Vashishtha’s pregnant daughter-in-law, Vashishtha frees him from the Rakshasa state.
The amazing nobility of the sage is now seen. Kalmashapada, like Pandu, has been
cursed with death in intercourse. Hence he begs Vashishtha to father a son on Queen
Madayanti (she, unlike Madri, repulsed her husband’s amorous advances) and the sage
consents. When his grandson Parashara organises a Rakshasa-destruction sacrifice
(prefiguring the serpent-annihilation rite of Janamejaya), it is Vashishtha who dissuades
him from exterminating innocent Rakshasas for the fault of Kalmashapada. Not only this,
but when the penitent Vishvamitra, finally free from envy, approaches him begging
pardon, it is Vashishtha who crowns his relentless pursuit after recognition as a seer by
addressing him as brahmarshi! The perfect self-control seen in Vashishtha, whose name
itself means “sense-subduer”, is unparalleled and is a telling instance of the superiority
of spiritual and moral strength over brute power.

Vishvamitra, on the other hand, is the Brahmin can become the Parashurama showed
the world that the Brahmin can become the greatest of all warriors, Vishvaratha, king of
Kanyakubja, proved to society that a Kshatriya can become the greatest of sages. It is
Vishvamitra characteristic to take up lost causes. Thus, grateful to Trishanku (a prince of
the Ikshvaku dynasty banished for having eaten a cow of Vashishtha’s, raped a
Brahmin’s wife and his family during a famine, Vishvamitra goes all out to ensure that the
sacrifice sought to be held by him is a success, despite the boycott by Vashishtha and
the gods. Trishanku had lost caste and was living with Chandalas. The incensed
Vishvamitra took up the challenge and created new deities to accept the offerings (in the
Rig Veda III.9 he refers to 3339 gods in place of the Vedic 33). Vishvamitra had no
hesitation in asking a Chandala to share with him the only food available, dog’s meat, on
the eminently practical ground that if the body itself did not exist, how could one practice
dharma and earn merit? However, where spiritual wisdom was concerned, it was
Vashishtha who remained the supreme master, as sublimely recorded in the Yoga-
Vashishtha Ramayana.

It is these sages who play a critical role in securing the cohesiveness of the social
structure and establishing it on the [46] highest principles of human conduct, protecting
which is the job of the Kshatriya raja. One of the reasons for the collapse of moral order
noticed in the epic is the absence of great sages in the courts of Hastinapura,
Indraprastha and Dvaraka. Dhritarashtra’s family priest is not even mentioned, while the
Pandavas pick up Dhaumya, who is no more than a good ritualist. The age of Vashishtha
and Vishvamitra is long passed. Vyasa is no replacement for them.

Yet, it is Vyasa who is the stage-manager, truly the “arranger” as his name denotes. At
every critical stage he appears to provide a different turn to the course of events.
Commanded by his mother to intervene to save the dynasty, he cannot cut himself off
thereafter. It is he who ensures that Gandhari does not discard the aborted foetus, and
produces from it the 101 Dhartarashtras (as Aurva had long back the 60,000 sons of
Sagara). He appears at the right time to guide the Pandavas to Draupadi’ssvayamvara,
and to ensure that she is married to all five of them. During the exile it is Vyasa who
advises Arjuna how to obtain celestial weapons. It is because of him that Sanjaya can
see the entire battle and narrate it to Dhritarashtra. After the war he steps in to prevent
general annihilation from the twin missiles launched by Arjuna and Ashvatthama. Finally,
it is he who advises the Pandavas to depart on their last journey. It is Krishna
Dvaipayana Vyasa’s anguished cry—placed ironically in the “Ascension to Heaven”
section—that is left ringing in our ears, echoing down the dusty corridors of recorded
time. One answer is provided in Bhishma’s discourse from the death-in-life bed of arrows
in terms of the metaphor of the Kamavriksha 70which Sri Ramakrishna transformed into
the marvellous parable of desire under the Kalpataru. It is the other Krishna, Vasudeva,
who evokes it in a wondrous eidetic image [47] that begins with the same word, urdhva,
and goes on to provide the solution [71]:

Urdhvamulamadhah shakhamashvattham prahurvyayam /

Chandamsi yasya parnani yastam veda vedavit //

“Mention is made of a cosmic fig-tree rooted above,

Whose leaves are said to be the Vedas;
The knower of this fig-tree
is the knower of the Vedas.
Its branches reach out below and above,
And the gunas nourish them;
Its flowers are the objects of the senses;
Below the ground flourish more roots,
Giving birth to action.
You may not see its real shape,
nor its end, birth and existence.
Slice this fig-tree with the sword of non-attachment.”

Each of us has to find that answer for oneself. Each one of us has to become the
protagonist in one’s individual course of life. What the epic can and does provide us is
with are lessons to be drawn from the experiences of the leaders in the epic narrative, so
that we can, avoid those pitfalls and live a proactive instead of a reactive life; shape our
destiny using power not for self-aggrandisement but for developing the self to subserve
the public weal.

– Pradip Bhattacharya
December 15, 2002

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This article is now also available in French at Leadership et Exercice du Pouvoir

Hinduism

References :
All English translations from the Mahabharata are taken from Padma Sri Prof. P. Lal’s verse-by-
verse transcreation of the complete epic (Writers Workshop, Calcutta, December 1968 ff.). The
original Sanskrit text is taken from the Aryashastra recension (Calcutta, 1968 ff.).
1. P. Lal: The Mahabharata (condensed & transcreated into English), Vikas, New
Delhi, 1980 p. 370, Svargarohana, 5.62. This remarkable passage was pointed out
by Prof. Lal in his third session on Vyasa’s epic on 14th November 1999 at the G.D.
Birla Sabhaghar, Calcutta.
2. ibid. p. 365.
3. T.S. Eliot: “The Wasteland and other poems” Faber, 1922.
4. Mahabharata, Shanti Parva, 67. 23-27
5. ibid. 69. 4.
6. ibid. 69. 94, 125-126.
7. C.M. Joad: Philosophy for our times [Thomas Nelson, London, p. 334].
8. Adi Parva, 102. 70; 119 . 2-5
9. Adi Parva, 103 . 15-18
10. Udyoga Parva, 129. 53.
11. Bhishma Parva, 43 . 41, 56, 71.
12. George Meredith: “Modern Love”, 1862. I am grateful to Prof. Amitava Roy,
Shakespeare Professor, Rabindra Bharati University, for providing me with the
reference.
13. Sabha Parva, 67 . 38-40, 47, 49, 53.
14. ibid., 69 . 6, 8, 14.
15. ibid. 69 . 15, 16.
16. ibid. 69, 19-20.
17. ibid. 71 . 19, 20.
18. Adi Parva, 1 . 110; Shanti Parva 254 . 1-4.
19. W.B. Yeats : “The Second Coming” 1921.
20. Adi Parva, 89 . 17-20.
21. Adi Parva, 89 . 4, 5.
22. Adi Parva, 85 . 12-14. In Vana Parva 181 . 12-14 Nahusha recounts his fall
due to pride.
23. Adi Parva, 90 . 7.
24. Adi Parva, 89 . 5-7.
25. Adi Parva, 89 . 9-10.
26. Adi Parva, 90 . 22, 24, 26.
27. Udyoga Parva, 143 . 47.
28. Gita, 3 . 19; 4 . 8.
29. Joad op . cit pp. 285-7, 354.
30. Shanti Parva, 81 . 5-10.
31. Udyoga Parva, 79 . 5.
32. Sabha Parva, 26 . 28, 29; 38 . 8, 9, 15-21.
33. Udyoga Parva, 143 . 33.
34. Gada Parva, 61 . 50-53.
35. Adi Parva, 120-125.
36. ibid. 122 . 7.
37. ibid. 129 . 29.
38. ibid. 129 . 32.
39. ibid. 123 . 83.
40. Naomi Wolf is a best-selling feminist author, advisor to the American President
and Vice-President. The reference is to her latest work, Promiscuities (quoted in
TIME, 8 Nov. 1999, p. 25.).
41. ibid. 124 . 26-28.
42. ibid. 125 . 23.
43. ibid. 125 . 42.
44. ibid. 125 . 66-68.
45. ibid. 153 . 13.
46. ibid. 157 . 47-49.
47. ibid. 157 . 74.
48. ibid. 164 . 10-11.
49. ibid. 164 . 15.
50. ibid. 164 . 28.
51. ibid. 164 . 20-22.
52. ibid. 193 . 4-5.
53. ibid. 193 . 12.
54. ibid. 197 . 29; 198 . 16-17.
55. ibid. 198 . 18.
56. ibid. 209 . 9.
57. Udyoga Parva, 132 . 32-34.
58. ibid. 133 . 14.
59. ibid. 137 . 16-18.
60. Dr. M. Esther Harding: Woman’s Mysteries (Rider, London, 1971,pp. 125-126).
61. Devi Bhagavat Purana II . 2. 1-36.
62. Sri Aurobindo: Collected Works vol. 1, “The Village and the Nation”, p.737, he
explains how clan loyalty stood in the kingship in the epic is provided.
63. Adi Parva, 169 . 44-46, 48, Sabha Parva, 65 . 33-37.
64. Udyoga Parva, 82 . 45, 48.
65. Vana Parva, 10 . 125.
66. ibid. 10 . 127.
67. Virata Parva, 20 . 30.
68. Naomi Wolf op . cit.
69. Adi Parva, 182 . 11, 12, 14.
70. Shanti Parva 254 . 108. The parable has been discussed in P. Bhattacharya,
“Desire Under the Kalpataru”, Journal of South Asian Literature, Michigan State
University, 1997.
71. Gita, 15 . 1-3, transcreated by Prof. P. Lal, (Writers Workshop, Calcutta).