In Sarala Mahabharata,
(a)
In King Duryodhana’s court, where he had gone as Yudhisthira’s emissary of
peace, Krishna asked the Kaurava king for five villages for the Pandavas so
that a war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas could be avoided. It would not
be incorrect to say that during his interaction with the Kauravas in the court
on the subject, he downplayed the issue of the Pandavas’ right to half of the
kingdom of Hastinapura – not that the Pandavas had told him to ask Duryodhana for
that. Krishna’s emphasis was on the
Pandavas being part of the Kuru family. He told Duryodhana that the Pandavas
were his brothers and that it did not look proper that they were suffering much
hardship, when his own brothers and he were living in luxury. It was his moral
duty to help them live a life of dignity.
(b) As the Kauravas and the
Pandavas’ armies stood facing each other, ready to fight, Krishna asked Arjuna to attack Bhishma. He
told the Avatara that he had an emotional bond with him and with his guru
Drona, and with Ashwasthama, Duryodhana, Karna, Sakuni and some others as well,
who were in the battlefield as his adversaries and that he would not attack
them. He would fight with them only if they attacked him. The emotional bond with his family was an important consideration in the case of Arjuna. Krishna said
nothing to him and left his chariot and went directly to Yudhisthira to apprise him
about Arjuna’s refusal to fight.
(c ) Yudhisthira thought Arjuna
was right, and he said so to Krishna. He went all alone, and without arms, to the
Kaurava side to plead with Duryodhana to give them just one village, if not
five, to avoid the fratricidal war. The Kula relationship was paramount for
him.
(d) When Arjuna met Bhishma for
the first time on the battlefield, he told him that it was the Kauravas who
were responsible for brothers fighting brothers and pleaded with him to intervene
and stop it. Bhishma told him that, contrary to what he thought, the Pandavas
were also responsible for that fratricidal engagement. If they
really had a commitment to the family – for the kula, - they would not have come to
the battlefield for the kingdom. He told him that it wasn’t too late, even at that stage, for the Pandavas to leave the battlefield, if they were really concerned about the
kula. Bhishma told Arjuna that sometimes a member of the kula becomes an utter
disgrace for the kula, but the kula does not discard him. They bear with him.
Thus, in this dialogue between Bhishma and Arjuna, the Kuru eldest emphasizes
the kula spirit, the commitment to the kula, which could include making
sacrifices to accommodate a member who brings disgrace to the kula.
(e) Hit by Bhima, as Duryodhana
lay mortally wounded, Yudhisthira was not celebrating his victory. He was
crying, placing his head on his lap. He was talking to him as an elder brother
would to his younger brother, who had strayed from the path of virtue and who
had made grievous miscalculations about the outcome of the war. He said he
would give him the kingdom and go to the forest, as his father Pandu had done
for Duryodhana’s father. Pandu, the King of Hastinapura, once overheard a
conversation between his elder brother Dhritarashtra and his wife Gandhari. Dhritarashtra,
who could not become king because he was born blind, was telling Gandhari about
ending their life. Pandu readily abdicated in favour of his elder brother and
went to the forest with his wife, from where he defended the kingdom for
Dhritarashtra. Now, Yudhisthira was saying that he wanted to give the kingdom to
his younger brother Duryodhana. In the eldest Pandava’s words, there was no
insincerity. Duryodhana was dying, and Yudhisthira’s words touched him greatly.
They were no enemies at that
stage; they were brothers, members of the same kula.
(f) Later, that night, Ashwasthama,
who had left the battlefield after his father, guru Drona’s death, came to him,
on hearing that he was dying. He told him that with him being there in his army,
the war had not ended. Duryodhana appointed him as the Commander-in-Chief. Soon, he returned to him with five severed heads and told him that he had won the
war for him. Duryodhana was happy. In the morning, when he found that they were the
heads of Draupadi’s sons, he was utterly miserable and condemned Ashwasthama in
the harshest of words for bringing an end to the Kuru kula. Holding the five
heads on his lap, he breathed his last.
His last act in life was an
affirmation of the Kula feelings.
(g) As the Pandavas and Draupadi
were climbing the mountain Himalayas to reach its top, Draupadi fell. Bhima told Yudhisthira,
who was leading them, that Draupadi had
fallen and begged him to stop for a while for her. He told Bhima that she was a
great sinner, that she was bound to fall on that account, and that he should abandon her and
resume climbing. A shocked Bhima asked him what sins she had committed. In Sarala
Mahabharata, Yudhisthira, in “Swargarohana Parva”, was not merely the
eldest Pandava; he was also the voice of dharma in the sense of justice. His
pronouncements on the failings of the Pandavas and Draupadi, which were
judgements, had the tone of authority and finality. He told Bhima that she was
the cause of the all-consuming Kurukshetra war. She tied her hair only after
“eating” ninety-nine of the Kaurava brothers. In the words of the embodiment of
dharma on earth, there is a strong assertion of the kula spirit.
Taken together, these episodes
affirm the kula bonding.
In Vyasa Mahabharata, although
the importance of the kula bond is acknowledged and even endorsed, it is not
considered pre-eminent. In the Kaurava court, Krishna spoke about the
importance of unity among the members of the kula, but he dwelt on its utility: if they were together, the Pandavas and the Kauravas would be invincible. He did not treat the kula bonding as a moral value. Later, on the battlefield of
Kurukshetra, when Arjuna refused to
engage in a war against the members of
his kula, Krishna told him that it was his moha (delusion) and impressed upon
him the need to free himself from it in that dharma yuddha and do his duty as a
kshatriya. He had to fight for the Pandavas’ right to the kingdom, which had
been unjustly denied to them by their Kaurava brothers. Krishna told him that
fighting for one’s legitimate rights, denied through adharma, is an act
of dharma and not fighting, an act of adharma.
In Sarala Mahabharata, war
is considered sinful. It is because many innocents die on the battlefield. They
are innocent in the sense that they would not be the beneficiaries in the case
of victory. The soldiers fight and die for others; the war is never their war.
Under no circumstances would a war be justified in Sarala Mahabharata.
But wars did take place. The challenge was to minimise the destruction caused
by the war. That was why Yudhisthira suggested to Duryodhana that only the five
Pandavas and the hundred Kauravas should fight, and the rest should leave the
battlefield. Needless to say, it was unacceptable to Duryodhana.
From the above, it follows that
there can be no “just war”, no “dharma yuddha”. In Sarala Mahabharata, as
in Vyasa Mahabharata, the expression “dharma yuddha” is used to describe
the Kurukshetra War, but in Sarala Mahabharata, for an entirely
different reason. It is not related to the issue of the refusal by the Kauravas
of the Pandavas’ legitimate right to half of the kingdom of Hastinapura. It is
worth noting that in Sarala’s narrative, it was Duryodhana who first used this expression
for that war. He did so when the Pandavas and the Kauravas were making the war
code. He called upon everyone to honour the code. Theirs would be a dharma yuddha,
he said, because Krishna would be the witness. On account of the Avatara’s
presence, the entire battlefield would become a sacred place.
In both Vyasa Mahabharata
and Sarala Mahabharata, the kula suffers incalculable damage. As for kulatwa,
which is bonding with the kula and emotional attachment to the members of the
kula, in the former narrative, it is considered to be moha, therefore morally and spiritually degrading, and useful only for material benefits, whereas in the latter, it is
celebrated as a great human value, justified in itself, that is, not for any
utilitarian reasons. It’s a value to be cherished, rather than discarded as a
human failing.
No comments:
Post a Comment