Swami Gober's Bhagavad Gita Commentary: Introductory Essay - 11

In True Light

He who thus knows in true light My divine birth and action, after having abandoned the body is not born again; he comes to Me, O Arjuna!

Bhagavad Gita, chap 4, ver 9

Sri Krishna, the Avatar of God, actually the Godhead himself, has happened in the Mahabharata; but what is his role in the whole drama? What did he accomplish at all besides reciting the Bhagavad Gita, if indeed that could be counted as an accomplishment? He proclaims most resoundingly in one of the most recognized verses of the Gita – I incarnate again and again to protect the righteous, to destroy the wicked, and establish righteousness. Forget the 'again and again' part, just focusing on the avatar that is directly associated with the Gita: What did he do to help protect the righteous (the Pandavas), cause the destruction of the wicked (the Kauravas), and establish righteousness? Nothing, zilch. His is a totally expendable character in the Mahabharata epic, contributing nothing beyond a lot of essential glamour to the story. That is the role beautiful heroines usually take on in Bollywood movies, just stand on the sidelines mostly, appear from time to time and keep pumping in glamour. As I've been saying, Krishna comes out as such a useless character, so desperately trying to find some purpose to his pointless existence, that I really feel pity for him. Krishna is charming, flamboyant, no doubt, but life is not all just about glamour and pizzazz. Even in the war he is in a non-combatant role as per his own wish, so where on earth is protecting the righteous and destroying the wicked? To begin with, the good side, or the supposedly good side, is more than a hundred times capable of defending itself. They might have had rat-sized brains, but that wouldn’t have made much of a difference. The Pandavas were a mighty force unto themselves with or without Krishna, there was simply no overwhelming need for Krishna to exist!

In the Bhagavad Gita though, Krishna seems to be telling that he has taken all this trouble of being born on the earth just to kill Duryodhana, though an iota of his assistance wasn't really needed to accomplish this task. Arjuna and Bheema could have taken good care of that. However, the propaganda makes up for what is lacking in the story itself. It makes us believe that Duryodhana was so evil and so unbelievably powerful, that the greatest force of good there was and the divine force of God himself had to join hands and even then could only put down Duryodhana with the aid of some cunning and luck!

So who is this oh-so most wicked Duryodhana and what did he do? Just knowing Duryodhana in true light places the Pandavas, Krishna, Vyasa and the whole Mahabharata in true light as well. From typical Hollywood or Bollywood movies we learn that the raison d’etre of the hero is determined by the villain. The protagonist’s heroism, greatness, claim to fame, purpose of life, all flow from the competence and caliber of the antagonist(s). Without Dr No and his illustrious successors, James Bond would be wasted, so is the case with Green Goblin & co. and Spider Man, the Joker & co. and Bat Man.

Who is this Dr. No, this Green Goblin, this Joker Duryodhana, who seems to give meaning to the existence of the Pandavas and the great God Krishna himself, and sets the whole Mahabharata rolling. Of what caliber and competence is he and what great evil did he commit? As disappointing as it may sound, in all there are about five relatively minor charges leveled against Duryodhana. In this essay we will look into the first two of these allegations in detail and argue in defense of Duryodhana. The remaining three — among which is the most damning of all allegations, that Duryodhana invited Yudhishthira for a gambling match and kept continually winning — are so silly that they are not even worth considering. Nonetheless, we would be looking into them a bit here and there in various contexts in the subsequent essays. It is important to clear the first two charges because unlike the remaining awfully silly accusations, these involve premeditated, cold-blooded murder attempts, which have in fact created Duryodhana’s whole reputation for evil. Seeing the shallowness of Duryodhana’s evil is a good way of seeing the hollowness of the of the Pandava goodness, the greatness of the Mahabharata’s ideology, and Krishna’s self-proclaimed divinity. Duryodhana is as evil as the Bhagavad Gita is holy, both the attributes having been solely generated by machinations of mindless propaganda.

The first allegation is the attempted murder on Bheema when they were all kids around 13-14 years old. This act is what started the most wicked and reprehensible career of Duryodhana. Now, though Krishna and other self-righteous characters may not have known this, it is common knowledge nowadays that a good number of sociopaths undergo seriously abusive and traumatic childhoods, and that's what dulls their moral sensibilities so much. Duryodhana, though, was a prince and had the most pampering of parents, still Duryodhana went through what one can consider a traumatic childhood. So by whom was he abused and traumatised? Yes, by a horrible, vicious bully known as Bhima, the second of the Pandavas!

Duryodhana was enjoying a normal childhood, everything was just going fine. And suddenly one day the Pandava brothers along with their mother land in the Hastinapura palace from nowhere claiming they are his long lost cousins. Okay, that much is fine. And from then on, Duryodhana, his hundred brothers (though he has a sister she is excluded), and the five Pandava brothers go to study and play together. Bhima plays the big bully here. He is a very crudely physical guy, he roughs up the Kauravas in every possible way, subjects the Kauravas to every possible humiliation and degradation. He almost wipes out any sense of self-respect and dignity in the Kaurava group while the rest of the Pandavas remain gleeful spectators:

Whenever they (the Pandavas) were engaged in play with the sons of Dhritarashtra, their superiority of strength became marked. In speed, in striking the objects aimed at, in consuming articles of food, and scattering dust, Bhimasena beat all the sons of Dhritarashtra. The son of the Wind-god (Bhima) pulled them by the hair and made them fight with one another, laughing all the while. And Vrikodara (Bhima) easily defeated those hundred and one children of great energy as if they were one instead of being a hundred and one. The second Pandava used to seize them by the hair, and throwing them down, to drag them along the earth. By this, some had their knees broken, some their heads, and some their shoulders. That youth, sometimes holding ten of them, drowned them in water, till they were nearly dead. When the sons of Dhritarashtra got up to the boughs of a tree for plucking fruits, Bhima used to shake that tree, by striking it with his foot, so that down came the fruits and the fruitpluckers at the same time. In fact, those princes were no match for Bhima in pugilistic encounters, in speed, or in skill.

Bhima was breaking the knees, shoulders and heads of the children, all hundred and one of them! Drowning children until they were nearly dead! Making them fall from big trees, and getting their bones and limbs broken. Dragging them all around by hair on the ground. Pure sadistic pleasure. Bhima was terrorizing the Kaurava children in every way he could, and this went on for years. The text goes on to say “Bhima used to make a display of his strength by thus tormenting them in childishness but not from malice.” But this goes without saying! By definition, the Pandavas are the symbols of virtue, how can they ever do the least thing smacking of wickedness! In fact, Bhima's child-like frolic and fun are what the author fondly calls “these wonderful exhibitions of Bhima.” I think what is most wonderful is that freaks such as Veda Vyasa, absolutely devoid of any sense of discrimination, are born on the earth at all!

The Kauravas must have complained to their then guru Kripacharya and the most venerable Kuru elder Bhishma who was the guy in full charge of them. But these two must have said “No, no, you children shouldn't be such cry babies. The Pandavas are the embodiments of virtue, you should imbibe virtue from them.” Then they must have reminded the children something in line with that famous Swami Vivekanda quote “Strength is life, weakness is death.” So all Bhima was doing to the Kauravas was imparting them strength training. He may have been a little rough in his childishness sometimes, but how could there be any malice, the very thought of it! (Pray tell, if Bhima was doing all this in the spirit of childishness why was he not manhandling his own brothers?) The elders must have supported Bhima, or at least preached tolerance to Duryodhana, or else this terrorizing and traumatizing couldn't have gone on for as long as they did. At the most, there would have been one or two instances, and Bhima would have been severely reprimanded. But since the Pandavas were symbols of virtue, it never occurred to anyone to do anything about the situation.

It was left only to Duryodhana to do something about it. He must have tolerated and tolerated for years, crucial formative years, but there are limits for toleration. In the Mahabharata story, Krishna once publicly executes a king named Shishupala for abusing him verbally. Among a royal gathering of hundreds of kings, on a solemn occasion, Krishna decapitates this king in a most gruesome manner and spills blood all around. Krishna simply says, “I have tolerated this king abusing me verbally 99 times, 100th time he is done for.” The servants clean up the bloody mess, and ceremony proceeds as usual. Duryodhana must have tolerated not a hundred times but two hundred times, and not just silly verbal abuse, but wanton, barbaric, physical brutalizing. However, Krishna can kill anyone as he wants under any pretext, he is always lauded the great wise God unerring in his dispatch of justice, but when Duryodhana attempts to kill it becomes the grossest act of evil.

Also, Duryodhana had to opt for murder because he couldn't get Bhima beaten up in any way, that was simply out of question. Punishing Bhima in any manner was not feasible, firstly because there was no way to do so, and if there were, an injured Bhima would retaliate on Duryodhana in a most horrible manner. Duryodhana was therefore compelled to get Bhima killed.

In later years, Bhima would murder a fellow by name Kichaka in such a horrible, trademark style, simply for soliciting Draupadi not knowing who she actually is. During the one incognito year of the Pandavas after their 12-year exile in the forest, Draupadi is working in disguise as a maid and hairdresser for a queen of a big kingdom. The queen's brother, and the supreme commander of the army, sets his eye on Draupadi. Draupadi is just a lowly servant, he could do anything with her if he wanted, yet being rather gentlemanly he only proposes to marry her and make her his chief spouse and promises to fulfill her every whim and fancy. Draupadi of course refuses saying that she is married to some invisible gods. Naturally, Kichaka wouldn’t take that seriously, and in all earnestness, continues proposing Draupadi. He simply has no idea how a servant maid could refuse his offer of making her his most beloved consort. One she abruptly dashes him to the ground and leaves the room. Kichaka falls flat on the ground. Just driven by the force of habit, he runs after her and kicks her so that she falls on the ground too. That's it, his fate is sealed!

Bhima, also working under disguise in the same court, first lures Kichaka into a trap, and then they fight like WWF champions for a long while shaking up the whole building. Finally, Kichaka yields and is lying weak and trembling on the ground. Now Bhima does what even a hardened psychopathic killers can barely contemplate:

And that foremost of mighty persons (Bhima), squeezing his own hands, and biting his lips in rage, again attacked his adversary and thrust his arms and legs and neck and head into his body... And having crushed all his limbs, and reduced him into a ball of flesh, the mighty Bhimasena showed him unto Krishna (Draupadi).

Now that gives a fair idea of the kind of person we are dealing with here. When Kichaka's relatives try to avenge the dead one and kill Draupadi at the event of Kichaka's funeral, Bhima uproots a tree and kills all 105 of them. So Duryodhana had simply no way to go about it and try to get even with Bhima other than fatally poison him. This is exactly what he does, poisons him and lets him drown in a lake. Although he also intends to imprison Arjuna and Yudhishthira later on in order to preempt their vengeance strike, this is only wishful thinking on Duryodhana's part, for it was not yet within his power to do so. The matter doesn't even get that far however, the poison fails to kill Bheema and the whole plan of Duryodhana is foiled.

Any normal child in Duryodhana's place would have done exactly the same thing, it was just a survival and defensive measure. However, for doing so he was continually reviled, maligned and vilified. Veda Vyasa already attributes all negative qualities to him, evil, jealousy, unrighteousness, ignorance, pride, ambition, arrogance, hatred etc., in the passage where he makes a mention of Duryodhana's intentions on Bhima. And the God of the Universe was already born somewhere around to see to the destruction of this Duryodhana, this hideous, unspeakable evil that has just started rearing its ugly hood — there seems to be nothing more important to do on the agenda of the Cosmic Creator! (God of course knows beforehand who would turn into evil beings of cosmic proportions, so he is born when they are born, so that he would be grown up by the time they would be grown up).

The second allegation: Duryodhana's attempt to burn the Pandavas alive and kill them. This is a story that takes place eight years after the first murder attempt on Bhima. Duryodhana is the eldest child of the king Dhritharashtra, who himself is the eldest son of his father. Hastinapura has been ruled by the Kuru dynasty for over several centuries now; the simple fact that the Kauravas are called the Kauravas, taking the name after the clan while the Pandavas take the name from their father Pandu, indicates that the Pandavas have nothing to do with the throne, they are a side line. So, in the traditions of primogeniture, the kingdom is to be inherited by Duryodhana. In normal circumstances, there would have been absolutely no question or dispute about that. However, the deceased father of the Pandavas was the younger brother of Dhritharashtra, and owing to Dhritharashtra's handicap, Pandu had ruled the kingdom briefly before he departed to the Himalayas along with his two wives for some personal reason. The Pandavas were born in the Himalayas. Yudhishthira, the eldest of the Pandavas, technically did not have any right to the Hastinapura throne overriding that of Duryodhana. And Duryodhana of course always grew with the idea that he would be the future monarch of Hastinapura. But suddenly the Pandavas make their entrance and stake claims for the throne. Because of their unlimited virtue, the Pandavas have gained the favor of Bhishma and a few other elders. Bhishma does a nifty trick, he mingles the Kauravas and the Pandavas together and nominates the eldest among them for kingship, whereas only the sons of the reigning king should have been taken into account.

Even by that criterion, though, Duryodhana was conceived one full year before Yudhishthira was conceived! However, he was not allowed to be born normally. Vyasa, seeing that if the child of Gandhari took birth before the child of Kunti he wouldn't have any epic story on his hands, very cunningly messes up with Gandhari's pregnancy. He gives Gandhari the blessing that she would eventually bear one hundred children, even though she didn't ask for any such preposterous boon. What woman would want to bear a hundred children, is this a blessing or a curse? Just imagine pregnancies for hundred years continuously! Anyway, Vyasa blesses and God knows what he does with her, her offspiring is not delivered even after two years of gestation in the womb! Three months after Yudhishthira was born to Kunti, however, Gandhari beats her stomach in frustration, and out comes a shapeless lump of flesh, thanks to Vyasa's blessings and secret experimentation on Gandhari. Vyasa was of course half-expecting something like this, and he appears ready on the scene. He does some further experimentation on this lump of flesh, surgically cuts it and puts the pieces into incubators. Duryodhana is finally born from one of those incubators four years after he was conceived, whereas had his birth been not tampered with he would have been born one full year before Yudhishthira. Anybody in Duryodhana's place would have been sorely vexed with all this conspiracy by Vyasa, Bhishma and others in power and position to deprive him of his rightful inheritance.

Even then Duryodhana did nothing. And Yudhishthira becomes the heir-apparent of Hastinapura.

Dhritarashtra, moved by kindness for the people, installed Yudhishthira, the son of Pandu, as the heir-apparent of the kingdom on account of his firmness, fortitude, patience, benevolence, frankness and unswerving honesty (of heart). And within a short time Yudhishthira, the son of Kunti, by his good behaviour, manners and close application to business, overshadowed the deeds of his father.

“Firmness, fortitude, patience, benevolence, frankness, unswerving honesty” — this is how propaganda works. What do these characteristics translate to in concrete terms, we have no idea. The Mahabharata is full of stories, why isn't there a single story to illustrate any of Yudhishthira's virtues in any real sense? There are all kinds of side-track stories in the epic, while Yudhishthira is in many ways the central character of the epic, and there isn't one story where his virtues are highlighted in themselves, in action and behavior and not solely by the aid of propaganda.

The very last popularly known story in the Mahabharata epic moves around Yudhishthira, but again it is just propaganda, doesn't demonstrate anything virtuous about Yudhishthira, and in fact like the whole of the Mahabharata only succeeds in brazenly highlighting Yudhishthira's idiocy. This last episode of the epic tells how the Pandava brothers along with Draupadi go walking to reach the heaven in the last phase of their earthly lives. They have to climb and cross the Himalayas on bare foot to reach the gates of heaven, and only the truly 100% virtuous ones would be able to traverse all the way and reach the destination. On the way, Draupadi falls down from a hill and dies. Bhima asks Yudhishthira why has she fallen, the foremost of virtuous and faithful wives. Yudhishthira answers: Indeed she has been most virtuous but she liked Arjuna more than the other brothers, that's why she had to perish on the way. Now, Draupadi or any other woman would naturally like Arjuna more, he was also her original love and original husband, these other brothers only forcefully marry her in most bizarre circumstances. Besides, how could any woman possibly love such an arrant retard as Yudhishthira? But he must have been terribly jealous, he cites this as the sole reason for her unexpected death and failure on the path of dharma, her partiality toward Arjuna! But as they progress on the way to heaven, all the four of his brothers fall down one after one and Yudhishthira alone, the supremely virtuous one without a single blemish on his character, reaches the gateway to heaven. This is the way of propaganda! Throughout the epic, we only get to see Yudhishthira's unbelievable idiocy, lunacy and outright fraudulent behavior, but here he is the first and only person in all of human history ever to reach the doors of heaven in the physical body. Apparently his body has been so virtuefied throughout Yudhishthira's long life, it doesn't need to die to go to heaven as in the case of even the other Pandavas. At the end of this episode, there is finally one small concrete test to confirm Yudhishthira's virtue for all eternity. While the brothers and their wife had been walking up the Himalayas, a stray dog tails them. Not once does Yudhishthira or the brothers pay the creature any kind of attention, but by the time Yudhishthira reaches the heaven's door, only this dog is left accompanying him. Indra, the god of heaven, who is there to pick Yudhishthira up forces the dog to go back, but Yudhishthira being the childish idiot that he is, insists the dog too should allowed to enter the heaven, since it followed him so faithfully all the way up the mountains. Indra says “Don't be idiotic, dogs have nothing to do in heaven, they would only create so much nuisance to all the people enjoying the nonstop song and dance festivities.” But Yudhishthira is adamant, he says without dog I am not coming. Indra is immensely pleased, and also it turns out that the dog was not a real dog but just a test. This freaking idiot Yudhishthira is about to terminate the earthly existence of poor innocent poodle that was just casually following him, and he is hailed as the most perfectly virtuous soul that ever lived on the earth for doing so!

This bizarre and lunatic episode is supposed to be the ultimate demonstration of the ultimate virtue of Yudhishthira. There is also another lunatic episode like this in the middle of the epic narrative, where the Pandava brothers again die (though they would be brought back to life subsequently), which is supposed to be the ultimate demonstration of the ultimate wisdom (in juxtaposition to virtue) of Yudhishthira. Except for these two episodes we see nothing but relentless propaganda and panegyrics about Yudhishtira's unsurpassed virtue and wisdom, along with his long and tedious dharma talks every so often.

Yudhishthira has been declared the heir apparent, superseding the right of Duryodhana, simply because he is a childish idiot, meek, mild-mannered, and utterly incompetent to do anything. That is the reason Bhishma and other elders want him to be king, so that they can easily pull the strings from behind. Duryodhana, in contrast, is independent-minded and is not easy to be manipulated. Citing Yudhishthira's virtue, the above-quoted text says “good behavior and manners” — like a seven-year-old child, that is all he is good at. And this good behavior and manners mostly translate to respecting the elders, honoring them, pretending excessive humility. In India respecting the elders is considered the supreme virtue; even if you were a psychopath or a serial killer, just act overly submissive before the elders and you would be praised as the personification of culture, virtue and innate goodness — serial killing and all, everybody has some minor character deficiencies of course. Duryodhana is perpetually persecuted and Yudhishthira is endlessly esteemed, simply because Yudhishthira knew this trick of putting on inordinate humility — good behavior and manners — before the oldies, while Duryodhana was acting somewhat free-willed and free-spirited.

Then the text says about Yudhishthira's qualities, “close application to business.” What business no one knows! This Yudhishthira is just fit to do nothing, and that is a most apparent fact! For instance, all the Kaurava and Pandava brothers train intensively under Drona for ten years, each of them becoming masters at one or other martial skill by the end of their education. Arujuna alone excels at all skills, and Yudhishthira is again bloody good at absolutely nothing. However, we can imagine, the author of the Mahabharata could never admit as much, so he writes that after training under the greatest living master for over a decade in all kinds of martial arts, Yudhishthira finally became proficient at driving the chariot! What a tremendous accomplishment! One wonders, why not proficient at feeding the horses?

So Duryodhana's throne is not only usurped, but it is usurped by an utter imbecile, second only to Krishna in the qualities of virtue and wisdom! We can understand Duryodhana's frustration and humiliation. If Yudhishthira goes on to become the king, Duryodhana and his whole line of descendants would forever fall into oblivion, while this moron and his brothers would go on getting glorified both on the earth and in heaven.

After Yudhishthira's nomination as the heir-apparent to the throne of Hastinapura, the official power and army has already come into the Pandava hands in good measure. Meanwhile, the Pandavas and the Kauravas complete the last phase of their training under Drona and graduate summa cum laude. No sooner are they out of school than the Pandavas go on a rampage of plunder and warfare. This again works on the same bully principle of Bheema, but Arjuna is more in charge here. These two warriors were like the mafia of those times. They would just go around bullying all the kings around, or just whoever takes their fancy. They would press a king into submission with or without a fight, often by mere threats. Then they would extract a large booty from the king and send it to Hastinapura. If the king refused the booty, it is assumed he would be killed and his kingdom would be destroyed. These military campaigns of the Pandavas are not conquests and efforts at unifying the country in any sense, for these idiots haven't the slightest knowledge on how to govern a kingdom or work for prosperity of the society, nor any inclination to get themselves into such things. These people were simply the biggest terrorists of their times, they were only good for killing, menacing, looting and pillaging. In the process they also get even with some kings who dared to defy their father Pandu decades ago. Pandu too was good at roaming around the country gathering loads of booty, and this was mostly all he did in his brief tenure. And good portions of this looted wealth by Pandu would go to Bhishma, his mothers and grandmother, and other people in power, none of it to the people of Hastinapura.

The Pandavas might have started a minor revolution of sorts by becoming willing to share the untold plundered wealth with some of the less prominent citizens too. This explains the sudden surge in their popularity, although this is not explicitly mentioned in the text it can be easily guessed at going by the clues. Just like their father did, they buy the loyalty of most of the ministers in Hastinapura's court, and in addition that of many of Hastinapura's citizens. Now the Pandava agenda is to carry out a virtual coup, otherwise they may have to wait 20-30 years before Dhritharashtra finally retires or dies. The easiest way to do it is sway the public opinion in their favor. They already have this reputation of being tremendously virtuous, so the could just exploit it. Citizens start slowly murmuring, clamoring for the abdication of Dhritharashtra and the crowning of Yudhishthira. It's the same trend within the court too. Now both Dhritharashtra and Duryodhana get agitated by the developments. Duryodhana starts a counter campaign of buying back the loyalty of some of the ministers, but he realizes he cannot achieve much by these efforts. The situation is already going out of hand.

So Duryodhana in consultation with his inner circle of Karna, Shakuni and Duhshasana (the so-called Evil Axis, literally the 'Evil Four') decides that they need to buy some time to be able to deal with the situation. The best way to do it is send the Pandavas away into some kind of exile for some time, if only that were possible. Some sports events are about to commence at a province called Varanavata, it seems. Duryodhana pleads his father to convince the Pandavas to go there for some time. And only with an intention to resort to it should all his efforts fail here, Duryodhana arranges for a situation where he could kill the Pandavas easily at their holiday resort. The thing is, the Pandavas cannot be killed easily. Conventional things like attacking and stabbing wouldn't work with them. Therefore per force Duryodhana had to take recourse to the idea of burning them down to death even though that is a horrible way of killing someone. But the circumstances leave him with no other option. Thus starting on a note of lack of resoluteness, Duryodhana hatches a very dumb and inefficient plan to burn down the Pandavas. He sends a guy to go Varanavata and build a makeshift palace with inflammable materials. Pandavas are of course in the know of things as they are happening, courtesy their trusted uncle Vidura, the prime minister of Hastinapura court and a Pandava mole. The Pandavas see a golden opportunity here! So Dhritharashtra just had to suggest and they are all eager and raring to go to Varanavata and spend a few holidays there. The idea is that they would escape the murder attempt but disappear, letting everyone assume that they are dead. Citizens and everyone would cry for them, Duryodhana would be cursed and execrated all over, for the homicide aspect of the burn down would only be too apparent and the prime suspect even more so. At this juncture, the Pandavas would make a reappearance, and then usurping the kingdom would be a cinch, with enormous public sympathy and support on their side.

The Pandavas go to Varanavata and reside in this inflammable building that gives off a horrible stench of ghee, hemp, resin and other gluey, oily substances. Vidura arranges for expert miners to dig a subterranean passage for the Pandavas to make an easy exit. The games in the town are over in ten days, but Pandavas wait on for the burning down in great patience. Unable to bear the infernal stench of the place (which they pretend not to notice), however, they go on touring and hunting all the day and return to the stinking palace only to sleep. Days pass by, and weaks and months. But Duryodhana cannot take any decision and tarries on, and here at Varanavata Duryodhana’s man in the charge of the Pandavas cannot execute anything not receiving any orders from his master. One full year is over. Nothing happens. Even the wise and virtuous Yudhishthira is irked this time. They cannot wait any longer, so they decide to set the palace on fire themselves and slip away. There you have it, it is not Duryodhana who makes an attempt to burn down the Pandavas, it is the Pandavas themselves who set the palace on fire!

Then the son of Pandu (Bhima) set fire to the door of that house of lac. Then he set fire to the mansion in several parts all around. Then when the sons of Pandu were satisfied that the house had caught fire in several parts those chastisers of foes with their mother, entered the subterranean passage without losing any time. Then the heat and the roar of the fire became intense and awakened the townspeople.

The Pandavas escape and live incognito for a good while thereafter, so that the public sympathy they are counting on is given time to incubate and mature. They make a reappearance at the appropriate time, also bringing Draupadi along with them. Crowds are jubilant, and Dhritharashtra immediately partitions the kingdom and gives one half away to them without ado. The Pandavas get everything, and Duryodhana only gets calumny. He becomes the great murderer and the great evil one, all without doing anything much and without killing a single soul!

Guess who are the most loathsome and cold-blooded murderers here. It is the Pandavas! Duryodhana may not have had any mind for sending into them into that dumb ghee-stinking palace, but the Pandavas don't seem to have any heart or soul, any considerateness at all. What actually precipitates their decision to burn the house down that particular day was their discovery of an elderly lady and her five grown up children, mirroring the Pandavas and their mother, in the town bazaar. This family belongs to the Nishada caste, the tribe of Ekalavya. One would think that the Pandavas would have been amused on spotting a family just like theirs, and would have tried to communicate and connect to them. They in fact do so, but only pretend to do so. They bring them to their lac palace as guests without any outsider's knowledge, ask them to be excused for the stench, and then proceed to treat them to lavish meals. They feed them well, make them totally drunk, and when they have all gone unconscious, the Pandavas get ready and set the palace on fire, burning the six innocent people along with it in total cold blood! Absolutely nothing like a conscience or human sensitivity the Pandavas seem to have. These five people from the lower caste served the Pandavas' nefarious purpose, so they are just used and burnt them down like logs. And there was absolutely no need for indulging in this atrocity. Burning human bodies in inflammable materials would have turned everything into bones and ashes, just like a body on the funeral pyre. There would be no CSI investigators checking upon the scene, the Pandavas could have just procured a lot of bones and ashes and sprayed them about. However the mother and her five sons family was readily available for sacrifice, the Pandavas didn't have any scruples anyway, so why not add a more realistic touch for whatever it worth?

The Bhagavad Gita is not just a philosophical treatise, it comes with a bunch of promises and assurances. The one most outstanding among all of them is: I, Sri Krishna, the Lord of the Universe, have taken incarnation on the earth to protect the good (the Pandavas), destroy the wicked (the Kauravas), and establish the rule of righteousness (the Pandava rule in Hastinapura), and I will do so again and again for ages to come. The Lord only seems to be interested in protecting cold-blooded murderers who moreover seem to have no qualms about killing openly and in public knowledge. The Lord is also hell-bent on destroying people who have not murdered anyone, who are leading their normal lives in the lot allotted to them by life, trying to guard their identity and existence from the encroachment of powerful nefarious elements. And what is this rule of righteousness Krishna speaks about? We will see in a subsequent post how Yudhishthira and his openly and blatantly plundered the whole country in a most systematic fashion to fill the treasuries of their kingdom.

I just want to clarify one point here. My version of the lac house and other incidents above is based on Veda Vyasa's original text. I have stuck to all the key facts, and I usually do, only taking the freedom to play with some connectivity issues. Like the Bhagavad Gita or even more so, the Mahabharata is horrendously inconsistent and gets grossly illogical every so often. The text seems to me to be desperately involved in all kinds of cover-up jobs. For example, the Pandavas have just returned from their first looting and pillaging campaign across the country, they have displayed their already much vaunted might and prowess to everybody. At this time Dhristharashtra proposes Varanavata, and the text says though Yudhishthira knew about the evil plan of Duryodhana, he had to simply give in to Dhritharashtra's wishes because the Pandavas were “weak and helpless.” This is such glaring nonsense. Dhritharashtra was only offering a suggestion, and Yudhishthira could easily turn it down with or without citing any excuse, and without causing much dent in his 'good manners' reputation either. And the Pandavas were not anything like weak and helpless, in fact they could have initiated a coup then and there if they could risk a little damage to their reputation. Seeing that the statement in the original epic made no sense, I had to come to the most obvious conclusion that the Pandavas realized how they could turn this whole affair to their advantage. Again in Varanavata, the text says that the Pandavas could have refused to live in that stinking place Duryodhana built for them but that they became terribly afraid that should they do so Duryodhana could then resort to more drastic means to eliminate them. So they had to simply endure the painful protracted sojourn in the lac house like stupid helpless cowards. The text in fact continuously portrays the Pandavas throughout this segment as fleeing cowards mortally afraid of incurring Duryodhana's displeasure. That is the reason they live at the lac house for so long and then go into hiding for so long. This is all just stupid meaningless propaganda. In my version of the Mahabharata narratives, I cut through such ridiculous blather sometimes dispensed by Veda Vyasa and try to join 2 and 2 in a more plausible manner.

In this world, though, joining 2 and 2 seems to be the most difficult thing to do for most people. But just doing that would throw so much light on the divine birth and action of Sri Krishna, and many more things besides. In fact I think he who knows the art of joining 2 and 2 would not be born again in this world, having achieved perfection of intelligence! He would then ascend to the heaven of enlightenment and from there would be able to view the whole world in true light. It is so simple!