The Mahabharata and the Indian Politics

The Mahabharata and the Indian Politics

The war of the Mahabharata was purely for mundane purpose. This war  engineered for share in booty of previous wars and for share in ancestral property. There was no noble cause behind the war. Even the dignity of woman (Draupadi) was  not at stake and in the same way general good was not an issue responsible for the war. If u see subtly you find for the  peace last proposal from Krishna on behalf of the Pandavas was a demand for five villages from the empire of Hastinapur. Neither the woman's dignity nor the genral good was even discussed either with enemies or within their own close circle. 

   And Krishna motivated Arjuna and other brothers . In one sense he was right as the enemies were not ready to listen anything and were arrogantly shrewd and confident. But even then one thing is very disturbing. In course of convincing Arjuna he propagated or better say reignited the concepts which had defined human beings as puppets in the hands of pre determined destiny. Even the theory of Karmayog was  not a sufficientt tool to re- energise the dampen spirit of Arjuna and at last Krishna had to attach the goodness of Karm yoga with the concept of pre determined place of human beings in the larger set up the Varna System-an umbrella organization for classification of people based on heredity. Here it is pertinent to make observation that the primary place of human beings in that umbrella set up was the birth and karma of the earlier life. And Arjuna could be motivate at last not by Krishna's arguments about intangible concepts of Atman and Parmatman but by the logic of Varna system in which he was Kshatriya by his birth. If Krishna's logic for distribution of people  into different varnas according to their Gunnas most of the Kaurav people could not be defined as Kshatriya . But in reality both Kauravas and Pandvas were treated as Kshtriya. This is self contradictory in itself. So the entire logic of Dwyait and Adwyait was just a tool to keep common people under the awe of God and so called God's design .

   This scheme to rationalize rulers ' self interest by invoking the idea of religion was nothing but a ploy to justify rulers misdeeds . There was no evidence of misrule under Dhritarashtra for which the Pandavas would have fought. The war was to satisfy the rule by heredity and nothing more.

      And this has been transmitting from generations to generations. This  is basic politics in India even today where the politics is still based on issues of birth based identities and question of common good has been conspicuosly absent from our democratic descourse. There has been no  efforts  to bring the question of  common good in democratic politics. In the past Charvaks ideological argument and Buddha' s traditional of rationalism were expelled from political main stream and the most irrational things like intangible conepts of Atman and Parmatman, strong demorlization of manual labour , heirarchial  classification of people on  the basis of birth based occupations were promoted. Even where rationality was allowed as argued by some that was allowed with in the perview of this  scheme. No one was allowed to try innovations beyond the limits of this identity based political mileu. Even Mahatma Gandhi could not dare to cross this limit. And so no serious effort was ever allowed to break this boundary and to make politics free from religio-political concept of birth based karma system.  A very few lumeneries dared to do so but they were effectively banished from political and cultural streams. The most damaging conequences include the rise of religiousity and communalism  and birth and growth of castist and communal  middle class which is  antagonistic to the  ideas of freedom of masse from the clutches of issues of birth based identities . So even after 76 years of Independence we are still fighting on the name of the nation. This is the most sinister and most deplorable growth of Indianness. Identity based unity is always very very fragile and short lived. This is true not only for Indian subcontinent but for every region of the world. No where in the world , identity politics could have generated peaceful coexistence . The countries dominated by the same religions do always engage in infighting, Ethnic issues bring bloody clashes as we are suffering in Manipur which is India's own "Rwanda moment" So was with the Indian Subcontinent also. Clashes during Partition time, very big scale communal conflicts , caste conflicts , linguistics clashes, earlier violent clashes in Darjeeling, Assam, Tripura Mizoram etc were the by products of this identity politics which are rooted in our famous karma theoretical perspective which gives priority of violence to protect identities. But we have failed to read between the lines. Try to shed this age old affliation and to embrass ideas of tolerance in public life. This is the only way to save us as India i.e. Bharat. Otherwise many  Mahabharatas are in offing in our public descourse .