Gandhi, Godse and Geeta

re:#71 by rsaxena
In believing or disbelieving Mahabharata, i would rather go by what sages and seers have to say than what some in this chowk are saying. After all what expertise have you or others to say the events really did not happen? If Mahabharata did not happen the way it is being taught, enlighten us as to how it happened.
Of course, Mahabharata is full of symbolism. But the symbolisms are based on real life events. Most Indians miss out on the symbolism and read Mahabharata as a family drama.
So, did Krishna really exist or is he also a myth? After all Krishna forms an important character in this whole epic drama and without him, the epic is nothing.
In this regard, may i point out that a whole new city of Dwaraka has been excavated in 1987 off the coast of Gujarat under the sea by S.R.Rao and his colleagues, putting to rest the mythical Dwaraka. The German archaologist who spend all his millions in trying to find the city of Troy did find it: not one but seven of them one below the other (i am forgetting his name but you can surf the internet and find out).
So, in these matters let the sages speak. Yogananda wrote an eminently readable book on the symbolism of Geetha. He does concede that Geetha was perhaps imagined as a coversation between Arjuna and Krishna by Vyasa. Vyasa was a very spiritual and liberated soul and he wanted to tell the spiritual truths and it is entirely possible that he did introduce this imaginary conversation happening just before the epic war.
Rest of the events in Mahabharata is as real and you and me. So says Yogananda, one of the great masters that India has produced in the last century. I think i will let it rest at that.
Sridhar

re:#69 by jay
You seem to be baffled by too many magical things that happened in Mahabharata. What is it that baffles you? That India had already reached the pinnacle of glory, both spiritually and materialistically or that compared to India`s pathetic condition today, all that is being said in Mahbharata looks like fairy tale?
Without going into controversial things, all i have to say is that science today does not have all the answers. I have seen how science works. It depends on facts. There is no book of science that says God exists or there is something as a soul. Yet, these were the very things that concerned the Sages and Yogis of the past. Many of them seem to have transcended time and space by being one with God. One of them wrote a classic in sanskrit (often quoted by Wayne Dyer, the eminent pschologist and new age Guru in USA). Yogasutra by Patanjali details how to scientifically approach and merge with God. It also details the benefits (including many Siddhis or powers) that accrue during the process. The process occurs in stages and is painfully slow and few can even attempt it. However, it has been done and many yogis of present and past are a living proof. If you or anyone else in chowk says this is all nonsense, it is too bad. It still does not change the fact that it has been or is being done.
I would recommend you or anyone else in chowk a book by Paul Brunton. It is called ``A search in secret India``. Now, Brunton was a British journalist, a well educated man. He was intrigued by yogis of India and he went in search of a real Guru. On this journey, he witnessed a number of miracles that he has written about in the book. This book became a best seller in 1930s, a time when few knew or cared about yogis. BTW, Brunton was also the first man from West to have written in detail about Yoga and introduced yoga to the west. Did he finally find a Guru? Read that book. It is unputdownable.

Sridhar

re:#67 by arjun_m
Proof, Proof! Let me see. Is there a proof God exists? Is there a proof there is something called a Soul? What kind of proof are you talking about? One which can be held in hand or seen under a microscope? Is there something called a life experience? Close to 95% (perhaps more) people in this world (leaving China, we do not know how many in China believe in God though officially it shuns religion) believe in God yet only a handful have experienced or seen God.
How about soul? The best available technology cannot document the presence of a soul in the body, yet it is felt and people believe in it. Raymond Moody became famous for research on NDE (near death experience) and documented this elusive entity. Popular culture in the west does not support it and wants scientific proof. You seem to be aping the west when you talk about proof.

Sridhar

I have driven past Kurukshetra many times but never visited it..is it worth stopping by??

My post #70
PS: correction : Gandhiji was in E Bengal from end of Oct 46 to sometime in Jan 47(more like 2-3 months not 6)

re: rsridhar

{Majority of Indians (including educated ones like me) believe Mahabharata and the epic battle really happened. }

...the mahabharat represents some of the most profound thinking on the human experience...it is creative and imaginative...perhaps there is symbolism based on real events of the time....but let us not insult the author by suggesting that we think it all really happened, particularly as described...

sameer /dostmitter -- at the end of the epic war almost every one of the Family was dead except the Pandavas brothers –

It is said that poor Pandavas were so heartbroken with that pyrrhic victory that they, with Draupadi, self-exile themselves to mountains in Nepal in an area that borders UP.

Interestingly enough even today, up in the high mountains of Nepal -- there is a tribe that claims Pandavas as its ancestors -- and practices Polyandry among its people!

Sadna,

One can quote various verses and interpretations of gita and tie oneself in knots. In an operational sense, hinduism did not include the upliftment of the downtrodden, compassion for the fellow humans. It is worth noting that untill recently there has been no hindu charitable organisations, no orphanages, no salvation army to help the poor, no system for collecting contributions from the avaerage man in the street to consolidate to a common good as in a christian society. No love thy neighbour, no sakkat. Helping the dalits and non-violence are the christian/ budhist rereading of gita by gamdhi, no one in the past had done that.

Many rich indians , maharajas have indulged in charity at the promptings of private karma, not from a notion of social obligation. Hinduism is devoid of aany social consciousness as we understand it today, weach left to her/ his own karma. Ironically, this is the strength of hindus today, adapting to the cultures from fiji to surinam to the US.

Sridhar,

Quoting from memory dating back 30 years, Aurobindo in his essays on gita talks about the role of adi sankara. Till sankara came along there has been no mention of gita in the discourses by earlier scholars. It was sankara who promoted gita to the present status at par with vedas and upanishads. Final comment by aurobindo is that if it was inserted by sankara, he has done a splendid job.

As you say, sankaras main challenge was to contain bidhism and he achieved this by making Budhha the 9 th avatar, another god in the hindu pantheon. Now dont tell me that you havnot heard of this.

Arjun,

Reality of mahabarat war could be important for the historians and archeologists. The sory covers the entire gamut of human life and as a setting for the gita is superb. I prefer to believe that it is fiction, too many magical things that defy reality, but are good props to eccentuate and intensify the human drama.

dost-mittar #55

Thanks very much, that was informative and painful to read.

I too donot agree with Godse`s reasons for his assassination. He seems to have been so angry he blamed Gandhiji for everything without accepting the inability of Gandhiji to influence events and choices beyond a point.

After understanding Jinnah and the Muslim League were out of the reach of Gandhi`s influence, Godse contradicts himself in his condemnation of Gandhiji. Why blame Gandhi for something Godse himself says he could not change, namely the creation of Pakistan?

Godse`s implication that the influence of Gandhiji on the Congress policy was so complete that he solely was responsible for conceding Partition is not supportable by facts, in my view. Godse condemns Gandhiji and the Congress for the opposite, appeasing the ML and conceding Partition. He would have been even angrier about `appeasment` had the Congress accepted ML demands. Godse would have never gotten what he considered `practical politics`(I believe), namely Hindus unashamedly asserting domination of numbers and the Hindu Mahasabha demand of one man one vote.

His generalization that Gandhi abandoned Hindus to their fate in communal riots is also mistaken. For example, Gandhi travelled to Noakhali ? East Bengal and remained there for 6 months (Oct 46-March 47) working to restore peace after post-direct action riots there targeted the minority Hindus including their women.

The core reason for the assassination seems to be this: Godse thought that after Gandhiji`s death, the Indian government would feel free to attack and retake Pakistan to put an end to the humanitarian disaster. He was mistaken in this, too not sure why exactly, one reason was possibly because the British hadn`t quit the Indian Army and wouldnot have stood for it. Was Godse unaware of this ? In any case would attacking or threatening Pakistan have led to an end of the humanitarian disaster or compounded it? Did Godse ever ponder over this?


This is just my speculation, that at the time, Gandhiji had a much larger time scale of concern than the immediate present. (One can understand this would have looked very much like inhumanity to the refugees who arrived in India). What Gandhi had forecast much before was that splitting India on religious lines would create two perpetually hostile militarized states with their minorities under perpetual seige(someone had once posted this, I`ll try to find it again).

If he couldnot stop Partition and he couldnot stop the violence, what Gandhjii could attempt was damage control : 1.establishment of trust and amicable relations between the new India and new Pakistan 2. ensure safety and future of Muslims in India.

Though professing himself a patriot, Godse was too full of immediate events to comprehend the above two issues vital to the country`s future. Was Gandhiji being realistic in trying to accomplish the above, given how politically incorrect his stands were alongside the violence and the large scale misery? Don`t know enough history to answer that. But events of the succeeding years prove that if Gandhiji had such apprehensions and aims, he was not wrong to have them.

About whether Godse was right or wrong in doing what he considered his duty.
Lets say there is a road with cars and trucks travelling on it and many people cross that road daily.

An adult man sees people crossing the road. Though in full possession of his faculties, he hasnot understood the significance of the cars and trucks on the road or the fact that everyone who crosses looks on both sides for approaching vehicles before crossing. He also fails to understand the importance of a sign which says cross the road carefully. He simply thinks if others can cross the road, so can he, period. One day he thinks its his duty to cross the road. He does so, and he gets hit by a car and he and the car passengers die and road is closed for 2 hours while they mop him off the pavement.

Is there any meaning in pondering that since he was doing his duty as he thought it, was he right or wrong? Or whether should people cross the road when they know others may be mislead into doing so unsafely? Should roads be built and should we manufacture cars and trucks?

We may say, for the protection of those individuals who are not out and out rash, judgements of pedestrians go wrong so let us have public awareness campaign including short films where fictional character A got hit for carelessness and fictional character B crossed safely after taking precautions. Let us build an overbridge and impose a fine for not using it. But the same man was intent on doing his duty so he said I am willing to pay the fine, and look the fictional characters A and B crossed the road so I will too. He did and many got killed.

Is there any point in asking then whether the man is right or wrong?

Dost Mittar,

Great piece! And many of the responses were as interesting as your question. Will be looking up the Geeta this summer.

Just a quick couple of thoughts;

Yes, it was quite possible for Godse to read the Geeta and situate himself within it in the way he did. The dynamics of morality and context are reflected in reader interpretation-the number of invisible narratives within a text are innumerable. Godse found one narrative and created another-albeit murderous and tragic.

Has anyone been watching the PBS docu on Jimmy Carter? His Christian conscience and humanism supposedly was perceived as ``idealist`` and ``weak`` by a country (the majority, anyway) unused to such vision. So heckled was he in his role as an international peacemaker that I suspect he wasn`t fulfilling his role in the mainstream American narrative-Americans and their gas comes first, and honest self introspection was the last thing Washington players do....

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#64, #61 sridhar, arjun_m

It is a deeply futilize exercise to look into older religous traditions and debate whether or not certain figures were ``real`` or not.

Was there really a dude called Abraham in the middle-east? Was there really a jewish rabbi called Yeshua (Jesus) around 10 BC? No one really knows and certainly no empirical evidence exists of their ``reality``.
Similar comments apply to Mahabharata and Ramayana.

What is important is that these figures and stories (I have heard the term ``sacred stories`` used) are deeply important to a lot of people. Hence, it is valuable to understand what (1) the exact content in various sacred stories (2) people;s interpretation of the same.

dosy-mittar #53: I understand the problem with the timeline of Mahabharata war and the final copy of Bhagawad Gita. Although it is read as eyewitness account, in present tense, it is not necessarily formulated in the final form at that time. As for Mahabharata war goes, it has been suggested a war between conservatives and liberals, between Punjabi plains and Ganges plains, between first cousins on inheritance of throne and so on. It is true that they did not get mentioned in the jatakas of Buddhism, just as Jesus did not get mentioning by the first century AD well-known historians. Not getting mentioned, not taking place or taking place later can not be easily deduced from the accounts. Many western authors date it to 5-6 century AD durng Gupta dynasty. It is the time when perhaps it was finally collated from various sources. The original event may or may not be as big as it sounds, if composer had vested interest in the memory and grandeur of winners.
However, it sounds that event took place much much before 500-600 AD.
Historical evidence exists of Jat and Rajputs tribes in Punjab during this time. One well-known example is around 500 AD gravestone that reads, burial of the Jat prince of Salpura. The names of Punjabi tribes in Mahabharata do not make any mention of these two major groups. Not a single tribe name of 10 tribes mentioned supporting Kauravas resemble to any current tribal name. It is impossible for all ten to completely disappear without trace in 1500 years. Only one, perhaps a conservative tribe, from Sivipura (Shorkot) who opted to support Pandavas is traced to modern day Sials due to their presence in large numbers in this area and certain features that suggest them to be an older tribe than later Scythian migrants. If this has any truth, the war took place in BC and not AD. Going back to 200 BC, many of the names mentioned in Alexander`s history in India are traceable but again the ten lost tribes of Mahabharata are not. I am ``convinced`` that Japanese are the lost ten tribes of Punjab and not the lost ten tribes of Israel. How about a *wink* here?
Similarly a fermented drink mentioned in Mahabharata, favorite bhangra party drink of that time totally disappeared from history. There can be two possibilities. If the war is during AD, it was a minor local conflict. If it was a big war, it is much older.

Shall we see another Gandhi soon?

Gandhi has often been described as an excellent agitationist with superior communication skills. Some of his writings, corrected for timeline and history, would have made excellent blogs.

Yes, we shall see plenty of Gandhis challenging the system . . . and there are so many more countries for the emerging Gandhis to choose from, too. I think Gandhis spring from the most restrictive of systems.

Any bets that Pakistan will see a Gandhi emerging soon?

re:#61 by arjun_m
Dude,
Majority of Indians (including educated ones like me) believe Mahabharata and the epic battle really happened. You know that right. Some idiot you are.
Sridhar