Gandhi, Godse and Geeta

...i wish you had not posted this article on chowk...this is not the place to discuss a topic like this...

Nand:

what a surprise!...welcome to chowk for now...comments later after i have read this...

rgds,

...t

You raise intresting question. Na jaay raftan,na paay maNdan, as far as I am concerned. But I might learn from the interactions of others,more knowledgeable in the subject.A little nit-picking: isn`t it Bheeshm rather
than Bheesham...unless you are a Punjabi.
Regards.

PS to #3
Mr.Tandan,
I apologise for a tasteless query in a tasteless manner.

Godse and Co. were p**sed off that Hindus didn`t put up a fight and saw partition as the final humiliation of Hindus by Muslims. They blamed it on Gandhi`s creed of non-violence.

The irony is that if there was one leader who was against partition, it was Gandhi. Nehru, Patel, Jinnah et. al. being politicians at their core, were the ones who ultimately carved up India.

It almost passed as a moral dilema if script was not that week. Had the author used hypothetical characters instead of real ones (Gandhi & Godse) the case would have been stronger. Allow me to elaborate.

The author establishes the base of this dilemma by mentioning the battle between Kurus and Pandvas. That was the fatal mistake. Author builds up a case around the notions of ``good` and ``evil``. And tries to prove that one of the party was ``right` and the other was ``wrong``. Which means that author is capable of differentiating between the notions of good and evil and also he wants his readers to see in those terms. At this time lets assume that either one of kurus or pandwas can be ``good`` or ``evil``, which means that it is author`s own perspective; he may consider kurus as evil or vice versa.

Now we apply this postulate to Gandhi and Godse. Let us first assume that Gandhi is evil, then we can deduce from the limits set out by author that Godse must be good; conversely if we take the position that Godse was evil then Gandhi must be good. Now here lies the contradiction that voids this dilemma. Since in the first part of his hypothesis author establishes that he is capable of differentiating between good and evil but in the second part he wants us to believe that he can`t decide between good and evil. The second part of his hypothesis thus negates the first part. A thing cannot be true and false at the same time. It can either be true or false; and these were the constraints defined by author himself. In this case Geeta becomes irrelevant.

Nice try though.

[Pandavas have exhausted all peaceful means of obtaining justice from their cousins, the Kauravas, who had refused to return to Pandavas their half of the kingdom. As a last resort, Krishna had himself gone to Kauravas as an ambassador of peace but they not only declined to give Pandavas their legitimate share but also refused Krishna’s suggested compromise of giving Pandavas a token of five villages, even five houses. Pandavas were left with no other choice but to fight for their right or give in to their cousins’ tyranny.]

Does the author claim that the Pandavas were in the right when they claimed a half-share of the kingdom?

Dhritharashtra, elder brother to Pandu, was blind but he was still the king, with Pandu acting as the Regent. The law of primogeniture says that Dhritharashtra was the king and it is only his first son Duryodana who had the right to succeed him. So where do the Pandavas have a right to a half-share in the kingdom? After all, the first-born Rama succeeded his father King Dasharath with Bharath, Lakshman, etc., acting as loyal brothers but not as claimants to any share in the kingdom. It was precisely for this reason that Kaikeyi demanded that her son Bharath should be king knowing that Bharath had no chance otherwise.

I think the entire Mahabharatha story is being wrongly interpreted with Pandavas being the good guys and the Kauravas the baddies. I don`t think the Pandavas collectively had one legal leg to stand on.

UrsTruly:

I agree that the author tries to build a case of ``good`` versus ``evil`` in the first case. That is because the Mahabharata itself portrays the ``good`` Pandavas against the ``evil`` Duryodhana. However, Krishna`s discourse is not based on good and evil. It is based on Karma and Dharma. The author does mention correctly that it was Arjun`s decision to be the commander of the Pandava army, and having made that decision, it was his duty to fight. He weakens his hypotheses by giving the background of the Mahabharata, which is missing in the actual discourse to Arjun.

The author`s interpretation of Gandhi and Godse is therefore closer to the essence of the Gita.

Very perceptive on your part though.

++

Godse believed that Gandhi was responsible for the vivisection of his beloved motherland, had betrayed the Hindu nation and was the cause of the loss of life and honour of millions. Therefore, he deserved to die. There was no joy in this task for Godse. In killing Gandhi, he was just fulfilling what he believed to be his dharma. In his mind, he was following the same course of action that Krishna had asked Arjun to follow in the Geeta. Having accepted the role of the assassin, he did not let his personal feelings for Gandhi prevent him from carrying out his “dharma”.

So, who was following the message of Geeta in the true sense? Gandhi, Godse or both? If both, should holy scriptures play a role in morality?

++

Author makes the assumption that he knows that all decisions Gandhi made were made after deep study of Geeta only. This is not true. In his Autibiography he describes a dilemma resolution formula. You can find English translation of his autobiography at: http://www.mahatma.org.in/books/showbook.jsp?book=bg0001&link=bg&id=1&lang=en. This is the translation by Mahadev Desai they probably have tried to preserve pagination of original print edition. The formula is on pages 49-50.

Apart from vivisection there were issues which became bones of contention between newly created India and Pakistan. Gandhi seemed to be taking side of Pakistan`s side on some of the issues. For example the issue of dividing pre-partition Rupee fund. Gandhi kept on meddling on many issues and his stance appears to be formulated after applying the formula a little overzealously.

-ew

STUKA!!!!!

I am in Delhi (ok, in Palam Vihar, Haryana....) till Dec 21, except for about ten days at the beginning of Dec when I`m in Bombay/Pune. Gimme call on 636 9395. Use the Harayana area code (look it up in book :-)). Talk soon!

Urstruly, harimau:

To add a contextual twist to the good vs. evil debate let me propose that in the modern day Hastinapur, India represents the Pandavas and Pakistan the Kauravas :))

Now who`s good and who`s evil? Whatever---- I thought teh article though pretty weak at a fundamental level, made for interesting reading!

RSaxena . . . I thought we could discuss everything at chowk, so why are you being so diffident about matters?

Getting back to the question, I would think that both Gandhi and Godse, amongst many others, were following the inner call of their respective consciences. Whether these consciences were overtaken by reading scriptures, philosophies or whether these consciences were stuck between ego and angst is something that many can find out if they read Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Or Joseph Heller. Or study histories of lifetimes of people they know intimately, not histories written by others of periods past.

Good article on chowk.com, asks a question many of us in India ask ourselves as we compare the cells at Yervada versus the cabins at the Aga Khan Palace nearby, in Poona?

Nand,

The central element of the advice in geeta relates the attitude with which a task is to be performed, it should be in a detached , disinterested manner with out any sense of ego, beyond the notion of good and bad, in a trascendaental manner. Most of the main charectors like drona, bheshma etc knew the outcome of the war and who would kill them, still they fought like hell in the purest sense of ones duty. The war stopped at dusk and the two enemies discussed matters as friend only to resume the fight early in the morning, that was thir task, there was no animosity.

This is in sharp contrast to the notion of jihad where the promise of heaven leads to war in an ultimate display of greed and haterd as evidenced by the mutilation of bodies in kargill invasion.

In terms of the purity of intentions, may be gandhi and godse are comparable. Contribution of godse to the enduring legacy of gandhi is not insignificant. He terminated the life of a great soul at its peak, delivering the ultimate test to the greatness of a man who died with the name of god on his lips as gandhi himself fpretold....

...`` ...If I die with an assasins bullet with out the name of god on my lips, you can be sure that I was not a mahatma...``

Godse is critical to the greatness of gandhi, part of the scheme of things, and with out some kind of influence of gita on godses part, the greatness of gandhi would have been diminished....

The time and the manner one dies adds pognancey to the entire life...John F kennady today .....he would have been draged through the courts...

dost-mittarji

Welcome ! Its always nice to know chowkwallahs real names :).

Thanks for a thought provoking article. IMO such a topic requires experts to credibly tackle the huge scope of the subject matter and do it full justice.

My 1-paisas` worth on the questions you raised in the end:

``should holy scriptures play a role in morality``
If you mean the Geeta, IMO it depends on individual inclination. In my humble opinion, a person`s morality is his own responsibility and holy scripture can at the most be a guide, a reference or a corroboration (or a negation as the case may be) :).

If by holy scriptures, you mean the Mahabharata, well there are strong traditional advisories against doing so. One such warning adage is that no copy of Mahabharata should be kept in the house, as it will cause strife in the family. Another is if a person reads the Mahabharata in a single sitting, he will lose his sanity. The main reason as I understand it is, that the Mahabharata raises more questions than it answers. Its storyline and characterisations are such that there are , no simple and moral certainities illustrated, no simple and clear cut role models, in other words, very grudging relief offered to the reader as to unambiguous affirmation of principle.

``So, who was following the message of Geeta in the true sense? Gandhi, Godse or both?``

Gandhi was a great man who did a lot better than us ordinary joes, IMO, inspite of and given his faults.
I am not acquainted with Godse`s thinking, but I don`t think he was being true to the Geeta. For one, he didnot use his head very much, it seems, about what he was trying to accomplish by killing Gandhiji. Correct me if I am wrong but Gandhiji was at the time almost 80, and already detached from public life and the hustle bustle of a new country`s governance. At such a time, the assassination of Gandhi only led to a public backlash against those whom Godse had ideological sympathy with, that people held it up as a reason to keep them at arm`s length and consequently Gandhi`s (and their opponent Nehru`s) agenda only got strengthened not weakened.

Incidentally, something I`ve been wanting to point out wrt the Mahabharata war and Krishna`s role in it is that Krishna was cousin to both the Kauravas and to the Pandavas, so he didnot wish to either take up arms personally nor take sides. So he offered that he himself would join one side as an unarmed noncombatant and his army would fight on the opposite side to balance things out.

Arjuna chose Krishna as noncombatant to be on his own side(and Krishna served as his charioteer) and Duryodhana was equally happy to have Krishna`s Yadava army assigned to fight on the Kaurava side.

Krishna`s elder brother Balram displayed yet another degree of detachment, he was so angry and disgusted with the whole idea of war between the cousins that he refused to have anything to do with it and went off on a long journey.

The contrast between Krishna`s and Balram`s courses of action is a simple example of the sort of question the Mahabharata raises but doesnot answer. Which is, given a conflict among those whom you love, is it helpful or harmful to stay put and try to see justice done or is it best to stay away and wash ones hands of it.

Sadna

``. Another is if a person reads the Mahabharata in a single sitting, he will lose his sanity``

A couple of episodes that I watched on TV did that to me. However, I must admit that I have hots for the chick who played the role of Subudra, Lord Krishan`s sister. She can definitely cause strife in a family, if you know what I mean :)

I must confess that sometimes -- there are moments of altered states of my mind -- when I end up writing Pure Trash on Chowk --

what I didn`t know is --that it can happen to some of my best friends as well.....