Mahabharat on Bhagwat Gita

The Gita has been recently the very centre of a new-age Mahabharat, fought in the distant land of Russia. An appeal had sought to ban the holy text on the premise that it enshrines a militant ideology. Though the appeal has been set aside by the Russian court, the issue has highlighted the enigma that is Gita.

Like all other religious texts, the Bhagwat Gita is allegorical and lends itself to dual interpretation.

On one level it is a very mundane historical drama which graphs the interplay of the righteous Pandavas and the devious Kauravas. Read from this reference point the exhortation of Lord Krishna to Arjun to take up arms against his very own kinsmen to gain back lost land and prestige is seen as realpolitik at its very worst. Or sheer wordly-wisdom of life's battlefield.

Dharma or duty inherent in life-circumstance of a person is what Krishna holds as the supreme arbiter of morality. Hence a soldier has to fight and kill if enemy attacks his motherland. Right has to be acquired with might, if need be.

It is such a world-view which leaves Gita open to charges of extremism. A world-view which justifies violence as a means to fulfill one's dharma.

But Gita is an esoteric text. It is esstentially a handbook of self-realization. The characters of Mahabharat are both at once, historical and allegorical.

Sudied from this point of view, Gita depicts the eternal battle between the good and the evil tendencies which goes on within each one of us.

If Kauravas symbolically represent our innumerable evil habits and tendencies then Pandavs are symbols of our few good and strong 'samsakaras.'

When Krishna tells Arjun to take up arms against the enemy and kill it, it refers to the 'fight-to-finish' battle which each person must undertake in his journey to self-realization, or mere better life.

This dual philosophy is what makes Bhagwat Gita an enigma. A text which is open to multifarious interpretation. The Gita has been variously positioned as a religious ritual text, as a handbook of vedantic philosophy, as a textbook of devotion, as a manual of yoga, as a book of modern management, among other things.

Now it has been anointed as a textbook of extremist philosophy. Not bad for a 5000 year old manuscript.

Pakistani Subcontinental Broadway Show

Pakistan Premier Gilani has gone where no Pakistani prime minister has gone before. He has vocalized his concern about the belligerence of the Army and the ISI. Few days earlier Gilani has voiced his concern about the insubordination of these two Domestic Mavericks; their lack
of accountability to the Pakistani Parliament. He was concerened about a coup by the Army.

This is not something new. The specter of a military coup has haunted the subconscious
of successive elected Pakistani premier. Even President Asif Ali Zardari was allegedly haunted by the banshee of an imminent coup. Hence an impassioned plea to the US for intervention in the
post-Laden domestic scenario.
Or that’s what the Memogate purportedly brings to the fore.

The octopus-like grip which the Army has on the state of the nation is a reality
which every government in Pakistan has to live with. It has existed prior to
Gilani. It will exist well after him. So why the hue and cry now??

The reason may well lie with realpolitik pressures from the United States and the world at large. Post-Laden pressure has been building on Pakistan to prove its ‘honest credentials’ vis-à-vis state sponsored terrorism.

The Pakistani ruling elite has been ill-placed between an increasingly aggressive US and a very defensive and sentimental domestic populace. Situation is such that there is almost a cold-war between the two countries and diplomacy is operating inconclusively from such sub-zero milieu.

Before the two nations ‘came to blows,’ so to speak, or attracted punitive sanctions and put into utterly defensive and submissive postion, it was imperative that Pakistan acted.

Hence the masterstroke by Premier Gilani. By condemning the belligerence and insubordination of the Army and the ISI it has washed its hand off any and all misdeeds of the army.

So sanctuary to Laden, sanctuary to Al Qaida and other terror misdeeds springing from a deviant army/ISI has been shrugged off by the Prime Minister as nefarious activities of the Dread Duo… which is not reporting to the elected power elite anyway.

It now remains to be seen how United States takes up this gambit to normalize relationship with one of its most important ally in the region. Pakistan has done its part to give the dialogue cue to
America to act its next scene in the ensuing subcontinental Broadway show.