The wisdom of Mahabharata Posted by Sibi Sukumar , Saturday, August 26, 2006 at 5:58 AM, in

While historians have debated as to when the Mahabharata was written, it was beyond doubt centuries before Lord Acton’s (1842-1902) perceptive observation in a letter to a friend. Yet, this writer cannot think of a single Indian intellectual who has quoted Bheeshma on power while he can recall several of them quoting Lord Acton.

Few other instances, perhaps, illustrate more poignantly the alienation of a large section of Indian intellectuals from their own intellectual and cultural well springs and identification with those of the West. What merits criticism is an obsessive admiration for the West that leads to the neglect of India’s own intellectual and cultural heritage, its great epics and monumental works on religion and philosophy. For one thing, it would mean the nonutilisation of the wisdom, insights, customs and practices that have evolved in the matrix of the country’s history.

Familiar to most people, these could be useful for promoting the kind of enlightened values a society needs for its progress, and framing policies as well as strategies for implementation. For another, pride in a country’s achievements, which can only come through awareness of these, gives a nation a sense of destiny that enables it to find its rightful place in the world. It must, however, be a pride tempered by wisdom and morality. Also, it must be accompanied by knowledge, which enables a country to recognise its national interest, shortcomings, the greatness of the culture and intellectual traditions of other nations. In India’s case, the need to draw from its own repositories of wisdom is all the greater given the profound treasures they contain. The Mahabharata is a striking example.

Bheeshma’s answers to Yudhishtira’s questions reflect a deep understanding of the compulsions of realpolitik. They cover a wide range of subjects including a king’s virtues and his attitude toward his subjects, the appointment of his advisors, and the qualities to be sought in them and other important functionaries of the State. Leaders of political parties choosing candidates for elections to legislatures should bear in mind that legislators should not only be honest and sincere but “have the courage of the truth with them all the time”

And, of course, Finance Minister P Chidambaram should remember that a “good king levies taxes as a bee gathers pollen from flowers, gently, without injuring the people” (Menon, Vol II, p 597). Also, the Mahabharata has stunning insights into the future. Thus Rishi Markandeya says that the kings of the Kali Yuga, which descended on the earth on the tenth day of the battle of Kurukshetra and prevails even today, “will be short-lived, greedy and rapacious”, and that “wealth alone will confer nobility, regardless of a man’s birth or his character; power will define virtue”. “Terrible wars and demonic diseases will decimate the human race, and savage cold and scathing heat, scorching droughts and sweeping floods will terrorise the people....”

Did Markandeya foresee global warming, AIDS and Katrina, which savaged New Orleans in the US? One does not know. It is unwise to read too much into past events and observations in the light of later developments, particularly since in an epic like the Mahabharata one does know where facts end and fiction takes over. It is a great treasure chest of wisdom and the country will be the loser if it continues to ignore it.