The Cure For Terrorism Is Virat Brihad Hindutva

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<span style='color:red'>Leadership & Managing Power – 2</span>

<b>Insights from Mahabharata</b>

<i>Pradip Bhattacharya</i>

Karna: I am myself alone—self-destructive power

Karna, like Bhishma, harbours grievance against his mother and is chained by an outdated concept of loyalty to a benefactor, regardless of the innate merit of the situation and the superordinate goal of lokasangraha. The mainspring of his actions I, however, not even this dharma, but an obsession with himself. For Karna it is social status and recognition that constitute the source of power. Indeed, he is the true counterpart of Bhishma’s Egotistical Sublime. The fact of his inferior birth is a poisonous ulcer eating into his soul and impelling him to acts of incredible prowess, conquering single-handed for Duryodhana all the territories that the four Pandavas had won for Yudhishthira’s rajasuya yajna. Once he had even worsted the mighty Jarasandha, who gifted him the town of Malini in appreciation. For the same reason he took the vow of never refusing a mendicant, and thereby knowingly deprived himself of his invulnerability and his benefactor Duryodhana of sure victory.

Thus, as in the case of Bhishma, it is inflexible determination to stick to one’s word, whatever the consequences, which leads to doom. In both their cases, their own self is prized above all else [in the case of Karna, even above his much vaunted loyalty to Duryodhana and his goal of slaying Arjuna]. Although Karna does not emerge victorious in his encounters with Arjuna and even with the Gandharvas when Duryodhana is captured. Yet he alone saves the Kaurava host from annihilation at the hands of Ghatotkacha. It is of him that Yudhishthira is the most apprehensive. Krishna sets much store by Karna, Knowing that if he stands aside Duryodhana would not dare go to war. On more than one occasion Krishna tries to persuade Karna to join the Pandavas, the last being just before the battle when Karna, Achilles like, had withdrawn from the battle because of Bhishma’s insult. Even Bhishma regarded him as a great warrior ad deliberately insulted him to take advantage of his hypersensitive self-image and keep him from fighting his brothers. Bhishma provides a valuable psychological insight into Karna’s character when he informs him that because of his birth against the law of nature—supra-human and mortal intercourse not sanctified by marital rites—he developed an unhealthy envy of nobility of character which was accentuated by his keeping company with a mean individual like Duryodhana.

But, it is this warrior who publicity terms Draupadi a harlot, asks that she be stripped, and joins six others to attack the teenaged Abhimanyu jointly, against all canons of fair battle. It is Karna who seals the fate of this mighty teenager by cutting his bowstring from behind. Unfortunately, Vyasa does not tell us of the inner workings of Karna’s mind and heart. In lending a hand in killing his rival’s son did he feel he was in some way avenging his many defeats at Arjuna’s hands? In calling Draupadi a whore about whom it is of no concerns whether she is clothed or naked, was he taking revenge for having been publicly rejected by her in the svayamvara on account of his caste?

All this shows his confusion over what dharma and power are all about, and it is this confusion about dharma that is flung back at him by Krishna when he entreats Arjuna to wait till has extricated the chariot wheel from the mud, and can take up arms again. Karna, too, is a man divided against himself, yet undoubtedly noble in his silence about his mother’s secret and wise in his judgement. For, he tells Krishna not to reveal the secret to Yudhishthira who will invariably offer the kingdom to him and he will inexorably hand it over to Duryodhana. All his tremendous power has throughout been put in the service of adharma because of his profound sense of a lacerated ego. Here is a hero who knows, like Bhishma, that he is on the side of wrong, but is a slave of his word and will not shift to support what he knows to be the right. His greatness as a man shines radiantly in the fact that while he knows that he is battling his blood brothers, and is promise-bound not to slay them, they are all eager to kill this charioteer’s son! His slicing off the skin-armour and flesh earrings is an external symbol of the inner splitting-in-two of his very psyche. One part of him knows that Duryodhana’s plans are evil. This part in Karna is all that is admirable in a human being. It is the “Surya” part of him, shining in an effulgent glory which rivets all attention on him right from the beginning. This it is that catches the eye of Duryodhana who grapples Karna to his breast with hoops of steel. It is this part of him that defeats each of his brothers in turn, except Arjuna, and lets them go unharmed (even with a kiss on the infuriated but helpless Bhima’s cheek) although by killing them or by capturing Yudhishthira for Duryodhana [as Drona had planned] he could have ended the war.

However, a miasma of intrigue and evil envelops this sun in Karna. The chariot-wheel of Karna’s life is, as it were, entrapped in a quicksand, being sucked under slowly but surely, as he connives in the heinous abuse of state power by Shakuni and Duryodhana, with the blind monarch Dhritarashtra eagerly acquiescing. The helping hand of succour offered by Krishna is rejected on egotistic grounds alone. As Krishna points out:

“The world is doomed because you do not accept
my advice.
When the world’s doom nears, my friend,
wrong appears right,
wrong gets embedded in the heart
and stays there.” [27]

All that Karna is concerned about is that his reputation must remain unsullied at all costs and he must find out who is better: Arjuna or himself. Karna has waded in too far by now to return. Perhaps death is his only salvation.

(contd.)