Gurcharan Das
I’d liked Gurcharan Das’ “India Unbound” (that was a long while back, I haven’t read his later works) and I’m generally a sucker for all things epic, so buying this was a given.
The blurb created quite the hype for me by stating that the book “shows us how we can come to terms with the uncertain ethics of the world today.” (a world which according to them can be compared to the one in Mahabharata) On hindsight, this does seem a reasonably impossible task and I should have figured that out before I started.
If one takes this expectation of an answer out, it is an excellent read. An insightful work, the author has taken pains to analyse the epic in great depth, specifically on its perspectives on the nuances of dharma. What he adds to this is also the views by great philosophers across time, and their analyses of characters and situations. There is a lot of focus on the war itself, because many of the ‘contradictions’ of dharma play out then – the Pandavas using questionable tactics many a time to achieve victory, and Duryodhana’s consistent approach to his value systems. Yudhishtira comes under scrutiny most of the time, because he is the paragon of virtue and all things dharma, though it is interesting to note that the epic debates even this!
Through the book, the author does try to draw a parallel to our daily lives, how we react to situations, and how it measures up when viewed through the lens of dharma, but this is at best, patchy. He probably realised this in the final pages, where he sought to make some amends. But this is probably the book’s only ‘flaw’. In many ways, I thought this was a mirror of the epic itself, which is also inconclusive on many things, but offers many perspectives for us to fashion our own answers.
The first half in particular is a treasure trove of some excellent quotes and thought processes, which really allowed me to analyse my own thoughts, ideas and actions. This has tremendous relevance in an age when transactional value has an importance greater than the conscience, and dilemmas on morality and ethics are abundant if one does choose to dwell on them. If you’re even remotely interested in the Mahabharata and what it is trying to communicate, this is a must read!
