Wendy Doniger, the American Indologist, called the Bhagwad Gita a dishonest text. Many of us wondered why would Narayana himself order a man wishing for peace to pick up arms?
Several academic papers, books and popular articles linked televisation of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata with the rise of Hindu nationalism. We Hindus started to sway between taking the texts to be mythology or history.
The truth is, Hindu texts are so extensive, so vast, so diverse and so detailed that most of us have barely read any of them.
At a four-day course on the Mahabharata organized by the Indic Academy, Prof. Vishwa Adluri asked why an author enters his own text and makes himself a part of his creation, and why VedVyasa enters the Mahabharata himself in such a physical way.
The answer transformed the way I look at the Mahabharata. Vyasa blurs the line between reality and fiction. The text is the Universe, and the Universe a text. Thus reading the epic is the same as entering the universe.
Prof. Vishwa Adluri, who co-taught the course with Dr. Joydeep Bagchee, said that the Mahabharata was so intricate and detailed that it contained all the stories that could be found anywhere in the world—love, betrayal, war, reconciliation, retaliation, and love and hate for the divine.
Vyasa by being part of his own creation breaks the distinction between nature and the world. The Mahabharata adapts existing material as a guide for conducting ourselves in the daily Kurukshetra, both inside our hearts and outside in the world.
One of the most important takeaways from the course was the focus on how Kali Yuga, the time when dharma is in decline, is also the best time to learn about and practice dharma.
Both Adluri and Bagchee brought home the point that to learn from the Mahabharata we must approach the poem with an attitude of respect, with a belief that it has something to teach us.
Author: Charu Uppal
Image Source:
http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/hi/files/2015/09/8428516729_cd92044a60_o-Copy-1050×701.jpg
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