Are we descendants of heroes or illegitimate offspring of moral violators?
Dr. Jernail Singh Anand
The Gita that was recited by the Lord, no doubt, extrapolated on ‘dharma’ but its objective was to excite anger in Arjuna and make him stand up against the evil. Generally, we denounce the emotion of anger which makes one lose his reason causing harm to himself. What was the form of anger which Lord Krishna was trying to excite in the heart of Arjuna? The dividing line between anger and tolerance is very thin. Relationships, overthink, overgood – all these emotions make one a thinking object, which postpones action, even if he does not renounce it altogether. This is what happened to Hamlet. Overthought is overwrought when action gives way to reflection. Such men are not fit for history.
If Mahabharata is a great mythological moment in the epochal movement of time, it is because Arjuna, who held all the possibilities of greatness, would have wilted under the fear of losing his relations, if he had not been jolted out of his hollow stream of consciousness. How could he fight Guru Daron? How could he fight Bhishma? This stream of disarming thoughts could have made Arjuna unfit for history. He needed a heavy dose of philosophy, in the form of the Gita, which finally made him realize that tolerance was not the creed of the brave. Tolerance is not timidity, but only up to a limit. When it starts showing symptoms of fear, when one feels one is not up to a situation, toleration makes you a victim, not a warrior.
Is it really bad to harbour anger? Scriptures tell anger is a bad thing which destroys the thinking apparatus of man. So one should avoid it. Even in Sikhism, the Sikh is advised to guard against five evils: kaam [sexual passion] karodh [anger] lobh [greed] moh, [attachment] and ahnkar [pride]. Such abstentions are preached by other religions also. ‘Karodh’ [anger] is taboo in religious parlance.
But, what was Lord Krishna doing when he was reciting the Gita to Arjuna? He was making him realize that tolerance beyond a limit was unacceptable to a hero. He must shun passivity and reflection, and take up arms against the evil. No wonder, Arjuna needed an entire Gita to lift up his spirits, and make him feel angry at the indecencies of the Kaurvas. It was anger, whose superior variants are rage, wrath, fury, indignation, anguish, exasperation and outrage which uplift anger from a lowly emotion to a state of divinity.
What is death? A dead man does not react to your tears, your sighs. He is also dead to any indignities that are committed post death. Do whatever you like, if I do not stir, if I do not even cry, if I do not even sigh, and if I do not even try, I am dead. This is the condition of the people in general. There is no anger in the society over the indignities that are being committed on them.
Where is anger which is a genuine emotion when you are being subjected to indignities? When your liberty is being taken away? When your time is eaten away? When you are not given jobs? When you are not given salary? When you have no holiday? When you have no time to play with your kids? When in the offices you are made to sit before laptops and become an equation of mathematics?
If the anger, the wrath, the outrage, the fury, the passion, is missing, if the anxiety is missing, if you think you must tolerate it, and should not speak, are you really alive?
We need Lord Krishna all over again to put the things in the right order. We need another Gita. I wonder if times have really progressed since the Mahabharata. If we lack the anger which rose to the head of great warriors, who then tumbled empires, we need to get our DNA checked whether we are the heirs of great heroes like Arjuna and Bhima or the illegitimate offspring of moral violators.
Read: The fall of the Philosopher
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Hailing from Chandigarh, India, The author is Laureate of Seneca Award, Charter of Morava, Franz Kafka and Maxim Gorky Awards, and President, International Academy of Ethics
