Dr. Vishwa Adluri on the Mahabharata as Dharma’s Grand Design | Upclose with Ashish Dhar

Added: 2026-04-30

[00:00:00]criticize Hinduism from morning till evening. You're just wasting your life.

[00:00:06]You could have been such a good Christian. You are just knocking the crutches off of youngsters. History with a happy ending is the model also for Christianity except in Christianity the Messiah has already come. How Mahabharata critiques this anthroposity of >> in the Mahabharata neither man even the king uh nor even a society or even the universe is an end in itself >> because if you read the Mahabharata and you read it with the right approach the with shreddha and bi >> you have a few conditions there quite a few about shreddha about you know the right way and so on it's not that difficult.

[00:00:58]Suktanka in his wonderful book on the meaning of the Mahabharata says >> so welcome Vishua and it's an honor and a pleasure to be sitting next to you and having this conversation we if you remember back in was it 2017 or 18 >> Mhm. when you did the Indica workshop uh we discussed that we could you know have this conversation back then but your schedule was tight and then the next time you came and did an all-India tour that time also we missed it then a lot of things happened finally you are here you know this is after a tapasia of 8 years >> well I'm very happy to be here Ashish um I always enjoyed our conversations and um I thank you today and I thank upward.

[00:01:51]I thank your initiative. It's really good to be here today. I'm very happy.

[00:01:56]>> Thank you. And you know in in between these years we also did a video uh on the tip of the tip of the iceberg of what you what you talked about in the nay science and you know people really liked it. Our followers appreciated uh the video and the work that has gone behind it. Um and so a lot of our early viewers are already familiar with your work >> but I suppose you know over the last few years we've acquired some new viewers and uh while we are talking we will cover some bit of the elementary stuff that you know for people's understandings of what you've done and then maybe get more into the latest happenings and uh what all you're doing right now. Uh let me say that the nay science was a very very technical book.

[00:02:50]Uh obviously it challenged some of the established notions in indology. Uh so it had to be very very dense and well researched with lots of footnotes and biblio bibliographic information. you did a great job with the little video and I watch it sometimes and I I think to myself, gee, he makes it look so easy. Um, so that's a fantastic job. So, thank you for that.

[00:03:25]>> Thank you. Thank you. Uh, so last time you came to India was pre-COVID, of course. Uh uh how was CO for you and what have you been working professionally on since then?

[00:03:38]>> Uh nobody wants to be reminded about CO and I really don't want to even re recall what happened. It was dark. Uh it was a very very bad period uh of in everyone's life. Many people lost fa family, friends. Uh the psychic stress on everyone was so intense. Um so uh there was nothing much to do. So I kept reading. Um and through my readings um I finished reading the Brihadaranya in great detail and also the Bhagavat Purana. And in doing so I found uh an interpretation of varnash dharma that the upanishads which are before the mahabharata and bhagavat purana which clearly references the mahabharata.

[00:04:48]Here I found an interpretation of our dharma which I found to be quite useful.

[00:04:56]We live in a society where uh varna is interpreted as cast uh with endogamy and exclusion and so on. But the vanama system is a little bit different. So for example um in each person's ashrama one is supposed to go to the forest and two of the four ashramas have nothing to do with your birth status. So, so I did >> as in the last two, >> the last two. Um, so I began to think about it more and more and the figure of Vidura began to attract me a lot. Uh, he explicitly calls himself a Shudrai.

[00:05:49]He is disenfranchised in the Hastapura court. And I found that critique to be a little more nu a lot more nuanced than the critiques we hear uh in the intellectual field today.

[00:06:08]uh to give you one example uh while we were going through co and before and after American politics and I'm an American citizen uh American politics uh had taken on issues like black lives matter and so on uh but at the same time the Supreme Court has all the judges coming from just two IV league universities Harvard and Yale. So there is a kind of a privileged system that is endemic to societies or even if it is not it is so plain in our faces. uh yet we frame our critiques in such a way that they are not contributing to a dialogue uh especially a productive dialogue. It has just ended up polarizing uh us humans, Americans, human beings.

[00:07:19]And so uh Vidura became like it was he has a force. It was almost as if he was calling me uh to interpret his life and Vidura as you know is Dharma himself born in Ashundrai. So that is immense and I looked around in literature and Vidura is a minor figure and so on. Um so I at the American Academy of Religions they were doing a special the they have a presidential theme which was about exclusions and so on. So I submitted my paper there. I got accepted um and I kept working even after the uh the conference on vidura.

[00:08:16]So that's what I've been doing. Vidura vidura va.

[00:08:20]>> Oh excellent.

[00:08:21]>> Uh you mentioned that of the four ashramas do have nothing to do with birth. uh is that is that um um you know uncontested position like in from within the tradition because the syasa also has certain eligibilities as far as I have read.

[00:08:40]>> Yes and no. have eligibilities but those eligibilities are vaya and bacti or or at most bakti but viragya is the only eligibility there is to those two ashramas and whatever your social status be at the time of leaving you renounce or you begin renouncing everything by the time you come to syasa you also uh take away your the the sacred thread uh and you wash your hands of all ritual uh adikara or eligibility applies only to the ritual portions of our lives. So um it is common sense that uh varna and syasa have nothing to do with your birth status. So to be very clear in the varnish dharma if we look at the ashama varna does not play a dominant role in two of those uh varnas. Then I began to look at where it plays a role in two ways. In the case of Brahmanas for example uh their adikara is to perform the ritual mostly uh not just perform the rituals all the vijas perform the ritual uh but their task is also to preserve the texts to uh to transmit the texts and to educate um society. So they are playing that academic function as well. The vicas on the other hand are the economic engine of society and it benefits all. In the case of chhatrias usually there is no problem. Everybody accepts that we need warriors and soldiers and military.

[00:10:54]What I began to see is that the inequality is not arising in our present society out of Brahman's ruling and taking over. um except pushitra and one or two other extreme cases or rare cases the brahmanas held on to sacred power not secular power and our discussions do not make that distinction between sacred power and secular power. um at least in the Mahabharata those two powers are meant to not just complement each other but also to serve as checks and balances uh on each other. So the king would have the might of arms and force and that kind of power. The brahmanas would have a different kind of power which is sacradal power. that has say or they are the guardians of dharma and I've looked into the kingship in the Mahabharata and the king actually cannot make any new rules. So when we think of monarchy in the west uh we think of the king uh for example king Louie said leta the state is me. Uh this would is impossible in in in India. uh in the Indian paradigm the king only had the duty to interpret and exe not even interpret dharma too much but mostly execute the the legal codes such as the dharma texts. So the brahmanas did not play a direct role in in kidnapping a society and exploiting it. uh nor did the chatrias. So we need to keep that system as a whole in view.

[00:13:15]Now you might ask me why then did it so happen that the Brahmanas became the target of contemporary critique.

[00:13:27]The answer is simple. Since the reformation, the Catholic Church, the rebinical culture uh came under criticism within European academia mainly German and this sort of Protestant anti-clerical bias which you saw in the naions uh dominates even to this day. Uh and this method that was created of of historicizing a culture, looking to see where the sacred power was, conflating it with secular power and providing a critique of that culture. um is has only one thing in common that it it has its roots in a certain history out of which western academia operates and across cultures in the world there are so many cultures there are so many uh different modes of self-governance or governance and there is something violent about applying this method um globally to every culture. So you don't even have to know a culture uh before you just apply the method. And at least in the case of Mahabharata uh western scholars I do not mean to generalize western scholars many Indian scholars operated within the western paradigm and even today there are so many intellectuals who blindly operate in this paradigm.

[00:15:22]uh these scholars fail to take into account their own history, intellectual history.

[00:15:32]>> Again, the Mahabharata showed me that they did not understand the culture. They did not understand the texts. They were simply dumping this method uh onto things they did not fully understand.

[00:15:48]One of the key takeaways for me from your earlier workshop was the distinction that you made between the hermeneutics of tradition which is respectful versus a more arrogant way of interpreting texts.

[00:16:07]uh and I think that you know that that distinction applies to not just of course not just the Mahabharata but also several other uh shastras as well as the institutions of uh India including the Vashma Dharma. um all the points that you made really interesting points and you know we could go on and on because this is a topic which is never ending but um what I want to comment on is that once you look at any text with Shreddha and with the faith in the tradition that has been handed over to us uh suddenly you start seeing logic and and empathy and compassion in those uh in those texts and in those institutions >> and even within the vernasha when you compare it with meritocracy uh and I've you know I've taken a little bit of interest in the critiques of meritocracy that have started coming off late at least 100 years >> uh they've been there so meritocracy like uh famously Michael Sandal his latest book he says that meritocracy is not a cure for inequity. It is an excuse for it. Uh because ultimately the stratification and the way in which society uh the hierarchy that develops um it in my opinion it is more brutal today than it ever was in in India's history.

[00:17:45]>> There are a couple of questions. Uh I disagree with such a reductive uh reductive relationship between meritocracy and inequality.

[00:18:02]Right? Inequality arises out of economic uh structures, historical events, whether a culture has been colonized or whether a culture has faced natural calamities or uh whatever the reason be uh those economic conditions uh today it is quite clear that economy runs the world.

[00:18:31]uh meritocracy is a different issue. For example, even for us to to to be able to comment or for us to look at society, understand it and provide and provide a cogent answer to it. Uh we have to have some idea of what is a better understanding what is a better uh uh way to approach the problem and who therefore is the better voice or the better scholar. Right? So if if uh meritocracy be gotten rid of in academia, what is the pretense of all these scholars, right? They they they are sawing the branch they're sitting on because they claim expertise and that expertise includes some idea of meritocracy.

[00:19:41]So I I would like to leave Michael's analysis as a little reductive and uh now coming to meritocracy within a culture >> just to interject uh so in in defense of uh Michael Sandal it it's not as reductive as I made him sound >> because I picked a certain sentence which has a certain >> implication And it's a powerful sentence. It conveys a certain idea, but the whole book is not a a rebellion against or or a discrediting of meritocracy. He's pointing out to the systemic design flaws within meritocracy. And he says that over a period of time, it follows a certain logic and and uh it's he uses that as a commentary on today's politics in America.

[00:20:38]>> Yeah. But in that book he does not go into the academic institutions. He does not go into how rotten our academic institutions have become. He does not go into the power structures within academic institutions and the righteousness and the sheer force academics wish to have in the political arena in determining how a society ought to be shaped, how a society ought to be run. So uh these kinds of analyses may be sophisticated or subtle as you say but they are ultimately reductive and they are a red herring. The the real thing is what are the academics proposing based on an understanding of human nature and a respect for plurality of cultures. What methods have they come up with and how could they help society in a more creative, constructive way than to provide these endless critiques and micro debates that in a way function in an academic universe on its own having no relevance to uh or at least no relevance is a good good thing compared to the harm this causes to cultures. So if we were to frame this debate from a traditional Indic lens specifically Mahabharata and with your um current understanding of Vidhura as the central figure uh I know it's a it's a little abstract or maybe a little vague this question but uh how would you frame this problem then this social problem from a from the Mahabharata point of view >> in the workshop I made the point that Vidura is eminently qualified. He has merit. He's meritorious and he is dharma incarnate and yet he is sidelined in the politics of hastinapura and also the pedagogic scheme of hastapura with dona and bhishma as the gurus who have failed to re who failed to reign in darashtra who is clearly operating on the grounds of nepotism.

[00:23:22]uh favoring his own son.

[00:23:26]So in in the Mahabharata there is a more potent critique of social structures based on inheritance for example and this family uh inheritance and favoritism and so on. And I think that is a more powerful way of looking at uh social change today. So I am all for changing and helping society.

[00:24:04]Maybe perhaps if we critique the privileged systems instead of what existed in history, what might have existed in history and using that history to torment the practitioners today. If we became more self-reflective, if we if we thought about okay Hinduism has a portion of Sharma Dharma, whatever that interpretation may be, is that really the cause of economic inequality in India today? Is that really why we have super wealthy people on the one hand and poor people who are not even allowed to go into a mall and sleep overnight.

[00:24:59]So the the absolute deafness of academics to real situations in their righteous critique of tradition shows me one thing and I'll say it. They want to be the Brahmans today.

[00:25:20]They want that power, that power to guide the political and that is a very different righteousness than actually helping people.

[00:25:37]>> Yeah. So which is why I >> and Vidhura cuts such a sympathetic figure in the Mahabharata uh that again and again uh you feel that if Vidura had been allowed to be a king or at least be given the privilege of speaking to him speaking for Dharma although he's a contrary voice uh it would still have been helpful This exclusion of contrary voices within the intellectual academic sphere has become a real problem and it is killing academia which is why I was um you know I was pushing towards the the meritocratic critique because all said and done we live in a meritocratic society with all its flaws and one could argue that it is not pure meritocracy. There are a lot of issues with nepotism and you know favoritism all kinds of corrupt practices but that is always true that is always true for any system.

[00:26:48]>> Correct. Um so when when we look at the problems today and let's say let's forget India for for a for a moment and uh consider America which is far more um supposed to be far more egalitarian and uh the land of opportunity and so on.

[00:27:07]Even there the wealth equity inequity is just phenomenal. I think it's more than what it is here in India. And so this seems to be a global problem associated with the economic system that we have uh that we are currently uh experiencing.

[00:27:23]Um and to actually disregard that like you said and to fixate on on on barna or the Hindu way of uh economics and social economics. Um as you rightly said it is obfuscation of the real issue but coming back to the present.

[00:27:48]>> Yes.

[00:27:48]>> Um with the advances in science and the scientific understanding of social reality um genetics and so on. We are now in a place and I've I've followed a few western scholars especially >> we did a book discussion on Katherine Page Harden's genetic lottery. Um and so they just you know they spell out the problem like you said with the sandal also he spells out the problem but when it comes to the solution I found that most of them are unable to articulate it and do you think that an exposure to the Indian way of thinking would in any way or let's say if they were to take Vishar Luri's course on the Mahabharat would that would that help? Well, I'm not going to promote myself here, but uh I will say this. The social sciences by virtue of what they are can only give us quantifiable data, >> right?

[00:28:59]>> And interpretation of that data. It does not give us values, >> right?

[00:29:05]>> So values are a totally different thing.

[00:29:10]uh many atrocities occurred in countries that were not just producing but overproducing social science literature in Europe. So we have to recognize that values cannot be hooked in or anchored in the social sciences.

[00:29:33]we need something more >> and these and at least the Mahabharata for me provides an Archimedes point where from where I can think about values um all said and done uh the social sciences will produce uh data which interpreted correctly might produce certain results but so far that experiment has failed.

[00:30:05]>> Mhm.

[00:30:07]>> At the heart of all of this is the embrace of historical materialism if you will from Marx and also Hegel which does not account for a human being.

[00:30:23]So, human beings are not just a sum of needs and a material needs and um a system by which those needs are met. Of course, basic needs are basic needs. I'm not denying that.

[00:30:43]However, what is lacking here is a good look at what a human being is. A human being not only has needs but also has drives, instincts, desires, even greed.

[00:31:05]So when you don't take the the the desire, greed, self-restraint, need for discipline, need for uh values such as compassion, uh charity, dana dharma, charity is a wrong translation of dhana dharma, but giving. So you give as much as possible uh back to society without the this kind of an analysis of a human being is lacking in the social sciences. They're working with a wrong develop wrong understanding of what it means to be a human being. They are working with a broad general universal definition of man as mankind.

[00:31:58]And this very broad generalization and universalization gives them the license to uh to interfere and to uh dictate how various cultures ought to edit themselves to fit the model.

[00:32:20]It does not work.

[00:32:22]It does not work. We have to be uh sensitive to a human being that a human being can get pretty nasty and pretty greedy. But a human being can also be pretty good and trained the right way, will learn these values and incorporate them.

[00:32:45]We also have to be respectful of the plurality of human societies.

[00:32:52]You can't take one model and force it on different cultures which are ci civilizationally disparit. I'm not saying better civilizations. I'm not saying worse civilizations.

[00:33:07]I'm saying there are different civilizations with their own histories, issues, uh traditions, texts, hopes, right? Um and you cannot dismiss all of those. Take for example in Christian societies salvation is a solved problem through Christ. But in Hindu societies that is not the case. They strive for moa. They strive for some kind of amrit.

[00:33:42]And when you just bring this analysis of yours from Germany which already was problematic in China and Russia and dump it on India and expect India to be dismantled and reshaped according to this plan. You're asking for a lot without knowing what the hell you're saying.

[00:34:12]You don't even have a definition, a working conception of what it means to be a human being. This you get in the Mahabharata.

[00:34:22]This you I've read all of Marks, right?

[00:34:26]I have read much secondary literature on marks and I find that the Mahabharata has a better view of the different kinds of people and how each person is struggling with a whole dynamic of of uh dharma versus just basic desire and uh basic greed.

[00:35:04]I will put it this way. There are two types of actions.

[00:35:10]Shastra, janita karma for which you need scripture to tell you what is right and what is wrong or value texts.

[00:35:19]There is swabhan karma which is actions you undertake because of your basic human nature. Marxism has failed on both aspects. There is no scripture. There is no value text in any culture simply because there is no universal text like that and Marxism is always operating on the level of an abstract universal definition of mankind.

[00:35:48]It doesn't even have a definition for swabha swabha vajan karma because it does not have a way in which you can address greed in a person for example excesses in in in in a person and therefore people are doing what they want and while the Marxists are and analyzing, you know, not analyzing while the Marxists are working on this social re-engineering project of actually wiping the civilizational memory clean and implanting the Marxist ideology or system.

[00:36:45]Capitalisms have grown worse and worse.

[00:36:49]People are just doing whatever they want.

[00:36:55]Right.

[00:36:56]>> Right.

[00:36:56]>> And my critique of Marxism does not come from my dislike of Marxism. I think Marx was very brilliant. His an analysis of of exploitation I think is superb.

[00:37:16]My sadness is that it is not sufficient.

[00:37:21]My sadness is that it burns down things without some scope of replacing what it is.

[00:37:31]Um when asked what is the Marxist society going to look like after revolution the answers are so so so contradictory and plural until we come to Adorno who says that to conceive of a poor postmarxist society is like conceiving leaving God as an image or an idol. It's a kind of idolatry. So he takes the second commandment and applies it to utopia and tells us that we should not imagine a utopia but simply go through this Marxist practice.

[00:38:20]I do wish there was a kingdom of God. I do wish there was an ideal society. I do wish there was no exploitation but Marxism just does not have the tools to get there.

[00:38:39]So you used a lot of mixed terminology here. uh you kept going back to Christian vocabulary from time to time invoking terms like the kingdom of god, the second commandment and even earlier in your in the book also you've argued that you know secularism how it um came about within a Christian millu and you know it's basically uh Christianity secularized in that sense so uh your critique of marks Do you see any parallels with the biblical tradition with Christianity and um you know things like that? Could you?

[00:39:21]>> Of course I do. Uh it is a lot to pack into one answer but two things stand out. One is the history of these religions that valorizes a segment of time from Adam's fall to the to the Messiah in the first case. Um, and that is one of God's work working itself until we get the Messiah.

[00:39:55]And this linear directional history with a happy ending is the model also for Christianity.

[00:40:05]Except in Christianity the Messiah has already come which is Christ and we're just waiting for the final judgment and the kingdom of God. Uh you can also interpret that the kingdom of God is here and now which very significant sections of Christian theology argues.

[00:40:28]However, the fact remains that it is a linear segment or it's a linear narrative with a start point and an end point.

[00:40:42]In this also notice the anthroposentricity that history is driven by man's relationship to God. Uh who in who creates man in his image in one version and Genesis 1 and he gives him dominion over the entire earth. This anthroposentricity continues through Hegel and all of history is narrated as if the the the work of God is completed.

[00:41:29]History is completed in the Hegelian system. Markx does not critique Hegel for his anthropocentricity.

[00:41:40]Markx does not critique Hegel for such a a view, a biblical view of temporality.

[00:41:50]He simply materializes it or he puts it in the paradigm of a uh historical materialism.

[00:41:58]And the Marxist system is similarly driven with a kind of a hope an escal esqueological hope that after the revolution we would have the perfect society or at least a better society.

[00:42:18]So the biblical uh tempor the biblical structure of Marxist ideology is very clear. it we've known it at least since kwith uh and there is really no argument there and if you compare it to the mahabharata to the cycles of time and so on that anthropocentricity is actually critiqued so I think we need more than marks to go forward forward. We shouldn't throw away marks but we need more than marks to go forward in my view.

[00:43:05]>> Now tell us a little more about this. If you could expand on this last statement that you made about how Mahabharata uh critiques this anthroposity of Yeah.

[00:43:16]In the Mahabharata the neither man even the king uh nor even a society or even the universe is an end in itself.

[00:43:32]So with with this notion of the decline of dharma rather than progress for example uh with the notions of cyclicality of time which completely implodes our fetish for a narrow segment of human history with the directionality forward in terms of progress or in terms of the kingdom of god to come. I think the Mahabharata is uh more more in tune with human nature, man's position in the universe and the nature of time that we now know from science that it is not a man-measured thing at all but a feature of the universe itself.

[00:44:25]>> Right?

[00:44:27]Um so when it comes to the question of history like you said that there is this view that history the western view uh influenced by Christian thought is of a linear time which is heading to some sort of a utopia and you know which they can't of course deny uh define um and in your works you've critiqued and you've even um pointed at the origin of this discipline ipline of history within the western academia and now that because western academia is kind of universalized in this postc colonial world we operate in the same paradigm um how would you want to redesign let's say how do we look at our past as a from u as distinct from how how it is done today academically or is there even a need to do This experiment was taken up by Frederick Ner in his two of his works are important. All of it is important but these two are relevant here. One is his second untimely meditation which discusses the different ways of doing history and he is fed up with the critical historioggraphy of his time which continues even to this day. This critical historioggraphy has the is very appealing because it appeals to our anthropocentricity, our sense of superiority that we are the justest and the smartest human beings ever to have populated this earth and everyone that came before us were crooked and childish. So, so nature critiques that and in the in the uh beautiful beautiful book does spoke Zaratushra uh the prophet Zaratushra uh finds a cure for that kind of historicism by discovering the eternal recurrence of the same. And in that eternal recurrence of the same Zaratushra realizes that even these small humans small-minded humans let's say which he calls the last men last man uh will also recur eternally and Zaratushra becomes sick and in a section called the convolescent he makes peace with that.

[00:47:16]So the mahabharatas is somewhat similar that going through the history of the pandavas and so on. We go beyond my own righteousness and my selfish little bubble, my subjectivity.

[00:47:35]Uh I go beyond even my society and the political world. uh and try to figure myself out in the vastness of this universe which comes and goes, >> right?

[00:47:53]Um so in your um recent workshop uh which I was uh uh which I couldn't attend unfortunately but I spoke to a lot of participants uh and they said that you know they gave glowing reviews.

[00:48:11]Um one of the themes that you've touched upon like in the previous one is also the continuity of the Hindu tradition uh which reflects in in the epics in a certain way uh in the Mahabharata in the Ramayana and in of course the origin is in the uh Vic corpus and how that translates to the Brahmanas the I mean of course it's part of the same but the opanishads and then the Mahabharata and then you also have the damastra literature nowadays there's a a lot of I mean a lot of political uh sloganering around um the manuspriti for example how does the mahabharata look at the man dharma shastra the manuspriti do you have any thoughts about that >> yes of course uh the man dharma shastra is a shastra on its own but The Mahabharata sees itself as having a hugely interpretive uh component to its existence. So it is the fifth Va it is the support of the Veda. So we are told that you must support the Veda with the help of the purana. Right? So some of the issues for example Manu raises about the nature of inheritance uh how it should be divided uh what what about gambling and so on.

[00:49:53]Some of the elements in Manu are dealt with in an explicit way in the Mahabharata.

[00:50:01]And it draws the Mahabharata draws cogent applications of dharma which are compassionate driven by the uh by the slogan aims dharma and equity and a sense of shared responsibility in constructing a society.

[00:50:24]If you read Manu as a book of rights rather than duties, then you're not reading Manu in the first place. You're reading some caricature of your own mind. Uh so the Mahabharata deals is the Sri Sudra Veda. It is a Veda meant for women meant to in not just meant for women but to include women. include shudras of and include virtually everyone because as we talked earlier vyra is the only adhikara for approaching the mahabara.

[00:51:07]So it creates this bacti axis uh which allows you to combine so social goals with personal goals with dharma.

[00:51:24]So I like the Mahabharata more than any other text because of its lightheartedness, its ability to include everyone in its program.

[00:51:42]It also teaches us a little bit of it gives us a little bit of tragic wisdom that society will never be perfect. And in that claim for perfection, we cause so much harm. And I've always been aware of this since I was a kid. I read the Cinderella story and Cinderella is the one who who foot fits into the shoe well and good.

[00:52:17]But before Cinderella fit into that shoe, her stepsisters tried that shoe.

[00:52:23]They had to cut off their toes to fit into the shoe. And I've always been aware of how uh violent it is to normalize just one vision of society, just one vision of what human happiness is, you know, and it's not for me to speak on behalf of Hindus. They they have they should talk for themselves. But I do feel sad when I come across a Hindu intellectual sort of amputating themselves intellectually to try to fit into this shoe that that is normative now across the globe.

[00:53:18]It's sad and sometimes in life bad things happen. Uh people we love die.

[00:53:27]Uh illness happens. Uh fortunes are made, fortunes are lost. And the Mahabharata also gives you a kind of consolation and wisdom to affirm life in spite of it going wrong and not to spit on life or perform surgeries on life just to fit into some perfect image you've made up in your mind. That's very important to me.

[00:53:57]tragic wisdom and affirmation of life in spite of everything.

[00:54:04]So approaching the complexity of the Indian tradition through the lens of the Mahabharata uh makes the tradition more approachable. Is is that is it right to say that? Is it because if you read the Mahabharata and you read it with the right approach the with Shandha and Bhi u and then you approach other texts do you think that you are better equipped to uh to deal with the you know so many schools of thought and philosophy and you know all that. Ashish you have uh said a you have a few conditions there quite a few about shreddha about uh you know the right way and so on it's not that difficult suktanker in his wonderful book on the meaning of the mahabharata says that we these these western spectacles by western Again I mean this epistem that we are critiquing here if we it's the mahabharata appears to be chaotic or monstrous or unapproachable precisely because of these spectacles we are hanging on to on our noses. Um all we have to do is just approach the Mahabharata and read it without all these preconceptions and uh gotcha. I'm going to find a flaw in it. Uh I'm going to stick up for Draati and and you know I'm going to um who's that scholar?

[00:55:55]Um Chakraarti she wrote an article on Mahabharata that Alf Hilter Bital gate threw it in my face and said what garbage is this and I had to just I was so shocked and of course I yelled at Alf and I said just because she's Indian doesn't mean I am her spokesman and her advocate. She has every right to be as befuddled as she wishes to be and wear four pairs of those spectacles warned us uh against that's her thing.

[00:56:34]The point is simple. If you set aside these ideologies and so on, the text itself is quite clear.

[00:56:45]Take the example of Dropi.

[00:56:48]Every feminist stands up and pies her or becomes a warrior and a lawyer for her.

[00:56:57]She's a goddess. When she appears in the sabha, she is in her period. So she's menstruating and quote impure. She's also extremely pure because her hair is consecrated with the uh waters from the Raja Suya that have been sprinkled on her. She's both clothed and on the verge of being naked. Um she is she spells doom and she brings down Hastapura court. Right. And whereas Dharma in the form of Yudhishtira could not speak and whereas Dharma in the form of Vidura was speaking eloquently but his voice was excluded.

[00:57:50]Draati enacts dharma and brings justice um to the entire narrative of of the uh rivalry between the pandavas and koravas. So is a feminist reading even desirable?

[00:58:11]Right? Would Draadi look at a feminist reading and identify with it? So again, does Draadi require these feminists to defend her? Right? So again I may have misqued or paraphrased suktanker but he's very clear about the spectacles placed on our noses by western gurus uh that get in the way. So rather than think about what new approach will we have to the mahabharata etc. Just read the text. Just read it completely. Read it thoughtfully. Hold on to your righteous horses and give the text a chance to speak for itself. And shda means nothing more than that. It doesn't mean that I somehow have to have faith as if my the fate of my soul depended on it whether I'd be saved or damned because of my faith. Shredda is not that. Shredda is just an open mind for you to just read the text and see what the text says, >> right?

[00:59:30]Um I think if I recall correctly you somewhere said that you know there has to be a romance with the text and u people you know tend to like you just said complicate it complicate this relationship too much then just go ahead and read it. So for the younger not just younger but any audience who wishes to actually start exploring the Mahabharata uh do you have any recommendations of which uh translation or which author uh they should start with uh or anything that they should read about it? Well, all parents should read suktankar's on the meaning of the mahabharata and parenting consists of many things but also to give your kids a spiritual core any spiritual core. If if Mahabharata and Hinduism are not working for you, convert yourself to Christianity and give your kids that.

[01:00:40]Just stop being a secular quote unquote Hindu. Neither then nor here. You do not have the courage for your convictions. And you're going on and on critiquing.

[01:00:58]What are the kids get getting out of it?

[01:01:01]What are you teaching your kids? You're teaching your kids to bark like dogs.

[01:01:07]You're not giving them anything uh useful. Those kids will face real life challenges.

[01:01:15]How are they going to face it otherwise? Right? And here I I I must say that I have the greatest respect for Islam because I do not hear Muslims critiquing themselves like the Hindus.

[01:01:41]And that is somehow shameful to me in a way I cannot really explain. It's embarrassing. It's like somebody running naked on the street, you know. It's >> I share your sentiments there.

[01:02:01]Um, so when you uh spoke about this, >> could we go back to that? I have something more to say about it.

[01:02:08]>> Ah, please. We'll Yeah.

[01:02:11]>> There is a rule called the rule of respect.

[01:02:15]The rule of respect means that if you cannot say that about Christianity, Judaism or Islam, you should not say that about Hinduism either. The fact that you're a Hindu does not give you the right to take away that respect from the Hindu community because the Hindu community is also a community and it is not your community once you do not wish to be a part of it.

[01:02:54]>> Right? And if you have problems with it, if you have problems with Christianity, those problems are to be understood, coitated upon, read further. If there are problems with Islam, those problems need to be uh thought about, understood in their contexts and given an respectful interpretation. If there are problems with Hinduism, do your best to either give respect and come up with a respectful interpretation or just shut up.

[01:03:39]>> You know, the only way if the only way you're a Hindu is to criticize Hinduism from morning till evening, you're just wasting your life. You could have been such a good Christian.

[01:03:57]You could have taught your children the meaning of love, the meaning of faith.

[01:04:02]You could have brought them to Christ.

[01:04:06]You could have done so much.

[01:04:09]You could have given young kids something to live by.

[01:04:15]You are just knocking the crutches off of youngsters.

[01:04:21]You are cut pulling the rug from under their feet and that is really really shameful >> by denying them access to the wisdom of the tradition. Is it is it >> no by already plan poisoning their minds to to to rubbish >> themselves and their tradition. Think of what that does to the psyche of an entire generation of youth, right? How irresponsible, how wicked can you get? And for what?

[01:05:01]For these professorships, for these honors they bestow on each other, for these little conferences that keep out contrary voices and like an echo chamber, talk to each other, massage each other and go home.

[01:05:22]What is the point?

[01:05:25]I have seen professors who are so righteous and so worried about exploitation and social distinctions and so on. When they order food from a waiter, they do not even look at the waiter.

[01:05:53]So for their suare right I mean they don't even have that kindness in their voice and how many academic conferences also had a feeding of the poor section in a temple there's something called anadana academic conferences do not give away food to the hungry.

[01:06:27]You see where I'm going with this?

[01:06:30]>> Yeah. So, but do you do you see a change coming in the academia at least with respect to how they deal with contrarian views? Um, forget about getting to an at least in terms of accommodating voices.

[01:06:47]>> They're dying out. They're dying out. It has become so incestuous in the same ideas that there will be no jobs for the next generation there. There are no jobs for the next generation. And it's it's a very sad thing. It could have been so wonderful. It could have been so uh filled with learning and and art and literature and and creating beautiful, courageous, creative, just souls and all we teach them is to protest.

[01:07:29]>> Okay. So I'll ask you something which you may well choose not to answer um given that you know there could be unnecessary back and forth with other scholars but I was curious and if there's a way in which you want to answer please feel free otherwise we'll just skip to the next question. Uh this is about this whole business of dating the epics, right? That this happened 3,000 years ago, 5,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, 40,000 years ago. Um I know broadly your views on that but do you think that in uh in understanding who we are or in this project of um if I may use the loaded word decolonizing our minds?

[01:08:15]>> Is there a place for such uh scholarship and does that does it add any value and what are the pros and cons as you see them?

[01:08:27]What I didn't understand about your question was why that should be of a a controversial subject and why I should be afraid to answer that question. I'm not afraid of answering that question.

[01:08:40]I can tell you this that every attempt at dating the epic goes back to Christian Lassen's attempts to show a race war at the heart of Mahabharata.

[01:08:58]It's poisonous stuff.

[01:09:00]And you may today not remember Lassen.

[01:09:05]Most scholars today haven't read Lassen.

[01:09:10]Uh but you carry on the epistem without any without asking basic questions. Why do why is it so important for you to date this epic?

[01:09:26]Why?

[01:09:28]Especially when every criterion you used to date the epic turned out to be poisonous. For example, just take this thing for example. It was a chhatria epic first and therefore uh and the brahmans corrupted it. This is Luther's critique of catholicism.

[01:09:53]Then you come up but where is this criteria epic? You come up with the oral bic hypothesis and say oh it was an oral text before then you then it was written down by the brahmans but this is not the written text. The written text has bi and Krishna and dharma and all the things those are interpolations right. So these things and now a whole generation of scholars are taught just to look for interpolations using their own wits. This is called higher criticism.

[01:10:38]Grossly appropriate adjective for it. Uh but you you say this doesn't seem right.

[01:10:47]Therefore this has to be an interpolation.

[01:10:51]Why does this not seem right? Because it's bacti and therefore that must be late and so on. So the most important purpose this criticism served is to deconstruct the mahabharata and leave it out shred uh in search of dates but nobody knew which layer came where and so on.

[01:11:18]Suktanka ended this game. He came up with the oldest archetype that could be logically constructed based on all existing manuscripts. So now we have a mahabharata which has all these elements you thought were late and none of the elements you expected which is the nucleus of the hero epic and so on. So the search for dating has never been innocent.

[01:11:54]It has never been an objective search for the dates. Had it been only that, it would have been an element of idle curiosity and that is not particularly valuable for us.

[01:12:11]Right? So I'll I date the mahabharata as follows. It follows the upanishads of which it is well aware of and on and on the Veda which it is commenting on. And the Bhagavat Purana makes explicit reference not only to the Mahabharata but structurally integrates itself into the Mahabharata's design. So it came after the Veda and it came before the Bhagavat Purana and that's enough dating for you dating for you to give you a clue as to how to read the text and beyond telling you how to read a text. What is the the date supposed to give you? What was the need for the date?

[01:13:07]We are having this entire conversation and you do not know which year I was born in.

[01:13:13]>> Right.

[01:13:13]>> Right.

[01:13:14]>> No, but given that it has been weaponized, right? This was >> of course it was weaponized. It was always a weapon from day one. I mean it was a trope against Judaism and and ca Catholicism with with uh Luther. And these tropes were always violent. that were always meant to deconstruct and um sort of shake up the institutions and the uh traditions of a culture.

[01:13:49]>> Yeah. So my question is so uh uh just to come to a you know better understanding of your thoughts on this that given that it is weaponized by in history itself right we have a history of colonialism and they've used it for certain purposes so on and so forth the race theory and all that. Um now that we inherit that past that and has been forced upon us, isn't it incumbent upon us to also respond to that? And what are the what if we choose not to? Is isn't there a risk there? I don't see a risk there because as things stand it it is not possible for us to date the text and even if it was through a new technology Mahabharata will still be Mahabharata as Suktankar has uh has excavated it from the manuscripts that exist. So the task remains to be for us to read. Now why don't I go back and answer that question and come up with alternate dates or push the date back? Because when something is incorrect and something was irresponsible and something was as racial and as poisonous as Mahabharata scholarship was uh until recently.

[01:15:22]Why should I keep that issue alive by throwing in another iron into the fire?

[01:15:31]Right? So, so let it go. I I even let the cat I do not even answer questions of whether it was a history or a myth because people who think that there is a history without a narrative and a myth without a a a truth in it are both wrong. So I again just read the text start with suktankers on the meaning of the mahabharata pick up a translation of the mahabharata and read it you don't even have to read the critical edition if you're not a scholar if you're a scholar you should you can simply read um Kisari moan ganguli's translation which is available online and you just keep reading it. Besides reading, it is it serves us to have some guides. Someone who has read the text before many times and someone who has experienced some of those things in the text uh to uh to guide you, >> right? And if you can't do all that for yourself, at least get out of the way of your kids to and let them claim what is rightfully theirs. Right? This civilization is their inheritance.

[01:16:59]And you do not have a right to interfere. it's up to them to grow up and decide for themselves uh where they plot themselves on the spiritual intellectual map.

[01:17:13]>> Thank you for saying that. That was beautifully put. Um now coming to uh you know towards the end of the our conversation uh nay science has been around for a while now. What is in the works and what should people like us look forward to from it? Yeah, I'm working on the Vidura thing as I said. So I would want to publish that work, the Vidura work, but I want to publish it um perhaps in a more more accessible way and I've I have easily demonstrated my scholarship and my uh academic rigor. So I think it would be more fruitful and maybe more satisfying to me to talk about this to a more general public which is precisely what is holding up the the the publication of it because as I have written it it is so highly technical.

[01:18:20]So, so I'm trying to see how I could make take it one step beyond be higher than academic writing which would include a different set of lit a literary set which I'm trying to inculcate it myself because academic writing um anyone can do it uh but to write in a with some literary flare um is a step beyond without resorting to it as fiction. Of course.

[01:18:52]>> Of course. Of course. Of course. No. And and I'm really looking forward to that because uh >> it'll take a while.

[01:18:59]>> Yeah.

[01:19:01]>> For my literary skills to mature. But yeah, >> but I I must confess that uh reading May science was not easy at all.

[01:19:11]>> Of course it was not. Writing it was not easy. I thought, but it had it was it had to be done.

[01:19:17]>> Right. Right. Right. And so yeah. So this uh this is very good news for for us because now I don't I won't have to read each page twice or thrice to for it to actually for to understand it. Thank you again. Thank you for for this lovely conversation for um answering all the questions that I had and I wish you came to India more often and we could sit like this and you know go further and deeper. I like nothing more than talking about the Mahabharata. So invitation accepted. I will definitely I'll definitely come more often.

[01:19:59]>> So thank you very much Rishbar. Thank you.

[01:20:01]>> Thank you so much Aish.