A Srinivas
Rao
13th
June 2013
Few would have suppressed their smiles at the unseemly drama
when LK Advani blogged about the slights that Bhishma Pitaamaha suffered apart
from the entire bed of arrows he was lain on by Arjuna. While Mr Advani enjoyed the embalmed self
description and the episode does invite some deeper understanding of the Indian
reluctance to part with power and the gerontocracy’s justification for
perpetuation of its rule. (It is not that the Congress party exactly covers
itself with glory, with its first family and their inheritance of the Party
chair and the sycophancy it entails; but that’s a different story. Besides the
BJP’s genuflection while not at 10 Janpath is certainly at the RSS Sarsanghchalak
at Nagpur). I shall examine in this
article the Bhishma Ptitaamaha’s life critically, drawing entirely from the brilliant
analysis of the noted sociologist Iravati Karve in her compelling portrait “Yugant”. The reason I also wish to direct attention to
this note is the enormous leadership blockages in Indian institutional
infrastructure that is really headed by an inept gerontocracy filled with
retired judges, bureaucrats, of all hues and to occupy positions of authority
in exchange for political favors that mirrors the Jajamani patronage system. Having been also personally witness to my own octogenarian
dean at SP Jain Institute as his subordinate or minion and his steadfast refusal
to step down and enable a smooth succession, I thought this article was ringing
in my mind at many levels.
While we might examine the enduring metaphors of the epic
Mahabharata we must not be dismissive of it as just a myth but as a guide to
generations of Indians who have used the two great epics as a meta- language
that unites the disparate Hindu mind. However
I would hasten to add that Indian history is rife with instances of succession
conflicts. It would sound unseemly that Indian recorded history of rulers
commences with an oedipal conflict, a king who was an enemy to his own family (ajatashatru),
having imprisoned his own father on suspicion that he might not allow for a
smooth succession. That king was Ajatashatru (492-460 BCE). Legend states that
his mother felt like eating the flesh of her husband, king Bimbisara when she
was pregnant, foretelling his doom; and despite abandoning the baby in the dump,
was picked up by his father and nursed (his sore finger that gave him his
nickname Kunika) and raised as his own . When Kunika was insecure about the
succession to his father’s throne, he usurps the same and is cursed by his
mother Kosala devi to be called Ajatashatru. Ajatashatru imprisoned his father
Bimbisara and is also reputed to have tortured his father in prison by
starvation, (not even permitting his mother to smear honey over her body to
feed the king) and by cutting his father’s soles and filling them with salt. In a mirrored irony Ajatashatru was killed by
his own son Udayabhadra to claim his throne. It is unclear in Buddhist texts whether
Bimbisara was reluctant to part with his throne until very late.
While the Ajatashatru episode is an extreme and violent example
of succession turning sour, it has been the leitmotif of Indian power struggles.
Other masked under the garb of conservatism and respect to one’s elders and
tradition, the Indian mind has always resisted the institutionalization of the
process of succession. Why is it that
our octogenarian politicians and institutional heads invoke the Bhishma example? Few realize that it is not an unsullied
example. We shall examine Bhishma’s life
to see what it holds and what his complex motivations were.
Bhishma stands as the solitary lone suffering and tragic
figure in the entire Mahabharata and looms large long after his prolonged departure.
We overlook the fact that the tragedy of all the dramatis personae in the epic are
foreshadowed in Bhishma. If we were to
discard the mythical origins of Bhishma as one of the eight Vasus that Ganga
drowns with Shantanu helpless about it; we find that he was a smart lad of
sixteen when she returns him as crown prince Devavrata to his father. Shantanu infatuated by a fisherwoman Satyavati
was persuaded into marriage by Devavrata after he swore to remain celibate and
renounce his claim to the throne. This
earned Devavrata the title Bhishma and blessed with volitional death. His entire life was one of futile self
sacrifice as he took it upon himself to ensure the perpetuation of the Kuru
race into eternity. Indeed he was the
second in the race of the Kurus to hold his father’s sexual desires above his
own, after Puru’s similar renunciation to Yayati. Shantanu dies leaving behind
two sons the eldest of who dies soon after, leaving little Vichitravirya for
the throne. Bhishma is the regent who oversees the kingdom, a task he does for
almost 40 years. At his mother’s behest he when asked to find brides for the
young Vichitravirya, abducts the three daughters of the King of Kashi (not an
entirely chivalrous act even for those times). Of the three Amba declares her love for the
King of Shalva and is sent to him who refuses this gratuitous gift leaving a
distraught Amba to return to Bhishma and asking him to marry her. Amba is spurned because of Bhishma’s vow and
commits suicide, not before cursing him.
Vichitravirya soon dies without leaving an heir to the Kuru dynasty. With
Bhishma’s vow becoming a millstone for the dynasty, Satyavati and Bhishma
decide to invite Vyasa (his brother in law) to beget children on Vichitravirya’s
wives. The two women were so appalled by
the dark and unkempt Vyasa that one swooned and the other shut her eyes and
conceived Dhritarashtra who was blind and an albino child Pandu. The next time Vyasa visited the women’s
quarters the queens substituted a maid who begat Vidura.
Bhishma continued to rule as regent until Dhritarashtra and
Pandu come of age and the task of bride hunting again falls on Bhishma’s shoulders.
He gets the princess Gandhari who blindfolds
herself when she marries Dhritarashtra and the stout Kunti and the lovely Madri
as wives of Pandu. Pandu goes on a campaign to expand territory and holds a
dark secret that he is impotent. Pandu
agrees to niyoga a practice prevalent in those times, to beget children with
his wives through men of their own caste; begetting the five Pandavas. Pandu
soon dies and Madri burns herself on his funeral pyre leaving Kunti widowed. I n a peculiar way Bhishma had done much
injustice to all the women in his life, his mother and two generations of
brides who would have secretly cursed his apathy to their plight. Mercifully no
one asked him to get brides neither for Duryodhana nor for the Pandavas. However he did little to stop the public
disrobing of Draupadi, the Pandava polyandrous wife, choosing instead to dwell
upon a debate on what was right and wrong (while Vidura was the only one who
even tried). It was only Shishupala who
roundly tells the truth to Bhishma’s face at a sacrifice where the Pandavas
decided to honor Krishna. When Shishupala told the Pandavas that it was only appropriate
that the eldest in ones own family receive such honour rather than some one
outside, even Krishna had no answer to that poser. When Bhishma deferred it to Krishna as an accommodation,
Shishupala railed that Bhishma was a blot on all Kshatriyas, that he was not a
celibate but impotent and had delusions of wisdom (prajamanin), he denounced
the injustice done to the daughters of Kashi, and the arrangement (niyoga) that
he made for the wives of Vichitravirya with the Brahmin Vyasa rather than
choose a Kshatriya from the kingdom. This was an interesting accusation since
it meant that rather than having the power slip out of Bhishma’s hands as the
regent he chose to have a Brahmin who would never contest the throne.
Bhishma’s claims to be a great warrior were suspect. The
only two instances outside the great war of his prowess was the abduction of
the princesses of Kashi which was not much of a struggle and that of a cattle
raiding party at the little kingdom of Virata, that too when he was an old man!
That hardly makes him stand out as an exemplar of Kshatriya dharma (the gloss
on how he fought Parashuram was a later interpolation by the Bhrigu clan). By the time of the Mahabharata war Bhishma was
almost 90 years old. The calculation is that Bhishma would have been 16 when he
saw his father being married, then with Vichitraviryas marriage would have been
another 18 years, with his death, birth of Dhiritarashtra and Pandu and Pandu’s
ascension to the throne another 18 years , Given Arjuna’s order of birth after
Dharma and Bhima, and another 18 years at least for Arjuna to marry Draupadi at
a swayamvara Bhishma would have been at least 71, The burning of Khandwaprastha,
building the Mayasabha, and the dice game (at least 4 years) and a 12 year
exile, Bhishma is already over 85 now given that Abhimanyu was born towards the
end of the exile and that he would have been at least 16 when he marries, Bhishma
was well into his nineties. Even if the
exile were discounted to just twelve months instead of twelve years, Bhishma
was a 90 year old nonagenarian who would ironically be the generalissimo for
the entire Kaurava army.
This was gerontocracy at its unabashed best. When he had
renounced the throne and did not have children of his own why did he go to such
great lengths to steer the children of three generations (with the fourth
already at his knees) around the corridors of power. Was that his dharma or was
it an elaborate ruse to continue surrogate power despite his tremendous
sacrifice. Were his sacrifices a mask to cover his unwillingness to part with
power? ; An ultimate weapon to silence the generations than retire unto the
wilderness. At the commencement of the war when this nonagenarian was preparing
for battle, Vyasa comes and requests his mother Satyavati to take the daughters
in law and retire to the forest as he foresaw great destruction. Satyavati and the womenfolk followed which
would have also been opportune for the 90 year old to go. But Bhishma prevails
and awaits the generalship to be conferred upon him by a very reluctant
Duryodhana as the eldest of the Kurus. What was a formal request by Duryodhana
was seized by Bhishma and he wasted 10 out of the 18 days war with no major
victories. Bhishma abuses Karna on his low birth who in turn swore not to enter
the battle till the generalissimo was lain low. How could Arjuna who once sat
on Bhishma’s knee as a child and called him father and was lovingly corrected
as ‘grandfather’ be shot at? This question perplexed both the Pandavas and the
Kauravas. On the third day of the Great
War the Kaurava army is in disarray and Duryodhana censures Bhishma for the
conduct of the war. On the fourth day
Duryodhana again berates Bhishma for slackness who in turn gives his usual
excuse that Arjuna was invincible. On the seventh day again he is questioned
for his conduct of the war. On the night of the eighth day of battle an emergency
council is called in the Kaurava camp to discuss the mounting losses including
Shakuni and Bhishma is given an ultimatum at Karna’s behest “perform or step aside”.
On the ninth day Krishna is exasperated with Arjuna’s great reluctance to kill
his grandfather and leaps out of the chariot, whip in hand heading to Bhishma
with Arjuna dragging him back. This time Dharma (Yudhishtira) assails Shikhandi
(twin to Drishtadymna) why he had not killed Bhishma (Bhishma had sworn not to
kill a woman or a transgender). Bringing
Shikhandi was a ruse to cover Arjuna’s deference which finally worked as
already 10 days were lost with the ageing patriarch refusing to cede his power.
Finally sense prevails on Arjuna who lays him down in a shower of arrows that
seemed to cushion the ageing patriarch’s great fall. Some would quibble that he
did not stop there, for he continued to speak and utter his great banalities
not on a blog but in his lengthy discourse on statecraft to Yudhishtira forming
the whole section called the Shantiparva also giving devout Hindus the thousand
names of Vishnu (recited by many, including myself). After his great fall the battle quickened and
by means fair and foul (saama, dama, danda bheda as my ex-boss used to recite) the
great dynasty meets a bloody end and the Pandava’s a Pyrrhic victory.
A great and long life lived in self sacrifice often did not
heed the sensitivities of those around himself. The sacrifice turned out to be an inflexible position
even when it threatened to extinguish the very things Bhishma dedicated his
life unto. This rendered him ruthless to his own kin and intransigent to the
extent of imposing a heavy cost upon his family. This tragic figure exemplified a life in
futility even when it was principled and often hinted to being plain
ineffective and irrelevant to his succeeding generations. Such is the weak
metaphor that Indian gerontocracy whether in politics, bureaucracy or
institutions invokes, with the irony lost upon them. Hosting the largest youth population in India
few if any of our institutions address this profound age divide and the elderly
yield not.
great blog..
ReplyDelete