After Karna’s Death, the great war of Mahabharata comes to a quick close. Almost all the great warriors on the Kaurava side are gone. In despair, Duryodhana flees from the battlefield to a lake nearby. Using “Maya” (magic) he solidifies its waters and enters into it, resolving to rest there in suspended animation. The Pandavas manage to find him, however, and so the stage is set for the war’s last duel – between Bhima and Duryodhana.
As it Begins, Krishna doubts If Bhima will be able to defeat Duryodhana in a fair fight – he will need some sort of dodge. Arjuna gets the point and he slaps his left thigh, signaling to Bhima to strike a blow below the navel. Bhima hurls his mace unfairly at Duryodhana’s thigh, smashing it and wins. Thus the war ends.
As he lies dying on the battlefield late in the afternoon of the eighteenth day, Duryodhan enumerates Krishna’s many misdeeds during the war. He accuses him of perfidy in the way he had all the top Kaurava commanders killed :
“Aren’t you ashamed, O heir of Kamsa’s servant, for having me struck down so unfairly! When Bhima and I were fighting with clubs, you told Arjuna to remind Bhima to break my thighs. Aren’t You Ashamed that you have had so many kings who were fighting fairly and valiantly in battle killed by crooked means? You killed our grandfather by placing Shikhandi before (Arjuna). You behaved viciously in having the elephant of the same name as Ashwatthama killed, when our teacher cast down his armor, you did not stop the hateful Dhristadyumna from killing him... and you had Karna, the best of men, struck when he was in difficulty, trying to pull out the sunken wheel of his chariot. Had you fought with Karna, Bhishma, Drona and me, you would certainly not have won.”
It Is not unusual for an epic hero to win through cunning. The Greeks did it all the time. The Odyssey glorifies that master Trickster, Odysseus. It recounts the great deception of the Trojan horse. The Iliad reveals the duplicity of Athena, who posed as Hector’s brother, Deiphobos, to put him off his guard in his final battle. The difference between the Greek and the Indian epic is that the action stops in the Mahabharata when the hero does something wrong. Dubious acts are placed under the lens of dharma and are examined from different angles before being finally condemned. The Iliad, on the other hand, mentions them and gets on with it without remorse.
Duryodhana’s condemnation of Krishna’s deceits belongs to this tradition. Kunti, the Pandava’s mother, had earlier warned Krishna :
“Do whatever is good for them in whatever way you see fit, without hurting dharma, and without deception, enemy–tamer.”
Krishna, however, instead of safeguarding dharma, instructs the Pandavas to do precisely the opposite in the name of strategy.
“Casting aside virtue, ye sons of Pandu, adopt now some contrivance for gaining the victory.”
Some acts in war are always more dishonorable than others. It is these considerations of honor which led these ancient warriors to define a set of mutually agreed rules of combat. The rules became part of the Kshatriya Dharma, a “warrior’s code of conduct”, defining meticulously what is right and wrong conduct in the course of war. In the language of Western medieval scholastics, this is called “jus in bello”, “Justice in the conduct of war”.
There is also “Jus ad bellum”, “the just reasons for going to war” and “jus post bellum”, “Justice of the consequences of war.” The epic seems resigned to the inevitability of war and seeks ways to inject some fairness. It elaborates the rules of fighting, and reminds the combatants what these rules are and then condemns those who break them.
Duryodhana may have had good reasons to denounce Krishna, but Krishna believes that Duryodhana is really the guilty one. He blames him for the failure of the peace talks. Rolling his eyes in anger, Krishna replies to Duryodhana :
“When you burned with envy for the wealth of the Pandavas... you plotted that evil, heinous dice game. What sort of a man are you who would molest the wife of a kinsman? You had Draupadi brought into the hall and spoke to her as you did! You manhandled the queen…”
Krishna firmly believes that once you make the fateful decision to go to war, then you must win at any cost. As he sees it, the Pandvas’ cause it just and once the war begins the only thing that matters is victory.
[Published with permission from Penguin Random House India, from the book
"The Difficulty of Being Good", by Gurcharan Das]
