entire assembly could protect Draupadi from being wagered in the game. All the elders including the respectable Bhishma were painfully silent when Draupadi was dragged in the assembly hall in a sole piece of garment. No one speaks and no one answers her bold question ' Whom did you lose first, yourself or me?'. This question posed a terrifying moral and social challenge to the society at that time. Finally Bhishma, the eldest of all, answers the question as a legal dilemma. If Yudhisthira lost himself first, he was not competent to stake Draupadi in the first place. But if we see from another angle, that a wife belongs to a husband and is expected to act upon his orders, Yudhishthira is allowed to stake her. Hence Bhishma fails to solve Draupadi ' s dilemma.
Such instances in Mahabharata make us stop and wonder – what is moral and what is not. What is just and what is unjust. Gurcharan Das comes back to the present world when Pratibha Patil was elected as the President of India. She had murder cases pending on her and still she was endowed with the most prestigious position of power. Bhishma like person Manmohan Singh remained silent. Gurcharan Das aptly calls this response of silence as ' immorality of silence '.
Further, the author reflects on Arjuna ' s state of mind, his anxiety, his despair on fighting against his own family. Arjuna is pained at the thought that he has to fight against his own cousins, elders, Guru from whom he has learnt everything. As his eyes gaze at the battlefield he sees Dronacharya, Bhishma and he falls silent. This is the part of Bhagavad Gita in Mahabharata. Krishna debates with
Arjuna and explains him that his duty is to fight the war. The author relates this to the war waged by U. S. on Iraq. Saddam Hussain ' s evil force in Iraq was removed by intervention of the US. But this was achieved through a blood curdling war. May be a war was necessary to free Iraq, or not. The dilemma stays.
If Arjuna ' s duty is to fight, it is Yudhisthira ' s duty to follow ' dharma '. Yudhishthira follows dharma not from any hope of rewards, but because of his sense that ' he must do what he has to do '. The author connects Yudhisthira ' s sense of duty to a CEO of a firm he knew. This man refused to pay bribes to government, though the company was on the brink of bankruptcy. Half his workforce had to be fired and the organization was restructured, he lost 80 % of his business to competitors but still chose to follow his sense of duty. Gurcharan Das aptly says – Yudhishthira follows dharma not from any hope of rewards, but because of his sense that ' he must do what he has to do '.
I believe that no one reads Ramayana or the Mahabharata for the first time. We hear the stories as children, grow with it and every time we read it we find something new. Everytime I pick up Mahabharata to browse through, it provides me a new line of thought, a new piece of wisdom, a new theory to rationalize upon. Gurcharan Das ' work is like a mirror to us. Reflecting our actions and seeking answers to it in the Mahabharata. It reminds us about our aspirations to be good and ' how difficult it is to be good '.
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