As nation-states struggle to maintain their legitimacy in the eyes of their citizen-subjects, violence brews everywhere today. The old social arrangements supporting states unravel rapidly. In this post-modern world, however, we still retain the old fictions about well-ordered states built on national self-determination and linguistic unity (though these have been more myth than reality in the postcolonial world anyway!). Violence, we believe, is antithetical to socio-political order, the moral fabric of society, and the individual conscience. Are we always right though?
Given my philosophical training in the Western European canon, I could quite easily refer to “just war” theories from Aquinas to Michael Walzer. Or pacifism in the very Christian ways that we recognize from the New Testament via St. Francis of Assisi to Immanuel Kant. But there is nothing new to be said there. So I want to step somewhat out of my comfort zone and make an argument grounded in a certain South Asian tradition that dates to the age of Mahabharata. I am, of course, neither a textualist nor a specialist on ancient India, but rely heavily on past Indological and historical scholarship. I wish, nonetheless, to excavate some general theses on violence in the Mahabharata and its socio-historical context. This agenda seems to me to be quite consistent with the spirit of that epic poem, which says: “Poets have told it before, and are telling it now, and will tell it again. What is here is also found elsewhere, but what is not found here is found nowhere else.”
The Mahabharata, as many of you know, is a story of war and fratricide. Its composition took place over a number of centuries that saw the rise of competing and collaborating mahajanapadas (proto-states or “kingdoms”) in the plains of northern India and the consequent tensions between brahminical (priestly) and kshatriya (warrior) ideals of social order. Because the final form of the Mahabharata took shape in an age of dissent and ferment, best represented by the rise of Buddhist and Jaina sects, the epic can also be read as a debate between the orthodox and the heterodox in which attitudes to violence are central. Indeed, war and violence lie at the heart of the poem. In the opening scene of the Mahabharata, the king Janmejaya avenges the death of his father by a snake-bite by performing a startling sacrifice of snakes. Whereas these slithery creatures of the underworld are generally venerated or appeased, the king decides to undertake the most brutal violence against them as a species. This anti-sacrifice, one not sanctioned by the scriptures or tradition (or even completed actually!), provides the starting point after which the many-sided narrative of the epic unfolds. Violence, darkness and inauspiciousness are thus ever-present in this worldly narrative as they are in our world.
Ahimsa: A Moral Philosophy of Limits?
The Mahabharata, after starting on such a terrifying note of inauspicious violence, repeatedly notes that ahimsa is the greatest moral precept for mankind, its highest dharma. For recent interpreters led by M.K. Gandhi, ahimsa or non-violence is the central theme of the epic. They point to Yuddhishthira’s renunciation of the kingdom he won through war at the end of the epic. War and violence, they say with Yuddhisthira, are ultimately futile, whatever may be its ends and whoever may be its practitioners. While this is a fairly commonplace reading in India today, is it justified?
In the first place, there is ambiguity in the very meaning of the word ahimsa. The verb root han-can mean either “to hit or strike” or “to kill or murder.” But abstaining from hitting or striking is very different from abstaining from killing or murder. Furthermore, ahimsa, at least for the brahminical elite, did not extend to the sacrifice of animals. Among the cruelest forms of violence, the sacrifice of a horse by suffocation/strangling could thus be justified as ritual appeasement or bribery of the gods to buy temporal peace. It is not himsa (murder or killing). Although these animal sacrifices did become key targets for anti-brahminical sects from the 4th century BC, it is worth noting that animals continued to be eaten, albeit perhaps with lesser intensity. Asoka’s edicts tell his subjects to treat their domestic animals with kindness, but he doesn’t advocate vegetarianism. Male goats, sheep and cattle are specifically cited as animals that can be eaten or sacrificed by householders. The menu in his own royal kitchen prominently noted peacock and deer. And what about humans? Asoka’s declarations of ahimsa in Rock Edict XIII occur only after he had conquered whatever there existed to be conquered, and had effectively attained the Later Vedic ideal of the chakravartin(universal) emperor. He can still threaten the “forest tribes of his empire” by saying that “he has power even in his remorse, and he asks them to repent, lest they be killed.” Any blanket utopian statement against violence is, therefore, undercut by words and deeds alike.
But if complete abstinence from violence is much too utopian for us worldly souls, are the arguments favoring violence persuasive? The natural world, the Arthashatra says nearly two millennia before Hobbes, is all about matsya nyaya (“the law of fishes”), by which smaller fish get swallowed up by bigger fish in the sea. This may be a justification for kingship by danda(punishment), but Arjuna in the Mahabharata recognizes in it, more generally, the inevitability of violence in human affairs: “People honor most the gods who are killers. Rudra is a killer, and so are Skanda, Indra, Agni, Varuna, Yama. I don’t see anyone living in the world with ahimsa. Even ascetics cannot stay alive without killing.” Similarly, Rama, accused of foul-play in killing the monkey Bali, argues in his defence: “Even sages go hunting.” It is even argued against the Buddhist, Jaina and Ajivika sects that ahimsa itself might entail violence against the (bodily )self, most spectacularly in the form of self-sacrifice. Even “rice and barley…scream soundlessly” when they become food for humans. Agriculture, after all, is violence (himsa) because it kills not only plants, but also many animals and insects in the fields. In modern parlance, agriculture is (and has always been since its origin in the Neolithic age) an ecologically-destructive activity. Grains, fruits, and vegetables, remarks the wise meatseller Dharmavyadha to the sage Kaushika, contain life forms, which die when we consume them. He concludes, “I don’t see a single person in this world who lives by ahimsa” for “life preys on life” for survival.
But surely it is not being suggested that violence is desirable because it is inevitable. That seems much too far-fetched. A particularly poignant passage may be found in the opening book, the Adi Parva, describing the burning of the vast Khandava forest by Arjuna, Krishna and Agni: “Creatures by the thousands screamed in terror, and were scorched; some embraced their sons or mothers or fathers, unable to leave them. Everywhere creatures writhed on the ground, with burning wings, eyes, and paws.” The war books in the Mahabharata also offer similar graphic descriptions of gore, mutilation, death, and destruction that certainly do not commend violence. How then can we reconcile the conflicting opinions about violence in human affairs? I suggest considering ahimsa not as a doctrine of non-violence in the utopian sense, but as a moral philosophy of limits. Non-violence is always the ideal for us, but some amount of violence is an inescapable part of the human condition. Or else we couldn’t live at all. For some, this reality may inspire a lifestyle choice such as vegetarianism or membership of a religion such as Jainism, but these are not the only ethically-defensible options available to us. Sometimes, violence may even be necessary, for which reason the Pandavas go to war against their cousins and kinsmen. In sum, violence may not be desirable and complete abstinence from violence may be impossible for living beings, but what is possible is a kind of moral limit to minimize the violence around us. It is, therefore, not so much about whether there can be non-violence, but how much and what kinds ought to be permissible in a decent society.
Violence in Politics and Society
Violence is inherent in politics and society because, as the Arthashatra and Mahabharata argue, the king (or state) rules by danda (force/punishment). That violent state of affairs is deemed a lesser evil in comparison with the greater evil of anarchy or matsya nyaya. By no means did this view go uncontested. The Mahabharata includes these words of a dissident brahmin: “The barley is the people and the deer is the royal power; thus the people are food for the royal power, and so the one who has royal power eats the people.” A bit later, we are treated to a subaltern parody of the ritual copulation between queens and horses in the ashvamedha yagna (horse sacrifice): “‘The little female bird rocks back and forth as he thrusts the penis into the slit.’ Now, that bird is really the people, for the people rock back and forth at the thrust of the royal power, and the slit is the people, and the penis is the royal power, which presses against the people; and so the one who has royal power is hurtful to the people.” The Buddha as political philosopher, too, railed in vain against the encroaching imperial kingdoms and defended republican government as superior by virtue of being more people-friendly and consensus-based. But the unjust violence of the statist status quo nonetheless weighed heavily on the minds and bodies of most of society.
Is this not also true in our own times? Are we also not held ransom by specious arguments against anarchy? Or by brazen justifications of state violence against ordinary folks? Aren’t democracy and freedom just as much elite hocus-pocus in states today as the raja dharma that legitimized monarchies in ancient India? Why do the violence of states and elites appear cloaked in high-minded statements, whereas the naked violence of the subordinated is deemed illegitimate? Why is it deemed acceptable to bomb and murder thousands of men, women, children and animals in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, but the death of a few hundred rich people on 9/11 or 26/11 is instantly condemned as terrorism? Why is the naked plunder of natural resources in the tribal areas of South Asia today regarded as legitimate in the name of “development,” but the defensive violence of tribal communities delegitimized as “Maoist”? Why, in other words, do some forms of particularly brutal violence, namely those in favor of the statist status quo, override the lesser defensive violence of the weak and the wretched?
The primary conclusion I draw here is that we simply don’t live in decent societies in which the majority can live peacefully. In India today, this is most certainly the case. The six decades of neo-colonial loot in Middle India, Kashmir, and the Northeast suggest that these regions, much like the Pandavas, have tried and failed to receive what is rightfully theirs. The Pandavas, dispossessed by their cousins, asked for merely five villages to avoid the horrors of war, but they were refused. The similarities with the situation today are eerie. As violence and insubordination break out all over the subcontinent, might the moral justification for such acts be akin to that for the great war of the Mahabharata? But is the violence of the dispossessed still justified? Should we not feel queasy about defending violence even when the ends seem virtuous? We may not live in decent societies, but will taking up arms against the status quo not taint some forever even if their aims are attained?
These are very difficult questions to answer today as they were in the age of epic poetry. But the Mahabharata provides a “coded” answer to this dilemma. That code is to be found in the story of Ashvathama’s vengeance against the Pandavas for killing his father (their guru) by trickery. Although the actual murderer Drishtadyumna is the primary object of his revenge, Ashvathama deems all the Pandavas to be culpable and complicit, including the near-perfect Yudhishthira for his famous half-truth. His dialogue with Kripacharya before seeking vengeance is rather revealing. Kripa blames Duryodhana’s “greedy and thoughtless” ways for causing the war in the first place. “Always wicked, knowing no patience, he ignored the counsel of friends; and now, when things have turned too bad for him, regrets that he didn’t. We too, following his misdeeds, are now in this grievous trouble.” But Ashvathama is hell-bent on revenge and wishes to attack the Pandava camp in the darkness of the night. This, Kripa reminds him, would violate the kshatriya moral code and be adharma (unrighteous), but it matters little to someone who feels as wronged as Ashwathama. “The Pandavas,” he contends, “had on the battlefield already shattered dharma into a hundred pieces.”
As he approaches the Pandava camp, he is met by a mysteriously large figure against whom he seems powerless. Ashvathama says, “I’m just not able to make out who this mysterious figure really is. It seems certain that it is my own wicked mind that I see before me in that form…The fool who wants to do violence to another, against every safe admonition, does violence to himself by his own hands.” But in a curious twist, he is assisted by the god Shiva, often represented as Time (kaala) in Sanskrit literature, who enters his body and equips him with a divine sword. There appears, therefore, to be divine mandate for Ashvathama’s revenge; Time itself appears to empathize with the young man’s grievances against the Pandavas. One by one, Drishtadyumna and his brothers are slain in cold blood. The Pandavas escape death only because they have camped elsewhere that night. Thereafter, we are told that Ashvathama fired a “destructive weapon” at the “Pandava wombs” to destroy them, an act that is highly suggestive of sexual violence. He is then cursed by the god Krishna: “In all civilized opinion, you are considered a coward; given to evil deeds again and again; a child-murderer. You are cursed. For three thousand years from now, you will drift on the earth, with no one to talk with, and live in places lonely and abandoned. Your body will have the foul smell of flowing pus, wracked with every disease known. You will live in places where no human beings live.”
Although charged with divine energy and weapons and assisted by Time, Ashvathama thus ends up ostracized and banished from society. Despite his just grievance against the Pandavas, there is considerable ambivalence over his violent means: Shiva/Time (Destroyer of Injustice and Wickedness) favors him but Krishna/Vishnu (Preserver of the Three Worlds of Classical Hinduism) curses him. The narrator pronounces no final verdict on Ashvathama: his vengeance is justified to an extent, but he can no longer live like a free citizen in the postwar polity. In this sense, Ashvathama ends up as the mirror-image of the sacrificial animal, who must die but is not deemed to be killed or murdered. If the sacrificial beast is killed but remains within the domain of ahimsa, Ashvathama lives but must reside outside the domain of ahimsa, the foundation of decent society.
It should be noted here that the tale of Ashvathama’s vengeance is not too dissimilar structurally to the Pandavas’ own travails. This is the coded message in the narrative structure. Dispossessed unjustly of their kingdom, the Pandavas are scorned, cheated and exiled. That great adharma, which is similar to that suffered by Ashvathama, is sought to be reversed through the Great War of the Mahabharata. Although their violence is justified, as Krishna argues in the Gita, it is so only in a qualified sense. Killing men, women, children, and animals cannot be regarded by any society as a legitimate activity, whatever the cause or motivation. The crestfallen Yuddhisthira is thus left to lament: “Victorious, we are defeated.” His nagging doubts about the legitimacy of war and violence now take over. He is unable to enjoy the spoils of victory. He cannot become the maryad purushottam (ideal man) Rama as in the older epic poem. Nor can he create a ramarajya for his subjects after a fratricidal war. When the Pandavas leave the palace at Hastinapura for the Himalayas, it is merely the final symbol of their defeat in victory. Like Ashvathama, they too might be seen as exiled or cursed to wander far away from society, outside the domain of ahimsa or the moral philosophy of limits to violence.
This is a handy lesson to be learned in our times. When we recognize the morality of violent social protest against the domination of states, empires, and elites, we should also recognize that such violence can never be moral in an unqualified sense. This is not an ex-nihilo argument, but one that is rooted in everyday reality. Violence against a great evil or a greater violence may well be justified in ethical terms, and it may even lead to the creation of a more just society (as in the Mahabharata). But even these ethically-acceptable forms of violence cannot be within the domain of ahimsa as long as it lacks limits. And the nature of war makes it very difficult indeed to impose limits or restraints on one’s acts of violence. Caught between brutal oppression and limitless violence in vengeance, it is certainly a very difficult predicament. Not to revolt against oppression is to acquiesce in one’s subordination, but revolt also is hardly bereft of blemishes. This predicament can be resolved only if those perpetuating ethically-acceptable violence are removed from the body politic. They may do so voluntarily such as Yudhisthira and his brothers or be cursed like Ashvathama. But they cannot remain as before in any decent society that is to remain free from further violence.
What might it mean though to be “removed from the body politic” in a practical sense? It is useful here to consider my earlier remark that the likes of Ashvathama are the mirror-images of sacrificial animals that die without being killed. A kind of social death is implied here: being killed without being sacrificed. Readers of Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer will see a close connection here. The non-sacrificial deaths, social or physical, are the very basis of sovereignty. They preserve and justify the social order, including society’s sense of what is morally right and wrong, decent and indecent. This is, of course, the very principle enshrined in contemporary techniques of suicide bombing. The non-sacrificial deaths of suicide bombers complement the social order they wish to shape for the future. These young men (or women, as the case may be) cannot be reabsorbed into society. Their fate cannot be anything but Promethean, cursed forever to social death far away from society. This is, paradoxically, how the individual conscience and the moral fabric of society are reconciled in theory as well as practice. For any decent society must be governed by a moral philosophy that limits violence, that is, ahimsa. Violence beyond limits may be warranted at times, but the existence of its practitioners within society can never be acceptable.
P.S. I shall be delighted if someone wishes to disagree with me, either in terms of my overall argument or the specifics therein. At the very least, any such initiative should, I think, stimulate greater thought on the growing violence in our world and the ethics of such violence. Nonetheless, I think my argument dispenses adequately enough notions of pacifism that have come to be linked with morality and ethics, especially in the South Asian context.
