Opinion
In Greek myth, violence is part of a movement from chaos to order. But
Indian myth lays out that as long as violence exists, it will beget violence.
Image credit: Adnan Abidi/Reuters
Yesterday
· 08:00 am Updated Yesterday · 04:15 pm
It
begins with castration. Chronus cuts the genitals of his father, Uranus, as he
makes his way out of his mother Gaia’s womb. From the cut genitals rise the
Furies, who embody divine vengeance, as well as Aphrodite, the goddess of
passion. This then becomes a recurring theme in Greek mythology, with sons
killing and overthrowing fathers. So we have the story of Oedipus, who kills
his father, and Perseus, who kills his grandfather. At the heart of the Greek
worldview is the idea that the younger generation eventually, and violently,
overpowers the older generation.
Chaos
theory
This
Greek worldview shapes the modern scientific-atheistic worldview, with its
irreverence for all things past, especially ideas that have long bound together
tribes, communities and nations together. It fuels our desire to replace old
phones and old computers with something better, in our quest for the good life.
For, like the Greeks, we are conditioned to believe that the future will be
better. We are moving from the chaos of the past to the order of the future.
The
sages of India will only smile: for them, there was chaos before and there will
be chaos after, order before and order after, violence before and violence
after. In dismay they watched Europeans say “never again” after the First World
War. In dismay they read posters at Holocaust museums that demanded history
should be remembered, not repeated. That was like hoping humans could prevent
the next thunderstorm. It revealed a failure to recognise the nature of
humanity.
In
Hindu, Jain and Buddhist mythology, the world functions on the principle of
karma: actions create reactions. The present is an outcome of the past and
cause of the future. Cultural violence is an outcome of various predisposing
and precipitating factors. As long as these exist, violence will resurface
again and again. Laws that seek to domesticate man, like farm animals, only
amplify these predisposing and precipitating factors. The only way to break
free from the violent instinct is to outgrow our hungers and fears. This a sage
can achieve through rigorous mental re-conditioning, but he also realises that
such an enterprise cannot be forced on a population. It remains an individual
endeavour, and can never be a collective enterprise. Which is why Indic sages
typically are observers, even when they participate.
Violence
and meaning
Violence
existed before culture, before man, in nature. Animals kill for food, and this
violence establishes the food chain. Animals fight over food and mates, and
this violence establishes the pecking order in herds and in packs. It also
helps define territories. The violence of animals, even plants (though unseen),
as they go about surviving, is intense and relentless. As per the earth clock,
if Earth established itself 24 hours ago, life, hence violence, came into existence
five hours ago, and humans with their culture came into existence less than a
minute ago. Since the arrival of humans, violence has taken a different form.
It is not just about food, or mates, or security, it is about meaning.
In the act of killing, or being killed, I give myself meaning.
The
Vikings, for example, got people to raid villages through a narrative that
promised them a place with the gods in the Hall of Valhalla. They would be
taken there by beautiful swan-damsels known as Valkyries who would select the
bravest of the brave from the battlefield.
A
similar narrative now informs young Islamic terrorists, who are being told that
“jihad leads to jannat [paradise]” – that by killing non-believers they will
help establish the Kingdom of God on earth, as it was in times of the Islamic
Caliphate, before it was overshadowed by the West. In exchange, they believe,
they will be given a place in paradise, full of all the pleasures denied to
them in their earthly life.
Most
scholars of Islam are horrified at this narrow and literal reading of the
Quran, but that is the nature of extremism – to simplify a complex narrative
for the benefit of people who seek simple answers to life’s complex issues.
Such a discourse is often accompanied by contempt for the intellectual, who is
obsessed with nuance and who does not care for simplistic binaries. We find
this trend in extremist nationalism, where patriotism for the state takes the
place of submission to God.
Control
and delusion
In the
desire to show that Hinduism is also violent, and not as non-violent as it
claims to be, Western academicians often compare and contrast Krishna with
Buddha, very much like many modern writers compare and contrast Gandhi and BR
Ambedkar. So, the Bhagwad Gita is presented as a book that justifies war and
that dharma-yuddha is equated to jihad. This is a willful misreading stemming
from the academic, even political, desire to show either that “all religions
are equal” or that “all religions promote violence”. They overlook the fact that
the Abrahamic worldview, which forms the basis of Islam, Christianity and
Judaism, speak of paigambars, or messengers of God, who tell humanity
how to function, while Hinduism speaks of digambaras, or naked ascetics,
who withdraw from the world, and its violence, not because they denounce it,
but because they outgrow the need to indulge it, and are fully aware that they
cannot stop it as it is part of the karmic cycle. For the ascetic, control is
humanity’s greatest delusion.
The
Gita is a book that challenges the hermit’s withdrawal and demands enlightened
engagement in the world, not to establish the Kingdom of God but to contribute
to society without expectation. Sometimes, this takes the form of violence. But
there is no escaping from the consequences of war even if you are on the good
side, or right side, or the noble side. Thus even Krishna is cursed, and Arjuna
loses all his children, as they fight and kill to establish social order in
Kurukshetra. Greater complexity of life is presented in the epic Mahabharata,
of which the Gita is a part, when the Kauravas, who are the villains, end up in
heaven, and Pandavas go to hell, based on karmic reasoning that defies human
notions of justice and fairness.
As the
Mahabharata tells us, as long as humans destroy nature to establish culture,
like the Pandavas who burned the forest of Khandavaprastha to create the city
of Indraprastha, there will be refugees (Nagas, in the Mahabharata), who
will strike back at being deprived of their homes, their lifestyles, and the
affluence created by the destruction of their homes. Kept out of the table,
they will fight. The entitled devas will fight the invading and envious asuras,
who feel tricked and cheated and rejected. And this fight will continue as long
as humans fail to display empathy for the other (para, in Sanskrit).
Which is why in Hinduism, God is addressed as Parameshwara, one who embodies
the infinite other. No exceptions can be made.
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