THE CLASSICAL DILEMMA OF DHARMA

The Classical Dilemma of Dharma

The word Dharma has always intrigued me. I call my dilemma classical, as I know I am not the only one battling to understand what it means. Not so much because of its esoteric import for the Anglo Saxon world, or the complexity of its etymology, but more because of the complete lack of a parallel in the English language.

Morality, duty, piety, truth, religion, legality, righteousness, conduct all seem to individually and severally signify in some measure the import of the word Dharma. But only in some measure, as the significance of the word is far beyond all the above can collectively connote.

Derived from the Sanskrit Dhātu Dhŗ which means to sustain, the word Dharma defies precise definition. The manifest meaning is too broad to even a very scholarly westerner to discern, decipher and define.

As a child, sitting on my maternal grandfather’s lap, I used to hear him deliver discourses on Dharma and basically in context of the most unsung hero of epic India – Bharat, the younger brother of Rama, the King of Ayodhya. “Ye dhryati, iti Dharmah” – “That which sustains is Dharma”. This to his mind was the actually the most precise definition of the word Dharma and to me the most intriguing also. How does the common mind translate this to daily life. No way!

What sustains? Of course the cosmic order.

How does that sustain? Of course because it must.

Why does it sustain? Because of the cycle of eternal perpetuity.

And of course, I needn’t say more on why I find this the most intriguing question.

Well the demagogue ( I am a Hindu, and if I can call Hinduism a religion, there is no well defined concept of blasphemy in my religion, so I can, unlike followers of any other faiths take the liberty of calling the famous charioteer a demagogue ), who preached Dharma / Karma and then in a teacher like exasperation Bhakti to Arjuna, much as the latter, in his bout of emotionalism, failed to imbibe the subtleties of either Dharma or Karma, thus being advised by his charioteer to abandon cerebration and adopt the path of Bhakti, as Bhakti needs no reason, it is unconditional surrender to the master; was perhaps the only one who understood the esoteric import of Dharma and its ever changing and so very situation and actor specific definition.

In the Mahabharata, Dhrtrashtra was forever, fondling with the idea of Dharma, and distorting its definitions to sponsor the designs of his son - a reflection of his own aspirations - leaves the naïve reader completed confused about the concept of Dharma with his convoluted argumentations to suit his son’s ambition.

Similarly, whereas Gangaputra Bhishma, who I would say was the most coherent of the epic cast after the slave son Vidur, also has in places shown an understanding of Dharma which is very confusing. How can a Kshatriya stay a silent spectator to pawning and then humiliation much less the disrobing of a women, and even more egregiously his own grand daughter in law, in the court that he was ordained to adorn, guide and protect, against all threats from within and without, and yet claim to being on the right side of Dharma?

How can a man of such immaculate erudition and seasoned judgement as Devvratta himself, a man whose senses would have been so refined by decades of abstinence and penance, err in his understanding of the profoundness of Dharma. If err he could never, how can Dharma ever allow Bhishma to stand witness to such guile, such deceit and such avarice and such rapaciousness. How come his bow was not strung of sheer indignation and anger on those masters of deceit.

The only character in the epic who shows complete moral and intellectual fidelity to his views and values and demonstrates unwavering coherence to what he believed was his Dharma was Vidur.

Help me guys in understanding the profoundness of Dharma.

AWARD NITE, STAR MIGHT, AUDIENCE PLIGHT

Giving awards has become a catchy trend. Institute awards and give them amidst pre-scripted fanfare stretching into midnight, one award affair barely distinguishable from the other, including detail of where the lectern for the anchors is positioned. Carefully choreographed, nay cartographed as it is more of chess board PT than dance.


Multiple celebrity anchors, who bring in some wit and some humor ( not necessarily without stink), some rancour, some play, some frolic and some prank mostly imbued in imbecility.

The Khan clan usually outdoes others in this race. Shah Rukh is the front runner. The man has manic energy and has something that clicks with the common man. Intellectuals, find him just another freak case of success of probability or the probability of success.

The only one award function that I did the mistake of attending in person and not viewed on TV was the felicitation of the Sushmita and Aishwarya after they won the world beauty pageants in the mid 90s. Serpentine queues outside and euphoria brinking on madness inside. In fact a colleague of mine was so struck by the actual physical presence of these dames that he jumped the bamboo barricade, breached the security cordon and reached next to the jeep in which these women were riding and waving to the crowd. Of course in hot pursuit were the cops and he did get a lathi of a Mumbai police, but he was euphoric about being able to touch Sush’s hand and remained steeped in a blissful hypnagogic hallucination thereafter for many days.

Speaking of the Filmfare Awards of last week, many of the impromptu jokes and crowd interaction seemed pre-meditated, orchestrating a situation which sometimes can be actually more embarrassing than humorous.


If some of you would have seen the Filmfare awards, the chhota nawab joke was pretty much in poor taste. But the nymphs must giggle and the cameras must focus on them to complete the ritual.

Sometimes I feel, it may be wrong to be critical. You can admire the heavy stuff, but laugh only at buffoonery. That is what these stars are doing. Only that they take a fortune for that buffoonery.

Gurcharan Das

When he was 3, his name was Ashok Kumar. His grandmother suspected, his mother had a silent crush on the actor Ashok Kumar. So to undue the sin, she took him to her guru and putting the 3 yr old at his feet, pleaded the guru to christen him. The guru saw the child at his feet and magnanimously chose to call him Guru Charan Das.

I would now not say, what is in a name!

Our Neta

Well, our generation saw the worst of them. The ubiquitous Neta, clad in immaculate white, cynically grinning, undaunted by scandalous exposés, master of subterfuge, archetypically one who could most brazenly blame almost anything on opposition – vipaksha ka hath, is the stereoptypical image that my generation grew up with. Just as my fathers generation saw many who were committed administrators, diligently reading and pushing files, and my grandfathers generation saw nation builders and statesmen, who put the country before self, by the time I was in my teens, politics was literally degenerated to the refuge of the scoundrel. It seemed then, the mores of this tribe had already reached a primal abyss and could not drop deeper.

Neta – surprisingly for me, Webster, still does not recognize the word, implying the English language has not yet co-opted it, notwithstanding lack of a word with parallel connotation in the English language. In-fact, there is clearly no prototype of this character in the Anglo Saxon world. This creature is quite specifically found in India and predominantly in the IndoGangetic plain, though significantly enough, no empirical evidence has been established between this creature and flora and fauna of the Indo Gangetic plain.

Bimaru states (15 pct of Indias GDP), where the combined GDP of all of them is less than the Education Budget of the USA. But, ironically, an average politician of these states can easily buy the President of USA many times over.

Today, I must admit, there are some Netas if you could call them who are very sound and couldn't care less for the strappings of power. P Chidambaram our Home Minister - who has jettisoned symbols, like the beacon light on the car that stands out like a phallic symbol of sarkari power or black cats, whose patented posture of elbows jutting of their modified ambassadors, figuratively forewarning "dont mess with us"- whether they create a protective layer around the protectee or not is yet to be tested, but they clearly do a good job of intimidating all who come their way, and mark the VVVIP from the VIP.

When as a student 15 yrs ago, I had approached PC for a seminar, he opted to sit with the students. Today, at the Grand Hyatt Mumbai, I saw him alight from his unmarked most simple Maruti Esteem, while his counterpart of the Maharashtra State's convoy was too long to fit in the hotel porch.

He also keeps the airport staff, most eager to offer their faciliation to him, always baffled. He exits like a normal passenger, while the officials scurry to facilitate his clearances. He always manages to outsmart them. He carries his own brief case as well. You call this reverse modesty or just his efficiency stretching beyond sarkari files. Clearly, politicians from my home state of UP need to imbibe some this virtue.

See you soon.