UniVerse: Your true legacy as a doer
How will posterity see my legacy? This question has recently been raised by no less a person than the retired Chief Justice of India. This reminded me of a story recorded by the Hindi scholar Hazari Prasad Dwivedi in an essay titled ‘Bhishma Ko Maaf Nahin Kiya Gaya’ (Bhishma Was Not Forgiven). Once, during their regular evening walk on the premises of Kala Bhavan, Rabindranath Tagore had posed an interesting question to him: “Why was Bhishma Pitamah, the grand old warrior, patriarch of the eminent royal clan of Kurus, not anointed as an avatara after his death, but two Yadava brothers, Krishna and Balrama, from a much humbler rural background, were?”
The poet said he thought it was so because such questions are decided historically by how posterity views your true legacy as a doer. Hazari Prasadji mulled over it and agreed. After the Mahabharata war, he writes, Balrama, the great farmer warrior, earned the right to be revered as an avatara because he refused to take sides in what he foresaw as a terrible fratricidal war and chose instead to go into the forest for his remaining days.
When the Pandavas and Balrama’s younger brother Krishna, the great statesman, asked him to take up arms, he had the guts to stand up and tell the warring royals that whatever the dharma, he shall not participate in a war for throne that will ruin mankind and make the land sterile.
Krishna participated in the war only because of his loyalty to Arjuna, his friend, as his unarmed charioteer and refused to shed blood. When Gandhari cursed him for the death of her sons later, he told her bluntly: “You can curse me all you want, but O Kshatriya queen, it was your own upbringing that led to this.”
In India, people have always preferred an outspoken karma yogi to an orator. One who throws caution to the winds, swings into action to protect the greater common good and restore sanity of the nation. So what if it meant losing public face and risking ridicule? A later karma yogi, Mahatma Gandhi, whose grand legacy makes even his political critics bow to him, showed the same presence of mind and daring after the Chauri Chaura violence and stopped the Satyagraha in its tracks. A peaceful movement, he felt, could not be allowed to degenerate into violence. There was criticism from hot heads, but he did not relent. It is not hard to make out the public perception of a man to whom the nation has turned again and again to sort out its moral dilemmas. Bhishma was one such figure of authority — celibate, morally irreproachable and a great warrior. But he let clansmen like the Kauravas misbehave with his granddaughter-in-law, Draupadi, in public. Even when the three abducted princesses — Amba, Ambika and Ambalika — appealed to him that he marry them instead of his impotent brother, he kept quoting his great vow of celibacy and examples and precedents from scriptures and history, but did nothing.
When divisions in Bhishma’s psyche surfaced again and again at crucial points, resulting in the denial of justice to men, women and clans, his claim to join the pantheon of great avataras shrank in public perception.
Bhishma’s case proves that history remembers great heroes less by their recorded speeches and more by prompt, though risky, acts that cause personal loss of reputation, but go on to ensure justice and relief to millions of sufferers.
— The writer is a veteran journalist
