Abstract
Sri Krishna in the Mahabharata is
not the figure of serene philosophical instruction that he presents in the
Bhagavad Gita alone. He is also the strategist who advises the killing of Drona
through a half-truth, who suggests Bhima strike Duryodhana below the belt, who
engineers Karna's death at a moment when dharmic rules of war forbid attack on
a defenceless warrior, who manoeuvres the entire epic toward a conclusion that
many of its characters experience as deeply unjust. The Krishna of the
Mahabharata is one of the most morally complex figures in world literature
precisely because he is simultaneously the supreme teacher of dharma and a
pragmatist who violates its conventional rules when the larger dharmic purpose
demands it. This article explores what this portrait of Krishna reveals about
the Mahabharata's understanding of ethics, why the tradition does not regard
Krishna's strategic violations as simply wrong, and what the distinction
between rules-based morality and purpose-based morality can tell us about one
of the most contested figures in Sanatana Dharma.
Keywords: Krishna, strategist,
Mahabharata, contextual ethics, moral pragmatism, dharma, Kurukshetra, divine,
means, Bhagavad Gita, Sanatana Dharma
Introduction
The reader who comes to the
Mahabharata from the Bhagavad Gita expecting to find the same Krishna, the
serene and philosophically omniscient teacher of Arjuna, is in for a
significant adjustment. The Krishna of the full epic is all of that and
something more disturbing: a player, in both senses of the word. He plays the
game of the epic with a mastery and a willingness to bend or break conventional
rules that seems, on the surface, to contradict everything he teaches Arjuna
about dharma, truth, and righteous conduct.
This apparent contradiction has
troubled readers for centuries. It has generated the entire tradition of
Krishna-bhakti's response, which is to say that what Krishna does, being
divine, cannot be judged by ordinary moral standards. It has also generated the
rationalist critique, which is to say that the Mahabharata's Krishna is a
political operator dressed in theological authority. Neither response is
adequate. The text itself requires something more nuanced: the recognition that
Krishna is operating from a different moral framework than either the
rules-based absolutist or the self-serving pragmatist, and that understanding
what that framework is requires genuinely engaging with the text's most
difficult episodes.
The Half-Truth
About Ashwatthama: Strategy or Violation?
The episode in which Yudhishthira
announces, at Krishna's instigation, that Ashwatthama has been killed while
allowing Drona to believe his son rather than an elephant is dead, is the most
commonly cited example of Krishna's strategic ethics and the one most used to argue
that his conduct is simply adharmic. Drona, on hearing the news and unable to
believe it could be true without Yudhishthira's confirmation, lowers his
weapons in grief. He is then killed by Dhrishtadyumna in a manner that also
violates the conventional rules of war.
यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत। अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम्॥
Yada yada hi
dharmasya glanir bhavati bharata, Abhyutthanam adharmasya tadatmanam srijamy
aham.
(Whenever dharma
declines and adharma rises, O Bharata, I create myself.)
Bhagavad Gita,
Chapter 4, Verse 7
Krishna's purpose in the
Mahabharata, as he states in the Gita, is the restoration of dharma when it has
declined. This purpose is what his strategies serve. The question the text is
pressing is whether the means used to restore dharma can themselves involve
dharma's violation, and whether a figure of sufficient wisdom and cosmic
purpose can make that determination rightly. The Mahabharata does not answer
this question simply. It shows its consequences fully, including the curse that
attaches to each violation, including the deaths of Krishna's own people, the
Yadavas, in the epic's aftermath. The strategies work. They also cost.
The Killing of
Karna: Purpose Over Protocol
The killing of Karna while his
chariot wheel is stuck in the ground is the episode that most clearly
demonstrates Krishna's willingness to prioritise the war's dharmic purpose over
the conventional rules of honourable combat. Karna, in the act of freeing his
wheel, calls on Arjuna to wait, invoking the rule that a warrior should not be
attacked while temporarily defenceless. Arjuna hesitates. Krishna's response is
a detailed argument that Karna's own violations of dharma throughout his life,
particularly his participation in the humiliation of Draupadi and the killing
of Abhimanyu under rule-violating conditions, forfeit his claim to the
protection of the rules he is now invoking.
This argument is, from a strict
rules-based perspective, invalid: the rules apply regardless of past behaviour.
From a purpose-based perspective, it is coherent: the person who has
contributed most to the war's adharmic conduct is making a claim to the war's
dharmic protections that the larger dharmic purpose of the war cannot
accommodate. Krishna's ethics throughout the Mahabharata are of the second
kind. He is not primarily concerned with the rules of the game. He is concerned
with the outcome: the restoration of dharmic order and the defeat of the forces
that have violated it.
परित्राणाय साधूनां विनाशाय च दुष्कृताम्। धर्मसंस्थापनार्थाय सम्भवामि युगे युगे॥
Paritranaya
sadhunam vinashaya ca dushkritam, Dharma-samsthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge
yuge.
(For the
protection of the good, for the destruction of the wicked, and for the
re-establishment of dharma, I am born in every age.)
Bhagavad Gita,
Chapter 4, Verse 8
For the re-establishment of dharma.
This is the purpose that Krishna's strategies serve, and the text presents it
as a purpose that supersedes the conventional rules when the conventional rules
themselves have been so thoroughly compromised by those on the adharmic side
that following them would guarantee the defeat of dharma rather than its
restoration. This is the moral framework within which Krishna operates: not
rule-following for its own sake, but purpose-serving, where the purpose is the
highest dharmic good and the determination of what serves that purpose requires
a wisdom that the text presents as beyond ordinary human capacity.
The Cost: Even the
Divine Pays
The Mahabharata does not present
Krishna's strategic violations as costless, and this is one of the most
important features of the text's treatment of his character. The Gandhari
curse, delivered with the full force of a devoted mother's grief and tapasya
after the war, lays on Krishna the destruction of his own people. The Yadavas
will kill each other, the curse says, just as his own kin the Pandavas have
killed their kin the Kauravas. Krishna accepts the curse without protest. He
knows it is just.
This acceptance is the text's most
important statement about Krishna's ethics. He is not exempt from the moral law
he has bent in service of the larger purpose. The consequences apply to him as
they apply to everyone. His strategies achieved what they were intended to
achieve: the war ended, the adharmic forces were defeated, Yudhishthira was
installed as king, dharma was restored in the formal sense. And Krishna's own
people were destroyed as the consequence of the same karmic logic that governed
everything else in the epic. The divine strategist plays the game better than
anyone else. The game still has its rules, and they still apply.
Conclusion
Krishna as strategist is not a less
divine or less philosophical figure than Krishna as teacher. He is both at
once, and the Mahabharata insists that these two aspects of his character
cannot be separated without distorting both. The teacher who tells Arjuna to
act without attachment to outcomes and to hold the supreme dharmic purpose
above personal considerations is the same teacher who demonstrates what that looks
like in practice across the entire course of the war. The demonstration is not
comfortable. It is not meant to be.
What the Mahabharata offers through
its portrait of Krishna is neither moral absolutism nor moral relativism. It
offers something harder and more demanding: the recognition that there are
situations in which the strict application of conventional moral rules will
produce outcomes that violate the purpose those rules were designed to serve,
and that genuine wisdom consists in the capacity to distinguish those
situations from the situations where strict adherence is required. Krishna has
this capacity. The Mahabharata does not claim it is easy to develop. It shows,
through his story and its costs, exactly what it requires.
References and
Suggested Reading
Mahabharata, Bhishma Parva, Drona
Parva, Karna Parva, and Mausala Parva
Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 4
(commentaries by Adi Shankaracharya and B.G. Tilak)
Alf Hiltebeitel, The Ritual of
Battle: Krishna in the Mahabharata (1976)
Devdutt Pattanaik, Jaya: An
Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata (2010)
S. Radhakrishnan, The Bhagavadgita
(1948)
Iravati Karve, Yuganta: The End of
an Epoch (1969)
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