Bad blood

Last week Anil Ambani publicly thanked his brother and sister-in-law for bailing him out of an expensive corner, expressing deep gratitude for their largesse. His statement buried years of acrimony and many believe could, perhaps, repair the rift between the brothers that has split the empire and the family since the death of their father. Another pair of battling brothers, Shivinder and Malvinder Singh, is still spewing vitriol. At stake is an empire worth billions. 

Brothers fight; sibling rivalry is neither new nor unusual. In the myths that underline several ancient cultures and religions, the relationship defines an archetype of internecine conflict and fratricide. In many homespun aphorisms, it is also used to bring home the futility of war or the treachery of one’s own. In India, for instance, the Mahabharata is described as a battle of the brothers and in the Ramayana, Vibhishana’s betrayal has become a Hindi proverb (ghar ka bhedi lanka dhaye). Vibhishana fought against his brother Ravana, allying with Rama in the final battle. Cain and Abel, Remus and Romulus, Zeus and Poseidon, Osiris and Seth are some other examples of brothers at war.

Some of the fights have been described in gory detail. The Osiris-Seth conflict, for instance, is a violent and bloody one. Osiris was an agricultural god, an ideal ruler of a good people. His brother Seth represented chaos and strife. Seth murdered his brother to wrest control over the kingdom and, in some versions, he dismembered the body and buried its parts in different places so that no one would ever find Osiris again. (The plan is thwarted by Isis, sister and wife of Osiris but that is a different story.)

Romulus, after whom the city of Rome is named, killed his brother to rise to the throne. Romulus and Remus were twins, the god Mars was their father and their mother a princess. However, when the king, their uncle, found out about his sister’s pregnancy, he was livid and when she gave birth to twins, abandoned them at the bank of a river. The boys were found and raised by a she-wolf and grew up to be brave warriors who brought down their uncle. Romulus and Remus went on to found the city of Rome but fell out over where the boundary lines should be drawn. Angered by his brother’s objections, Romulus killed him and crowned himself king of Rome. 

BROTHERS-IN-ARMS: Anil and Mukesh Ambani

Not all brothers live by such barbarous terms. Agamemnon went to war to defend his brother’s honour. He led the Greek army in battle against Troy after Helen, wife of Menelaus (brother of Agamemnon), had been abducted by Paris, the prince of Troy. Agamemnon even sacrificed his own daughter to ensure victory for the Greeks in the battle.

From the Indian epics we have stories of brotherly love, of obedience and subservience. Lakshmana epitomised the ideal brother, sacrificing his life for that of Rama and Sita. Even Bharata, for whose sake Kaikeyi asked for Ram to be exiled, was devoted to his elder sibling and refused to rule in his absence. However, Sugriva who pledged his support to Rama in the battle against Ravana, engineered his brother’s death so that he could stake his claim to the throne and marry his brother’s wife.  

Turn to the Mahabharata and the relationships are more complicated. While the cousins are bitter enemies, the Pandavas, all brothers from different fathers, accept Yudhishthira’s leadership. 

However, the relationship between Krishna and his brother Balarama is frayed, so much so that Balarama decided to sit out the battle because he did not like the idea of aligning with the Pandavas. The two are not blood brothers however, with neither a mother or father in common.

What does the strain in such relationships symbolise? Scholars see this as a reflection of the debates around social order and kinship. It was important to contain internecine rivalry, hence the emphasis on primogeniture in Indian epics. In fact, myths of ancestry (those that establish the right of one tribe over another) imply a hierarchy of status according to the order in which they or their ancestors first appeared in a community. Despite the public display of love and reverence, there is an edginess to the bond: BJP politician Pramod Mahajan’s murder by his brother is still fresh in people’s memories, or Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s execution of three brothers en route to the throne defines India’s medieval history.

Scratch the surface and, in many households, the relationship between brothers remains an uneasy truce.