The Mahabharata and us

G N Devy has produced incisive commentary on what it means to be the inheritors of this vibrant, timeless text

The Mahabharata: The Epic and the Nation

Author: G N Devy

Publisher: Aleph

Price: Rs 499

Pages: 142

No Indian, it is said, encounters the Mahabharata for the first time. Its chaotic plot twists and polychromatic cast of mortals and gods are so deeply embedded in the country’s cultural consciousness that the text, like an old love, never really has to explain itself.

A father blind to his children’s flaws is Dhritarashtra (the blind king who failed to discipline his errant son), a wronged son caught in the wrong company is Karna (abandoned at birth, he was a Pandava, but fought on the side of the Kauravas) and a weak, indecisive leader is Yudhisthira (the eldest born among the five Pandava brothers who lost his kingdom and freedom in a game of dice). These may be overly simplistic stereotypes and do disservice to an epic as complex as the Mahabharata. But as Ganesh Devy, cultural activist, linguaphile and former professor of English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, argues in this book, the point is not what we make of the Mahabharata, but what gives an epic of 100,000 verses influence and agency across generations of Indians?

How does it survive the wear and tear of time, even as everything around it has changed? As Devy points out, this is a remarkable feat. Kings and kingdoms that it wrote about are long gone, art forms that gave it reach and influence have long been overshadowed and the philosophies that glued the bulky, rambling narrative into a coherent story, have either been overrun by new ones or have transformed significantly. But the Mahabharata continues to engage and excite readers, still livens up political debates, inspires movie makers and writers and serves up as a cautionary tale against greed and hubris.

Devy has been fascinated with the epic for as long as he can remember. His quest for the secret to its longevity and abiding appeal began early; leading him to probe around the knotty and gnarly roots of the Mahabharata while he went about his career as a teacher and linguist. Over the past two years, he found that he was ready to go back to the text, finding within himself the stillness and clarity to grapple with the numerous questions that it had raised in his mind.

The result is a sharply incisive commentary on the ideas that power the text, the imagination that lends it wings and most critically, the influence of the text on the identity of a nation. What does it mean to be the inheritors of a text such as the Mahabharata?

In a style with which readers and listeners are now familiar (Devy is a well-known figure on the lecture circuit, speaking on the linguistic diversity of India, epic traditions and such other topics), he approaches the text with the naiveté of a first-time reader and the scholarship of a seasoned academic. No question is too small to be ignored and no answer is complete, if it does not lead to more questions. Readers are encouraged to introspect on the plot, structure, the characters and the liberal use of mythology as a storytelling device.

The book does not separate the Mahabharata from its readers — the two are perpetually locked in a tight embrace. For instance, even when Devy looks at the big ideas in the epic, about war, death and free will among others, he ties them to the big ideas that we, as a nation, are wrestling with today.

On the issue of identity, for instance, he scopes out a maze of inferences between the text and its structure to lead readers into the mind of the Mahabharata. How does it imagine nationhood, he asks? Is the nation a uniform collective of people who believe in the same thing or is it a diverse set of people who share a common past?

The clue lies in the narrative structure, Devy writes. He directs the reader’s attention to the Mahabharata’s concentric circle of stories that do not start at the beginning or end at the end. This is not that unique; epic narratives, the Iliad and the Odyssey and many others, all begin medias res — never at the beginning but somewhere in the middle of the action. The Mahabharata, however, not only does not start at the beginning, but refuses to “identify any single act or event as the beginning of the story”.

Devy explains that the Adi Parva (first chapter) has many potential starting blocks; it could be the several myths that seek to explain the making of the universe, it could be King Shantanu’s dalliances with Ganga and Satyavati or it could be Bhisma’s vow of celibacy. Similarly, there is no single ending to the book — the Pandavas’ ascension to heaven is not the end of the narrative, which continues through their progeny to whom the story is being told.

Devy shows how, with its many beginnings and many ends, the epic provides an understanding of Kal or Time and it gives people a way of remembering their past. That this past is fluid, mythologised and begins differently for different people and is yet accepted by all, he proposes, is an idea that lies at the core of the epic. “The Mahabharata unites us not in any imagined territorial national space; it brings us together in Time, symbolised by the never-stopping kala chakra (wheel of time) …,” the wheel in perpetual motion is the central metaphor of the epic.

One of the most original commentaries on the Mahabharata, this book treats the complexity of the story and its legacy with a light touch. It forces readers to immerse themselves into not just what is on the page, but also what it evokes within them. There are very few who can do the same, with the lucidity and gravity that Devy does.