A K Bhattacharya: Yashwant Sinha's epic half-truth

RAISINA HILL

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) should consider itself lucky that former External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha's description of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as "Shikhandi" did not start a long-lasting row.

Yet the Congress leaders dropped the idea of attacking Sinha for what could well be seen as another tasteless attempt to denigrate the office of the prime minister to which former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar alluded at a function last week.

The BJP too did not respond to the initial Congress reaction. And for good reason, it would seem in retrospect. Shikhandi is a colourful character from the Mahabharata.

But contrary to the widely-held belief, Shikhandi was neither a hermaphrodite nor a eunuch, which is what Sinha was suggesting as an allusion to the Congress's structure of governance.

But had this leader of the "swadeshi " party learned his Indian epics better, he would have known that Shikhandi was born a woman, but became a man because he received a boon from Lord Shiva that he would be able to kill Bhishma and take revenge for the injustice done to him in his previous birth.

Even in his previous birth, Shikhandi was born a woman named Amba, one of the three daughters of the king of Kashi. Bhishma wanted a bride for his cousin Vichitravirya, and comandeered of all the three daughters, including Amba.

But there was a problem. Amba had already given her word to marry another king, Shalva. When Bhishma heard of this, he apologised to Amba and returned her to Shalva, who, however, refused to accept her.

Amba's ire fell on Bhishma, for it was because of him that she lost the man who she thought would be her husband. She took a vow to kill Bhishma, who as we all know, had received a boon that nobody could kill him until he desired his own death.

To cut a long story short, Amba begged several gods and goddesses to give her the powers to kill Bhishma, but only Lord Shiva agreed to confer that boon, but with a condition. What was the condition? She would have to be born again as a woman, but would later become a man and then kill Bhishma.

Obviously, Lord Shiva knew that Bhishma had also vowed that he would not fight a woman, a hermaphrodite, a woman who had become a man and an unarmed person.

Thus, Shikhandi was born as the eldest daughter of King Drupad. But she was brought up as a boy and even married off to a princess. This caused more problems till Shikhandi borrowed manhood from an associate of Kuber.

In the 18-day war at Kurukshetra, Shikhandi took the side of the Pandavas and had successfully aimed nine arrows at Bhishma and then Arjun used Shikhandi to riddle his body with more arrows after which Bhishma finally died.

This is the story of Shikhandi. And it is reasonable to believe that the BJP's decision to drop the controversy around Yashwant Sinha's comments may well have to do with fears that the real story could have meant embarassment for the party.

Shikhandi, as it turns out, has royal lineage. And his sex change was the result of a boon. Interestingly, too, Shikhandi remained a man till his death.

There can be only one similarity between Manmohan Singh and Shikhandi. Both of them changed roles. Starting his career as a teacher and then a technocrat, Manmohan Singh became a full-fledged politician. The transformation of his role was also occasioned by a crisis.

The country's balance of payments and fiscal crisis had forced then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao to rely on a technocrat like Manmohan Singh to transform himself into a politician as finance minister. Shikhandi too had to transform himself into a man to save his father, Drupad, from a sudden attack by the enemy.

And just like Shikhandi, Manmohan Singh is quite focused on his targets. Who is the Bhishma that Manmohan Singh could eliminate? Obviously, none of the senior BJP leaders are keen to acquire that role.

The Congress leaders may have been ultra-defensive about the new power structure that has been put in place by their party president Sonia Gandhi. But it could well have used the same analogy to drive home a larger political message that could have silenced the BJP.

After all, which political party in India wants to be seen as being associated with the Kauravas? Shikhandi fought on the side of the Pandavas and eventually succeeded in eliminating the tallest leader of the Kauravas "" Bhishma. If the debate had continued, it was the BJP that would have been embarrassed, not the Congress.