Zoo Station

There are few topics that interest me as much as Hinduism (Previous posts : 1, 2). I don't intend to make this blog a pulpit. The posts are merely a result of my intellectual curiosity and fascination about a religion with more than 800 million followers, and whose tradition I was born into. Many religious practitioners, including many of my Christian friends, don't place much importance on an intellectual understanding of their religion, since religion is anyway, after all, about faith. I tend to agree. What I personally find particularly interesting about Hinduism are the intellectual aspects of the religion - philosophy, beliefs, literature and mythology.

There are a couple of approaches to Hinduism - that of the devotee or the religionist, and that of the scholar or the student. My approach is primarily intellectual. I tend to think of the Indian classics as religious and philosophical works of a group of people of a certain time and place, and the Hindu traditions to be representative of those people and those times. I don't nescessarily hold any particular tradition sacrosanct above the others, but by the same token, the references in the classics are artifacts of the conventions of their historical and geographic context.

Such a contextual approach is no different from interpreting anything else historical, say, the Dred Scott decision of 1857. The case sounds shocking today. One of the major questions of the case was whether Dred Scott ought to be considered 'property'. However, even the defendants of the litigant used what would be considered today politically incorrect terminology, and I think the defense ought to be understood in the context of its time. As a 'colored' person, and even otherwise, I, of course, sympathise entirely with Dred Scott.

There is an effort to to promote a more sensitive, humanistic and informed approach to the interpretation of the classics and Hinduism. I read Prof. Hiltebeitel's "Rethinking the Mahabharata" a couple of months back, and I cannot recommend highly enough the modern, culturally aware approach to interpreting the Mahabharata in the book. His book presents a very different look at the Mahabharata, as the title suggests, but it always remains sensitive and scholarly. The discussion of the famous incident of the disrobing of Draupadi is a good example of the latter.

There is no question that Draupadi's fate was decided under decidedly anti-woman legal conventions. It is easy to think of the incident as the perfect example of a bunch of men brutalizing a helpless woman, which in turn could be interpreted as indicative of a deliberately callous attitude towards women. However, it is important to note that the Mahabharata itself views the event as brutal and distasteful. What the Mahabharata itself tries to bring out is not the humiliation of Draupadi, but the humiliation of Duryodhana, Duhshaasana and the others. When Duryodhana sends an usher to get Draupadi after Yudhishthira loses her in an underhanded dice game, the Mahabharata's treatment of the incident reveals the sophistication of Draupadi's response. I found Prof. Hiltebeitel's reading of the incident of Draupadi very, very interesting.

When Duryodhana's usher ... tells Draupadi she is to come with him as a slave, she asks three questions in a burst: "How do you speak so, an usher? What Rajaputra would wager his wife? The king was befooled and crazed by the dicing. Was there nothing else for him to stake?' In these questions, she sounds angry, incredulous and then sarcastic. But when the usher has explained the betting sequence, with Yudhishthira having bet himself before he bet her, she uses her wits : "Go to the game. Having gone, ask in the sabha, what did you lose first, yourself or me? (kim nu purvam parajaisir atamanam mam nu) Having learned that, then come to take me". Draupadi formulates her question in a way that opens up two things that might work in her favor. She definitely wants the question raised "in the sabha", where she can expect it to be treated "in court" as a case of "law", dharma. And, where cleverly or inadvertently - and if we grant that she is clever to address the court, she is probably being clever here too - in asking Yudhishthira a question whose answer she has already obtained, she makes it clear at least to readers that her question is about more than it says.

The usher goes back and puts her question before the sabha, the site of the gambling which, as Draupadi keenly realizes and utilizes to her advantage, is also the court. He further quotes her on a separate question : "As the owner of whom did you lose us?'" Draupadi is, in effect, confronting the sabha with a prashna, a question.

Here, Yudhishthira did not stir, as if he had lost conciousness and made no reply... whether good or ill.'" The questions snowball even as their meanings double : "As owner of whom?" or, "As master, or lord, of what?: One may ask, did Draupadi really ask this new question? In effect, the "usher" joins Draupadi's question with Vidura's observation that Yudhishthira was "not his own master or lord" when he bet her.

By asking a tough question that has no clear legalistic answer, Draupadi has left the sabha in a state of bafflement. Yudhishthira, the master of dharma, has no answer. Nor has Bhishma, the partriarch of the family. Duryodhana is surprised at this turn of events, because he assumed that he had won Draupadi in the gambling match, but as events are turning out, a frustrated Duryodhana realizes that he may not able to arrogate his power as he likes. The disrobing incident that follows illustrates Duryodhana's frustration as opposed to his power, and shows what a pitiful person he really is.