​Was Karna not discriminated against by being labeled a charioteer’s son?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Yes, sir. Hare Krishna. Was Karna not discriminated against because of being considered a charioteer’s son? Answer, yes.
That’s true. He was discriminated against because he was considered to be of low birth. And that was definitely a disadvantage for him throughout his life.
But along with that, he also had a congenital armor, a Kavach, which made him, which protected him from death at the hands of his opponents. So the Pandavas, although they had also been fathered by the gods, they did not have an advantage of the protection of this magnitude. So Arjuna did not have any congenital armor.
So in a sense, Karna was disadvantaged because of his low birth, but then he was advantaged because of his armor. So we could say that the playing field was leveled. So we all begin with some advantages and some disadvantages in our life.
And Karna did have a disadvantage, but he also had an advantage. Secondly, if we see that everybody has disadvantages and we cannot go throughout life complaining about our disadvantages. The Pandavas, they were just children when their father died.
And when they came back to their kingdom, they had to confront an envious cousin who tried to poison Bhima, who tried to poison one of the Pandavas. And then later on, they attempted to be burnt alive. So what fault was there is that they were born in the same dynasty as the vicious Duryodhana who made them the target of his horrendous manipulation, horrendous schemes.
So we could say that if you want to talk about destiny discriminating or giving a bad deal, the Pandavas also got a bad deal. And we have to, from this life’s perspective, life is not fair. And we just have to accept it and live with it.
Now, from a broader perspective of multiple lifetimes, we can understand that whatever we have done in the past, that’s what comes to us in this lifetime. So the Mahabharata explains that Karna in his previous life was a demon named Dambhodbhava. He was also known as Sahasrakavacha because he had been blessed by, he had a thousand Kavachas, thousand armors protection.
And these were blessed, given to him by Suryadev, Sun God whom he had worshipped quite fervently. Now he had got a blessing from the Suryadev that he, that made him almost immortal, undefeatable. He had that, a prediction that each of his Kavachas would protect him for a thousand years.
That means an aggressor would have to fight with him for a thousand years and only then they will be able to destroy the Kavacha. And not only that, after destroying that Kavacha, that person would immediately fall dead. And then, you know, basically, how could somebody, that means it would have required, it was almost impossible to defeat him.
So and he went around terrorizing the universe till he met his match in Narnarayan Dushyas. So Narnarayan, they are considered one person manifesting in two forms and they challenged Dambhodbhava, the Sahasrakavacha. And what happened with Sahasrakavacha was that Narnarayan Dushy, who, one of them fought while the other performed austerity.
And a third part of his benediction was that, you know, next time to fight and kill him, to break one of his armours, the person would have to perform austerity for a thousand years. So what they would do is, Nara would fight with Sahasrakavacha while Narnarayan would perform austerity. Then Narnarayan would fight with him for a thousand years and break one of his Kavachas.
And then by that Narnarayan would fall dead. But during this time, Narnarayan had performed austerity for a thousand years and had acquired enough ascetic merits to fight with Sahasrakavacha. And then he would fight, Narnarayan would fight for a thousand years and he would destroy a second Kavacha.
And during this time, Nara, who had been revived by the mystic austerities performed by Narayan, he would perform austerities for a thousand years. And like that, the two were alternated in fighting and doing austerity. And by this laborious and prolonged arrangement, they destroyed 999 of his Kavachas.
And then, becoming fearful, this demon, seeing his end nearby, he fled. And he fled to Sun God, who had given him that power. And Sun God, seeing that this person had come to his protection, seeing that he had surrendered to him, offered him protection.
And Narnarayan, they wanted to finish off their work. But Sun God told him, he is in my protection, you cannot attack him now. And then Sun God was thinking of what to do with this demon who was with him now.
And at that time, he, at that time, Kunti chanted a prayer by which she could get, she could invoke the Sun God. And Sun God came there and he offered, he impregnated Kunti and that’s how he got a son. So that son was Karna.
And because Sahasrara Kavacha had one Kavacha remaining, so now Karna was born with the Kavacha. Now the thing is that because he had done so many demoniac activities in his previous life, that demon Sahasrara Kavacha, who now was born as Karna, had some demoniac qualities. But because he had worshipped the Sun God, because he had been with the Sun God, because he had been fathered by the Sun God, so he also had some good qualities and thus he was a complex character, a grey character with both good and bad within him.
So overall, because he had done so much bad karma in terms of terrorizing the universe earlier, so in this life, he also had to suffer some of those consequences by being, by not getting the prestige of being a Kshatriya. Although he had the valor, the vigor, the archery skills of a Kshatriya. He did not get that.
So that was a part of the karmic reaction that he got. And beyond that, what is important is to recognize that thus he was discriminated against and this kind of discrimination according to caste is not the standard of the Vedic tradition. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna talks about how at the time he descended, at that time, he says, the pure knowledge, the pure principles that he had taught at the start of the creation, they had got lost.
सकालेनेहमहता योगो नष्टः परन्तप By the power of time, things had become deviated, Krishna told Arjuna. Krishna is telling Arjuna. So that means the culture that we see at the time of the Mahabharata is not the ideal spiritual culture.
It is a deviated culture and a part of the deviation was the discrimination against people based on their caste as was assigned by their birth. But Krishna tells later in the same Bhagavad Gita, 4th chapter itself, 13th verse that चातुर्वर्ण्यम्मयासुष्टम् गुणकर्मविभागशः He says that the caste system is actually determined, the Varnashram, not exactly caste system, Varnashram is determined by qualities and activities. गुणकर्मविभागशः, it is not determined by birth.
And thus, actually speaking, Krishna is telling Arjuna that this is a deviation. So, you know, every age has its blind spots. So every age has it.
So we see that people are discriminated at different times in history by different forces. So to live amidst whatever blind spots are there in our particular age, that is the defining challenge of life in all ages. And now we understand that why are people born in an age where there are certain blind spots? So why were blacks born at a time when there was racial discrimination against the blacks? Well, why were Native Americans at a time when the Britishers came and they practically annihilated them? Well, it is just we understand this is the way karma acts and we have to live with the kind of situation we are in.
We have to make the best of a bad deal. So Karna had to live at a time when he was discriminated against and he had to make the best of it. He certainly was discriminated against, but everybody faces problems and we cannot do wrong because we have got wrong.
The Pandavas, they also suffered, we could say unfairly, because they were persecuted by their own cousins. But still they stuck to the path of virtue. Karna, unfortunately, chose this path of wise by siding with Duryodhana and that was his fatal mistake.