Was the Kurukshetra war Krishna’s plan?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So was it Krishna’s plan that the war occur and even Dhritarashtra couldn’t stop it? And Dhritarashtra, which option did he take? It didn’t seem he took any of the options, tolerate, mitigate, immigrate. Actually Dhritarashtra was constantly trying to mitigate. He was trying to, he couldn’t mitigate his blindness.
That was just unchangeable. But he wanted to mitigate and change the situation so that his son would have unchallenged rule. And for that he was trying to eliminate the Pandavas.
So that was, he was, we could say Duryodhana was the active villain and Dhritarashtra was the passive villain. But both of them were acting towards that purpose. So he was mitigating quite a bit, trying to change the external situation, but he was doing it in an adharmic way.
Now with respect to whether Krishna wanted that war, it’s a difficult question to answer. Because at one side, in 11, we can say, paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ vināśyāya ca duṣkṛtāṁ dharma-saṁsthāpanārthāya sambhavāmy uveṅga. That Krishna does come to descend to destroy the demonic.
But then we also know Chaitanya Mahāprabhu, when Krishna comes to Chaitanya Mahāprabhu, he doesn’t destroy the demonic people, he destroys the demonic mentality. And when Krishna went as Shantidūt, at that time, he did try to change Duryodhana’s mind, persuade Duryodhana to give up his demonic mentality. So Krishna even tried that at that time.
But Duryodhana was not ready to listen. So if Krishna anyway wanted the war to take place, then Krishna wouldn’t have gone as Shantidūt also. But Krishna went as Shantidūt.
So Krishna showed by his actions that he tried his best for preventing the war. So one thing is very clear from the Mahabharata. See, everything that we speak, it has to be seen in its original context and it has also to be seen in its current context.
In its current context, if we start saying that the war was Krishna’s will, then it may appear that Krishna is a warmongering God. And in today’s world, whenever I go in universities and colleges where Hinduism is taught, many people are extremely uncomfortable with the idea that the Bhagavad Gita was spoken on a war field. And some academic scholars equate the Bhagavad Gita’s war setting with the concept of Jihad in Islam.
Now they say that just as Islam has radicals, Hindus also have radicals. Now if you look at the history, yes, there can be radicals in every religion. That’s just human nature.
But relatively speaking, Krishna is not talking about war as a specific call for action for all time. And most of the, not most, almost all the traditional commentators on the Bhagavad Gita, not one of them has recommended that the followers fight wars. Ramacharya, Madhvacharya, they were all living at a time when Islam was ruling India.
And some of the rulers were quite despotic. But none of them used the Bhagavad Gita to say that you should fight against them. So that is not the, so I answer that question with respect to, I say that look at the context, look at the content and look at the consequence of the Bhagavad Gita.
The context is Krishna himself tried to avoid the war. The content is there is no hate speech in the Bhagavad Gita. There is not a single verse where Krishna says the Kauravas are so demoniac you’d kill them.
It’s a completely philosophical book. There is not a single war strategy in the book. In fact, after the second chapter, the war is rarely mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita.
And the consequences throughout the bhakti tradition which is emerged from the Bhagavad Gita, very few people have, practically no one has used it to justify war. So some devotees say that actually the same Krishna, that Krishna wanted this war to happen and he simply used and everything happened accordingly. Well Krishna, the actions of the Mahabharata don’t show that Krishna wanted the war.
Krishna tried his best to avoid the war. So another way of looking at it could be that there were demoniac people and demoniac people had to be eliminated and therefore the war had to be fought. But the point is that it was not Krishna who instigated the war.
That’s very important to understand. Just because something is meant to happen doesn’t mean that God is responsible for it. It is the human actors who act in particular ways.
That’s why it happens. So it’s also if you look backwards towards the whole incident of the Mahabharata, the background, the context, Krishna is not, throughout Krishna is giving advice to the Pandavas and he is guiding them about how to live peacefully. He is not throughout instigating them towards war or anything like that.
So certainly we have to look at, if you look at the origin context of the Mahabharata, Krishna does try to avoid the war. He does his very best to avoid the war. And if you look at the consequence also, it’s not that the war itself was what Krishna wanted.
Krishna wanted the adharmic people to either give up the adharma or to be removed. So when they refused to give up the adharma, then he removed them. But it’s not that, he is not a warmongering God.
So in that sense we have to be very careful that we don’t say that Krishna was the person who caused the war. It is the human actors who acted in mnemonic ways and because they are not ready to change their ways, so then Krishna removed them through the war. Does that answer your question?