Duryodhana Unaffected By Place Of Dharma – Gita Verses 2 1.2 To 1.4

Welcome everyone.

So, we are discussing the first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita which broadly sets the stage for the discussion and yesterday we discussed the first text which describes the bigger conversation within which the core conversation of the Gita is going to happen. So, this was a conversation between the King Dhritarashtra and his assistant Sanjay and this happened in the court and now from the second text we are going to move to the battlefield where the core conversation is going to happen. The previous verse had the question, what did they do after they were assembled on the battlefield to fight and the question was asked because of the unpredictable influence of Dharma.

Dharma can be said of virtue, piety. Here it refers to the influence of the place. So, the scene on the battlefield begins with the person of the greatest concern to Dhritarashtra, the King.

Dhritarashtra's son is Duryodhana. So, the King is concerned whether my son will be affected by this place of virtue. Will he decide that he won't fight? What will the opposite side do? Because he is naturally concerned about his son.

So, therefore if we consider on the battlefield these two armies are assembled. There are the Kauravas who are the sons of Dhritarashtra. Among them the main prince is Duryodhana.

He is here and on the other side are the Pandavas. So, when Duryodhana sees the army of the Pandavas, he goes and approaches his teacher in Drona. So, Duryodhana goes to Drona and speaks to him.

So, he is seeing the military formation of his opponents and when he sees this, he is disturbed. He is a little rattled. Why? Because he presumed that he was going to win.

He had far more forces. He had 11 divisions. It's called Akshahunis and it's a technical word and his opponents had only 7 divisions.

So, militarily he was way superior and he thought I am going to win easily. But he found that the opponents looked very confident and very competent. They seemed to be very well organized and that shook him a little bit and that's why he has gone to Drona and is talking with him.

In general, if you consider one side is the side of virtue and the other side is the side of vice or lack of virtue, then number of people who support virtue in the world are relatively lesser. So, like we said, the good guys and the bad guys. Now, generally, the people who overtly come out in the support of good are not that many.

Most people we can say may be in between good and bad but they will not take up if somebody, somebody the side of bad is very aggressive, then many people will not come out to oppose that bad. They say, why do I get into trouble? Maybe this will be too much trouble. It's none of my business.

Something like that. So, this in one sense reflects the universal human condition where often the forces of good are outnumbered by the forces of evil. So, that's what the numerical superiority indicates.

So, Duryodhana is by nature a politician. Now, when you use the word politician, it can be, don't do politics with me. If you use that word, politics can have a negative connotation that it means manipulating and trying to form groups in an underhanded way.

So, Duryodhana is concerned that the people on the opposite side are fully determined to fight but he is a little concerned that maybe people on his side may not be that determined to fight. Now, on his side, there were two, the senior most warriors, that is Drona was his teacher and later on there is a reference to Bhishma who was his grandsire. So, for them, for these two people at least, you could say, their affection was suspect or their affection or more specifically the support was suspect for Duryodhana.

So, because they were circumstantially obliged to fight on his side although they were more affectionate to the opposite side. So, here he is goading them. He is goading them by saying remember that the opposite army, who has formed that army? Who has organized that army? That has been organized by the son of your enemy.

So, he is telling Drona, Drona is his teacher, he had a rival named Drupada. So, now if somebody is not so eager to fight, are you not sure whether they are eager to fight? So, you could say their affection was to the Pandavas but their affiliation, they were officially on the side of the Kauravas. So, he was wondering whether will they fight wholeheartedly? So, he is now asking or he is trying to ensure or make them fight wholeheartedly and to do that he first approaches his teacher Drona and then I was saying that Drona had as his rival Drupada who was a king and Drupada had a son Dhrishtadyumna.

We don't need to get into the names too much but his son, the son of his rival was the commander of the opposite side. So, basically you are telling him remember the people on those side they are they are your opponents, they are the son of your opponent and your son of your rival has now formed the army against you. He is saying that the implication he is telling Drona that you were soft hearted before Why you are soft hearted? Because you almost all the warriors on the Pandava side major warriors and on the Kaurava side for all of them Drona was their teacher.

Drona had a big military academy where he taught all of them and because he taught all of them so the idea is that he is being told over here you were soft hearted that you trained the son of your rival and now the son of your rival is fighting against you so don't be soft hearted again He is goading Drona We can go to the next verse So now here two things are happening In general in an army, if you consider this is the Kaurava army the leader Duryodhana is the prince he is the main antagonist he is the person who is the main bad guy and he doesn't want to although he is shaken and that's why he came to Drona to shake him up to goad him but he doesn't want to seem shaken so that's why now he will be doing a comparative assessment he is going to do a comparative assessment of the two armies in order to try to say that actually we are better so he at one level goaded Drona but he is a little concerned hey was my disturbance seen by my other soldiers and generals so do they think that I have become lacking in confidence if that is the case then I don't want that so he is going to do a comparative assessment so basically from the text 4 to around 10 there is a comparison comparative assessment of the two armies so here he mentions some names in this particular text so on the opposite side on the Pandava side there is Bhima who is the main rival of Duryodhana both of them were good at mace fighting and they were mace fighting rivals so Bhima and another prominent warrior is Arjuna who is a great archer so they are the most formidable people on the opposite side and he is saying that oh don't worry we also have big people on our side so there are many warriors on our side who equal Bhima and Arjuna so in this way he is trying to pacify his soldiers don't worry that, don't think that they are powerful, there are many who can equal them see what happens is if we are speaking in a group see if I am speaking over here and there is I am speaking to this person but if it is a group meeting there are other people also who are hearing what I am saying see if I am working with you and in a team and I yell at one of the members of the team I may be angry only with that person but if I yell at that person others are also going to see he will also say hey is this person short tempered if Sisi can yell at this person maybe he may yell at me also so I may be speaking to one person but my actions are also read by others so he was speaking to Drona but when he was speaking to Drona he also wanted to reassure others, so he is reassuring them and while doing that again he mentions Drupada, he just wants to take a dig at Drona once again to make sure that he is motivated to fight, basically here the question of Dharma one of the meaning of Dharma is the right thing to do so what happened was both Drona and Bhishma in the past in different situations they had taken vows to support the Kuru king now they had support the Kuru king because Kuru is the dynasty where they were ruling where they were serving both of them had taken that vow and they had thought that this vow will make sure that our loyalty the kingdom will be there and the kingdom will be protected but they couldn't have foresaw on a situation anticipated a situation where that Kuru dynasty itself will be fighting among themselves and the king to whom they had sworn allegiance would be on the wrong side so they were bound by their vow to in one sense because of their vow they ended up fighting on the wrong side so you could say they were good people who ended up on the bad side it's complicated because one of my friends he is in the police and he was telling that at one time he was called to stop riots and he actually went there and when he went there he saw that these were not criminals who were out to destroy but these were just people who were completely starving and right next to where the slums slums like ghettos underprivileged places right next to them there was this luxurious supermarkets and malls where people were enjoying fast 5 star food and they were breaking and they just wanted to eat something so he said I was stoned how can I shoot these people I took a vow I mean I committed as a police person to protect the citizens but now if normally if you could say citizens are breaking the law but they are not breaking the law because they are criminals they are breaking the law because they are in need so should I attack them should I not attack them it's a difficult question to decide so is the allegiance to the state or to the citizens so that's not an easy thing to say you could say that okay my allegiance is to citizens but then can each police person decide that in this case the state is right or the citizens are right sometimes the citizens may also be unwarranted in their anger and citizens get away with one thing today they may demand something they or somebody like them may demand more tomorrow life is complicated and that's what is depicted in the split loyalties that are there over here so I think we discussed three texts today 2,3,4 and the second was basically Duryodhan is the camera shifts to Duryodhan narrative lens we can say it goes to him because he is the person of concern to the king and then in the third verse he is basically goading inciting the person Drona his teacher because his dedication is suspect and then the next verse onwards he starts reassuring his troops and he does that by a comparative assessment overall what this shows is that he is simply acting according to his nature he is a politician and he is doing his politicking so overall the question that did the in place of Dharma that place of virtue affect him in anyway so the Dharmakshetra the place of Dharma had no effect on him he is just his normal self he is his politicking he is manipulating he is emotionally goading so more or less that question is being answered over here through this narration we will continue in our next session so we are.