Gita 02.33 – Honorable position brings obligation of tangible contribution

Thank you Bhagavad Gita 2.33 so here Krishna is now pointing out to Arjuna the flip side of his choice in the previous verse he said a kshatriya should be happy to be able to fight according to dharma but he says now if however you decide not to fight dharmam sangramam righteous war in this righteous war if you do not fight dharmam nakarishyasi if you do not do your dharma of fighting in the righteous war tataha the consequence of that will be svadharmam kirtimcha hitva you will lose your svadharma you will have lost the opportunity to act as honourable kshatriya you will have lost your kirti your fame and having lost that paapam vapsisi you will have accumulated paapa, you will have accumulated severe sinful reactions now this harkens back to several verses first of all this especially is similar to 2.2 where also Krishna has said that you will get infamy so there it was mentioned you lose kirti and here also you lose fame and paapam vapsisi refers back to 1.36 where Arjuna had argued that so so essentially Arjuna had said at that time that if I fight and kill the dhadarashtras then we will get great sinful reactions so Krishna is countering that turning that argument on the head by saying that if you don't fight you will get sinful reactions how is that that is because if you don't fight to Arjuna then you are acting in a way that is unrighteous you are acting in a adharmic way because kshatriya dharma is to fight so when you don't fight you are not acting according to kshatriya dharma and when you don't act according to kshatriya dharma then what happens you get sinful reaction so dharma the nature is such that it is not just that the performance of dharma gives piety but the non-performance of dharma especially when dharma is expected to be done that comprises impiety for example a doctor there is also a medicine the crime by negligence if a doctor knows that a particular patient is sick and can be cured by this medicine but the doctor doesn't give that medicine then that is also a crime the doctor may argue that I didn't I didn't give poison I didn't actually harm the patient but yes it may not have been any specific action that the doctor did which does the harm there was what the action that the doctor did not do that caused the harm so crime by negligence is also recognized as a crime let's suppose terrorists are on a rampage and the police decide not to do anything at that time then that is also considered to be a crime many times in wars especially in modern warfare now for example when the war was the second world war was won or nearly being won the German army had been beaten back now Germany is considered normally depicted as villainous the axis powers are depicted as villains and allied powers are considered as heroic now yes the axis powers Germany, Italy they did many brutal things in Japan and especially Hitler was behind the holocaust but actually even the allies were at times quite brutal so after the many German cities fell then the allied powers their soldiers went mad looting the property of the Germans violating their women and doing all sorts of brutal things and the heads of state the army generals and army commanders just turned a blind eye towards it so that was also a crime by negligence and similarly there were many Germans who said that when the holocaust was going on at that time we did not participate in the holocaust but neither did they stand up to stop it and especially those who were in government official posts often they did they were culpable because they did not resist it so the point here is Krishna is telling Arjuna not doing your dharma will give you paapa so swadharma, hitva so if you do not do your dharma you get paapa mawaapsisi, you will get sinful reaction the whole system of dharma is arranged in such a way that everyone performs their responsibility and by performing their responsibility everyone moves onwards on the spiritual path, on the path of spiritual evolution while also maintaining harmony and order in society that is the expertise of foreign ashram material people progress towards both material and spiritual success so now the problem comes up when people do not follow their dharma so if Arjuna is Kshatriya will not follow his dharma then he will get paapa, so Krishna is telling that actually for you as a warrior there is no duty better than the duty of fighting which he has said earlier and it has a converse to whom much is given, much is expected just as if a player is given the honor of say representing India at the Olympics the player may say because of my practice and my performance that I got the opportunity, yes fine that may be true but still one has been interested in that opportunity and one has to perform and if the person doesn't perform then that would mean that that opportunity will no longer be there that opportunity opportunity to represent the country was not if a person performs carelessly neglects to do the duty, chickens out because of something then it is quite different from a person at a local club of chickening out so a Kshatriya is given an enormous honor in the social body and the Kshatriyas are considered to be at one level almost like gods, the representatives of god on earth, the king is called Narade Arjuna may not be a king but Arjuna is a member of the royal family, a dear brother of the king Yudhishthira so for such a person now the honor is not just for one's own gratification the honorable position is given so that one can make a tangible contribution so the if one accepts the honorable position for Kshatriya but does not make a tangible contribution in terms of doing duty even when it is difficult to do then that will be culpable and you will get power, just like a judge gets to sit on a high position gets a good salary gets a lot of respect, everybody calls judge your honor and in this way the judge is respected but the judge while being respected is also expected to do to do a heavy responsibility to hear the full court case properly and after hearing that court case to give a proper decision the judge does not hear about some evidence at all or the judge just doesn't come to the court even worse and then the judge may say that a judge neglects to consider certain evidence or something like that so that it's not what the judge has done but it's what the judge has not done that makes one culpable so here Krishna is telling to Arjuna that this is a great opportunity which most Kshatriyas would welcome and that welcome would be intelligent because this war opens the door to heaven but for those who do not welcome those who do not accept this opportunity they are going to suffer and the suffering will be in terms of the reaction that they will get because of negligence of duty therefore Arjuna your worst fear that you will get sinful reaction that will come true not when you fight but when you don't fight and therefore Arjuna you must fight that is the subtext of this verse so in this way in this verse actually Arjuna finds that Krishna has turned his argument around both the argument of the argument of paap especially Krishna has expertly turned around that argument.