History is written by winners – because Rama and Krishna won wars, did they declare themselves as God?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Now, often… You can sit down. Thank you.
So, if we say history is written by winners, so, is it that because Ram and Krishna won battles, that’s why they came to be known as gods? It could be. At the same time, if you look at these stories themselves, they don’t always portray these characters in the best possible light. If we consider Ram, he sent Sita out, and that is something which exasperates, which confuses and shocks people.
How could he do that? Now, if history is written by the winners, and this is simply a case of the winners writing this history, why would they portray the winner in such a confusing light? Similarly, with respect to Krishna, in the Mahabharata, there are cases where apparently Krishna does something wrong. The way, say, Karna is killed. Now, why did Ram send Sita away? Why did Krishna have Karna killed the way he was killed? These are questions which can be discussed separately.
But my point is, that if somebody simply wants to portray somebody as God, if they themselves want to portray themselves as God, then why would they write stories in which there would be moral ambiguity? They could have just written it with no morally questionable actions at all. That is the strongest counter to this argument. This is technically called a euhemerism.
Euhemerism is that after somebody dies, their followers make them into God. Or, during their life itself, it can happen that when they become very powerful, they are made into God. Now, if you consider that way, if you consider the scale of victory or magnitude of victory, there are so many other kings who won so many battles, and Rabukta Maurya did a lot.
Why is he not celebrated as God? I am going to the second reason now. If history is written by winners, and winners can make themselves as God, then there will be so many winners in history. Why are not other winners being made into God? As you see, from a historical perspective, Ramayana and Mahabharata, the empirical history is very speculative, but even at least 2500 years ago, much much more than that, possibly also.
But there are so many other kings. Why are these particular kings being portrayed as God? And if you consider Krishna, he was never even a king. He was always an assistant of a king.
Ugrasen was the king. So why not portray him as the supreme? It is not done like that. Another point is, that if this were the case, that the winners were always portrayed as, winners throughout the history in such a way that they could make themselves as God, then they could have portrayed the, portrayed the, portrayed the opponents completely in black color.
But the Mahabharata doesn’t do that. No, the virtuousness of Karna is talked about, the virtuousness of Bhishma is talked about, the qualities of Drona are talked about. So, now if you consider, study the history of Pakistan, from a Pakistani perspective.
Now, they don’t say that Pakistan actually, was created in 1947. They say that Pakistan was actually created in the 13th-14th century, long, long ago. And then, they said that land was that, holy land was taken away by the British.
And they consider the whole of India is also meant to be Pakistan. Now, that way they have this whole battle. So, now if you see the Pakistani history, they don’t portray anything good about the Hindu infidels.
So, their history is that, this land was meant to be for Allah, and the Hindus have taken it away, and we have to get it back. So, why would winners portray the losers in positive light? You consider contemporary history, we don’t hear in Second World War narratives, anything positive, spoken by the allies about the heroism of Hitler or his followers. And, of course, Hitler was brutal.
But, the point is that, this is a very, it is a very oversimplified understanding of history. And, if at all history is written by winners, okay, but, if somebody was royal and powerful, the last reason I would say, that is somebody just, say, very wealthy and powerful, and then they wrote something, then why would people who are renounced, who have nothing to gain, why would they be glorifying such people? What would they gain by it? Is there something to gain? If at all, if you want to titillate, if, say, those people who renounced the world, they have something to gain, maybe they didn’t have enough intelligence to earn money, so they want to earn money, then, you know, better make somebody who is current into God, and get money, they will give you money, some money, some financial support, some social prestige, but somebody is long gone and disappeared now, dead or disappeared, whatever you want to use. What is the use of glorifying them? So, this is a leftist Marxist kind of reinterpretation of history, which can seem appealing at first glance, but if you look at it from a critical perspective, it doesn’t stand scrutiny.
Okay?