When is violence justified – how is the Gita’s war different from modern World Wars?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so when is violence justified? Bhagavad Gita leads to a war being fought and we also have world wars being fought there are three different points first is what is the purpose of the war? Second is what are the efforts done to resolve things without the war being fought and what is the consciousness with which the people are fighting the war so if we look at the Bhagavad Gita we see that before that the Pandavas went to extremes to avoid the war it is Krishna himself who went as a Shanti Doodh Krishna even if everybody at that time did not accept him as God, they all knew that he had killed extremely powerful warriors demons also they knew he was a very powerful warrior and so for Krishna himself to go as a messenger you know a messenger usually a person very reasonably low in the hierarchy goes as a messenger so for example say there is a standoff between India and Pakistan and then the Indian Prime Minister goes as a messenger at that that means in the intent or the desire for peace is so great that the Prime Minister himself is ready to go and then if Pakistan tries to arrest the Indian Prime Minister he has gone there there will be outrage over there so that’s what happened over there so the Pandavas tried everything sometimes we say I tried everything humanly possible the Pandavas tried everything humanly possible and everything divinely possible to avoid war so the Kauravas left them with no option at all Pandavas said just give us 5 villages and they were not ready to agree with that there are different ways in which we may say no also sometimes somebody invites us for some program some event and we say I would like to come but I can’t come because I have this sometimes we can say no to a particular request without saying no to the person but Duryodhana already said I will not give enough land to put the tip of a needle through this is not just no to the proposal this is a no to the person it’s an insult it’s so he had no desire for a peaceful settlement so that’s the if you look at the effort that were done to avoid the war they were enormous on the Pandavas and beyond that also if you see the purpose of the war the purpose was that a series of atrocities the Kauravas performed on the Pandavas and the Pandavas tolerated all of it the Pandavas purpose was not so much that they wanted to win a kingdom they wanted the rule of Dharma they wanted the rule of virtue and if you look at the consciousness the Pandavas fought not so much to gain a kingdom they fought so that they could establish Dharma they fought so that there could be a rule of virtue so there is a there is a argument for extreme pacifism which says war should never be fought violence is never the solution but you know violence is alone not the solution but violence is sometimes necessary as a precursor to a solution sometimes the United Nations it sends peace keeping forces to avoid war just see what is the name also peace keeping force so to avoid violence you need force so actually violence or the threat of violence is is a major deterrent it alone will not stop but it is a deterrent and sometimes that is what is required so you cannot say at A, B, C these factors of violence are justified but if you look at the overall context it is that the Pandavas they were repeatedly atrocities were performed against them they tried to tolerate it all they were very accommodating and still they were rebuffed and eventually the purpose was to establish Dharma so if you look at the overall context then you do see that this was not just a war which is fought for gaining territory for getting power and prestige it was a war fought to establish Dharma and everybody who is fighting may have their own rationalizations we are on the side of virtue we are doing what is right, we are doing what is good but there are objective criteria by which things can also be observed so if we consider world war 1 or world war 2 we could say that both parties were vicious to some extent but certainly in world war 2 we can say that one party was much more vicious and so the other party had to defend we have to recognize that violence is is not entirely unavoidable at the same time, the Bhagavad Gita’s message is not a call for violence the Bhagavad Gita concludes with a call for surrender and Arjuna gives his assent, not by saying I will fight, he will say I will do your way Karishi Vachanam Tava the Bhagavad Gita has been commented by thousands of by many Acharyas there are hundreds of commentaries written on it but none of the Acharyas have ever have ever written commentaries which were calls for war Ramanujacharya Madhacharya, they lived when say Islam was ruling India but they did not use the Bhagavad Gita I will fight against the Muslims nothing like that so they focus on the essence of the Bhagavad Gita the essence of the Bhagavad Gita the Bhagavad Gita is a call not for violence, not for silence it’s a call for transcendence it’s a call to raise one’s consciousness to the spiritual level and sometimes that raising to the transcendence can be through violence sometimes it can be through silence sometimes it can be through something else the important thing is the Gita itself is not a book that is calling for violence if you look at it I have a whole article on this you see, the Gita is spoken just before a war but there is not a single verse which talks about war strategies in fact, after the fourth chapter the only reference to war that comes is in the eleventh chapter where Arjuna is talking, where the Vishwaroopa is described there is a reference in the eighth chapter where the Maman is forgiving but that is more in a broad context that fighting is your duty as a Kshatriya not to particularly fight this war in the whole last six chapters of the Bhagavad Gita there is no reference to the war at all so the point of the Gita is not to inspire somebody to fight a war the point of the Bhagavad Gita is to inspire us all to act according to Dharma Arjuna’s question at the start is also not should I fight or should I not fight Arjuna’s question is I want to know what is Dharma and Krishna tells what is Dharma so if the Bhagavad Gita had simply been a call to war it would not have had so much relevance for thousands of years it has had relevance because it addresses addresses universal questions of what is the purpose of humanity how are we to act in this world does it answer your question