When Yudhishthira Considered Duryodhana A Good King Was Killing Him Necessary To Establish Dharma

Transcript

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Hare Krishna the question here is was Duryodhana a good king if yes then did Yudhishthira have to fight the whole Kurukshetra war to overthrow him for establishing Dharma answer I’ll give it at three levels over here first is with respect to the epic itself and the traditional sources whether Duryodhana was a good king during the time when he was ruling is open to question now there are some statements which suggest say for example Shila Prabhupada in the first canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam while describing Yudhishthira’s lamentation says that actually Duryodhana was a good king and there was no need to have fought this war now at that time Yudhishthira was also saying that oh I caused the death of all these people because of me there are so many widows and orphans over here and he is saying that I am a criminal I have committed so many sins that no amount of atonement will purify me from it so he is actually at that time expressing great emotional trauma so whether at that time his statements reflect an objective reality that is open to question even academic scholars who studied the Mahabharat and then who studied other sources of literary sources at the time of the Mahabharat some say Duryodhana was a good ruler some say he was not a good ruler so let’s assume for argument’s sake that he was a good ruler now what do we mean by good ruler over here that he didn’t exploit the citizens he didn’t abuse the citizens he did his duty so that the citizens could have the basic facilities of life they could have they could pursue their duties and pursue happiness so let’s presume I am not accepting that he was a good king but if in those terms he was a good king so what was the reason for him to be a good king so if we look at his overall behavior in life it was this very person who had tried to publicly disrobe his own sister-in-law Draupadi and she was she was also not a weak woman she had powerful husbands and he knew very well there could be retribution but he felt he was so intoxicated by power that he felt that now that I have made the Pandavas my slaves I can do whatever I want and he delighted in causing misery to the Pandavas by dishonoring Draupadi and also he wanted to actually dishonor Draupadi because he felt that she had dishonored him before now yes maybe she laughed when he slipped and fell but it’s one thing to laugh it may have hurt his ego but okay there’s a sense of proportionality that for a woman to be publicly disrobed she could very well die of shame such a dishonorable thing so a king has to have a sense of proportionality did he have that he had no right to do that to Draupadi it was because of his own inability to discern where was the floor and where was the water that’s why he slipped and fell so this kind of vengefulness disproportionately getting back at people this is vicious and we may say that okay but he did only that time no we may say that some people say he was a good person but he was corrupted by Shakuni not really yes Shakuni gave him further devious ideas about how to get how to overpower the Pandavas but even before Shakuni came in when he was still a teenager he set up a whole conspiracy to have Bhima poisoned it was only because of some amazing coincidences that Bhima survived and came back stronger so it was not that if you look at Duryodhana’s track record it was not that he has a track record of being a well virtuous person so it’s unlikely that when he actually got power he would have suddenly lost all the vices that he had exhibited throughout his life now we may say that actually he he was only against the Pandavas but he wouldn’t have been against the ordinary citizens because the Pandavas were threats to him well okay but then what does that simply mean that means a person is insecure and because of their insecurity anybody whom they perceive as a threat they want to eliminate that person and then right now the Pandavas were threats, tomorrow somebody else could become a threat and they would want to eliminate that person also one of the characters of the king is Dakshin that means there are multiple interests, multiple stakeholders multiple pressure groups and the king has to expertly balance them the king cannot just overrule everyone by his absolute power and kill everyone who opposes him or who feels the threat that is not a Dharmic ruler at all so it is because he had a track record of doing Adharma it is quite likely that he would have done Adharma, he would have abused his power, now Adharma we are not talking about irreligious activities in terms of destroying temples and things like that, he might not have done that but he could have made the life hell for his citizens or for anyone among his citizens who he thought was a threat for him or anyone who opposed him and now let me say that okay even if he was a good king now why would he have been a good king so actually speaking the purpose was so that when the Pandavas come back and when the Pandavas take claim for a kingdom at that time after the 13 years of exile at that time he by giving gifts and by in today’s world you can say populist just handing out freebies to people by doing that he may have depleted the royal treasury but by that he wanted to win the people over so it was only because there was a threat of the Pandavas coming back in fact this was his strategy earlier also earlier when the Pandavas were becoming increasingly popular he connived with his father to have the Pandavas sent away from the capital to Varanavarth he said out of sight, out of mind so if they don’t see the Pandavas regularly then they will forget the Pandavas and his plan was also of course to kill the Pandavas over there but even if they were not killed he wanted to put them away for months and during that his plan was I will give gifts and I will be generous to citizens and I will try to win them over so even if he was good to his citizens that was primarily because he was afraid that because there was a threat of the Pandavas coming back in so such a person who has a track record of acting viciously who has a track record of going to any extent to abuse one’s power to eliminate threats who has no sense of the limits of dharma even if for some time he was a good king, he was administering well that is most likely a show it’s if he had held on to power the Pandavas had gone out of picture the Pandavas had completely given up their claim for the kingdom the Pandavas claiming their kingdom not just for because they wanted to be rulers because they had a duty to their citizens they were members of the royal dynasty and along with that came responsibilities so it was for the protection of dharma that the Pandavas had to fight against Duryodhana to summarize either the report that Duryodhana was a good ruler is questionable and it’s false and even if it is it was an uncharacteristic of his own character to act virtuously and if he acted like that, it was only for the sake of populism so that the threat of the Pandavas on returning would be minimized, the people would be on his side and not their side such a king who is simply a populist, a opportunist but vicious internally needs to be eliminated otherwise what could he do if he had no threat from anyone else, the person who had tried to disrobe and dishonor Draupadi in public in the royal assembly what would such a person do when they had got untrammeled power this act is so brazen, it’s like when somebody wants to, some criminal wants to force oneself on a woman or violate a woman or dishonor a woman usually they may do it in private they may find the victim secretly and in a dark night or in a private place they may do it if somebody does it in a public place that means they have no fear of anybody getting to them they have created such a reign of terror that they are confident that nobody will bear witness against them nobody will stop them, nobody will bear witness against them in the courts but imagine if somebody has the brazenness to actually attack and violate a woman in the police police station or in the court itself so that was what Duryodhana was doing so his disregard for for dharma for basic principles of humanity and morality was horrendous and such a person by no means could actually ever be a good king that’s why he had to be neutralized thank you