Why did Arjuna kill Bhishma unfairly?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Hare Krishna. Question, why did the Pandavas arrange to kill Bhishma unfairly? Answer, it was not exactly unfair.
First of all, Bhishma is considered to be one of the Mahajanas. He was so great a dharmic teacher that even when he was in deathbed, even when he was part of the defeated party, still the Pandavas went to him and Krishna himself was there when he instructed Dharmaraj. So the point is Bhishma surely knew all the codes of war and yet he himself told the Pandavas about how he could be killed.
So the Pandavas knew that they were up against formidable warriors who would be almost impossible to defeat and therefore they went, especially Yudhishthira went and asked his elders how he would be able to defeat them before the war started and Bhishma said at that time, no one can defeat me as long as I have raised my weapons and how I can be defeated, I will tell you later. So then, later in the course of the war, Bhishma was the commander for 10 days and on the 9th night, the Pandavas went to Bhishma and then Bhishma himself revealed the secret. Bhishma had pointed towards the secret earlier saying that he considers Shikhandi to be a woman and he had taken a resolve that he would not raise weapons against a woman.
That was a Kshatriya resolve and he had especially stressed it. Shikhandi had been amba in his previous life. So he saw her as a woman and he was not going to attack her.
That was a chink in his armour and the Pandavas, as per the desire of Bhishma, Bhishma told, this is the way. If a warrior actually comes in, wherever I see Shikhandi, I will not shoot arrows there and if somebody shoots arrows to me from behind, that direction, then I will not counter. So from behind Shikhandi.
So that’s what they decided to do as per Bhishma’s desire. So Bhishma himself gave this instruction. That means he did not consider it unfair.
He would not want the last act of his life to be contaminated by Adharma. So now, is it Adharmic? The point here is that if a Kshatriya chooses not to counter attack, normally when two Kshatriyas are fighting, one Kshatriya challenges the other Kshatriya. Now the other Kshatriya has to respond to the challenge.
And then the two fight. So either the other Kshatriya run away, which is very un-Kshatriya, which is very un-heroic, or the Kshatriya fights. That’s the normal code.
So when Shikhandi as a Kshatriya challenged Bhishma for a fight, now Shikhandi was not as great a warrior as Bhishma, but Shikhandi was also not a very small warrior. Now for one Kshatriya to challenge another Kshatriya and to just be neglected, Bhishma was not even running away by which he would have admitted defeat and Bhishma was not fighting back also. So what could Shikhandi do at that time? Shikhandi attacked.
Attacked him. And then, now Shikhandi was there and Arjuna was also there with him. Now when Arjuna was shooting arrows at Bhishma, it was not that all the time he was hiding behind Bhishma, Shikhandi’s back.
He was actually, at least to shoot arrows, he would have to come back from behind Shikhandi’s back. And during that time, Bhishma had sufficient archery skills and even if Shikhandi and Arjuna were very close to each other, we could say, still, he could have very well shot at Arjuna and he could have countered Arjuna. And we see that he did keep fighting for a long, long time.
And eventually, when he was fighting, it was not that Bhishma was all alone. The other Kaurava warriors also tried to assist him and they saw that he was being targeted by Shikhandi and Arjuna. The other warriors came over there and Arjuna and Shikhandi combined.
They held all those warriors back while also attacking Bhishma. And Bhishma counterattacked but he would not attack Shikhandi. He was targeting Arjuna.
He was targeting Arjuna earlier. And on this day, he was targeted. Arjuna countered his arrows.
And eventually, the attack of Shikhandi, which he refused to counter, and the arrows of Arjuna, which he did counter, but all of them he couldn’t counter. So some of them pierced him and that’s how he eventually fell. And when he was falling, before that, Dushasan was trying to come to help him.
And Bhishma told Dushasan that, actually, the warriors of Shikhandi and Arjuna both are piercing me. But Shikhandi’s arrows don’t hurt me much. He said, it is Arjuna’s arrows which are piercing me and burning me from within.
Shikhandi’s arrows don’t have the capacity to wound me so much. So it was actually Shikhandi’s arrows which pierced through his body and yet did not cause fatal wounds. Of course, he had Iccha Mrityu.
But still, his body was so tough, so virile, that even when the arrows pierced his body, he could continue fighting because those arrows were not discharged with the lethal force that characterized the arrows of Partha. And Bhishma was countering most of the arrows of Partha. Eventually, when Bhishma fell, that was because of sustained assault of so many arrows wounding him and yet he maintained his life.
So we have to understand that the principles of Dharma cannot be just gleaned, can’t be understood by superficial appearance of things. Firstly, Arjuna’s killing of Bhishma was not unrighteous because Bhishma himself asked for it. It was not unrighteous because Shikhandi gave a fair warning and gave a fair challenge to Bhishma which Bhishma refused to take up.
And it is not unfair because Bhishma did have a chance to counter Arjuna even if he had decided that he would not counter Shikhandi. And eventually when he fell, even after that he was considered a great Dharmic authority that he would give instructions, Yudhishthira went to receive instructions from him. And thus, it was not that the attack was unfair, it was not adharmic because the person who was the teacher of Dharma himself had told and there is no indication that he was considered to have lost his sense of Dharma in having given such an instruction about how he could be killed.
So we ultimately understand that Bhishma’s killing was a part of the Lord’s plan and Bhishma himself played his role in that Lord’s plan and Arjuna played a role in that Lord’s plan. And that’s how the whole event took place. Thank you.