Why did Bhima abandon Hidimibi – did he marry her simply to gain political power?

Transcript

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thank you any other questions Hidimba was so angry that she was flirting with him he wanted to kill her as well as Bheema and Bheema killed Hidimba they were just going on their way and Bheema begged to Kunti she went to Kunti and they agreed now in general if there is a marriage say between a human and a Gandharva or a human and a Rakshasi or a human and a Naga then at that time it’s just general tradition in the scripture that they don’t live together is there a marriage between them no, the point is that when there is generally we see in scripture it is not the Pandavas alone doing this sometimes if you see the there are many other stories in the Puranas where this is what happens is it expected the point is that there are different in the Ramayana it is said that different species have different rules of morality so for example when Vali is killed at that time her own husband Vali only tells his wife Tara that you stay under the care of Surya so under the care of Surya that’s what her husband tells her that I will not be there you stay with him so for you it is not considered immoral because if your husband tells you to do it and there is no one else so my point is is there any account over there that Hidimbi expected Bhima to give up his kingdom and stay with him is there any account that Hidimbi felt is satisfied and complained that Bhima was not with him is there any account that there was that Bhima at that time he thought that in future we will have a powerful son and he will become the king of the Rakshasas and then we will have the Rakshasa forces with us there is no such calculative description anywhere in the Mahabharata that’s why they say Vyasadeva doesn’t go into it ok now if you want to go into that angle then that’s a if you want to look at scripture with a particular prism that’s fine, you can do that but is scripture really talking about that if you want to look with a feminist prism then there is polygamy over there one man has five wives so it is in general it is understood that every culture has to be evaluated in terms of the norms of that culture if you start evaluating one culture from the norms of another culture then any culture can be demonized Indians we demonize western culture, this is so bad I I was reading about when Britishers came to India first time in British culture the Victorian culture was going on so there is one woman who came and she wrote Indians are so obscene they wear clothes in which their ankles and legs their ankles and foot are bare which is a civilized woman would never come out of her house without covering her legs so now is that obscenity if you are living in Britain you need, if the weather is cold you will always have footwear in terms of cloth India is hot, you don’t need socks that’s not obscenity so if you start evaluating one culture in terms of another culture you can always find faults so what do you do so we explain that there is a particular world view within which people are operating and more in the specifics of the story there are universal human values that are to be learned there are universal universal human values to be learned there are universal spiritual values to be learned the specifics of the culture they are varying from person to person so now is it that the Mahabharata is in scripture also something that is descriptive and something that is prescriptive descriptive means simply describing what happened over there at that time prescriptive means this is what we are meant to do so the Pandavas first of all there was no description of the calculative mentality now if you say that the Asadev doesn’t go into that then what you are assuming that she had that kind of feeling how do you know that how do you know that Hidimbi felt resentful about it she might have been grateful that she had missed she could stay with Bhima for some time and in fact at that time when she got married only that was the condition Bhima cannot be always with you he will be there for some time with you and once he gives you a son then he will depart so she accepted that condition so there is no if we presume that she must have been resentful then we are projecting modern sensibilities modern ideas on somebody who is in a traditional culture and the ok let’s complete this for the first thing now marrying as a matter of political alliances is just universal in Indian culture not Indian culture, it’s world culture generally it was like that and there is a big difference in the whole conception of marriage in modern, post modern times in the past marriage was seen as a duty and if happiness happiness was hoped from that happiness was sought from that but happiness was not the primary purpose the idea was ok, I am in this family and my parents want to form a family they do that almost everywhere in the world marriages are arranged so marriage was seen as a duty to be done and the duty was of course meant to give pleasure but pleasure was not the defining basis for doing that now, in today’s world there is a completely different paradigm the purpose of marriage is pleasure and if I don’t get pleasure, why should I stay in the marriage so the operating world view is very different it’s like if I ride in America and I start evaluating the traffic rules of India everybody goes on the wrong side from your perspective it’s the wrong side but there is an order within that and people are driving people are getting to their places so similarly if we if somebody wants to be unfair and criticized they can do that and some people are just averse to it so it’s not that having said this that there is a reductionistic way of looking at things reductionistic means we have a particular perspective and we reduce traditional narratives to that perspective reductionistic so now it is true that marriages were formed for political alliances but the important thing is after the marriages were done did the Pandavas leave their wives on the streets not caring for them no, one man having many wives that was just a part of the culture they stayed at their places yeah only the queens who were not from their species like hidden beings she would not have fit in human culture her culture was different she is a different person so even what to speak of hidden beings even Ghatotkach the Pandavas loved him but he could not stay with them he would not have been happy living constantly in human society similarly when he went to the north he married another queen, another princess and that also, it was not expected that she would stay with him or he would stay with her so we can’t impose our cultural conceptions on those people