Wouldn’t killing Ashwatthama have been just punishment & prevented his future attack with Brahmastra?

Transcript

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Question. How to understand the Ashwathama punishment episode from the Srimad Bhagavatam, Canto 1, Chapter 7? Sometimes Prabhupada seems to be approving Ropadee’s forgiveness, sometimes he’s not.
So if he had been killed then he wouldn’t have attacked again with Brahmahastra. So was killing him for what he had done not justice? Bhima also had a different opinion. Krishna tested Arjuna in that situation.
Answer. It’s a complex situation. In general in Vedic culture, Brahmanas are considered worshipable.
And even if they make mistakes, even grave mistakes, they are not condemned. Or at least they are not usually very rarely killed. Because that involves Brahmahatya.
They may be punished but they should not be killed. So killing Brahmanas is extremely rare. So with respect to Ashwathama, what he did was horrendously wrong.
But he felt driven by a twisted sense of righteousness. That the Kauravas had killed his father when he was not conscious. Of course he was in meditation, not sleeping, but he was not conscious.
Similarly he said that, so that’s how he was able to justify to himself what he was doing. Now of course he did not kill one. If he had killed Dhristadyumna alone that would have been different.
He killed everyone including the Pandava sons who had never been a part of what happened to Drona. So certainly his actions were, even if driven by a misconceived sense of justice, they were disproportionate and horrendous. And now Draupadi’s reasoning was that, not just what he had done, but what doing anything to him would do to his loved one.
That was her consideration, that’s an empathic consideration. So in general Ashwathama had throughout the knowledge of the Pandavas, they had interacted with him, they were students together in Gurukul and they knew each other. Although Ashwathama had out of duty chosen to fight on the Kaurava side because his father had been obligated to, because of his sense of obligation to the Kaurava kingdom and he had some friendship with Duryodhana.
But Ashwathama had not known to be brutal or vicious. So in fact there are times, couple of occasions when Ashwathama advocates to Duryodhana that, that better stop fighting, there is no chance of winning against the Pandavas. And unfortunately Duryodhana doesn’t listen to him.
So it was a horrendous incident, but it was a one time incident. So then at that time, because he was a Brahmana, because his mother had no one, because this was a one time horrendous incident we had done, out of grief driven anger. So it was decided that he needn’t be killed.
So now Prabhupada’s purports, generally my understanding is Prabhupada gives us maximum lessons from every pastime. That means sometimes Prabhupada will, if he wants to convey the lesson of soft heartedness and empathy, he will say what Draupadi was doing was right. But if he wants to convey the lesson of justice and proportionate punishment to deter wrongdoers, he conveys that also.
So it depends on what his stress is. And that’s why rather than using those purports to judge whether that particular character was right or wrong, we can see his purports as indicative of what lessons we can learn. And sometimes a person is given a second chance and they improve.
And sometimes a person is given a second chance and they simply become worse. Now we can’t predict in advance. And although Krishna is God, Krishna doesn’t always operate on the presumption of omniscience whenever he is functioning.
Quite often he functions based on what is conducive, what is operationally suitable. And he lets his associates decide and he also gives some inputs. And he lets things go in their own way.
So was it the right choice? Well it depends on the context with the information they had. It seemed to be like a reasonable choice. But future showed that it was not such a right choice.
So it turned out to be a terrible choice because the Jiva, Ashwathama misuses free will again. When Giriraj Maharaj and other early disciples of Prabhupada, they found that one of the persons whom Prabhupada had made into a GVC, he fell away. But Prabhupada had spoken very highly of him and Prabhupada had empowered him repeatedly.
So then they were shocked that Prabhupada made a wrong decision. So Prabhupada basically explained that based on his track record I gave him an opportunity and he didn’t use that opportunity. He misused it.
So that is indicative that the soul has free will, the soul can misuse the free will. So that’s my overall understanding of the situation. So giving even a person who has done a horrendous wrong another chance and if they again do wrong then they have to be completely punished and disempowered.
If not killed at least disempowered. That did happen to Ashwathama eventually. So that’s how I broadly understand the situation.