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Magazine
THE SHASHI THAROOR COLUMN
Timeless epic
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There is practically no subject the Mahabharata does not cover.
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AS the New Year has begun, I have been spending some of my holiday time re-reading an old book. A very old book, in fact: the Mahabharata. It strikes me, increasingly, as the epitome of a truism we become conscious of each New Year, that there is nothing as new as the truly old.
Its success
Consider the evidence. A television series retelling the Mahabharata was the most successful Indian TV programme ever, drawing an audience of over 200 million and paralysing life during the hours of its weekly telecast. The Western world's leading avant-garde theatre director made a nine-hour play of the epic, which a multinational cast performed to enthusiastic acclaim across the globe, from Avignon to Ayers Rock. Shorter TV and film versions of the play were also successfully distributed worldwide. The best selling book in the history of Indian publishing in English is not some steamy potboiler, but the venerable C. Rajagopalachari ("Rajaji")'s episodic translation of the Mahabharata. (If the sales of other translations were added, the Mahabharata would probably eclipse the next few Indian bestsellers put together.) Obviously, the 2,000-year-old epic is still flourishing: why, an American professor in Washington, D.C. offers a "multimedia" course in the Mahabharata, with students examining it from a dozen different contemporary perspectives, including those of Bollywood, Brook, and yours truly (an immodest reference to my first novel, The Great Indian Novel, whose title is not a reflection of my estimate of its contents, but a reference to this source of inspiration — for since "Maha" means "Great" and "Bharat" is the Hindi name for India, "Mahabharata", after all, can be read to mean "Great India".)
A living epic
It is precisely the epic's appeal to non-Sanskrit scholars that has ensured the Mahabharata's present-day relevance and given me material for my novel. Though I am no expert on the great epic, I found the Mahabharata the perfect vehicle for an attempt to retell the political history of 20th Century India, through a fictional recasting of its events, episodes and characters. The eminent Mahabharata scholar C.R. Deshpande has attested to the importance of the epic in the Indian consciousness ("it has moulded the very character of the Indian people"). The Grand Old Man of Mahabharata studies, V.S. Sukthankar, put it uncompromisingly: "The Mahabharata," he wrote, "is the content of our collective unconscious .... We must therefore grasp this great book with both hands and face it squarely. Then we shall recognise that it is our past which has prolonged itself into the present. We are it ... ." Another eminent scholar, R.N. Dandekar, pointed out that "men and women in India from one end of the country to the other, whether young or old, whether rich or poor, whether high or low, whether simple or sophisticated, still derive entertainment, inspiration and guidance from the Mahabharata ... . There is indeed no department of Indian life, public or private, which is not effectively influenced by the great epic. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the people of India have learnt to think and act in terms of the Mahabharata".
The epic's "transcreator", P. Lal, takes this a crucial step further. "The epic of Vyasa is not a literary masterpiece out there, somewhere in the past, or tucked away in airconditioned museums and libraries," he avers. "Its characters still walk the Indian streets, its animals populate our forests, its legends and myths haunt and inspire the Indian imagination, its events are the disturbing warp and woof of our age ... . The essential Mahabharata is whatever is relevant to us in the second half of the 20th Century; whatever helps us understand and live better our own Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha (faith, wealth, pleasure and salvation) ... . No epic, no work of art, is sacred by itself; if it does not have meaning for me now, it is nothing, it is dead."
About understanding India
Lal's view underscores, rather than undermines, the traditionalists' position. The Mahabharata has come to stand for so much in the popular consciousness of Indians: the issues the epic raises, as well as the values it seeks to promote, are central to an understanding of what makes India India. And yet the Mahabharata is a tale of the real world, one whose heroes have feet of clay, whose stories have ambiguous ends, whose events range from great feats of honour and valour to dubious compromises, broken promises, dishonourable battles, expedient lies, dispensable morality.
A British friend, asked to explain to a foreigner what made England England, replied, "cricket, Shakespeare, the BBC". Though so concise an answer would be difficult for an Indian, it is impossible to imagine any similar attempt to describe India that omits the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata declares, "What is here is nowhere else; what is not here, is nowhere". Few other works in world literature could make such an extravagant claim, but in doing so, the 2,000-year-old Indian epic poem is not defending a closed structure: rather, the Mahabharata has had so many accretions over the years in constant retellings that there is practically no subject it does not cover. Its characters and personages still march triumphantly in Indian minds, its myths and legends still inspire the Indian imagination, its events still speak to Indians with a contemporary resonance rare in many 20th Century works.
An elasticity
The basic story, if the tale of the dynastic rivalry between the Pandava and Kaurava clans may be called that, has been so thoroughly the object of adaptation, interpolation and reinterpretation that the Mahabharata as we now have it overflows with myths and legends of all sorts, didactic tales exalting the Brahmins, fables and stories which teach moral and existential lessons, bardic poetry extolling historical dynasties, and meandering digressions on everything from law to lechery and politics to philosophy. Whenever a particular social or political message was sought to be imparted to Indians at large, it was simply inserted into a retelling of the Mahabharata. As Rajaji drily put it, "interpolation in a recognised classic seemed to correspond to inclusion in the national library". This elasticity through the ages adds to the timelessness of the epic's appeal.
What are the possibilities the Mahabharata offers us at the beginning of the 21st Century? Let me examine some of them in my next column.
Visit the author at www.shashitharoor.com
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