A brief discourse on Dharma

Kongbrailatpam Rajeshwar Sharma
Last year during his first semester break at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, my son, who was pursuing a master’s degree at NTU, went to Bali which is three-hour flight away from Singapore. It is one of the  islands of Indonesia that lies to the east of Java. More than ninety percent of the population of Bali is Hindus. He sent me some pictures of Diamond Beach at Nusa Penida on Nusa Island, Denpasar the capital city of Bali and  many others. Among them, pictures of Pandawa Beach, and a picture of the performance of Kecak dance at Uluwatu Temple are worth mentioning. Kecak dance is a dance performance of an episode of the Ramayana where Sita is kidnapped by Ravana and eventually rescued from Lanka by Hanuman who invaded the kingdom along with  his army of monkeys.
Seeing the picture of a performance of an episode of the Ramayana at a temple in Bali is a reminiscence of the early days of my life. It takes me down to the memory lane that leads me to those days in Manipur when stories of  the Ramayana and the Maha-bharata were very popular and were narrated with great enthusiasm at the “Mandop” of every Hindu temple in the State, where men, women and children used to gather at every “Mandop” to listen to  the stories.
Not only did they come to listen to the stories but they also came to watch the story-teller who used to dramatize the scenes as he narrated the story. Narrating stories of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana at several neighborhoods was not only an integral part of Manipuri culture but it was also a performing art. Those days of joy and innocence are gone.
Although the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have lost their popularity in Manipur, their fragrance  still lingers in the hearts and minds of those who love them. The moral lessons from the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are still relevant and worthy enough to guide the people and their leaders as well. Moreover  they are the two great epics that India has contributed to the world of literature. Of these two great epics, the  Mahabharata is the longest one which is interwoven with moral stories. A modern man can learn about Dharma from these stories. It is ten times longer than Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey combined together. The Mahabharata  consists of more than 100,000 verses of two lines which are divided into eighteen books known as “Parva”. It was written by Rishi Ved Vyas about three thousand years ago. The Mahabharata is also considered as the fifth Veda.
The other four Vedas are Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajur-veda and Atharvaveda.
On the surface of its story, the Mahabharata is about the war between two groups of cousins–the Kauravas and the Pandavas. Underneath the current lies the everlasting theme of Dharma. There is no single English word that can express the concept of Dharma. It is close to the meaning of duty, law, morality, religion and virtue, but it does not exactly mean each of the words. “A person’s dharma is what it is right for that person to do, but one person’s dharma is different from another’s.” writes John D Smith in the introduction to his translation of the Mahabharata. To kill the enemy in the battlefield is a soldier’s Dharma but it is a crime to kill a person in normal circumstance. To a Brahmin, killing an animal is Adharma but to a hunter, it is his Dharma, for hunting to get meat is a hunter’s livelihood. The question whether an act is one’s Dharma or not arises more often than once or twice in the Mahabharata.
The question is what exactly Dharma is. To answer this, one has to go through the third Parva where Yudhisthir and his four brothers along with their wife Draupadi return to the Kamyaka forest. In the forest they meet the  great ascetic Markandeya who tells them several stories. Among them the story of a Brahmin whose name is  Kausika explains what one’s Dharma is. One day Kausika went to a village to beg food. While he was begging in the village, the Brahmin met a woman from whom he begged some food but the woman treated her husband first.
This made Kausika very angry and he asked the woman why she treated her husband first. She replied that a woman’s Dharma is “unqualified obedience to her husband.” She also advised the Brahmin to meet a hunter in Mithila to learn more about Dharma.
Accordingly Kausika went to the prosperous city of Mithila where he found the hunter selling meat in a  slaughterhouse. The hunter took the Brahmin home to explain about Dharma. He explained that Dharma is doing one’s job earnestly with diligence as nicely as possible no matter how unpleasant the job is. The hunter said to  Kausika, “it is right to perform one’s own dharma as well as possible, even if the task be an unpleasant one.” In  the battlefield it is fair to tell the untruth if it serves the purpose to defeat one’s enemy, for a soldier’s Dharma is to defeat the enemy. It does not incur any sin to the soldier. “A lie would be better than truth, and he that speaks a  lie in order to live is not contaminated by it”, says Krishna to Yudhisthir in the battlefield of Kurukshetra in the  Maha-bharata.
Krishna, the charioteer of Arjuna, knows that unless Drona is eliminated, the onslaught of the Kauravas cannot be  stopped. So he devises a plan to kill Drona. When Bhima has killed an elephant called Asva-thaman, Krishna urges  Yudhisthir to cry out that Asvathaman is killed in order to make Drona, who was once his teacher, think that his  son Asvathaman is killed so that Drona should lay down his arms. Otherwise the Pandavas cannot kill Drona who  has already inflicted heavy casualties on them. In spite of being the scion of truth and righteousness, Yudhisthir  cries out ‘the terrible lie’ that forces Drona to lay down his arms. Seizing this opportunity, Dhrstadyumna severs  Drona’s head. Similar situation seems to be playing out in the present ethnic conflict in Manipur.
On the other hand, all lives are sacred to the Hindus. The greatest Dharma of a Hindu is to save lives, so non violence is the paramount principle of a Hindu. But sometimes situation arises, where two noble principles are in conflict. In such a situation, the principle of non-violence should always prevail. In the Mahabharata, Krishna  narrates a story of a hermit and a robber in order to tell that non-violence is the greatest Dharma. The hermit lived  in a forest and spent his days meditating in the forest. He was so truthful that he would never tell a lie. Knowing that the hermit would tell the truth, one day the robber asked the hermit if he saw a merchant coming into the forest. Although the hermit knew that the robber would kill the merchant, he told the truth that the merchant was  hiding in the forest. The robber killed the merchant after he found the merchant. Had the hermit told a lie, he  could have saved the life of the merchant. Here in this situation saving a life is more important than telling the  truth. Consequently the hermit had to share the sin of killing the merchant with the robber.
The concept of Dharma is complex and contradictory but it is not rigid. Its principle changes to suit the demands of the external circumstances and situations. In Manipur several principles of Dharma are practiced. It may be wrong for you to destroy forests and cultivate poppy, but very profitable for some people; it may be right for you to take up arms in self-defense, but a crime to others; and it may be wrong for you to take sides in the conflict, but a useful devise for others to eliminate the other. After all it is one’s Dharma. The writer  is a freelance writer