The Mahabharata War and The Modern World Wars

The European history  is criticized for having led to the two World Wards in the 20th Century. This happened inspite of the Age of Reason and the Renaissance. That led to a big deal of introspection in Europe. The great intellectuals of Europe wrote about that and their artists, film makers explored this phenomenon in exponentially creative ways. This led to a great awakening in Europe and America and ever since it has not been easy for them to go to war. They have had to convince their parliaments and have had to indulge in manufacturing of consent deploying a great deal of machinery if they had to go to war. The fundamental point still remains how renaissance, age of reasoning, progress, development led to the Two World Wars - not inspite of but because of. Further it should be noted that European Colonialization - executed under the watch of Age of Reason, Renaissance, Modernity - killed many more than the two world wars  over 2 centuries across the world. Net-net the Age of Reason and Renaissance paralleled with contradictory destruction of civilization and life elsewhere - this is at best blindsightedness or worst part of the design. 

When Indian traditionalists point out to the failure of Age of Reasoning and Renaissance, it is only natural that the past of India is held up against it. We have had our own share of wars throughout history. With the few exceptions like the much spoken Kalinga war, others have been affairs of few days. Sometimes sieges have been of months duration. In comparison more people have died during migrations and man made famines of engineered by British colonialization in India. There is ample evidence.

Now that the historically recorded wars cannot be compared - mythology becomes an easy target. At a superficial level the Mahabharata war is a target. Ramayana war is not an easy target as the honour of a lady was at question. Mahabharata though is more complex. At the outset it looks like a bloody war between cousins for land and power. The question that is posed is - If there as so much dharma in our tradition and society then
1. Did The Mahabharata War happen inspite of a dhaarmic society
2. Did the Mahabharata War happen because of our dhaarmic orientations

Essentially it is to say that we are no different and hence the Age of Reason/Renaissance blindness is not a big deal. This kind of an argument creates a confusion and also blocks our access to our cultural thought. 

Three important aspects about Mahabharata in relation to this debate

1. The Elders and the wise in Mahabharata who were the exponents of our dhaarmic traditions were constantly predicting the tragic war and constantly urging Dhritaraashtra to end his support to his sons. The power, intellect and ego of such elders got never blindsighted to the possibilities of the war because of their dhaarmic explorations. 
2. One side was on the side of dharma. They were constantly exploring dharma, taking guidance and keeping their power, ego and intellect under the check of such dhaarmic exponents. The other side though was indulging in blatant violation and willful dismissal of sagely advice.
3. Thirdly, the Pandavas constantly rejected the war and eventually did so only when Krishna clearly established how the war was necessary to establish order in the society and get rid of the negative elements. One can disagree with Krishna thats a different matter. But the discussion and debate of the larger good of the society - one can find throughout in Mahabharata.

Now those who want to compare the World Wars of 20th Century and Mahabharata should establish if there was anything similar in the former. On the contrary, one finds both sides indulging in similar excess, manipulation, deceipt throughout and only one of the sides went beyond an acceptable limit the other side took a moral high-ground in waging the war. Churchill - the great war hero of England clearly should have been a war criminal in the way he dealt with India during the last part of colonialization. Dharma was neither on the side of Germany/Japan nor on the side of England/US. Each's deceipt overran the other.

Secondly, none of those waging the war was concerned about that possibility decades earlier and even if they did nobody acted to avert the war. Instead every act seemed to be moving towards the war. Each waiting for the other's  single mistake to get to the act.

If there was anybody who was on the side of dharma it was the intellectuals of Europe and Germany who avoided getting on the either side until the fag end - when some of them found it necessary to put Germany down.

So, both in the World Wars and Mahabharata it was adharma that led to the war, not dharma. The essential difference is in the case of World Wars nobody was on the side of dharma. (One can at best say that in the end Germany and Japan were worse on their adharma quotent.) They both contributed to the entropy of adharma going up and eventually the lesser had to prevail over the other. There was certainly no Vidura and Vyasa who foretold disasters from within. There was no Bheeshma who knew what was right but bound himself in some complex calculations. Instead, there were umpteen number of Shalya-s, Jarasandhas, Bhagadatta-s, Jayadrathas on either side. Age of Reason and Renaissance was completely blindsighted to the disaster the civilization was heading towards because they failed to understand that unbridled development of intellect with a spiritual, dhaarmic angle only leads to the disproportionate growth of ego and conflict. There was no regular deflating of the balloon of ego. In the case of Mahabharata, one side was clearly exploring dharma. 

As Eric Fromm says "Reason flows from the blending of rational thought and feeling. If the two functions are torn apart, thinking deteriorates schizoid intellectual activity and feeling deteriorates into neurotic life-damaging passions."

The so called Renaissance and Age of Reasoning forgot feeling. But in Mahabharata the intellect was constantly under the check of emotion that was guided by Dharma.

Hence, the two are not comparable.

This is not to say that Renaissance and Age of Reasoning did not achieve anything at all. Its the overamphasis on Rational Thought that is fundamentally flawed. In another post I shall further elaborate on this aspect of the debate.