The Difficulty of Being Good – The Subtle Art of Dharma, By Gurcharan Das

25 February 2010

It was wonderful, enlightening and soothing to listen to Gurcharan Das at the Citi Mumbai office. He was here for a signing and discussion on his latest book.

He is a short, petite (almost frail) figure and has an unassuming and easy manner of speech, like he is relishing every word he is saying and genuinely wants to share his thoughts. He spoke of the defining qualities of a CEO: Determination, almost to the point of being stubborn and abundant Humility. His central theme was morality or Dharma – In good governance, by doing away with corruption which he said, would untie India’s hands and take her to the pinnacle of development and glory, quoting a Chinese Diplomat he met recently.

He spoke of how Mahabharata developed and evolved: As ‘Jaya’, ‘Bharata’ and then ‘Mahabharatha’ ; also, how the image and character of Krishna evolved with the epic. Its an epic with an obsession with Dharma, an epic where no God prescribes good or evil, right or wrong – this makes the characters question and argue the morality of their own actions and hence, sharpens the moral reasoning skills of the characters and indeed, the readers of the epic. This forms the very basis of classical Hinduism, he said. On a separate note, I can connect this to the idea of debate extolled by Amartya Sen in his wonderful book, the Argumentative Indian, where he talks about how moral reasoning and argumentation form the very basis of Indian democracy and culture.

Gurcharan Das, in outlining the broad storyline of Mahabharata, spoke of Draupadi who’s own Dharma and sense of being right saved her from humiliation in Court (and not Lord Krishna’s miracle, as another school of thought would have it). He spoke of Karna, whose moral reasoning led him to fight on the Kaurava side whilst he was actually a Pandava  by birth. He spoke of Arjuna’s moral dilemma at the thought of killing his kin at war and extended the thought to today’s wars raging across the world. He added that today’s world leaders would benefit from asking the Arjuna question before proclaiming: ‘TO WAR!’

On a separate note, he also spoke about today’s status-crazed society where everyone is worried about what someone else is thinking of them, adding that this worry is futile since each person is possessed of the same dread of others’ opinions!

Answering a question on morality being subjective, he said that the concept of right and wrong is universal and a universal truth, devoid of subjectivity. As you read the chain of actions and events in the Mahabharata, most often you know what right and wrong is, in the context of those actions.