‘I have slain that enemy, and others also I shall slay. I am a lord, I enjoy life, I am successful, powerful and happy.

I am wealthy and of noble birth, who else is there like me? I shall pay for religious rituals, I shall make benefactions, I shall enjoy myself.’ Thus they say in their darkness of delusion.

The Clay Sanskrit Library is a venture of philanthropist John Clay. He considered the ancient Sanskrit classics to be on a par with the ancient Latin and Greek classics. By their authority and comprehensive character, he wrote, they dominated Hindu literature for several centuries. Buddhist and Jain literature later developed their own literary traditions to bring about a second flowering of Sanskrit literature. The Clay Sanskrit Library has just released the first of a series intended to publish all the Sanskrit classics. This series opens with the multi-authored Mahabharata and Valmiki’s Ramayana and includes several other shorter poems, plays, stories and fables, some presented in English for the first time.

The excerpt at the head of this column is from the Bhagavad Gita (Book 16 slokas 14-15). The Bhagavad Gita itself is contained within the Mahabharata and comes at a point when the armies of the Kauravas and the Pandavas, two warring branches of a single princely family, are ready to battle. In a recent issue of the Times Literary Supplement, the reviewer of the Clay Sanskrit Library makes the valid point that the Mahabharata is, in its earliest articulation, not a text but a telling, a series of bardic stories enriched by each other. And as with the Homeric poems, he states that it is orality that is the key to understanding its significance; here was a way of telling people how things were, a way of transmitting knowledge.

One of the fables related in the collection is the story of the old lion, now retired, who wishes only to sleep peacefully in his cave. But a naughty mouse comes out of his hole and nibbles at his mane whenever he wants to take a nap, and this drives the lion crazy. So he engages a cat, its natural enemy, to keep it at bay, and for a while things go well. One day, the cat ambushes the mouse and dispatches it. Though the lion had previously fed the cat well, after the mouse is gone, the poor thing starves to death. The moral of the story – ‘never keep your master free from care.’

The Bhagavad Gita is today used mainly as a spiritual guide. Simon Brodbeck in his introduction to Juan Mascaro’s translation of the classic says that the Bhagavad Gita was of particular use to Hindu intellectuals and public figures as Indian nationalist ideas began to emerge under British rule. As the nationalist movement grew, it was interpreted in radically different ways by Indian politicians. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, an extremist, stressed its rejection of quietism and its justification of violent action against tyrants and used it to encourage revolutionary activity. This interpretation was in keeping with the Mahabharata context of the Bhagavad Gita. Gandhi, on the other hand, saw the Mahabharata war an allegorical representation of the internal struggle between the human soul and worldly temptations. For Gandhi, there was nothing in the text which contradicted his principles of non-violence and his politics of passive resistance.

The Bhagavad Gita, like all great religious texts, holds eternal truths. Much of it is in the form of a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna set in the background of the war between the Kauravas and the Pandavas. And therein lies its relevance for all time. As Juan Mascaro (who once served as a Vice Principal at Parameshwara College, Jaffna), states in the introduction to his own translation, while the war in the Mahabharata may be meant as a real war, the war in the Bhagavad Gita has a symbolic meaning. The Arjuna and Krishna that is found in the rest of the Mahabharata are different beings from the Krishna and Arjuna of the Bhagavad Gita. This is not just the battle for a kingdom. It is a battle for the kingdom of our ‘souls’ – are we going to allow the forces of light in us or the forces of darkness to win?

Mascaro thinks the imagery of Arjuna’s chariot is the chariot in Buddhism which is called ‘He that runs in silence’; the wheels of the chariot are Right effort’; the driver is the Dhamma, or truth. The chariot leads to Nirvana. The end of the journey is ‘The land which is free from fear.’ It is imagery that we find in all spiritual texts, irrespective of any particular religion or even no religion.

The news in Thursday’s The Island that some 439 families comprising a little over 1000 individuals were being re-settled in the Ampara, Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Jaffna districts was welcome news, even if it was only a small fraction of the total number. But it would have been better if there was also an announcement as to the basis on which these 439 families were selected. The photograph that accompanied this story showed a stern-faced Vinayagamurthy Muralitharan (alias Karuna Amman) pointing towards a way while a seemingly distraught couple with a young child appear to be crying and pleading, though the news item stated that Muralitharan was overseeing the movement of delighted civilians.

The Government undoubtedly has a difficult problem on its hands but it will make its task that much easier if there was transparency in making public their plans for re-settlement. Various spokespersons make various contradictory statements that confuses the public.

Holding nearly 300,000 persons in camps is no doubt a difficult task but it is now nearly two months since the massive wave of displaced persons moved in. Again, transparency and an acknowledgement of the inadequate facilities at their disposal would have helped. There was no need to deny the pathetic conditions in nearly all the camps, and show only pictures of one show-piece camp. The Defence Secretary says that foreign aid is required to run the camps but at the same time the aid agencies like the International Red Cross are told their operations in the camps need to be scaled down.

It is a lack of transparency and unsubstantiated blanket accusations against non-governmental organisations and western governments that lead to counter-accusations of a hidden agenda to change the ethnic demography of the North and East; and accusations of deaths and disappearances from the camps. It is never too late to take the people into confidence and reveal both the difficulties faced by the authorities as well as any firm plans to re-settle these people in their respective original villages. As it is, we have only reports of police stations and army camps being established, leading to rumours that Sinhala families are being settled in these areas. There may be no truth in these rumours but it is only transparency and access to the area for independent non-governmental persons (religious leaders, journalists, civil society), not statements by government spokespersons, that can put these rumours to rest.

There have been reports of an increase in the level of violence and extra-judicial killings from all parts of the country. Some of these killings are reportedly of underworld characters who themselves engage in acts of violence and killings. But condoning the extra-judicial killing of anyone is unacceptable. The rule of law cannot be ignored. We know from past experience, particularly during the southern insurgency, how many innocent young men were killed or simply disappeared because of false information given by persons attempting to settle personal grievances.

In 2004, the Asian Human Rights Commission published stories told be families who had suffered loss during the 1988-1989 period. Titled An Exceptional Collapse of the Rule of Law, Basil Fernando in his Introduction states, ‘The force of violence, once let loose, cannot be controlled even by those who initiate it. Developing its own momentum, it destroys the very fabric of society. Its target widens to gradually include everyone. In many of the inquiries into cases of disappearances, parents and relatives complained of innumerable innocent people being killed, including young boys and girls. According to statistics provided by the inquiry commissions, close to 15% of the total number of disappearances were persons below the age of 19. Many parents have claimed that their children were killed due to false information given by a jealous neighbour. In fact, no one who has lived through this period would challenge the notion that people used those moments of chaos to take personal vengeance against others. The sheer madness of the situation consumed innocent lives.’

In the present context of the total defeat of the LTTE and a ‘witch-hunt’ against those who willingly or unwillingly participated even in the LTTE’s non-violent activities, we must not forget the bitter lessons of the southern insurgency. Basil Fernando concludes his introduction with these words: ‘The only voices of sanity in the country are those who continue to cry in pain. These families have done this for over a decade now, and will continue doing so for the rest of their lives. At some stage, will the national conscience prove capable of responding to their pain?’