jabdakhata

At the same time Mahabharata tells us one simple thing - the course of virtue is not so straight forward as some people think. There are many twists and turns. It narrates a story about a certain Brahmana called Kaushik who was extremely foolish but wanted to stay on the course of truth. While he was resting by the roadside, a few persons came running in fear for their lives and hid behind a bush. Shortly a gang of robbers came with the intention of killing those innocent victims and demanded the information from Kaushik about their whereabouts. The foolish Brahmana, knowing the great perils that these innocent guys face, gave away the information to stick to his vow of truthfulness. Now truthfulness is considered as a great virtue, but what do you think happened to those guys? They were all butchered. And what do you think happened to Kaushik? Despite being truthful he was sunk into the deepest hell. So what would the moralists say? Obviously neither the ends, nor the means we

How do we define a virtuous end? An end which is devoid of all selfishness, from which will result good for a large majority and which would not result in any harm to innocent victims, will be treated as a virtuous end. Struggle for Indian independence is a virtuous end, so is the restoration of kingdom to Pandavas. Both would serve as good for a large majority. Therefore any means can be adopted for that purpose. In the two examples cited in the first blog of this series, rescuing the damsel in distress is definitely a virtuous act even if the means employed are as cruel as causing grave injury to those bandits. Similarly helping the child to get well even by begging, borrowing or stealing from the rich is a meritorious act with a selfless end objective if done by a third person not related to the child. When we look into the examples cited in Mahabharata, killing of Abhimanyu is not a virtuous end and nor is the means employed. This is because Duryadhana’s victory would b

In Ramayana we have couple of examples like Lord Rama killing Vali while the latter was engaged in a battle with Sugriva. Laksman killed Indrajeet while the latter was busy in performing a sacrifice. How do we justify the acts of such so called cruelty and immorality perpetrated by the incarnations of God? And why would the scriptures written by great sages, whose main purpose is education of the masses for a very long period of time, probably till the end of humanity, would glorify such events? These lead us to look more closely into the end vrs. means debates and the objections raised by moralists as well as apologetics. It is not that end should always justify means or means should always justify end. However, if the end is virtuous and devoid of any selfish agenda, any means can be adopted for achieving it as long as it does not cause any harm to the innocents. Even this can be a yardstick in judging the actions of Lord Krishna and others in the above scenes in Mahabharata.

Would means justify ends or would ends justify means? There have been endless debates on this by scholars of excellent reputation. However as far as I know that this debate has produced two schools of thoughts – a) moralists, who decry every so called foul act and try to view the world through the prism of righteousness, and therefore opine on behalf of righteous means for anything and everything and b) pragmatists – who assert that righteousness is good as long as it is practical and therefore would depend on situation. Means and ends can be righteous if ordained practical, else one should be “pragmatic”. Now imagine two hypothetical situations. In the first, a child is going to die because his parents cannot afford his medical treatment. There is a rich man living nearby who has plenty of money but would not donate. There is no other source of getting help for the child. In the second, a gang of rapists is dragging a hapless victim in an uninhabited place. The only way of res