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Scared of N-bomb? Read Mahabharata

Scared of N-bomb? Read Mahabharata

Author: Swami Vijnanananda Saraswati
Publication: The Economic Times
Date: October 11, 2006
URL: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2141990.cms

Einstein could never pardon himself for having been one of the founding fathers and guiding light for the American atomic commission that created the first pair of atom bombs, that showed the world a trailer of the kind of devastation that can be created by the same science which brings about the best of the comforts for you and me.

Post atom-bomb, the world started decrying these actions and Einstein was the first among them with the loudest voice - probably because all his life he couldn't pardon himself for being the father of a conspiracy that murdered thousands of innocents, worse still - where the living envied the dead - such was the pain.

Probably a situation very similar to that of Bhishma in Mahabharata - whose bed of arrows represented his conscience and how much of repentance could not undo the actions performed. He could probably never pardon himself for his inactions in moments where his pro-active role could have spared every one of the pain that they went through.

In fact, it has been my firm conviction that it is absolutely useless to debate upon the actual happenings of the events such as the ones mentioned in epics like Mahabharata , but what is of absolute consequence is the deeper meaning and the ethos that it signifies and that is what makes Vyaasa a great teacher.

The beauty probably lies in the fact that one always finds a person in our daily life who is similar to the characters in that epic.

What Vyaasa succeeds in portraying through the Mahabharata is the process of collective error - my error as a consequence of your error and all of us are collectively responsible for the errors committed and the laws of nature are such that every one - individually and collectively suffers the eventualities of mistakes.

Isn't this similar to what we all are witnessing now - with Pyongyang a new entrant in the nuclear game, there is a beautiful blame game going on. People who are out to create sanctions against this new boy, have already dirtied their hands. Let me ask a simple question - does US have the moral right to ask these questions to anybody after they killed innumerable people in Japan - just to emphatically announce their power and supremacy over others. Probably the only one nation which can stand up with Moral authority is Japan.

I don't mean that if the US had not created the deadly weapon, there wouldn't have been others who wouldn't have become the first, yet the truth is that, just because of this argument, US can not be absolved of the crime it has committed.

This is the dilemma.


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