6/10/2014 Mahabharata and Indian politics: From Duryodhana to Shikhandi : North, News - India Today

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Mahabharata and Indian politics: From
Duryodhana to Shikhandi
Akash Deep Ashok New Delhi, June 10, 2014 | UPDATED 18:14 IST

When the Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, rose to
speak in the House on Tuesday, little did people know that it would turn out be an
'epic' moment.
Kharge invoked the Mahabharata and said though the Pandavas were few in
number compared to the Kauravas, still they could not be defeated.
Curiously, Kharge did not factor in the Congress's crushing defeat in the recent
poll battle before he compared his party to the Pandavas, the victors in the epic.
But the wily politician found his way to get around this as well. "We may be 44 in
Lok Sabha, but the Pandavas will never be intimidated by a hundred Kauravas."
Amid the thumping of desks, including by Congress president Sonia Gandhi,
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6/10/2014 Mahabharata and Indian politics: From Duryodhana to Shikhandi : North, News - India Today
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/mallikarjun-kharge-mahabharata-indian-politics-pandavas-kauravas-congress/1/366209.html 2/5
Kharge expressed confidence that the party will bounce back to power and NDA
should not think that it will continue to be in power forever.
That is for the future to tell but we can certainly go back in the recent past to find
how frequently the Mahabharata has been invoked in our politics and how the
great Indian epic is inseparable from our politics.
In April, former PM Manmohan Singh's media advisor Sanjaya Baru claimed in
his controversial book 'The Accidental Prime Minister' that UPA chairperson
Sonia Gandhi had the final say in everything in the UPA government and that it
was a "reality that the PM came to terms with" - like Dhritarashtra. He later tried
to soften the blow saying, "The PM tried his best given his political limitations. He
was like Bheeshma of the Mahabharata, not Dhritarashtra. My book is about UPA
I, not UPA II. During UPA I, he was certainly not blind."
But Baru's Dhritarashtra analogy was not original. In November 2013, Aam Aadmi
Party leader Arvind Kejriwal had called former PM Singh 'Dhritarashtra' when
he attacked Singh over the coal blocks allocation scam and the missing coal files.
Kejriwal said that Singh kept signing and agreeing on files without speaking and
seeing.
Before this, in May 2012, then Team Anna member Prashant Bhushan had
likened PM Manmohan Singh to Shikhandi, a character in the Mahabharata.
However, he denied this later, but that was not entirely a denial. "I did not call the
Prime Minister a 'Shikhandi'. We also know that he is personally not corrupt. But,
when PM lets corruption flourish under his leadership, what is the point of
personal honesty. Congress party uses him as a 'kavach', or shield just as
Shikhandi was used as a shield in Mahabharata."
While allegations of corruption were being made in the run-up to and during the
Commonwealth Games, former cricketer and BJP leader Kirti Azad in August
2010 likened those involved in the controversy over the Games projects with
characters in the Mahabharata. "Shakuni and Duryodhana are busy making
money. The Delhi Government is like the blind-folded Gandhari and you are
sitting quiet like Bheeshma Pitamaha," Azad had told then Urban Development
Minister S. Jaipal Reddy in the Lok Sabha.
But not all invocations of the great epic are negative. In March 2008, while
appealing to the BJP to support the Indo-US nuclear deal, then PM Manmohan
Singh appealed to former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee to rise above "narrow" party
politics and support the deal in the classical epic style. "Bheeshma Pitamah of
Indian politics Atal Bihari Vajpayee should listen to his conscience and let
national interest prevail upon narrow politics," Singh had said in the Rajya Sabha.
For more news from India Today, follow us on Twitter @indiatoday and on Facebook at
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