Karna: A Battle Within!
Oh, thy glory shall remain, it will echo off all the corners of the world until the end of times. Thou didn’t fell to die but to fly.
Karna, the son of Surya, an unsung hero, a fallen warrior, is undoubtedly a story of sacrifice and heroics wrapped with its own follies and regrets, molding him into one of the greatest lives ever lived (perceive every fictional, historical or mythological character as real, for just because a realm exists in your mind doesn’t make it a lie). It wouldn’t be wrong to say he was one of the first antiheroes ever created.
If not aware of his story, I have briefly recapped** it at the footnote so that the article stays true to its comprehensibility. Nonetheless, this article is mainly meant to highlight Karna as a teacher, who taught everyone to stay strong and true to one’s own soul despite innumerable hurdles which might come your way and question the moral dilemmas along. I decided to write this as I could see so many battles being sparked today. Hence maybe taking inspirations from such characters would prove to be the light at the end of this very dark tunnel.
Mahabharata mainly underlines the concept of dharma, that is, righteousness. It is said to be the greatest war ever fought in the entirety of the Indian history wherein Lord Vishnu himself dawned upon this mortal earth in the form of his human embodiment, Lord Krishna, in order to establish Dharma. Every character sketched, good or bad, has his own journey which contributes to this establishment. The best part of this epic is that no character is completely true to the humane comprehension of right and wrong. They have their own strengths and weaknesses. And Karna is the most pivotal in this dilemma of being a hero or a villain. You’ll always find people argue over this fact yet for me he is the most heroic human character ever written. Yes, he had his faults, he did fall off towards the wrongness of the moral sense, he could be a very powerful antagonist if one sees through that lens but isn’t this the reason why he comes out to be the protagonist instead? Because, these flaws makes him human. Though he was half God yet the moral contradictions and the subsequent regrets makes him as human as humanely possible.
Karna was fueled with anger. He was humiliated time and again which instilled in him a great agony. When drowning in one such pool of ignominy, he was saved by Duryodhan which paved the way for a friendship which is extremely rare and beautiful. Unknown to the various implications time would create upon his life, he pledged his alliance to this friend which he then fulfilled by giving up his life. It is absolutely poignant to highlight the importance of such an alliance especially when our times are so laced with hypocrisy. The irascible tendencies being formed through various technological advancements need to know how extremely significant it is to remain true to one’s own heart even when submerged with the greatest of political and personal dilemmas.
Imagine for an instance, you’ve been working really hard to prove yourself. Imagine, being bullied in school and refrained from opportunities, you’ve been trying really hard to strive towards a goal which would end all your sufferings and establish you as a warrior. Now imagine, all of a sudden, one day you win that treasure, your pedestal, through a simple coincidence, but winning that would mean betraying your only friend who has been there for you all through your difficult times. Even though you are aware that your friend is not a good person, even though you know he befriended you because of his own selfish reasons and even though you know staying back would mean the death of you, will you choose to claim that throne or stay and die for your friend? This is a very difficult choice, not even including the personal implications of going against your own brothers. Honestly speaking, most of us would choose the treasure though we might answer this otherwise in order to balance our ethical grounds. There could be many ways to console ourselves over our choice.
Karna could have done that as well. He could have easily said that he did this in order to avoid the war. He could have been the king and even married Draupadi as a Pandav. His brothers would have accepted it, his mother would have atoned through this, and even Duryodhan might have swayed given the strong friendship they enjoyed. He could have avoided the war and all the bloodshed which followed but would he have been able to avoid the war thus brewed within his moral conscience? Would the world have remembered him the way it does now? Would he have got this title of the unsung hero if he swayed sides? And would I be writing this at all if he was the one who claimed the throne?
All these questions are prevalent but doesn’t this in some twisted way also prove that Karna was a selfish person who in order to remain true to his personal conscious decided to let lose the war when he could have saved so many warriors by sacrificing his soul.
These are some really ethical and baffling questions as both the solutions provide equal consensus of right and wrong. But in order to conclude we need to delve deep into the possibilities of contradictions that might have risen through this jolted crossfire of fate while understanding the very character of the man in question.
Karna was a warrior. He was not allowed to learn archery yet he overcame all the obstacles and became an archer. Though he was made king, he was never respected by the fellow courtiers, even Pandavas on occasions, because of his caste. He was a warrior upfront as well as a warrior within, constantly fighting off the various humiliations despite of no fault of his own. He was insulted by Draupadi in front of an entire court (there are versions which disprove this but I am choosing to go along with the popular tale) which came a long way in claiming his fall. Being with Duryodhan, he chose to see the bad in Pandavas and became a conspirator in all their shrewd mischiefs. He was a proud man but a man after all. The humane aspect of his soul made him tragic as well as treaded along immorality on many aspects. The blind hatred and agony enveloped because of humiliation made him fall many times throughout his journey but the strength of his soul always made him stand up again and again.
Two of the major actions taken by him which would normally go against his characters were his approval in Draupadi’s humiliation and his part in Abhimanyu’s death. I have read some mythological versions in which the biases of being a hero is maintained and these acts are somehow either portrayed as an implicated reasoning at that point of time or sheer helplessness or maybe just out of character for that time-being or even as a twisted love story for you hate only those whom you love.
I would, however, make no such efforts. It was wrong. Period.
Our society has this weird habit of celebrating heroes as saints in the guise of a man who could not commit any evil. And thus we tend to try to reason their psychology, try to find reasons for those actions. Undoubtedly this reasoning could be true. Karna might have faced these inner demons at that point of time and hence giving him the benefit of doubt is perhaps correct. But, I refuse to do so. I don’t want to see my hero as a perfect angel when it is known that the devil was an angel once. I would like to emphasize that expecting the best out of our heroes, or our ideas of heroes, is not the correct way to decipher their characters. Being a human has its shortcomings. Why would we need God if we were this perfect? So instead of eradicating our demons why not make peace with them and stay human for as long as possible.
Saying this, I do not approve of Karna’s action especially his stance towards Draupadi’s disrobing. I approve of the repentance that followed. I approve of the awareness of the fact that he committed a crime by being a part of such an immoral occurrence. I approve of his regret to have failed his very soul.
This awareness of committing a crime worse than the war crimes made him the hero that he is. In his heart, he was disobeying the very ideals that he so revered and this irony of an existence solidifies his character as an honorable man. He was entrapped in a weird entanglement, a cobweb of moral contradictions, wherein the only prestigious way to fall out was death. The magnanimity of his kingship points out how it wasn’t the crown he was after but the respect of being acknowledged as a warrior, which unfortunately he couldn’t really earn during his lifetime. With respect to the kindness he bestowed, it is pivotal to mention the very heart-wrenching poetic occurrence wherein he gave away his armor which was a part of his body, thus strengthening his conscious as a righteous man.
He knew he was siding with the opposite of his ideals yet he chose to avoid the bad brewing around him. And even if he did realize it was too late to walk out. He was aware of the fact that Duryodhan was dependent on his warrior skills in order to win the war and thus he only performed his duty as a noble man.
So, back to our question. Was it possible for him to choose the crown and avoid the war? The answer is no. He was aware of the fact that even if he did agree, he would never take the crown for himself and as a devoted friend would present it to Duryodhana. He was also aware that this would mean that all the sacrifices being construed would fail and the very establishment of righteousness would never occur. In order to further emphasis my reasoning, nothing would aid me better than the epic itself. Hence, I would like to refer to the answer which Karna gave to Lord Krishna upon being asked the same. He described this war as a sacrificial yagna, wherein he was a mere sacrifice which is hence quoted in excerpts from the epic,
This blazing kingdom, celebrated among all the kings of the earth, is already won (by Yudhishthira). O thou of Vrishni’s race, a great sacrifice of arms is about to be celebrated by Dhritarashtra’s son. Thou, O Janardana, wilt be the Upadrashtri of that sacrifice. The office of Adhyaryu also, O Krishna, in that sacrifice, will be thine.
For those harsh words, O Krishna, that I said before unto the sons of Pandu for the gratification of Dhritarashtra’s son,--for that wicked conduct of mine,--I am consumed with repentance. When O Krishna, thou wilt behold me slain by Arjuna, then will the Punachiti of this sacrifice commence. When the (second) son of Pandu will drink the blood of the loudly roaring Dussasana, then will the Soma-drinking of this sacrifice have taken place! When the two princes of Panchala (Dhrishtadyumna and Sikhandin) will overthrow Drona and Bhishma, then, O Janardana, will this sacrifice be suspended for an interval. When mighty Bhimasena will slay Duryodhana, then, O Madhava, will this sacrifice of Dhritarashtra’s son be concluded.
This hence establishes my inference of him being aware of the doom which was about to befall him yet he chose the higher ground in order to be etched forever in time and thus pave an ultimate guidance to the soul when lost upon such contradictions. In some versions, it is even said that Karna was created by Lord Krishna to set an example for us, to teach us that no matter how hard your battles might be, one must remain true to their individual conscious and strive towards making a better society. In each of our individual journeys to establish righteousness, one must not forget the truth and the cause for which the question has arisen in the first place.
Karna was misunderstood all his life, like most of us are. But unlike most of us, he chose to remain true and glorified his soul which though might not have made him a hero during his lifetime but definitely made him the most perfect character in all his imperfections.
We normally tend to empathize more with characters in a story because we are able to holistically view them. We are aware of their inner dualities and hence could relate and understand them in that context. Sadly that is not true in real life. We cannot see everyone’s journey with such an open minded purview and hence the relativity of empathy declines. This is where stories help in. They teach us empathy. They teach us the depth and the various layers through which our lives are mashed up and how everyone is fighting their own battles, which must be respected and not preyed upon.
Hence, there is so much to learn from this mythological hero that the conclusion is but a formality. Anyhow, I would like to quote Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, enamoring the beauty of this hero through his mesmerizing lines, for this interlude paralleled as a conclusion;
'’दया कर शत्रु को भी त्राण देकर ,
खुशी से मित्रता पर प्राण देकर ,
गया है कर्ण भू को दीन करके ,
मनुज-कुल को बहुत बलहीन करके .’'Roughly translated to,
‘Pitying even the enemy with mercy, Sacrificing his life happily for friendship, Gone is Karna leaving the earth humbled, And making the human race very powerless’
**Karna is one of the major characters in the Hindu epic Mahabharat. He is the son of Lord Surya (that is Sun) and princess Kunti who was conceived while Kunti was a maiden. Scared by the various orthodox blemishes of the society, Kunti decided to abandon her son, in turn valuing her own prestige more than the life of her newborn. Thus abandoned, Karna was adopted by a charioteer Adhirath and his wife Radha. Since, caste system was very prevalent in ancient India, Karna was denied every right that paralleled his talents and yet he came off as one the greatest archers of all times. Unknown to his own parentage, Karna befriended Duryodhana, arch-enemy of his half-brothers (the Pandavas). In his own war to claim victory over every right denied to him, he was blinded by anger and envy. Just before the war, Krishna (incarnation of Lord Vishnu) did tell him the truth and asked him to return to Kunti as the eldest Pandava and hence claim the throne. But true to his promise he refused to change sides at the last moment but did agree to kill no Pandavas except Arjun. Aware of the doom, he fought and lost the battle, making Arjun unknowingly commit fratricide.
This is a very crisp outline of what happened in the epic. To fathom the real character reading the epic is highly recommended.
