Congress leadership crisis: Dissent against 'High Command' quashed, yet again

All Sanskrit plays and stories involving kings (and most of them do) have a scene where senior ministers and elders plead with the king to appoint a successor or name a prince to take over the desolate kingdom, lest anarchy should reign. The best known of such instances, of course, is in the Ramayana, where all the royal court pleads with Bharata to become the king when Rama has been exiled to the forest by Kaikeyi.

Well, history always repeats itself in some way or the other. Or, to put it as a Sanskrit saying does, the world was never not as it is today. The efforts of senior Congress leaders to voice their dissent against the ‘High Command’ were quashed yet again, immediately followed by the same ‘rebels’ backtracking and reaffirming their trust in Nehru-Gandhi family’s able leadership.

So today, let me tell you a story from the Bhojaprabandha on letting go of power. The legendary king Bhoja was a young lad when his uncle, Munja, who succeeded Bhoja’s father, was ruling the kingdom. A great astrologer who visited the court predicted that the young Bhoja would have a long and illustrious reign, which threatened poor Munja’s plans of staying on the throne for a long time to come. Munja then secretly ordered someone to kill Bhoja. When Bhoja found out that the king had ordered his death, he sent the king a message: “The king Mandhata ruled this earth in a more glorious era. He is long gone now. The mighty Rama, who built a bridge across the ocean and ended Ravana forever—where is he today? There were hundreds of kings, including the great Yudhishtira. They must be in heaven now. This earth that they ruled over—it did not accompany any of them when they went. But Munja, you need not worry. I am sure the earth will follow you.” Sobering thought, isn’t it?

The reluctance to give up power is universal. Anyone following the politics around the US elections would have to agree with Yudhishtira’s assessment in the Mahabharata.

“First, the two dogs wag their tails vigorously; then they growl at each other. They circle around the meat, teeth bared. Then they bark, and the battle begins. The stronger one wins and gets the meat (and the other must go away quietly). This is exactly how men behave—there is not an iota of difference.”

And that would be the best of outcomes. Duryodhana, who fought Yudhishtira for power in the Mahabharata met a more horrific end. Kshemendra, always ruthless in his descriptions, tells us, “Duryodhana, who ruled over the vast earth, bounded by oceans bearing great treasures, lay alone on the battlefield with a broken thigh, and was eaten alive by wolves. Arjuna, who conquered the whole world lost to mere cowherds, and Krishna’s entire clan of Vrishnis was cut down by grass. Reflect on all this and cultivate some detachment.”

For a long time in India, we were complaining about the old men in politics who refused to quit and make way for younger leaders. Now that we have a couple of ‘youngsters’ (you can guess who), here is a special saying for them in Sanskrit: “Youth, wealth, power, and a lack of discernment—even one of these is a recipe for disaster. What are we to do when all four come together?”