The world today is haunted by the specter of terrorism, which rationalizes itself based on a religious book. Coming from this context, we may feel uneasy on finding that another religious book, the Bhagavad-gita, has a battlefield setting. Further, when we find that, in the Gita (02.03), Krishna disapproves of Arjuna’s pacifism and asks him to fight, our unease may exacerbate to alarm.

To properly understand Krishna’s call, we need to see it in its own context. The Mahabharata, the epic of which the Gita is a part, describes elaborately the outrageous atrocities that the vicious Kauravas had inflicted on the virtuous and peace-seeking Pandavas. Exhibiting remarkable forbearance, the Pandavas had offered the Kauravas peace on the most accommodating of terms. But the arrogant Kauravas had derisively rejected their offer, thereby leaving them no option except to fight. The Pandavas fought not just for their own right to serve as the martial guardians of society but also for their citizens’ right to have a virtuous socio-political environment conducive for all-round growth.

The Gita doesn’t endorse becoming a peacenik, wherein passivity distorts noble pacifism into ignoble impotency. When dealing with incorrigible offenders, it doesn’t naively rule out assertive action, including violence. Aptly therefore, Krishna chides Arjuna by declaring his reluctance to fight to be not ennobling, but degrading; not born of compassion, but born of confusion; not progressive for society and spirituality, but regressive for both. Indeed, the only right course of action for Arjuna was to fight.

The Pandavas’ thoughtful assertiveness against malevolent power-grabbers differs entirely from terrorist attacks on the defenseless and blameless. In fact, the mature consideration of one’s options that the Gita demonstrates comprises a model for unsentimental spiritual cogitation. Such cogitation is vital today for countering both the ignorance that breeds terrorism and the impotence that feeds it.

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