Das Take Cues from Indian Epic in Search For Dharma
Asia Society Washington, DC Center hosted author Gurcharan Das on September 20 to discuss his new book, The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma.
While Dharma has no direct English translation, the concept encompasses the notions of duty, goodness, justice, law, and custom. In his book, Das applies it to the worlds of business and politics to explain the moral failures that led to the global financial crisis.
"Dharma can mean duty, it can mean law, but by and large, it literally means doing the right thing,” Das said. “My book is one man’s search for Dharma in a contemporary world that we live in."
In his quest to do the right thing, Das turned to the great Indian epic, Mahabharata, to find answers and explanations. He believes that Mahabharata's approach to Dharma is pragmatic in that it does not seek moral perfection.
Das also sympathized with the moral dilemma of Arjuna, the third of the five Pandavas, and explained that this episode from the epic reminds us how we would like our leaders to behave at times. Das further urged that apart from economic and geopolitical consequences, today’s political leaders should also consider the moral consequences of waging a war. He highlighted the problem of status anxiety as faced by one of the characters of the epic, pointing out that this is again a universal phenomenon as people want to be recognized and respected.
“Our opinion of ourselves is held hostage to the opinion of others,” he said. Das concluded by saying that Mahabharata leads us to conclude that in a world full of flaws, a single act of goodness is one of the few things of true value.
Reported by Mitali Pradhan