Exploring Agency in the Mahabharata: Ethical and Political Dimensions of Dharma

268 Pages·2018·1.98 MB·English

by  Sibesh Chandra Bhattacharya

EXPLORING AGENCY IN THE
MAHĀBHĀRATA
The Mahābhārata, one of the major epics of India, is a sourcebook
complete by itself as well as an open text constantly under construction.
This volume looks at transactions between its modern discourses and
ancient vocabulary. Located amid conversations between these two
conceptual worlds, the volume grapples with the epic’s problematisation
of dharma or righteousness, and consequently, of the ideal person and
the good life through a cluster of issues surrounding the concept of
agency and action. Drawing on several interdisciplinary approaches,
the essays reflect on a range of issues in the Mahābhārata, including
those of duty, motivation, freedom, selfhood, choice, autonomy, and
justice, both in the context of philosophical debates and their ethical
and political ramifications for contemporary times.
This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers engaged
with philosophy, literature, religion, history, politics, culture, gender,
South Asian studies, and Indology. It will also appeal to the general
reader interested in South Asian epics and the Mahābhārata.
Sibesh Chandra Bhattacharya is former Professor of Ancient History,
Allahabad University, Allahabad, India.
Vrinda Dalmiya is Professor in the Philosophy Department at the
University of Hawai’i, Manoa, USA.
Gangeya Mukherji is presently Visiting Professor in the School of Arts
and Sciences, Ahmedabad University, Ahmedabad, India.

EXPLORING AGENCY
IN THE
MAHĀBHĀRATA
Ethical and Political Dimensions
of Dharma
Edited by Sibesh Chandra
Bhattacharya, Vrinda Dalmiya
and Gangeya Mukherji
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Indian Institute of
Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla; individual chapters, the
contributors
The right of Sibesh Chandra Bhattacharya, Vrinda Dalmiya
and Gangeya Mukherji to be identified as the authors of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
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identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-70920-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-06142-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
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For
Peter Ronald deSouza

CONTENTS
Contributors ix
Foreword xii
CHETAN SINGH
Acknowledgements xiv
Introduction: To Do 1
VRINDA DALMIYA AND GANGEYA MUKHERJI
PART I
Action 29
1 Mahābhārata. Itihāsa. Agency 31
SIBESH CHANDRA BHATTACHARYA
2 In Search of Genuine Agency: A Review of Action,
Freedom and Karma in the Mahābhārata 45
AMITA CHATTERJEE
3 The Theory of Karma in the Mahābhārata 62
CHRISTOPHER G. FRAMARIN
4 Karmayoga and the Vexed Moral Agent 81
ARTI DHAND
vii
CONTENTS
PART II
Actor 107
5 Complexities in the Agency for Violence: A Look
at the Mahābhārata 109
GANGEYA MUKHERJI
6 Irresolution and Agency: The Case of Yudhiṣṭhira 129
SHIRSHENDU CHAKRABARTI
7 Can the Subhuman Speak or Act? Agency of
Sagacious Serpents, Benevolent Birds, Rational
Rodents, and a Mocking Mongoose in the
Mahābhārata 143
ARINDAM CHAKRABARTI
8 Textual–Sexual Transitions: The Reification
of Women in the Mahābhārata 162
UMA CHAKRAVARTI
9 Ekalavya and the Possibility of Learning 179
SUNDAR SARUKKAI
PART III
Epic Agency and Retellings 195
10 Tagore’s Readings of the Mahābhārata 197
SUDIPTA KAVIRAJ
11 Answerability Between Lived Life and Living Text:
Chronotopicity in Finding Agency in the Mahābhārata 214
LAKSHMI BANDLAMUDI
12 Droṇa in the Ekalavya Episode in Sāralā Mahābhārata 232
B. N. PATNAIK
Index 247
viii
CONTRIBUTORS
Lakshmi Bandlamudi is Professor of Psychology at City University,
New York, USA. She is the author of Dialogics of Self, the Mahab-
harata and Culture: The History of Understanding and Under-
standing of History (2010).
Sibesh Chandra Bhattacharya is former Professor of ancient history,
Allahabad University, India; British Council Scholar, SOAS London;
National Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study; and President,
Indian Social Science Congress. His publications include Some
Aspects of Society in North India; Secular and Pluralistic Elements
in the Idea of State in Early India (2002) and Understanding Itihasa:
History, Philosophy, Culture (edited), besides around fifty research
papers in Indian and international publications such as South Asian
Review, Archiv Orientalni, History of English Speaking Peoples,
Philosophy East and West, Journal of Indian History, Indian His-
torical Review, and Indian Economic and Social History Review.
Arindam Chakrabarti is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Hawai’i, Manoa, USA. His major publications include Denying
Existence (1997) and Knowing from Words (co-edited with B. K.
Matilal, 1994), and Mahabharata Now (with Sibaji Bandyopad-
hyay, 2014).
Shirshendu Chakrabarti is former Professor of English, University of
Delhi, India. His latest book is Towards an Ethics and Aesthetics of
the Future: Rabindranath Tagore 1930–41 (2015), and he has writ-
ten three volumes of poetry in Bengali.
Uma Chakravarti taught history at Miranda House, University of
Delhi, India. She writes on topics in early Indian history to contem-
porary issues and is currently editing her third film on the unknown
histories of women.
ix