Table Of Content

Most of us spend our lives wrestling with day-to-day questions of right and wrong that are either left unanswered or have no easy answers. The Difficulty of Being Good turns to the Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, in order to answer the question, why be good? and discovers that the epic's world of moral haziness and uncertainty is closer to our experience as ordinary human beings than the narrow and rigid positions that define most debate in this fundamentalist age of moral certainty. The Mahabharata is obsessed with the elusive notion of dharma—in essence, doing the right thing. When a hero does something wrong in a Greek epic, he gets on with it; when a hero falters in the Mahabharata, the action stops and everyone weighs in with a different and often contradictory take on dharma. The epic's characters are flawed; they stumble. But their incoherent experiences throw light on our familiar emotions of anxiety, courage, despair, remorse, envy, compassion, vengefulness and duty. As the Mahabharata's story unfolds in The Difficulty of Being Good, the focus shifts from character to character—Bhishma, Yudhishthira, Arjuna, Draupadi, Duryodhana, Karna, Aswatthama and Krishna—their ethical problems, and the significance of these issues for our lives. Gurcharan Das's best-selling book India Unbound examined the classical aim of artha, material well-being. His, his first book in seven years, dwells on the goal of dharma, moral well-being. It addresses the central problem of how to live our lives in an examined way— holding a mirror up to us and forcing us to confront the many ways in which we deceive ourselves and others. What emerges in a doctrine of dharma that we can apply to our business decisions, political strategies, and interpersonal realationships—in effect, to life itself. Gurcharan Das is the author of the much—acclaimed India Unbound, which has been translated into many languages and filmed by the BBC. He writes a regular column for six Indian newspapers, including the Times of India, and occasionally for Newsweek, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Foreign Affairs. His other books include the novel A Fine Family, a book of essays, The Elephant Paradigm, and an anthology, Three English Plays, Larins Shib, 9 Jakhoo Hill and Mira. Gurcharan Das graduated from Harvard University where he studied philosophy with John Rawls and Sanskrit under Daniel Ingalls. He was CEO of Procter and Gamble India before he took early retirement to become a full— time writer. He lives in Delhi. WHY BE GOOD? WHAT EXACTLY IS DHARMA? HOW DOES ONE PRACTISE IT, AND TO WHAT EFFECT? GURCHARAN DAS'S SUPERB EXPOSITION OF THE DILEMMAS AND AMBIGUITIES INHERENT IN THE MAHABHARATA SHOWS US HOW WE CAN COME TO TERMS WITH THE UNCERTAIN ETHICS OF THE WORLD TODAY, A WORLD THAT IS UNCANNILY SIMILAR TO THAT OF THE GREAT EPIC 'The book is a wonderful combination of the scholarly and the personal, the academic and the meditative' —Wendy Doniger 'Through a series of bravura readings of the Mahabharata, Gurcharan Das makes a learned and passionate attempt to inform how the great Indian epic might illuminate our present—day moral dilemmas' —Sheldon Pollock 'A wise, passionate, and illuminating book... one of the best things l've read about the contribution of great literature to ethical thought' —Martha Nussbaum 'This book is a kind of miracle' —David Shulman 'A must—read to resolve the moral dilemmas of life' —N.R. Narayana Murthy 'A remarkable tour de force that connects an ageless philosophical epic to the travails of contemporary society' —Nandan Nilekani 'A significant Indian contribution to a new, universal Enlightenment that is not Western in origin or character' —Sudhir Kakar Cover image courtesy: National Museum, New Delhi Author photograph by Aradhana Seth Cover design by Gunjan Ahlawat ALSO BY GURCHARAN DAS NOVEL A Fine Family (1990) PLAYS Larins Sahib: A Play in Three Acts (1970) Mira (1971) 9 Jakhoo Hill (1973) Three English Plays (2001) NON-FICTION India Unbound (2000) The Elephant Paradigm: India Wrestles with Change (2002) THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING GOOD ON THE SUBTLE ART OF DHARMA Gurcharan Das ALLEN LANE an imprint of PENGUIN BOOKS ALLEN LANE Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Group (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published in Allen Lane by Penguin Books India 2009 Copyright © Gurcharan Das 2009 All rights reserved ISBN 978-06-7008-349-7 This Digital Edition published 2010. e-ISBN: 978-81- 8475-019-5 Digital conversion prepared by DK Digital Media, India. 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