Ethics in Chaotic Times: Teaching the Mahābhārata at the Intersection of Social Upheaval and Personal Stakes in an Urban University Classroom

This paper is a discussion of the pedagogical utility of the Mahābhārata beyond captivating undergraduate students with stories of love and war or an introduction to several key aspects of Hindu beliefs, sociality, and literary fecundity. As undergraduate students grapple with the turbulence of their lived reality in local and global contexts, the epic of course continues to interest their sensibilities for drama and explorations into an unfamiliar yet provocative hybrid world of human-superhuman-divine entities and much in-between. However, because of the students’ deep desire to engage with the turbulence of their times—through activism, a need for survival or cultural preservation, or personal edification on relevant issues—the epic, in my experience, holds a unique promise. It allows for a pedagogy for problem-solving that moves students beyond reacting to problems to critically assessing the tensions that constitute a problem in order to then think of perspectives to understand or solutions to solve them. Through examples from my redesigned pedagogy for teaching the Mahābhārata in the current semester, I illustrate the strong appeal for students to have a venue to grapple with their personal stake in an issue, whether personal, local, or global, and to articulate and refine their ethics for uncertain, chaotic, or “messy” situations as they increasingly feel pressured to take and declare their stance on a matter.

In many ways, the Mahābhārata is a story of underdogs perhaps more than it is of princes and queens and gods in the world of humans. Ekalavya is the emblematic underdog. The Pāndavas, though princes, are pitied yet unprotected by their uncle, King Dhṛtarāṣtra. Vyāsa remarks to Dhṛtarāṣtra following the dice game that of the family, the Pandavas touch his heart the most, as they are the most afflicted (Satyamurti, trans. 2020 [2015]: 214). And then we have a series of other figures, unfairly treated in varying degrees: Bhīṣma, who gives up his future as ruler for his father’s lust; Ambā, who is kidnapped by Bhīṣma and abandoned by the one she loved; Draupadī, required to marry the five Pāndavas to turn Kuntī’s carelessly tossed words into reality; Karṇa, the pitiable runner-up to Arjuna, helpless in abandoning the Kauravas, eager to best the Pāndavas, and unable to show the greatness of which we are given a glimpse.

My students know underdogs. They have been so or know well those who have been mistreated unfairly judged, or overall be victims of biases that other. I teach at an institution that creates spaces for refugees, first-generation, immigrant, DACA, Indigenous students, and students in recovery. They know turbulent times, including police brutality, racial riots, as well as profound interfaith solidarity in their neighborhood. As they experienced various kinds of unsettling and healing realities, they also experienced calls to take sides regarding issues ranging from MAGA, abortion, and transgender rights to the material-spatial effects of riots, the Ukraine-Russia war (an easy decision for most), then the Israel-Gaza war and genocide (a difficult decision for many), and then the campaigning duo of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, including the current administration (yet another difficult decision on my campus and in my city). Their personal stakes in supporting or rejecting or remaining silent on an issue are clear but the personal or social call to declare and show solidarity is also great. 

As I prepared to teach the Mahābhārata over the winter break, I had two pedagogic choices: Take the route I had taken before of teaching it as an introduction to Hinduism through the title of “Gods in the Human World” or tap into the text’s potential to lay bare the messiness of a world made up of individuals who fall somewhere on the spectrum of “flawed”. I chose the latter option to let the text guide students’ perspective on the tensions in their intra- and interpersonal lives. I also focus on those moments in the text that elicit the generative emotional-cognitive reactions of bafflement, cringes, sympathy, pity, and frustration. These reactions become points of perspective-building: What makes one character’s view on “doing the right/ appropriate/ best thing” more intelligible and convincing to the students over that of another character? How do characters build a logic for themselves and their audience for their actions or inaction? What makes a character–for example, Karṇa–appear villanous yet sympathetic? Students do a similar exercise with an example of strife or tension in their life wherein decision-making is a confusing or difficult task and one from current events. As they identify tensions, they also investigate ways in which these tensions get explained or resolved. Through a rhetorical analysis of their rationale-building and that of others, they not only come to see the epic’s characters more comprehensively but also themselves and others. 

“Dharma is subtle matter,” Bhīṣma tells Draupadī, perhaps stating a fact or perhaps evading her demand of an explanation for her shameful treatment in the open court. Exploring the subtlety of dharma and the related conundrum of knowing the “right” course of action from the perspectives of half-truths, misinformation, incomplete information, self-interest, collective good, and personal sacrifice is an exercise for my class in mapping how the underdogs empower themselves in what appears to be an unfair, inequitable world while trying to comprehend and practice dharma or striving to do the “right” thing. Additionally, I lean into what Emily Hudson (2013) identifies as the epic’s disorienting and reorienting of audiences’s comprehension of dharma by illustrating the changing contours of this concept as practiced by various characters in various situations. In doing so, I make the text a conduit to discuss the following: the productive function or flaw of ethics that are shaped and reshaped by contexts to which they are applied rather than remain absolute; what the characters fall back on as their situation raises more uncertainty with regards to dharma and what the students would recommend that their peers rely on during uncertainty; and how one might decide whether to make a sacrifice for a greater good or safeguard one’s interests or safety before supporting a broadly beneficial cause.