In the figure of Gandhari, we are asked, once more, to reflect on the behaviour and demeanour of the good wife. Most often, we are told that she is an exemplar because when she found out that the man to whom she was betrothed was blind, she bound her eyes with a cloth, firmly resolved not to be superior to her husband in any way. She did not see her hundred sons when they were born and she was spared the additional pain of seeing their broken, mangled bodies when they were killed in war. Throughout their lives, she stood by her husband and her sons, however foolhardy their choices and decisions, however much she might have thought that there were other ways to be, other ways to act. Occasionally, it is suggested to us (by Irawati Karve and Devdutt Pattanaik, for example), that Gandhari’s behaviour was not submissive. Rather, it was born out of anger at being deceived about her future husband.
Rebuke to Bhishma
Karve makes the argument that Gandhari’s blindfold was a daily and constant rebuke to Bhishma who captured her for his nephew after killing all her brothers, save the youngest, Shakuni, who was allowed to come with her to her marital home. Although this interpretation does not idealise Gandhari’s actions, it does bestow a certain righteousness upon the way she chooses to behave — Gandhari remains a strong, independent woman, albeit an angry one.
Some commentators and story tellers suggest that because of her humiliation, Gandhari and Shakuni conspired to destroy the Kaurava clan, enabling and encouraging the reckless stupidity and greed of all its princes such that the royal clan would decimate itself in a fratricidal war. Because in the Mahabharata, revenge is the most celebrated of all heroic values, this interpretation of Gandhari also keeps her within the epic’s frame of reference for action and possible motivation.
Sometimes, we are led to Gandhari’s essential villainy — for example, she did not speak up when Draupadi was disrobed in the assembly, she supported her son in his vicious and ultimately destructive ambitions. In that sense, she wilfully and knowingly acted against the Pandavas who were on the side of dharma. As in the Ramayana, we are persuaded that women like Gandhari and Kaikeyi, who act in order to secure the contested royal destinies of their sons, are ‘bad’ women.
We cannot countenance the fact that Gandhari and Kaikeyi are, in fact, acting as ‘good’ mothers when they protect the interests of their children against all odds. Within this paradigm of understanding, ambitious women, even those who are ambitious for their men, are not the women that we should valorise. Draupadi herself makes us a little uncomfortable with her unrelenting determination to be so violently and brutally avenged and to see her husbands on the throne at any cost. Far better is the woman who prays and fasts and seeks the blessings of the gods for her husband’s success and happiness than the woman who acts to secure it herself.
The writer works with myth, epic and the story traditions of the sub-continent
Published - March 30, 2017 03:29 pm IST
