The Bhagavad Gita can be, and has often been, summarized as God Krishna’s spiritual sermon to the reluctant warrior Arjuna to resolve the ethical dilemma of killing his relatives. Like all summaries, this too conceals more than it reveals about the text and cannot be blamed for this deficiency. It is only on closer scrutiny of the text that deeper questions begin to surface; why does an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent God take human form to bring order to the world? If he is Time, who has killed all those that are killed ultimately in battle, why does he need Arjuna as an instrument? This paper seeks to analyze the nature of Krishna’s divinity, and hence prove that despite the deterministic nature of Gita’s doctrine, His intervention is necessary to grant humans any moral responsibility.
A useful beginning point for the analysis of Krishna’s actions is Chapter 3 of the Gita when its most famous message, “Act without attachment to its fruits” is expounded. Krishna explains this doctrine to Arjuna by citing his own example. Being the Creator of the universe and as he later claims, the universe itself, Krishna has no reason to act like most humans motivated by desire to gain something. Yet, he chooses to act, this choice born out of his own duty as Preserver of the Universe. As God, Krishna is above human law, nevertheless subject to his own law; Preservation of order in the world of humans is their duty, but human failure wrests this responsibility on him. The equilibrium that Krishna has to achieve is not just between good and evil, order and chaos; it is between His action and human action, determinism and free will.
Later in the chapter, Krishna explains to Arjuna how actions are caused by ‘forces of Nature’ and humans are not the agents of their choices. Assuming that nature of a human in indicated by caste, which in itself is determined through past karma, the Gita seems to degenerate into a kind of fatalism which is salvaged only by the qualifier which grants humans the choice of their attitude while acting. This is the balance between human action and God’s actions which Krishna sets out to define by prescribing the motivations of right action. Demanding intense devotion, he tells Arjuna that all actions, if committed as an offering to Him, lead one to God (4,24). The immediate, worldly results of the action are irrelevant, and as propounded earlier, should not be the motivation for the action. At surface value, it seems that this ethical system distances the performer of actions from the positive or negative effects of his actions, effectively making him immune from judgment. Yet, the essence of the ethic lies in the assumption that Krishna too acts; and when He acts, no one escapes judgment.
Krishna provides the reason for his incarnations in Chapter 4 Verse 12 when he says “When righteousness is weak and unrighteousness exults in pride, then my Spirit arises on Earth.” Keeping this context in mind, Chapter 2 of the Gita seems like an exercise in futility. After all, if it is Krishna himself who has to vanquish Adharma, why does he provide arguments for Arjuna to fight the war? In fact, Krishna’s prophetic command (“Through the fate of their karma I have already doomed them to die: be thou merely the means of his work”) in Chapter 11 complicates the question further with the introduction of Karma. The natural question which arises is about the relationship between Krishna and the Karmic law: Does the law of Karma take its own course, independent of Krishna or does he control the forces of destiny? The Gita does not answer the question and any reading between the lines would be more in the realm of speculation rather than analysis. What can be safely asserted is that the question is irrelevant to Krishna’s sermon to Arjuna. Even if the law of karma decided the fate of Arjuna’s enemies, he wasn’t aware of it and needed divine intervention to know his purpose in human history. It is to be understood that Krishna’s objective is not merely the killing of the Kauravas but to make Arjuna conscious of his duty’s importance in the restoration of Dharma. Krishna’s deliberate refusal to be the dispenser of justice despite Arjuna’s reluctance to fight is an indicator of the self-imposed limits of his duty as an avatar. Krishna’s duty is to slay the doubts in the battleground of Arjuna’s soul and not to deprive him of his duty to fight for righteousness on the actual battleground of Kurukshetra. Even though Krishna is God, He has defined his role merely as a facilitator, placing the onus of acting on human Arjuna.
It is in Chapters 7,8 and 9 of the Gita that Krishna’s characterization undergoes a great change. The failure of his arguments as charioteer, friend and guide force him to reveal to Arjuna his true nature and form. His slow elevation from a fellow human being to God whose scope of action is nothing short of the spectacular and serves to create the feelings of intimidation, love and devotion in Arjuna. The numerous qualities ascribed to Krishna in these three chapters only serve to highlight the severe constraints that language creates for the kind of entity that the Gita tries to describe. Krishna is portrayed as a God that subsumes and defies all other ontological conceptions of God. The doctrines of Monism, Dualism and Pantheism seem to dissolve in the all-encompassing nature of Krishna’s divinity. The neat categories of Self and Other begin to hold no meaning in Krishna’s presence. All pervasive, he becomes the Observer, the Observed as well as the frame of reference.
In Chapter 11, the verbal imagery of the previous three chapters culminates into a stunning darshan of Krishna’s virat form for Arjuna. The dazzling view of the Infinite Divinity that Arjun saw was a confirmation of everything that Krishna had been telling him from the beginning. Apart from the numerous Gods and forces of nature that resided in Krishna’s body, Arjuna saw one sight which completely changed his mindset. Seeing Krishna’s bloody fangs which had the Kauravas trapped between them, Arjuna, for one moment, became privy to the future and the past (“I have already killed them’). The change in perspective from linear to circular time made him realize his own insignificance as well as importance in carrying out what was pre-ordained. Expanding the sphere of his choice and action to centuries forward and backward, Krishna struck a double blow. It emphasized not just his own greatness, but also gave Arjuna an assured place in his infinite divine form, giving his future actions a new meaning. The vision of Chapter 11 is as much about Krishna’s divinity as it is about Arjuna’s. Ultimately, this vision serves to motivate Arjuna much more than Krishna’s arguments, even though the vision corroborates them quite nicely. In fact, such an expansive view of divinity lends itself particularly well to the initial argument that Krishna had made to Arjuna about killing, (2,19) according to which the Eternal in man cannot kill or die.
In the light of the earlier paragraphs observations about Arjuna’s divine role, it is interesting to note his comment when Krishna reverts back to his human form. Arjuna says, “When I see thy gentle human face, Krishna, I return to my own nature, and my heart has peace.” (11, 51) Arjuna, in the beginning of the Gita, was a conflicted character whose behavior was anomalous to his position in the karma-dharma system. He is a character who rebels against the dictates of his ‘nature’ as a warrior, because of the attachments to his kin. His rebellion is the first signs of a revolution that Krishna seeks to quell through his discourse in the Gita. As preserver of the existing order, Krishna rises to the occasion to defend the structures created by Him. Yet, Krishna chooses not to intrude into the circumscribed sphere of Arjuna’s actions. This is because Arjuna carries out Krishna’s duty on Earth. As a defender of righteousness, Arjuna is Krishna’s first line of defense against evil in the world of human beings. Aware that a conflict within him was a precursor to much larger conflicts, Krishna chooses to focus on Arjuna’s enlightenment rather than obliterate the forces of adharma. Restoration of peace within him after Krishna’s vision made the restoration of order in the world an inevitable byproduct.
It is to be understood that Krishna’s reliance on Arjuna is not because He himself is incapable of achieving the task of destroying evil. His exhortation to Arjuna to act is born out of a much deeper reason, that of granting humans the right to chart the course of their lives, however misdirected they may be. Krishna is not a God who revels in self-inflicted human miseries and waits for an opportune moment to eradicate them; He is a God who prods and urges his imperfect creations to follow their duty. Like a parent, He allows his human children to make mistakes because the essence of their existence depends on their perceived ability to choose. The veil of Maya which envelops human memories is but a useful device to grant ‘free will’. When the system is on the verge of breaking down because of the materialism and hedonism resulting from Maya, Krishna lifts the veil off agents like Arjuna who display a predisposition to faith in God. Later, as these memories fade away, the system moves inexorably towards the state of disequilibrium. Krishna’s intervention through Arjuna is not a sign of the failure of the cyclical system. It is how the system works – providing at each step, room for humans to choose, not their actions, but the attitude with which they act. In conclusion, it can then be claimed that the doctrine of the Gita does reconcile determinism and free will, but a faith in Krishna’s intercession is critical to its particular solution.
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