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00:00Because we are talking about women as property and from the time of Bhagavad Gita and how in a way demolished by what the arguments that Lord Krishna gave.
00:07The animal that sits within us that wants to fight, that wants to capture territory is also the animal that wants to possess women.
00:13Arjuna chose to follow Krishna through the remaining 17 chapters what came ahead.
00:19Krishna kept on demolishing Arjuna and Arjuna stood through that.
00:23Shri Krishna was not speaking to everybody on the battlefield, Shri Krishna was speaking to one particular person who was revealing his insecurities, his doubts, his fears and attachments and all those things.
00:33If you are not Arjuna, the Gita is not for you.
00:38Hello and welcome to another special episode here on NDTV.
00:41I am with writer, philosopher and somebody who calls himself a lifelong student of Gita.
00:50He is known for his interpretation of Gita, the Upanishad.
00:55Acharya Prashant ji, thank you so much for giving us the time and speaking to us again.
01:00I was just going through one of your book and this is, ladies and gentlemen, the new edition of the Bhagavad Gita.
01:07And written by Acharya Prashant.
01:10And there are some very interesting thoughts that you have put in this book.
01:14And they are quite, though you quote Gita and then of course your interpretation, but they are quite, you know, apparent in the current context as well.
01:26I want to start with one and then I will bring you to a question.
01:30I am quoting from page 60 of this book which says,
01:34What else does Arjuna believe in?
01:38Women as property?
01:40It's a very patriarchal mindset when he says that, you know, women should not be allowed to mingle with people from the so-called lower castes.
01:51As if women cannot decide on their own.
01:54As if Arjuna, that's what you, this is what you are saying.
01:57As if Arjuna is the great and the final patriarch on whom rests the responsibility to protect women's, you know, chesity and minds.
02:07I want to probe you on this because you've written this.
02:12Isn't it very contextualized in today's terms as well?
02:17Men find it very hard to give up some sort of ownership of women even after they move on.
02:26Even after a relationship does not work out, even after a woman does not want to give you any sense of that ownership.
02:32Why do you think that happens that you find it so difficult and you want to treat them as a property?
02:37You see, that's the reason why the Bhagavad Gita has an eternal relevance.
02:45Chapter 1 is what sets the tone for the remaining 17 chapters.
02:52But chapter 1 is also the least quoted chapter and least understood chapter and given the least importance.
03:03What Arjuna is saying is, I do not want to fight.
03:07And that is well known. Arjuna didn't want to fight.
03:10But not many people pay attention to the reasons he was quoting in support of his decision to not to fight.
03:19He's saying, if we fight here, Dakshatriyas, and we get killed, most of us,
03:25then the women, they will go and they will mingle and mate with those of the lower Varnas and then their offsprings,
03:37they will be Varnsankars.
03:40There is something called Pratilom Viva, not in Vedanta, not in real religion, but in popular culture.
03:49Pratilom Viva is when somebody from the higher Varnas, a woman especially from the higher Varnas,
04:02marries somebody, a man particularly, from the lower Varnas.
04:07And then the offspring is a Varnasankar and Varnasankars are looked down upon.
04:13And Swarjun says, if a Varnasankar is born, then he will not be able to offer the right kind of prescribed sacrifices.
04:25He will not be able to participate in the holy rituals, especially when it comes to occasions like Shradd,
04:32when the souls of our diseased ancestors have to be pleased with offerings.
04:39They will not accept the offerings from a Varnasankar. So they will go hungry and thirsty.
04:45As a result, a great curse will befall the kingdom. And that's the reason he is quoting to Krishna.
04:50That's chapter 1 of the Bhagavad Gita. And from there, Krishna proceeds to annihilate these notions.
04:58That's the Bhagavad Gita. Which means, just as the message of the Gita is eternal,
05:04these tendencies inside us, the tendencies you asked of, why do we treat women as property?
05:11Why do men find it so difficult to really move on? Inwardly, they retain an idea of ownership,
05:18even after the relationship is no more. Why does that happen? Because that's a basic animal instinct.
05:23That's got nothing to do with the current culture or civilization or something that has recently
05:29happened or something that is dependent on a period of time that was there so many thousand years back.
05:35That is there today. And as long as we remain genetically who we are, that will remain.
05:41That's our animal tendency. That's our animal tendency to be territorial, to be opportunistic,
05:47to be possessive, and to really want to own, control the sexuality of the other person, the other gender,
05:56so that we can maximize our own pleasure. And not just maximize it, secure it.
06:01You know, when you own something, then there is a sense of security. This thing is with me,
06:05not only today, it's also not going to go away tomorrow. So, I own it and I own it with security.
06:11And that's the reason why men have wanted to control women's sexuality since time eternal.
06:17That's there in the Bhagavad Gita. That's what we find happening today. You see, you look at the
06:23current conflict, what we have just witnessed, the unfortunate deaths and the Pehalgaam massacre.
06:34You see the clear gender angle there, right? The terrorists come and then they are sparing the
06:41women and then shooting all the men and they are telling the women, now you will be left alive to
06:47bear this agony all your life. Go and relay this back. And then the operation two was codenamed
06:54Sindur. You see the gender angle? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you also see how the daughter of the
07:00diplomat would appear on screens, Foreign Secretary, the Foreign Secretary, how she was targeted.
07:07Probably the said diplomat also has sons. He is himself a man, even if he does not have sons. But
07:15the one chosen to be targeted was a woman, his daughter. So, there is always a gender angle to all
07:28our animalistic primordial instincts. Because that's how the animal in the jungle is. He wants to fight for
07:35territory. He wants to fight for women. And inwardly, we are still animals.
07:39No, but then what you picked up on, you know, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri's daughter being
07:45trolled online and all that vicious, you know, messaging around her and
07:52no, but does that come from the insecurity of weak men? Because you treat women as somebody's property.
07:58Yes. And the only way you can hit back at that man, in your head, you think, is to take away or to
08:04damage the property that that man and hence the woman. Yes. See, you said insecurity of weak men,
08:10that's rightly put. But there can be a more precise and refined way of putting it. That comes from the
08:17animal within us. If we say weak men, we say strong men, that does not really take care of the narrative.
08:24Yeah. Yeah. What we call as our weaknesses are actually our inheritances. What we have inherited
08:32from our jungle past. We are recently, very recently emerging from the jungle. And whatever we are
08:39carrying forward from there, today can be called as our weakness. And that includes our attitude towards
08:45the other gender. We want to own it. We want to suppress it. You look at war and you look at women.
08:51There has always been a relation. Cengiz Khan, the biggest conqueror Asia has seen.
08:59India he spared, but the rest of Asia, almost all of it, plus parts of Europe. He totally ravaged them.
09:09He was not only a conqueror. He was also the biggest rapist the world has seen. So much so, that a big
09:17proportion of the Asian population still bears the stamp of his genes. Because there were just so many
09:26women he personally raped. War and women, they go together. We know of the genocide in East Pakistan,
09:33Bangladesh. We know how rape was a big part of it. Yeah. We know how rape was a big part of the
09:39the pre-partition riots in India. Yeah. We know of that. We also know how rape was a big part of the
09:45motivation of the Japanese forces. Yes. In China, the rape of Nankin and the pleasure girls, the comfort girls
09:51and all those things. We know of all these things. The animal that sits within us, that wants to fight,
09:57that wants to capture territory, is also the animal that wants to possess women. There is a clear
10:04relationship. And that has been since the day we got really conscious. It was there in the jungle
10:13and it has continued with us. And the Bhagavad Gita presents a solution to that. So, the Bhagavad Gita is
10:19actually offering a solution to an eternal problem which is obviously relevant even today and will be
10:25relevant even in the future. That's the reason why I chose to teach this and why it is benefiting so
10:32many people. I want to quote something from your book but before I do that very quickly I want to
10:35ask you something because it's a very common phrase because we are talking about women as property and
10:43from the time of Bhagavad Gita and how you know it was what Arjun said and how it was
10:49in a way demolished by what the arguments that Lord Krishna gave. But
10:55Ghar ki izzat, why is the onus on the women and hence we see that women become the biggest casualty of a war.
11:03Right? I mean the whole notion of ravaging a woman becomes putting a nation down or putting a family down.
11:11How is it, how is, how does one break those shackles of thinking that women hold all the…
11:17By simply asking how does one define the term honour? If honour refers to my ability to keep my women
11:27subdued in the name of safety, then two hoots to such honour. Who wants this kind of honour?
11:33And that's what has happened. A person is honourable, a father is honourable, a family is honourable,
11:40a village or a tribe is honourable. If it can keep its women disciplined in order, marry them off as per
11:49the prescribed notions and then everything can be said to be honourable. And if anything goes astray,
11:57if a woman decides on her own, rightly, wrongly, whatever, but she has decided on her own to deviate,
12:04then it is dishonour. And since it is dishonour, the answer can be honour killing.
12:08That's what we witness. So all these are very flawed, very violent, very ignorant notions of honour and the real
12:19purpose of culture is to keep discarding such notions and cleansing itself from within. But
12:26instead, culture often becomes rigid and chooses to retain all the rubbish of the past. The concept of
12:34honour, also the concept of shame. These are two very related notions. Haya and Izzat. Sharma and Izzat.
12:45Lajja and Samman. These are honour and shame. These are related notions. And therefore, one has to
12:53take it with a pinch of salt when somebody says you are shameless. What does the word shame mean in the
12:59first place? One has to specify that. So, yeah, I mean, I'm sure. And also, I mean, why should women
13:05bear the burden of the honour of any family or anybody else? I want to quote from your book, since we are
13:12talking about this. And I think, ladies and gentlemen, this is where, like he said, culture defines it. This
13:17is where interpretation of this for the people of today becomes very, very important.
13:22You, and I've quoted this, you know, it's on page 78. You say, Arjuna says, you see, if I fight
13:31all the Kshatriyas, like you were talking about, the men will be gone and they will be corrupted.
13:36Once again, even in this, there isn't this orthodox notion. How do you, you know, completely dispel that?
13:44By understanding that you can have no lasting pleasure or completion, fulfilment, contentment,
13:57by owning anything, including a person, including a person of the other gender, that is not going to
14:04give you anything. Just that in the course of history, the principal source of energy was the physical
14:16muscle. And men happen to be more muscular in the course of evolution than women. Therefore,
14:25they acquired a more primary affair, a primary role in the state of social affairs.
14:30But that is no more the case today. There is so much energy being expended here. That's not coming
14:38from our muscles. We have alternate sources of energy. Men and women are actually equals
14:45when it comes to their contribution, their ability in the society. So, these things have to be kept
14:53aside. But when there is this idea that whatever is flowing in from the past is necessarily wonderful,
15:02then that obfuscates the bare fact in front of you. Then you can't see the reality because you worship
15:10the past so much. On that, I have a very important question. I'm sure you'll enjoy answering that.
15:16In your book, you say the Gita does not talk of an ancient war. It talks of the war right now. Do you
15:24also see how difficult it will be for you to remain with the Gita and Krishna if you have particular
15:31attitude towards women or towards caste or something else? Definitely. I just want to ask you, a lot of
15:37people would claim, I am a Hindu and so and so forth and identify myself with this and that. Can people
15:48claim or hold the Gita in their hand and still have prejudice against women or anybody or any caste or
15:54creed? No. If a thousand people claim to have read the Gita or understood the Gita or to be following the
16:03Gita, I would be surprised if even one of them is deserving of going beyond Chapter 1. Because Chapter 1
16:15is where we are all stuck. See, Arjun has a particular attitude towards warna, loosely translated as caste.
16:22And Arjun has a particular attitude towards women. And Arjun is superstitious. He is talking of all kinds
16:28of souls and superstitions, diseased ancestors and they will come and the dead ones are going to curse
16:35us. So there is women, there is caste, there is superstition and there is physical attachment.
16:42These are all my blood relatives. How do I shoot arrows at them? These four things. People talk of
16:49following Shri Krishna. But the fact is, we are all followers of the culture that dominates Arjun.
16:58And Arjun is very resistant to the words of Shri Krishna in the initial chapters of Gita.
17:06At one point, he actually tells Shri Krishna, why are you confusing me? Just let me go. I don't want to
17:12fight because I have my other priorities. I have my ancient notions and I don't want to give them up.
17:20So that's how we all are. Remaining in the state of Arjun, we claim to be followers of Shri Krishna.
17:28So we are stuck in chapter 1. We are stuck at chapter 1. Arjun didn't remain stuck at chapter 1. Arjun
17:33chose to follow Krishna through the remaining 17 chapters, what came ahead. And Krishna kept on
17:42dismembering Arjun. Krishna kept on demolishing Arjun. And Arjun stood through that. Most people who say they
17:51are reading the Gita, when they are demolished, when their notions are shown to be false, they just run
17:57away. That's why staying with the Gita is so very difficult. Or you can just be a hypocrite and stay
18:04with the Gita and say, well, here I am. I am done even with chapter 18. And now I am a Pandit of the
18:11Gita. And you can claim all those things. But that's sheer hypocrisy. The real thing is when those four
18:17things disappear from your life. Has gender prejudice disappeared? Has caste distinction disappeared?
18:25Has superstition disappeared? Has physical attachment disappeared? If these things are disappearing from
18:33your life, only then you can claim to be really devoted to Shri Krishna or being a student of Shri
18:39Krishna. Otherwise, you are just blabbering. So, essentially, there is a difference between
18:45reading Gita and understanding Gita. Gita has to become your life. Exactly. Most of us who
18:50claim that we have read Gita. Gita is not literature. Gita is not literature. Gita is a mirror.
18:56You look at the mirror and if there is a speck or blemish here, you want to change something on your
19:02face when you look at the mirror. If you look at the Gita and that doesn't result in changes in your
19:08life, then you are misusing the Gita. In some sense, that is disrespect to the Gita. Anybody who
19:14holds the Gita must be very, very ready to look within and discard all that which is unnecessary,
19:22superficial, borrowed and therefore antithetical to lives. If that is not happening, then that's
19:32disrespect to the Gita. I think that's why they say that Gita is a way of life. It teaches you how to
19:39conduct your life. But just probing you further on this, like you said, a lot of people are just stuck on
19:46chapter one, chapter one, because of these four prejudices that you have counted for us.
19:52Why don't people then understand? Why is it for them to leave chapter one, go to chapter two,
19:57still think that they are reading Gita, but not understand the SAR of the chapter one?
20:02Because they do not understand that the Gita is a medicine and all medicines are for
20:08a patient's specific disease. Right? All medicines are in that sense, customized, we may say bespoke.
20:18So we do not want to see that we are Arjun, but we want to benefit from Krishna. The thing is,
20:27Shri Krishna was not speaking to everybody on the battlefield. Shri Krishna was speaking to one
20:32particular person who was revealing his insecurities, his doubts, his fears and attachments and all those
20:38things. So you have to first of all see that you are very similar to Arjun and only then the Shri
20:46Krishna's message can be relevant to you. Because Gita is something between a Krishna and an Arjun.
20:53If you are not Arjun, the Gita is not for you. So chapter one is actually the most important chapter
20:58for a seeker, for a student of the Gita. But chapter one is the one we just flip through. Chapter two is
21:06when Shri Krishna starts speaking. So that's the real deal. Chapter one, okay, okay, fine, fine,
21:11fast forward. Because it opens with the Trashtra speaking and there is something from Sanjay and
21:17then even Duryodhana is there and then Arjun speaks. Shri Krishna is hardly found there. We don't want to
21:23see what is there. But the fact is, all improvement is for me. Therefore, it begins with my condition.
21:32First of all, I have to have the mirror to look at myself and only then improvement will ensue.
21:39But we do not look at ourselves. The way I pick up Gita is, okay, what is Shri Krishna saying?
21:43The question is, to whom? To whom are these words being said? If I do not realize that they are being
21:51said to me in my particular condition, then this remains just holy literature to be worshipped
21:58and to be kept away. This will not become life.
22:04So I think it will start from first identifying your own flaws, identifying your own shortcomings,
22:11and then trying to seek an answer of how Shri Krishna could have helped Arjun in that sense and
22:16possibly identifying with that. Thank you so much for this very interesting, enlightening and
22:22in the current context, I mean, you may seem, it may seem that Gita was written in a different era
22:27altogether, but… Oh, it's very relevant, very relevant. It's as if it's written for us today.
22:32Today. True. So in the online age also, it gives you a lot of answers of why we behave in a certain
22:38manner as we do. Thank you so much for speaking to us. Thank you. My name is Shubhangi and I
22:47am an IT consultant and I live in Munich for past eight years and I have been listening to Acharya Ji for
22:55more than two years on YouTube and part of Gita sessions for roughly a year or maybe a little more.
23:07And reflecting upon the session, we were learning the 57th verse, the second chapter from Bhagavad Gita.
23:16And in the context, Acharya Ji talked about the desire and one of the
23:25sentences which I really liked was the true can't be discovered by any other means but false.
23:37And the last one which I really liked but I'm yet to mull over is you can't understand a desire and
23:47find it intact. I am yet to understand it better. That's pretty much what I learned with respect in
23:59words today. And in the end, what I will remember a lot is don't just pass by rather stop. This will stay
24:11with me. And apart from that, I've also grown particularly fond of a sentence rather a question
24:20How do you know? It makes assuming things very difficult. At the same time,
24:24it has saved me a lot of mental every evening situations. So be thankful so far for all such
24:32each, each new form. And thank you.