Hindu stories!, W. says. I am to tell him another. I take him back to the great battle on the plains of Kurukshetra, and of Krishna's strange role in advising the Pandavas to break the rules of war.
The thirteenth day of battle saw Arjuna's son killed by Jayadratha. The great war leader vows that he will avenge his son's death by sunset on the next day, or throw himself into the funeral pyre.
Hearing this, his enemies set six of their greatest warriors the task of guarding Jayadratha. Try as he might, Arjuna could get no closer to his foe. In the last moments of the afternoon, with the rules of war dictating that all fighting stop at sunset, there seemed no choice but for Arjuna, leader of the Pandava armies, to follow his son into death.
Seeing his plight, Krishna, the King who became Arjuna's charioteer, takes action. This avatar of God, who participated in the battle on condition that he did not fight, lifted his chakra over the sun like a great cloud. Night seemed to fall all at once. The six warriors guarding Jayadratha took off their armour and turned to head back to the camp. Strike!, said Krishna, and Arjuna loosed the arrow that killed his enemy.
'What's a chakra?', says W. 'Do you have a chakra?' And then: 'go on, get on with it'.
On the fourteenth day of battle, I continue, Yudhishthira, the oldest of the Pandavas, makes a terrible mistake, issuing a challenge to the great warrior Duryodhana. He promises that if he defeats any of the Pandava brothers in single combat, then their armies will stop fighting.
Duryodhana chooses to duel with the mighty Bhima who, it quickly appears, is no match for his opponent as a warrior of the mace. What, then, is to be done? All seems lost.
Once again, Krishna steps into the fray. Like a boxing coach at the end of a round, Krishna advises Bhima during a break in combat to watch for a moment when he might strike at his opponent below the waist.
Bhima is aghast. That would be to break the rules of war! How could he maintain any virtue as a warrior after such an act? He has no choice, Krishna says, because of his older brother's wager. The Pandavas must not lose. And so Bhima watches for his moment, strikes, and his enemy falls dead.
'Anything goes!', W. says. 'My God, you Hindus!' And then: 'carry on'.
On the seventeenth day of the war, I continue, Krishna intervenes again. All are weary; bodies lie everywhere. The wounded cry out. The battlefield is slippery with blood. Karna, now leader of the enemy armies, has to dismount from his chariot in the midst of combat to free a wheel that has become stuck. According to the rules of war, no one should attack a dismounted chariot warrior. But Krishna tells Arjuna that attack him he must; Karna's might and leadership is such that the Pandavas will only lose against the army he commands. And so the great archer shoots Karna dead.
Why did Krishna, an avatar of God, counsel his friends to act dishonourably? Why, when he had accepted a position as a lowly charioteer, did he advise the Pandavas to break the rules of war? How can a lie be superior to the truth?
Some say Krishna had his eye on a greater duty, a higher dharma, than that which ruled men on earth; others that the enemies of the Pandavas deserved nothing else: weren't they unrighteousness, adharma, incarnate, no matter which men of virtue fought amongst them?
Others still say that the battle marked the transition from a higher to a lower Age – doesn't the Mahabharata end with the words, 'and darkness fell over India'? – and that cynicism and opportunism were the only means left. This is an age of lies, the truth has become lost, promises mean nothing, virtue has disappeared …
'You Hindus are so fatalistic', W. says. 'The world is illusory to you, isn't it? You can do anything you like. Nothing really matters'. Religion, for W., must take a stand against cynicism and opportunism, in this world, the only world, if it can do nothing else.
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