Skip to main content

The Difficulty of Being Good


Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers


Book Review

Title: The Difficulty of Being Good
Author: Gurcharan Das
Publisher: Penguin India, 2012

The Mahabharata is an epic that can be interpreted in numerous ways.  As Gurcharan Das says, “It is a cosmic allegory of the eternal struggle between good and evil on one plane.  At another level, it is about an all-too-human fight between the cousins of a royal family, which leads to a war and ends tragically in the death of almost everyone.  At a third level – and this is primarily the subject of my book – it is about the crisis of conscience of some of its characters.”

Das spent six years studying the epic, having taken an “academic holiday” from his successful career as a writer.  Before turning to fulltime writing, Das worked with multinational companies.  The prevalence of evil in the world of human beings set Das on a kind of spiritual quest.  The Difficulty of Being Good was the outcome. 

The book is an intellectual, spiritual, moral, philosophical and psychological exploration of one of India’s greatest epics.  It deserves to be read by anyone who wishes to understand the Mahabharata from a very wide perspective.  Anyone who is put off by the burgeoning darkness of evil in the world should read this book. 

It does not provide any solution to the problem of evil.  There isn’t any solution.  But we can learn how to deal with evil and keep ourselves good.  Quoting Machiavelli Das says, “a man who wishes to profess goodness at all times will come to ruin among so many who are not so good.”  When the patriarch Bhishma said that dharma was subtle, he meant little else. 

The Mahabharata shows how difficult it is to be good in a world of ‘bad’ people.  Yudhishthira tried his best to cling on to what he perceived as his dharma but failed to avoid the war and all the killings.  Yudhishthira’s dharma was based on benevolence, compassion and generosity.  Krishna, an avatar of God Vishnu himself, used many devious strategies and deceptions in order to defeat the Kauravas.  Even God would find it difficult to be good in the world of human affairs. 

What is our duty then?  That’s what Das’s book tries to answer.  It succeeds in providing a convincing answer too.  It is worth reading the book whether one is religious or not.  The insights provided in the book are not based on any particular religion.  Das brings in a whole spectrum of knowledge ranging from classic literature to contemporary economic views, from philosophy to psychology.   The best thing about it is its lucidity in spite of the profundity.

The books shows how religious literature should be read and interpreted.  That one reason alone should be enough for one to read it.  

Comments

  1. From your review, it seems that it is a must read for me. Thanks for sharing.

    Well... as far as I understand Mahabharata, there isn't any distinguish between good and bad, Both are miseries in context of human beings. It deals with Transcendence - Rising beyond Good & Bad.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is the transcendence that Das is driving at, Ravish. You will love the book for that reason. But transcendence has to be pragmatic too for the ordinary mortals. And Das manages to be practical. The reason is that he was on a genuine quest. That's why I recommend the book.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

War and Meaning of Victory

In the summer of 1999, while the rest of India was soaked in monsoon and Cricket World Cup, the country’s soldiers were clawing up frozen cliffs daring the bullets that came shooting from above. India’s incorrigible neighbour had sent its soldiers and militants to capture the snow-covered peaks of Kargil. It was an act of deception, a capture of India’s land stealthily. The terrain was harsh and hostile, testing the limits of human courage with every jagged step. The Kargil War was not just against a human enemy, but against peaks of stones and snow where the air itself was an adversary. Three months of bitter conflict and subhuman killing ended in India’s victory over the invading Pakistan. Victory! July 26 is celebrated ever after as Kargil Vijay Diwas by India. What is victory, however? Philosophically, I mean. We are supposed to be rational (philosophical) creatures, after all. “ W ar does not determine who is right,” Bertrand Russell said famously, “but who is left.” Every...

Stories from the North-East

Book Review Title: Lapbah: Stories from the North-East (2 volumes) Editors: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih & Rimi Nath Publisher: Penguin Random House India 2025 Pages: 366 + 358   Nestled among the eastern Himalayas and some breathtakingly charming valleys, the Northeastern region of India is home to hundreds of indigenous communities, each with distinct traditions, attire, music, and festivals. Languages spoken range from Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic tongues to Indo-Aryan dialects, reflecting centuries of migration and interaction. Tribal matrilineal societies thrive in Meghalaya, while Nagaland and Mizoram showcase rich Christian tribal traditions. Manipur is famed for classical dance and martial arts, and Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh add further layers of ethnic plurality and ecological richness. Sikkim blends Buddhist heritage with mountainous serenity, and Assam is known for its tea gardens and vibrant Vaishnavite culture. Collectively, the Northeast is a uni...

The RSS and Paradoxes

The oldest racist organisation in the world is all set to celebrate the centenary of its existence. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded in 1925 with the specific goal of unifying the Hindus in India under a religious and cultural banner. The Indian Independence struggle that was going on in full force at that time was no concern of the RSS. Though it gave the liberty to its individual members to take part in the struggle, the organisation’s official policy was to stay clear of it altogether. That was only one of the many paradoxical ironies that marked the RSS which was a nationalist organisation that cared little for the Independence of the nation. Today, the Prime Minister of India is a man who was trained and nurtured by the RSS. Shashi Tharoor wrote a massive book on the paradoxes that underscore the personality of Mr Narendra Modi. The RSS and paradoxes go hand in hand, if we take Modi as a specimen of the organisation’s great achievements. Tharoor’s final asses...