Ashoka is still relevant

Book

Title: Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King

Author: Patrick Olivelle

Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023

Pages: xxxix + 356

This book belongs to a series that is being brought out by HarperCollins: Indian Lives. Ashoka belonged to a period about which we know relatively little: 3^rd century BCE. The centuries that followed Ashoka chose to ignore the great emperor because of politico-religious reasons. The Brahmins were averse to Ashoka and his teachings. Hence they chose to project the epic kings, Yudhishthira and Rama, as ideals, and relegate Ashoka to the dark backgrounds of history. Both Ramayana and Mahabharata had kings who were always devoted to the welfare and supremacy of Brahmins while Ashoka strove to forge an egalitarian society.

Patrick Olivelle, the author, was born and raised in Sri Lanka. He is one of the greatest living scholars of ancient India, according to Ramachandra Guha, editor of the series of which this book is the first. Olivelle relies more on Ashoka’s own writings, the edicts and other inscriptions, than on secondary sources and legends. Ashoka’s personality is re-created by Olivelle from the emperor’s own writings. The book is scholarly but devoid of jargon.

Ashoka must have received a cosmopolitan, multicultural upbringing, argues the book. Many Greeks who had accompanied Alexander the Great chose to stay back and some of those women ended up in the Indian palaces. Ashoka’s father and grandfather probably married Greek princesses. At any rate, Ashoka was very open to new realities and possibilities including religions and gods.

The author of this book says that Ashoka must be the only king in human history who was “strong” enough to say “I am sorry.” Ashoka regretted the horrors of Kalinga War which killed about 100,000 people, deported 150,000 and caused the death of another 100,000 indirectly. But the emperor’s conversion to nonviolent Buddhism was not an overnight miracle. Ashoka wanted deeper solutions to political problems and hence he visited the Buddhist monasteries and studied the religion earnestly. Buddhism was already well-established in those days. There were plenty of monasteries.

As Ashoka studied Buddhism more and more, his spiritual focus shifted from nirvana to dharma. The last two decades of his life saw Ashoka focussing on dharma more than anything else. “If there was a single attribute that defined Ashoka’s primary identity, it was his devotion to dharma,” Olivelle writes. He saw the propagation of dharma across the world as his lasting legacy. When he sent monks and nuns to teach the world, it was his notion of dharma more than Buddhism that he wanted the world to understand.

Dharma, for Ashoka, was moral behaviour based on reason. It is the same for all humans. It is not one dharma for the Brahmins and another for the ruling class and yet another for others. What Ashoka envisaged was a world where goodness reigned. “The aim of Ashoka’s dharma project was to create a moral population with cultivated virtues that informed their relationships to significant others within their social universe, a moral cultivation that leads to happiness both here and in the hereafter.”

Ashoka was indeed a philosopher-king that Plato would have approved of. But India’s Brahmins and their religion could not accept Ashoka’s great vision which was also ecumenical. Ashoka respected all religions. He was not interested in converting anyone to any other religion. He never dreamt of something like One Empire, One Religion, One Language… Ashoka was a secularist in the true sense of the term. No wonder Jawaharlal Nehru admired him.

Nehru not only admired Ashoka but also emulated him in many ways. The book quotes French historian Amaury de Riencourt: “In Jawaharlal Nehru India found a remarkable reincarnation of emperor Ashoka.” Unfortunately, Nehru has also been villainised today in India which has transmogrified Ashoka’s gentle lions into angry killers. Even the meek Hanuman was forced to put on passions he could never have, what to say about lions!

The book does not enter into contemporary politics. These last few lines are my own additions to the review. The book made me think in those lines. It will make you think a lot too. It is worth spending time with this book, I assure you.

Ashoka's Lions

  

Modi's Lions