Opinion | When Victory Defeats You: Lessons From The Epics About The Cost Of War

There can never be an ethical justification for the violence and misery inflicted by war

Steven Pinker has recently argued that war and violence have declined in modern times, and that our species is living in its most peaceful era. Yet we often find ourselves on the brink of a great war, worrying that a catastrophe is about to occur. The Iran–US war has indeed thrown many of us into that anxiety once again.

The war has now entered its fifth week. As with any war, it has brought horror to many people and caused widespread suffering. The rise in prices and fuel shortages has affected us as well, though to a lesser extent than in neighbouring countries. Organised warfare and violence are as old as human civilisation, even if they may have declined in recent times.

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This also means that, when we look back at our heritage, at ancient times and the literature written then, we encounter stories, songs, and narratives of wars and their effects. It can hardly be otherwise. Poets are, in many ways, healers of wounds. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the cobbler who appears in the first act introduces himself as “a mender of bad soles." Great poets often dwell on great tragedies and console themselves and others for the pain these tragedies inflict. “Ruditaanusaaree Kavi," writes Kalidasa. The poet is the one who follows tears and lamentations.

In both of the great Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, war is a major component. In fact, great poems, or “Mahakavyas," formed a distinct genre in classical Sanskrit literature, and classical Indian literary theorists considered war an essential component of the genre. “Mantradootaprayaanaaji naayakaabhyudayair api," writes Acharya Dandin in his text ‘Kavyadarsha’ when he defines the Mahakavya. The planning of war, the march to battle, and the victory of the hero should be portrayed in the poem if it is an epic poem or Mahakavya. Perhaps war cannot be excluded from any grand narrative about the human condition.

It would be interesting to examine these epics once again to see what they say about war. Perhaps this has been done before. Yet, as is often said, classic texts yield new meanings with each reading. According to Italo Calvino, one of the defining characteristics of a classic is that, with every rereading, it offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first. Moreover, the pain caused by the death of loved ones, and the suffering such loss brings, has not changed over the millennia. The strategy, cruelty, and even the stupidity of those who go to war; well, that has not changed much either.

In the Mahabharata, after Duryodhana’s fall, three remaining warriors from the Kaurava side, Ashwatthama, Kripa, and Kritavarma, leave the........

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