The ‘management lessons from Mahabharata’ fraud

With all the news on the political front the same old, same old, perhaps you will allow me to indulge in a little tirade on one of my pet peeves -- courses on management techniques from the Bhagavad Gita. Or its more sophisticated counterpart, courses on applying Indian knowledge systems to contemporary law, engineering, and what-not. I was once at a discussion session with one of the greatest living experts on a particular Sanskrit philosophical discipline, and he was asked, “How do you think what we learn here can elevate the contemporary legal system?” And he replied simply, “It cannot”.

But even the hon’ble Governor of Karnataka is not immune to the aggrandisation of Sanskrit as holding the secret answers to all world problems -- he recently declared in a speech that the US space agency NASA has a department dedicated to Sanskrit manuscript research -- a claim that has been falsified many times over but keeps popping up again and again. Apart from the intellectual dishonesty in such claims, what bothers me is the underlying assumption -- that Sanskrit, its literature, and the accomplishments of the intellectuals who wrote in it, can only be worthwhile if they are designated as so by whatever suits our modern fancies.

Krishna is a brilliant statesman in the Mahabharata who devices the most incredible escapes from sticky situations without so much as lifting a weapon. But even he cannot escape the clutches of overly zealous management gurus and their lessons. I recently saw a management ‘expert’ quote Krishna’s advice to the Pandavas on Jarasandha.

In this episode, Jarasandha is a formidable enemy that the Pandavas must defeat to complete the Rajasuya sacrifice. Krishna proposes to go to Jarasandha in disguise, along with Bhima and Arjuna, and at this point, Krishna chooses to enter Jarasandha’s city in secret, rather than from the main entrance because, as he says, one must visit one’s friends through their front doors, and enemies through their back doors. Which is very interesting, but how does this qualify as a timeless lesson? Can you really enter your enemy’s house through their back door? Or, if the lesson is that one should make their plans against rivals in secret, do you really need Krishna to make such an obvious point for you when even a first-grader could tell you that?

Even the Mahabharata, with its delicious world of complications and nuance becomes fodder for inane moral lessons or simplistic management strategies in this perspective. One of the more preposterous pieces I read held up time management as one of the valuable skills to be inculcated from the Mahabharata. Not only is the concept of time management completely alien to the Mahabharata, but also, think of what Krishna does in the Kurukshetra war.

When Arjuna takes up a vow to kill Jayadratha before sunset or immolate himself, and the entire Kaurava army decides it would be easier to let Arjuna fail his vow and kill himself rather than try to kill him, they focus their efforts on protecting Jayadratha. Arjuna has trouble even locating where Jayadratha is before sunset. Krishna then steps in with some magic -- he darkens the sky with his Sudarshana disc covering the sun, and the Kauravas, fooled into thinking it is sunset, triumphantly bring Jayadratha out of hiding, when the sun suddenly comes back up again, and Arjuna kills Jayadratha.

Fascinating tale, but if you try to reduce this to a time management lesson, what can you possibly get from the story? Try to confuse your rival co-worker by changing the time zone on their laptop so they miss their deadline?

All this to say, why look at such a rich tradition of literature to extract banal lessons on how to squeeze a little extra from your corporate job? Let us read stories for what they are and they will enchant us anew.

(Anusha S Rao is the author of 'How to Love in Sanskrit' and likes writing new things about very old things. X: @AnushaSRao2)