Ami Ganatra on book Mahabharata Unravelled, clarifying misconceptions about the epic

There have been so many retellings and creative adaptations of the Mahabharata across cultures, generations, and media that it’s become difficult to differentiate fact from fiction with any certainty. We know the central plot, the characters, their motivations, mistakes, and learnings. We discuss them with great passion but very few of us have actually read the source text.

It is why Ami Ganatra’s latest book Mahabharata Unravelled: Lesser-Known Facets of a Well-Known History stands out in the sea of writings on the celebrated epic. It does not preach or sermonise. It doesn’t fictionalise either. It puts to paper the story as it unfolded, provides context, explainers, and busts popular misconceptions.

Befuddled by the countless versions, Ganatra, an alumna of IIM Ahmadabad, decided to read Geeta Press’s Sanskrit-Hindi Mahabharata and find out what’s what for herself. The 373-page book is the outcome. It does what its cover promises — reveals lesser-known facets of a well-known history. Here, she discusses the book, how it changed her understanding of the epic and its characters, and the Mahabharata’s enduring relevance.

What drove you to write Mahabharata Unravelled?

I was always attracted to the Mahabharata. My introduction to it was largely BR Chopra’s teleserial which I watched growing up. After that, I ended up reading a lot about it. But the more I read, the more questions I had. People say Draupadi was one of the panch-satis. Someone else says she was in love with Karna. Others say she was always angry and wanted blood and revenge. Who exactly was she? Why do no two notions about her add up? The same goes for Yudhishtira. He’s called the Dharmaraja. Why then did he gamble away his wife? Similarly, on the one hand, Karna is provoking Dushasana to disrobe Draupadi, and on the other hand, he’s celebrated as the underdog who stood for the justice of the downtrodden.

I had several questions. What is the truth? Is the epic so confused or was I confused? I was already learning Sanskrit and so I started to read the text for myself. As I read, I had several aha moments. I found the facts and characters quite different from what we know. Draupadi is such a different character. Karna is so different. A lot of things told to us about the injustice done to him have not even happened in the Vyasa-rachit Mahabharata. As I continued to read, the various pieces of the puzzle started falling in place.

Last year when the TV show aired during the lockdown, a lot of these discussions started again. All of us are very passionate about the Mahabharata. Everybody knows something about it and we all have our favourite characters. I felt discussions are great but we need to know what the actual Mahabharata says. Praveen Tiwari ji from Bloomsbury then nurtured that thought further. And the book came to be.

Mahabharata has so many people, facets, and stories. It’s difficult to pick one but do you have a favourite character? And is there any one incident that stands out more than the others for you?

I’m fascinated by how Vyasa ji has detailed out every character and how consistent they are; it’s beautiful. Of course, you tend to fall in love with Krishna and Arjuna as you read the story. But for me, Draupadi, Yudhishtira, and Kunti stand out because of their strength of character. People commonly think of Yudhishtira as someone who gambled away his wife and who wasn’t too keen on the war. We think of his unwillingness to fight as his weakness. But it was not. One cannot always act in a jiffy. Undertaking a war was a huge and crucial exercise. In the Mahabharata, the war killed two-three generations of people. It was not an easy decision. You need to be very well prepared when you approach a task of this scale. You cannot take such decisions on an impulse or because you think you were wronged. To be able to question whether you’re prepared enough to succeed and assess the consequences of your decision and actions requires a lot of patience and Yudhishtira had that. He had the understanding of when to do what and how to do what.

The one incident which I love is when Arjuna wants to kill Yudhishtira over an argument because of his oath that if anyone says anything to his gandiva (divine bow), he will kill that person. At that moment, the way Krishna explains what dharma is to Arjuna, that to me is the highlight of Mahabharata. That one incident beautifully explains how to understand what is right, wrong, and virtuous in the context of the situation.

Your choice and the arrangement of the stories is quite interesting. How did you decide what to talk about and what to leave?

I actually did struggle with this part because everything about the Mahabharata is interesting. But I didn’t want it to be an unabridged version that goes on for over 2,000 pages. So I decided to keep out certain things. For instance, Mahabharata has a lot of discourses. In their 13 years of vanvaas (exile), the P_andavas_ had several discussions with the rishis (sages). It makes for rich, dense literature but I skipped them and other parts which are not directly related to the story. I’ve focused on the central Kaurava-Pandava story and the questions that are usually topmost on people’s minds when they think about Mahabharata. Or rather, I have focused on the questions which were on the top of my mind when I started reading.

With the Mahabharata, what we know and what actually is, is quite different. Which were the three major inconsistencies or myths that unravelled for you after reading the source text?

That Dronacharya refused to teach Karna is not true. Karna was Dronacharya’s student. Dronacharya refused to teach Karna only the brahmastra because Karna was always competing with Arjuna. He was jealous of him and wanted to learn to use the brahmastra to fight with Arjuna. They were all very young then, which is why Dronacharya refused to teach Karna how to use the brahmastra.

Today, we think of Karna as someone who was always unjustly treated because of his caste. But he was a student of Dronacharya. So while admitting him, his caste didn’t come into play. This is the other myth. Karna is called the sutaputra, which is commonly understood as someone from the lower caste. But suta is not a low caste. People of mixed jaatis were called sutas. During the time of the Mahabharata, mixed jaatis were very popular. Take the children of a brahmin woman and a kshatriya man, and their progenies were called sutas. In fact, Karna was not the only suta. There are several other sutas in Mahabharata. If sutas were discriminated against because of their mixed lineage, all of them should have borne the brunt of it but they didn’t. On the contrary, sutas were given a lot of respect and they held some very prominent positions. For instance, Sudeshna, the wife of King Virat and the mother-in-law of Abhimanyu, was a suta. If everyone was as caste-obsessed as we are made to believe, why would Arjun marry his son to someone whose mother is not a kshatriya? Sudeshna’s brother Keechak, who was a great warrior and the commander-in-chief of Virat’s forces, was also a suta. Moreover, rishi Ugrasrava Sauti, who narrates the better part of the Mahabharata, was also a suta.

The third is about Draupadi. In the TV serial, they show that she makes fun of Duryodhana by saying, “Andhe ka putra andha” (the blind man has a blind son) when he falls into that pond. It is she who instigates the war by insulting Duryodhana and because their egos were hurt, maybe what they did with her (disrobe her in court) was justifiable. But if you read Vyasa’s Mahabharata, you’ll find Draupadi is not someone to make such offhand, trivial comments. And she does not. In fact, when this scene is narrated in the text, she is not even present. There are the five brothers and servants, some of whom also laugh, but Draupadi is not there. Duryodhana goes back and tells his father Dhritrashtra that they all laughed but he doesn’t say anything about “andhe ka putra andha.” It’s nowhere mentioned. It’s just the masala added.

A lot of things that are told to us are either not true or are misrepresented, which completely changes the personality of the characters and the way we view the Mahabharata. As long as it’s fiction, it doesn’t matter. You can take creative liberties when writing but it is always better to know what the actual itihas (history) says.

How to get the social media generation of today interested in Mahabharata?

More people need to realise the importance of this text. It’s not just entertainment. It’s about character and value building. It is about how to deal with ethical dilemmas. All of us face them. We all have multiple roles to play. Mahabharata can teach wonderfully how we should navigate through them.

I think it starts at home. It behooves the parents to get their children acquainted with stories from the Mahabharata at an early age. There are lots of good versions available for children like Amar Chitra Katha. There are also several YouTube channels that narrate short portions from Puranas and Upanishads. We should make good use of social media to spread the learnings of our ancestors.

This is your first book. Do you plan to write another?

I loved the process of writing this book. I hope I can write more about our itihaas. I’m hoping to write something like this on Ramayana too.