One of the prominent intellectual, critic and linguist of present day India, Prof Ganesh Devy who has authored over 50 books in Gujarati, Marathi and English on cultural studies and literary theory, spoke to The Goan on why Mahabharata fascinates him just like any other Indian and why he chose to pen a book on it
Q Why Mahabharata? Is it because of its eternity, all-time relativity and relevance even in today’s times? Which aspect of this epic touched you the most?
Ganesh Devy: Mahabharata meets and greets you at every nook and corner of India. It is everywhere “ in folk lore, stories, poems, idioms, myths, beliefs. No part of life remains untouched by it. At some age or stage of life, one has to encounter it. The same happened with me. As a kid it fascinated me and as a septuagenarian it still awes me. The virus and the lockdown provoked me to take up this long-pending task. Being on my own, I thought of opening my memory book and pen a portrait of a poem that has been speaking to the nation for two millennia “ the Mahabharata.
Looking back, as a researcher of society and culture I met people from various places in India, and found that Mahabharata is weaved in their mindset. It has a deep and long lasting impact on their thought process and their behaviour. While studying language literature of 1,000 years I noticed that several translations of this epic have taken place in various languages. My linguistic survey led me to collecting samples of songs and stories that had their origin in Mahabharata. I have touched 780 languages and dozens of these had references to stories from Mahabharata. I also worked on Indian history of 12,000 years for my upcoming book which is a collection of 80 scholars where I found that Mahabharat comes in a big way in Buddhism, Jainism as well as in regional language literature in a very enticing way. I have also worked for 25 years with tribal and saw that they had a number of Mahabharatas of their own. If you live in Asia, Mahabharata is bound to knock on your door, enter your mind. India myths are primarily from Mahabharata.
So I realised that if I want to make sense of myself as an Indian, then I have to make sense of Mahabharata. More importantly, as any literary critic, I had a desire to analyse the toughest of texts implicitly or explicitly. And what’s more complex than the Mahabharata?
Q True. Mahabharata comprises of hundreds of characters representing every single trait that can be traced in the human mind. Could you brief on how our ancient rishis analysed or dissected human nature to arrive at such a massive and impactful project?
I am awed by the imaginative powers of our great sage Vyasa who wrote Mahabharata. It is a great epic. Nothing parallels it. It is amazing to find all kinds of personalities and umpteen human traits, each completely different from the other in the epic. As a person, I wonder how Vyasa, achieved to derive this form? How he tricked? I am examining his method. The epic has vast and encompassing reach. How can a single entity have such a tremendous impact on Indian psyche? Looking at this possibility, one can simply wonder. It was this curiosity and interest in Indian culture that my mind turned to those aspects of Mahabharata.
When Sigmund Freud wrote on psychology, he was influenced by Greek mythology. Goa-based Indian psychoanalyst, novelist and author in the field of cultural psychology and the psychology of religion Sudhir Kakar who wrote ‘The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society of India’ explains this well. Kakar belongs to the psychoanalytic school of thought based on the work of Freud, which posits that all manifestations of behaviour are determined by latent (hidden) causations, placing heavy emphasis on the unconscious. He has studied Indian psyche and its varied manifestations in broader contexts from a cultural-specific perspective, yet many of his findings are universal.
Q Why has Mahabharata remained India’s national epic?
We don’t have to make any special effort to place it on the highest pedestal. It has always secured that place. Every time a new sensibility has been risen in Bharat, (eg the Bhakti movement), writers went back to Mahabharat. Dyneshwari, Geeta have been drawn from the Mahabharata. Our poets or writers in the last 50-60 years from Kannada, Bengali or Marathi have written texts glorifying the characters from Mahabharata. Michael Madhusudan’s Shishupalvadh, VS Khandekar’s Yayati, Mahasweta’s Draupadi, Dharmaveer Bharati’s Andha Yug... are all inspired by Mahabharata. The epic has touched our cinema and television, even digital format. Every new technology related to creative expression gets Indianised by referring to Mahabharata.
