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This story and discussion on Ekalavyan is interesting and quite controversial.

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Ram Chanadran

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This article is emailed to you by Ram Chandran ( rchandran )

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Source: The Hindu (http://www.hinduonnet.com)

 

A warning or an example?

 

 

THE STORY of Ekalavya is well known. Ekalavya was a young hunter who wished to

train as a warrior under Drona, the best-known guru in this field at the time.

Drona rejected him as a disciple on account of his low birth, whereupon he

acquired the skills himself through rigorous practice, after installing a

replica of Drona. In modern parlance, one might say that Ekalavya was an

autodidact and Drona taught him . Be that as it may, Ekalavya soon surpassed

Drona's favourite pupil Arjuna in skill and, in order to ensure that no one

could ever surpass Arjuna as an archer, Drona demanded the thumb of Ekalavya as

his "tuition fees''.

 

This incident is regularly cited as an example of social injustice within

Hinduism. The clarifying question to ask here is: is this incident to be treated

as an example, or as a warning?

 

The critics of Hinduism might wish to treat it as an example, but the Hindu

would tend to look upon it as a warning. It is an example only in the sense that

it is to be held up as an example of what happens when one acts unjustly. In the

end, Drona is slain by the very Pandavas for the sake of whose supremacy Drona

had amputated Ekalavya! And the irony here is not that of a Greek tragedy so

much as that of a morality tale. Drona lost his life as the result of a lie told

to him.

 

The point, moreover, does not consist of only the moral message. It also

possesses a spiritual resonance. To hear the resonance, one must attune one's

ears to those vibrations of Hinduism, in which the guru is said to play a vital

role in one's search for perfection, spiritual or otherwise. Ekalavya's story

makes the point that it is the guru as one's mental construct, rather than his

or her physical form, which is the transforming agency. The guru, as a mental

construct, imparted some supreme skill to Ekalavya, the guru in the physical

form deprived him of his capacity to exercise it. It was the desire of Ekalavya

to be a great archer which made him a great archer. No wonder Gautama Buddha,

Mahatma Gandhi and Ramana Maharshi had no gurus. All that perfection ultimately

requires of us is that our desire for it be perfect.

 

ARVIND SHARMA

 

 

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