So, in one word Srimad Bhagavad Gita is a "BOOK"; and I believe before reading any book we must need to know the essential facts about that book, like the name of the writer, contents covered in that book, etc. Bhagavad Gita is part of the great epic called "Mahabharata" which is mainly known as "Jaya". This epic was written by Maharishi Bhagavan Krsna Dwaipayan Ved Vaysa.
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| Maharishi Bhagavan Krsna Dwaipayan Ved Vaysa |
In that epic, there is 18 Parvas and this Srimad Bhagavad Gita is part of the Bhisma Parva between chapter 23 to 40. Because "Jaya" written in Sanskrit so this Bhagavad Gita also wrote in the Sanskrit language; in ancient times it used to be part of the "Jaya" but later Srimad Sripad Adi Shankaracharya (700AD) himself separately written his first-ever commentary on this portion of "Jaya" and this way Gita separated from the "Jaya" and got its identification among the Vedic literature.
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| Srimad Sripad Adi Shankaracharya |
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| Sriman Chaitanya Mahaprabhu |
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Bhagavad Gita 6.1 |
The Srimad Bhagavad Gita has been highly praised, not only by prominent Indians including Mahatma Gandhi and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, but also by Aldous Huxley, Henry David Thoreau, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Jung, Herman Hesse, and Bülent Ecevit.
Mahatma Gandhi expressed his love for the Gita in these words:
I find solace in the Bhagavad Gītā that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount. When disappointment stares me in the face and all alone I see not one ray of light, I go back to the Bhagavad Gītā. I find a verse here and a verse there and I immediately begin to smile amid overwhelming tragedies – and my life has been full of external tragedies – and if they have left no visible, no indelible scar on me, I owe it all to the teaching of Bhagavad Gītā.
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan himself wrote a commentary on Bhagavad Gita. He stated that the Bhagavad Gita teaches a universalist religion and the "essence of Hinduism" along with the "essence of all religions", rather than a private religion
Bal Gangadhar Tilak interpreted the karma yoga teachings in Gita as a "doctrine of liberation" taught by Hinduism.
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, commented on the Gita:
The Bhagavad-Gita deals essentially with the spiritual foundation of human existence. It is a call of action to meet the obligations and duties of life, yet keeping in view the spiritual nature and grander purpose of the universe.
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, 11th President of India, despite being a Muslim, used to read Bhagavad Gita and recite Vedic mantras.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist, and director of the Manhattan Project learned Sanskrit in 1933 and read the Bhagavad Gita in the original form, citing it later as one of the most influential books to shape his philosophy of life. Oppenheimer later recalled that, while witnessing the explosion of the Trinity nuclear test, he thought of verses from the Bhagavad Gita ( sloke no 11&12):
दिवि सूर्यसहस्रस्य भवेद्युगपदुत्थिता यदि भाः सदृशी सा स्याद्भासस्तस्य महात्मनः ॥११- १२॥
If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one...
Years later he would explain that another verse had also entered his head at that time:
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, remarked the following after his first study of the Gita, and thereafter frequently quoted the text in his journals and letters, particularly the "work with inner renunciation" idea in his writings on man's quest for spiritual energy:
I owed – my friend and I owed – a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Geeta. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.
Swami Vivekananda's works contained numerous references to the Gita, such as his lectures on the four yogas – Bhakti, Jnana, Karma, and Raja. Through the message of the Gita, Vivekananda sought to energize the people of India to reclaim their dormant but strong identity.
Aurobindo saw Bhagavad Gita as a "scripture of the future religion" and suggested that Hinduism had acquired a much wider relevance through the Gita.
Swami Sivananda called Bhagavad Gita "the most precious jewel of Hindu literature" and suggested its introduction into the curriculum of Indian schools and colleges.
Criticisms of Gita
The Gita presents its teaching in the context of a war where the warrior Arjuna is in inner crisis about whether he should renounce and abandon the battlefield, or fight and kill. He is advised by Krsna to do his sva-dharma, a term that has been variously interpreted. According to the Indologist Paul Hacker, the contextual meaning in the Gita is the "dharma of a particular varna". Neo-Hindus such as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, states Hacker, have preferred to not translate it in those terms, or "dharma" as religion, but leave Gita's message as "everyone must follow his sva-dharma". According to Chatterjee, the Hindus already understand the meaning of that term. To render it in English for non-Hindus for its better understanding, one must ask what is the sva-dharma for the non-Hindus? The Lord, states Chatterjee, created millions and millions of people, and he did not ordain dharma only for Indians (Hindus) and "make all the others dharma-less", for "are not the non-Hindus also his children"? According to Chatterjee, Krishna's religion of Gita is "not so narrow-minded". This argument, states Hacker, is an attempt to "universalize Hinduism".
The Gita has been cited and criticized as a Hindu text that supports varna-dharma and the caste system. B. R. Ambedkar, born in a Dalit family and the principal architect of the Constitution of India, criticized the text for its stance on caste and for "defending certain dogmas of religion on philosophical grounds". According to Jimmy Klausen, Ambedkar in his essay Krsna and his Gita stated that the Gita was a "tool" of Brahmanical Hinduism and for its latter-day saints such as Mahatma Gandhi and Lokmanya Tilak. To Ambedkar, states Klausen, it is a text of "mostly barbaric, religious particularisms" offering "a defense of the Kshatriya duty to make war and kill, the assertion that varna derives from birth rather than worth or aptitude, and the injunction to perform karma" neither perfunctorily nor egotistically. Similar criticism of the Gita has been published by Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi, another Marxist historian.
This is a brief overview of the Bhagavad Gita. Now, I will scrutinize all these views of these great personalities (both positive and negative ) by analyzing each sloke of the Bhagavad Gita whether these views are right or wrong by the grace of Guru.
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Hari OM TAT 🙏
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