S.N. Sahu 
While speaking on Budget 2024 in parliament, Rahul Gandhi recalled the Mahabharata war from Indian mythology and invoked the ‘chakravyuha’ – a formidable military formation adopted by Dronacharya, one of the great warriors on the Kaurava side. Rahul said that the chakravyuha was also known as the Padma or Kamal (lotus) Vyuha, formation, as it was in the shape of that flower. While the chakravyuha is part of the texture of India’s folklore and public consciousness, its other name as Padma or Kamal Vyuha is much less known to the larger public.
In a very calculated manner, Gandhi used the Kamal Vyuha phrase and drew its parallel with BJP’s symbol, the lotus flower, which he said Prime Minister Modi proudly wore a picture of on his chest during the election campaign. He then remarked that just like the chakravyuha of the Mahabharata – defined by violence, fear, killing and the employment of deadly weapons to trap an opponent – the Modi regime has encircled India and different sections of the population by a 21st century chakravyuha.
While recalling that in the original chakravyuha, six warriors from the Kaurava side killed young Abhimanyu of the Pandavas, he said that the 21st century chakravyuha is also commanded and controlled by six people: Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and the businessmen Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani. Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla expunged the last four names.
Gandhi identified these factors – monopoly capital and the entire wealth of the country in the hands of two bug business houses, the agencies including the CBI, ED and Income Tax Department and the political executive – commanding and controlling the 21st chakravyuha which was devastating the country.
Countering 21st century chakravyuha
Gandhi said that only those six people can enter that chakravyuha where fear and violence dominate and set the tone of rule of frightfulness. He proceeded to add that such a lotus shaped formation controlled exclusively by six people would be countered by “Shiv ki baaraat” – Lord Shiva’s marriage procession – which is open to anyone to participate and imagine the way one likes to wish without any fear. He then juxtaposed this “Shiv ki Baaraat” with Shiva’s ‘abhaya mudra’, or fearless posture, which he had referred to in his first intervention in the current session of parliament.
Rahul Gandhi asserted that the remedy to the chakravyuha controlled by six people in the 21st century would be shattered by the mechanism of the caste census which he said would be conducted after the INDIA alliance formed the government.
The Congress leader’s use of the chakravyuha analogy reminds one of C Rajagopalachari, who, in his book, Mahabharata, first published by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in 1951, referred to the death of Abhimanyu in the lotus formation strategy adopted by the Kauravas. Rajagopalachari wrote his book at the formative stage of nation building following India’s independence to educate the public about the enduring significance of our epics.
Prior to that, Mahatma Gandhi, while spearheading the first Satyagraha in South Africa, wrote in Indian Opinion on August 19, 1911 that “Millions of Indians in India, although they may not be able to sign their own names, know the spirit of the great epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana, which play a part in our national life that very few other similar works do”.
Later, Jawaharlal Nehru in his Discovery of India wrote, “The old epics of India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and other books, in popular translations and paraphrases, were widely known among the masses, and every incident and story and moral in them was engraved on the popular mind and gave a richness and content to it”. “Illiterate villagers,” he remarked, “would know hundreds of verses by heart and their conversation would be full of references to them or to some story with a moral, enshrined in some old classic”. “Often I was surprised, by some such literary turn given by a group of villagers to a simple talk about present-day affairs”, he noted. Nehru relied on recorded history or some ascertained fact and was fascinated by the fact that “even the illiterate peasant had a picture gallery in his mind, though this was largely drawn from myth and tradition and epic heroes and heroines, and only very little from history”.
By invoking the chakravyuha analogy from the Mahabharata to indict crony capitalism, majoritarianism, and Modi’s reliance on fear, Rahul Gandhi is tapping into the age-old legacy of India. Contextualising today’s challenges by referencing the epics in this way reinforces the rational, plural worldview that has always been central to the idea of India.
S.N. Sahu served as officer on special duty to former President KR Narayanan.
This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.