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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 in absentia. 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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