Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 10. SPIRITUALISM, RELIGION AND POLITICS
non-violent. Gandhi was determined till the last moment to pressure Ambedkar with his threat to kill
himself.
It makes no difference whether I threaten to kill you or to kill myself to make you accept my view.
In either case, I am using pressure and violence. In fact, when I threaten to kill you I give you a
choice to die with dignity, to tell me you would rather die than yield to my view which is wrong. But
when I threaten you with my own death, then I deprive you of the option to die with dignity; I put you
in a real dilemma. Either you have to yield and accept that you are in the wrong, or you take the
responsibility of my death on you. You are going to suffer guilt in every way.
In spite of his insistence on right means for right ends, the means that Gandhi himself uses are
never right. And I am bold enough to say that whatever Krishna did was right. In a relative sense,
taking his opponents into consideration, Krishna could not have done otherwise.
Question 2
QUESTIONER: COULD HE NOT HAVE KILLED THEM STRAIGHTAWAY WITH WEAPONS,
INSTEAD OF RESORTING TO DUBIOUS MEANS?
They are being killed with weapons. Don’t forget that cunning and deceit are parts of the arsenal of
war. And when your enemies are making full use of this arsenal, it is sheer stupidity to play into their
hands and get defeated and killed.
Krishna does not use deception against a group of good and saintly people. They are all unsaintly
and unscrupulous people. It has been proved a thousand times, and Krishna is having to deal with
them. Before going to war Krishna has done everything to bring them round to some compromise
so that war is avoided. But they force a war. They are nor ready for anything short of war, and they
are ready to use every foul means to destroy the Pandavas. And their whole past record is one of
unabashed dishonesty and treachery. If Krishna had behaved with such people in a gentlemanly
way, the Mahabharat would have ended very differently. Then the Pandavas would have lost the war
and the Kauravas would be the victors. Then evil would be victorious over good.
We say that truth wins – satyameva jayate – but history says it differently. History also puts the victor
on the side of truth. If the Kauravas had won, historians would have written their story, extolling them
to the skies. Then the Pandavas would have been forgotten, and no one would have known Krishna.
An altogether different story would have been written.
I think Krishna did the only right thing to do in the face of the realities of the situation, and all talk
of purity of means is irrelevant. In the world we live in, every means has to be tainted more or less.
If the means is absolutely pure, it will soon turn into an end; there will be no need to strive for the
end. A wholly pure means ceases to be different from the end; then ends and means are one and
the same. But ends and means are different from each other, as long as the means is tainted and
the end is clean. While it is true that a clean end is never attained through unclean means, is a pure
end ever achieved in this world? It is always there in our dreams and desires, but it is never really
achieved.
Gandhi could not say at the time of his death that he had attained to his lofty ends of truth and
non-violence and celibacy, for which he worked hard throughout his life. He died experimenting with
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 179 Osho