External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday highlighted the importance of the great epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana in the world of diplomacy.
Drawing references from the famous Hindu epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar threw light on how India’s ancient literature contains the essence of India’s strategic values. “If I am asked who is the world’s biggest diplomat, I would say it was Lord Krishna and Lord Hanuman. If you look at Hanuman, he had gone beyond diplomacy and used intelligence. He was a multi-purpose diplomat. I can give you examples of ten strategic concepts from today’s discourse from our Hindu Epics,” said the EAM on January 28.
He was speaking at an event in Pune for the release of his English book “The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World,” which has been translated into Marathi as ‘Bharat Marg’.
One of the chapters of Dr Jaishankar include strategic plannings and learnings relating to Indian epics.”Mahabharata was fought in a multi-polar world. That was multi-polar Bharat, where there were different rajya (kingdoms), they were told ‘you are with them, you are with me’…a couple of them were non-aligned…like Balram and Rukma,” he said.
“What was Arjuna’s dilemma, it was constraint, that he was emotionally interdependent…that how do I fight against my relatives. That was not material interdependence, but it was emotional interdependence,” he said.
Speaking with respect to Pakistan and China he said, “Karan and Duryodhan are violating rules-based order,” he stated of the rule-based order.” Karan and Duryodhan’s friendship only yielded bad results for them and for the society.
