In the ‘history’ of Akhand Bharat the first death sentence for crossing the laxman rekha was pronounced on Shishupal, king of Chedi.
As the legend goes all the kings of aryabrata are seated in the glittering hall of the newly built rajmahal of Pandavas in Indraprastha. The highbrow gathering is green with envy at the glamour and splendour of the royal palace and the city constructed by none other than Viswakarma himself, the architect of devas. The occasion is solemn - coronation of Yudhishtra as king of half of Kuru dominions.
The Rajasuya yagna for consecrating a king is in progress . One among the assembled dignitaries must do the honours for agra pooja, an integral part of the Yagna. Pandavas consult the elders and choose Krishna. Shishupal explodes in uncontrollable rage and vehemently remonstrates. How can Krishna supersede the more qualified including Duryodhana and he when they are in attendance! Moreover , Krishna is not even a king. He incites the gathering and starts to abuse him . There is a flutter among the kings, a buzz in the crowd. Many start taking sides. The yagna proceedings come to an abrupt halt. Krishna ,however, is unruffled, a placid lake amidst the rippling cacophony and tempest of opprobrium.
Not Bheema, his hackle is raised. How dare Shishupal vilify his illustrious, godly cousin , he must be taught a lesson. He rushes menacingly towards Shishupal. However, Bhishma pitamah stops him midway and tells the assembled kings of Krishna’s ‘vachan’ - he will not harm Shishupal till he commits one hundred crimes against him . But Shishupal is on an unswerving trajectory. He, heedlessly, persists in his unrelenting vituperative tirade and in the process crosses 100 sins.
As the legend goes all the kings of aryabrata are seated in the glittering hall of the newly built rajmahal of Pandavas in Indraprastha. The highbrow gathering is green with envy at the glamour and splendour of the royal palace and the city constructed by none other than Viswakarma himself, the architect of devas. The occasion is solemn - coronation of Yudhishtra as king of half of Kuru dominions.
The Rajasuya yagna for consecrating a king is in progress . One among the assembled dignitaries must do the honours for agra pooja, an integral part of the Yagna. Pandavas consult the elders and choose Krishna. Shishupal explodes in uncontrollable rage and vehemently remonstrates. How can Krishna supersede the more qualified including Duryodhana and he when they are in attendance! Moreover , Krishna is not even a king. He incites the gathering and starts to abuse him . There is a flutter among the kings, a buzz in the crowd. Many start taking sides. The yagna proceedings come to an abrupt halt. Krishna ,however, is unruffled, a placid lake amidst the rippling cacophony and tempest of opprobrium.
Not Bheema, his hackle is raised. How dare Shishupal vilify his illustrious, godly cousin , he must be taught a lesson. He rushes menacingly towards Shishupal. However, Bhishma pitamah stops him midway and tells the assembled kings of Krishna’s ‘vachan’ - he will not harm Shishupal till he commits one hundred crimes against him . But Shishupal is on an unswerving trajectory. He, heedlessly, persists in his unrelenting vituperative tirade and in the process crosses 100 sins.
Krishna with wry resignation observes Shishupal crossing the laxman rekha, and releases the sudarshan chakra. Shishupal gets shorter by six inches from the top. Oops ! That’s what happens when one doesn’t abide by laxman rekhas.
Humans grow up negotiating a baffling maze of laxman rekhas, red lines, no-no(s), no-go(s), ‘don’t you dare(s) !’ ‘that’s the limit !’.......This is haram, that is non-kosher, this is taboo that a must do, beef is grief....! How desperately an adolescent yearns to be an adult , just to draw up rather than heed laxman rekhas . Sadly, that isn’t the way life unveils . More nuanced, more subtle ,and more grating on the nerves , red lines sprout that shackle body and spirit. Nevertheless societal well being rests on the scaffolding of such proscriptions. If Shishupal had stopped at the 100th sin, he would have lived to fight another day.
Of more relevance to modern contexts is the liberal import underlying the obviously punitive carapace in the gatha , namely, Shishupal being allowed to commit 100 sins by divine dispensation. Today we jump at the gun and shoot at the first instance. Society is in jitters, is in deep angst, having immensely shrank distances to laxman rekhas . The country of immigrants wants no more ; the cradle of Islamic civilisation, the middle-east, has reached the tipping point of Shia-Sunni tolerance and stews in a boiling cauldron of internecine strife ; liberal capitalism is deemed to have run its course ,anti-globalisation noises, Brexit are symptoms of it ; the country that gave the Islamic world its first whiff of modern liberalism , Turkey, slides incessantly into authoritarianism; a country that advertises ‘one nation two systems’ is hell bent on eliminating the only other system where it exists, Hong Kong ; India an avowed secular nation is in the grips of identity politics, having reached the end of the tether of ‘minority appeasement’.
Everywhere it seems the laxman rekha is much less than 100 sins away.
Everywhere it seems the laxman rekha is much less than 100 sins away.
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