The Humiliation of Draupadi
Invaded, degraded, mauled, maligned, enslaved and held hostage to the vacancy of the perpetrators’ self accountability — such was the humiliation of chief queen Draupadi — a royal occasion of mendacious depravity etched deeply into ancient teachings to remind us of Dharma (conscious conformity to natural, cosmic law and order) that upholds Indian spirituality.
This is a case of harrowing slander, dishonourable prolonged assault and perverse contempt for human rights and rightful justice. This is a case of Adharma (transgression of natural law) that spawned the great bloody war that divided beloveds from family, disciples from mentors and friends from intimate circles.
This is a war that began as a power play. A power play acted out as a game. A rigged game with unconscionably rising stakes. A gambling away of self, of life, of love, of home, of relations, of purpose, of place. A gambling away — slave to the stress — over and over again. A gamble for gain at the miscalculated risk of immeasurable chains of loss.
A gamble sustained by addiction. Addictions spawned by poisons. All those poisons known to obstruct and obscure recognition of our own eternal nature as blessedly and blissedly one with all that is.
These poisons are identified in the yogic traditions of India as Avidya (ignorance and disregard for reality), Asmita (false self identification), Raga (attachments), Dvesa (aversions), Abhinidvesa (clinging to notions through fear of death).
These poisons tend to run rampant in the psyche infecting, proliferating and seeking to infiltrate and overwhelm vulnerable operatives, as a means to ultimately spread and seize control over the powers of our free will to choose to go with and not against the fundamental goodness of our human conscience.
Colonisation of poison takes effect through viral programming of a superficial, yet systematised way of thinking, speaking and acting to substantiate centralised, self-serving sovereignty over intellectualised loops that become disconnected from the diminishing bodily impulse to re-align with natural law.
In the case of Draupadi, we see the vindictive forces of a mob mentality, stirred by revenge for un-processed slights that snowball over time. We see certain unhealed adversaries rally in revenge to hungrily position and lustily aim at the one made most vulnerable through discriminative, unmitigated, frenzied shaming.
This is a case where the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, for while the repressed volume of magmatic distress has to erupt sometime, heated projection onto the innocent-until-proven-guilty, will ultimately backfire.
This is a case of personal integrity in the face of communal and societal failure to sincerely respond until justice be done on the behalf of all. This is a case of incorruptibility in the face of swarming, poisonous intent.
Draupadi, forcibly commandeered to court, stripped of her royal, cultural, marital privilege and protection becomes — by virtue of her innocence — the virtual centrepiece of inborn values. Intrinsic values that cross the boundaries of blood, gender, caste, custom, craft, culture and therefore not subject to politicised appropriation and strategic misrepresentation.
No matter that Draupadi was unlawfully staked in a gamble and lost by one of her five husbands, all blinded to the manipulation of the dice. When finally she was granted boons to prevent her from issuing a great curse, she unhesitatingly requested the sires of her future sons freedom back without bargaining for her personal safety.
No matter that Draupadi was viciously pulled from hither to thither by her hair. There was no where else for her to be, for she was the calm of reason at the center of the storm, wherever it brewed and blew.
No matter that Draupadi as the sanctioned wife to five brothers was accused of being a whore by her perpetrators and therefore, they justified, deserving of molestation even at the time of her menstruation. For she was and remains today for many, one key epitome of dharmic femininity — consciously conforming through polyandry, in this case, to the revered dictate of the absolute, nature, gods, sages, fathers, mothers and a true-held bow.
No matter that Draupadi’s single, ritual cloth of a plain white sari was pulled off her in an unrestrained attempt to disrobe and thoroughly unravel her vantage of composure. For in the heat of her austerity and unprotected by those who could not see beyond themselves, she appealed of single mind to Krishna, her divine Lord.
And in response — a seeming miracle powered from within. The self-regulated, limitless extent of her fearless integrity in action through total devotion to her truth, manifested as a self-extending length of cloth that cleaved to her flesh — no matter how powerfully the perpetrator yanked and pulled at its threads and end.
The perpetrators caught up in their own weave of self-deceit exhausted themselves in their frustrated assault on their singled-out victim. While they heinously sought to disable her by means unjust, they only succeeded in depleting themselves, as a matter of natural course. For while there are limits to what hatred and lies can produce, service to unfettered truth is self-sustained.
Poisoned by ignorance, greed and anger, the gamers committed acts that transgressed natural law. Each one of those acts was witnessed and each would be accounted for in the raging battle that ensued as the consequence of division seeded in the rigged game. A battle in which each would truly wake to their debts and ultimately realign with their whole purpose for being through the sacrifice of unconsciousness for some, and for others their life breath. This battle, with sorrowful loss of limb and life on both sides was nonetheless presided over and pervaded by Consciousness in full measure and driving action in and of Itself.
The perpetrators of assault on Draupadi — whether in their perceived right or whether wrongful by their disproportionate, intentionally harmful act — have not remained anonymous. For they too have a right to be named, and known by those who piece the puzzles as we all take our stand on the multi facets of one light.