Hitler and the Battle of Kurukshetra

A French writer looks at the rise and fall of Nazism through the Mahabharata

Maggi Lidchi-Grassis love affair with the Mahabharata began in Paris. She was 17 and had just read a French translation of Aurobindos Essays on the Gita. Though she was sequestered in South Africa during World War II,she soon came face to face with Hitlers horrors. One of her cousins had survived Auschwitz and was left with nightmares and a number tattooed on her arm. Through the Mahabharata,Lidchi-Grassi tried to make sense of the turmoil in the world around. In 1959,she finally left for Pondicherry. Over the years,she has been trying to come to grips with the epic,retelling it in her own way. The book is now being published as The Great Golden Sacrifice of the Mahabharata. In an e-mail interview with Nandini Nair,she spoke about the parallels between the rise and fall of Nazism and the battle of Kurukshetra. Excerpts:

What is the relevance of myths in contemporary India? Why retell the Mahabharata?

American mythologist Joseph Campbell says,There is in the civilised world a rising incidence of violence and despair It is the myths that offer us the most solid supports of the moral order. And it is in the phenomenon of creative literature concentrating on our epics that I see the hope for our society in the 21st century. The Mahabharata is about victory in the face of odds. When reading the epic,the walls of our circumscribed lives roll back and we enter a world where heroism cant be defeated.

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What were some of the challenges you faced while working with an epic of this depth?

Its enormity had to be dealt with by sifting and sorting. In this epic,which is eight times as long as the Odyssey and the Iliad,there are legends within legends,making it fascinating but which did not enter my retelling. I wanted to highlight the clash between the Asura and the Deva,the evil and the good,which results in humanity either taking a step forward or sliding back into barbarism.

What are the parallels between the events culminating in the battle of Kurukshetra and those culminating in World War II?

In my vision,the figures and events of the Mahabharata slid in and out of the drama the world passed through in the rise and fall of Nazism. Hitler,it was said,was instructed on how to act by a Being that he took to be a Being of Light. The Asura doesnt come complete with cloven hooves and forked tail. If Hitler and Nazism had prevailed,Europe and the world would have given way to barbarism.

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