A Lie, A Sin & A Savior

A Lie

This is a story of lie and deceit from mythology and  is known to everyone but still wish to repeat. There is a slight twist with today’s context in the end.

Guru Dronacharya in the Mahabharata was a teacher to both the Kauravas and the Pandavas. He had become the Commander of the Kaurava army after Bhishma. Drona was causing much destruction to the Pandavas and it became apparent that he had to be beaten if the five brothers were to win the war. But beating Drona in warfare was almost impossible with him being a foremost exponent of almost all weapons and strategies of war. Drona had just one weakness, his son Ashwathama who was also a great warrior. Bhima meanwhile killed an elephant named Ashwathama and the word went around the battlefield…Ashwathama is Dead. 

Guru Drona was in his prayers unarmed when this news reached about the death of Ashwathama. He however refused to believe the news and asked Yudisthir, the eldest of the Pandavas who was also known never to lie, 

“Is it true that Ashwathama is dead?”

“Yes”, says Yudhisthir and trails off inaudibly, “Ashwathama the elephant is dead”. 

Drona did not catch the trailing inaudible words and laid down his weapons and bowed his head in grief. Just at that moment, Drishtidyumna who was Yudhisthir’s brother-in-law chops off an unarmed Drona’s head.

Now coming to 1993 how a lie can be useful in today’s Mahabharata as well.

There were 11 bomb explosions in different parts of Mumbai and almost all were in Hindu dominated areas. Sharad Pawar, the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra went on to the television and the people by announcing that there had been 12 blasts including one at Masjid Bundar, an area dominated by Muslims. This was a master stroke of a ploy where he wanted to stall a Hindu retaliation by telling the people that this was not a communal situation but a law and order situation. He even lied when he told the public that the evidence found at Air India Building pointed to terrorist organization based in Southern India hinting at possible handiwork of LTTE.

A Sin

In 1842, Charles Napier, a Major General in the British Indian forces, was asked to quell Afghan tribal rebels in the province of Sindh post the First Angle-Afghan War. In his over enthusiasm, General Napier overran the province in the Battle of Mianee and Battle of Hyderabad and annexed Sindh  much against the agreement the British government had with the local ruler of the place.  

Napier was to have dispatched a message to his superiors wherein it is said that he wrote just one word…Peccavi which in Latin means I Have Sinned which was a pun for “I have Sindh”.

The pun that was attributed to Charles Napier was actually written by an English woman Catherine Winkworth who submitted it to Punch Magazine in 1844, which then printed it as a factual report.

A Savior

Russian Czarina Maria Fyodorovna reportedly once saved the life of a man by transposing a single comma in a warrant signed by her husband, Alexander III (1845-1884), exiling a man to death in Siberia. 

On the bottom of the warrant, the czar had written: “Pardon impossible, to be sent to Siberia.” 

The Czarina changed the punctuation so that the instructions read instead as follows: “Pardon, impossible to be sent to Siberia.” The man was set free.