The Gītā was not preached either as a pastime for persons tired out after living a worldly life in the pursuit of selfish motives nor as a preparatory lesson for living such worldly life; but in order to give philosophical advice as to how one should live his worldly life with an eye to Release (mokṣa) and as to the true duty of human beings in worldly life. -Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak

More than five thousand years ago Sri Krishna told and taught the science of spiritual awakening to Arjun on the battlefield of Kurukshetra in the form of Srimadbhagwadgita. The ‘Divine Song’ as Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak described it, is explained in 18 chapters and 700 verses. The ultimate goal of this intellectual exercise conducted on the battlefield was to teach and inspire Arjuna for performing his duty i.e. karma with an ‘uninvolved attachment’. The Gita has since been a perennial source of inspiration for many.

According to the Hindu calendar the Gita was told on the Ekadashi Day of Shukla Paksha of Margdarshirsh Month and since then this day is celebrated every year as ‘Gita Jayanti’. Gita is the only book whose anniversary is celebrated all over the world. This year's Gita Jayanti Mahotsav (Mokshada Ekadashi) is on Tuesday, 14^th December 2021.

We all know that the Mahabharata War took place between the Kauravas and Pandavas 5159 years ago on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. There in the midst of both the armies Arjuna developed a sort of psychological paralysis when he saw his relatives, gurus, brothers and other relatives with whom he was expected to fight and in order to win the war eliminate them. He immediately started wavering, advocating the futility of war and violence and put down his ‘Gandiva’ bow and arrows and sat in his chariot in a melancholy mood. He was utterly confused about his duty and obligation.

Sri Krishna, who is his close friend (Sakha) and also a teacher used this opportunity to remind him of his duties and inspire him to take up arms and kill all those who stood on the side of ‘Adharma’ and protect those who professed ‘Dharma’ i.e. righteousness. The Gita is contained in the sixth book of the Mahabharata where Sri Krishna the Charioteer apprises Arjuna of his Karma and saves him from the trap of temptation and confusion. Gita is thus a science of Karma.

Srimadbhagwadgita is the most widely respected scripture of Bharat and has been the source of inspiration for millions of people around the world. Recently, Prime Minister Narendrabhai Modi started the tradition of presenting Bhagwadgita to various dignitaries visiting Bharat on different occasions or whenever he travels to foreign countries as a memento. This has also underlined the importance of Bhagwadgita in the contemporary global scenario.

Bhagwadgita is not a mere religious text to be read and worshipped. It is the teachings of a Great Karmayogin like Sri Krishna to be imbibed and followed by us in our day-to-day life. Many great personalities, scientists and leaders believed that the Gita has been the guiding force that shaped their lives. We come across many a revolutionary who smilingly kissed the gallows with Bhagwadgita in their hands. Even great scientists like Albert Einstein, was so impressed by the teachings of Sri Krishna that he quoted: “When I read the Bhagwadgita and reflect about how God created this universe, everything else seems so superfluous”.

Another great American poet, naturalist, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau refers to Gita in his book titled “Walden”. In the very first chapter of his book he writes, “How much more admirable is the Bhagwadgita than all the ruins of the East.”

The American theoretical physicist J Robert Openheimer who is known as father of the atomic bomb and who was involved in the atomic bombing of Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima during the World War II. When he witnessed the destruction caused by the first atom bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima his instant reaction was: “Now I have become Death, the Destroyer of the world.” He read and studied Gita which influenced his life to a great extent. The first atomic explosion reminded him the words from Gita in which Krishna tells Arjuna “I have become Death, the destroyer of the world”. (कालोस्मिलोकक्षयकृतप्रवृद्धो).

An American monk, theologian, social activist and scholar of comparative religion Thomas Merton wrote about the Gita: “The word ‘Gita’ means Song. Just as in the Bible the Song of Solomon has traditionally been known as “The Song of Songs” because it was interpreted to symbolize the ultimate union of Israel with God (in terms of human married love), so the Bhagavad-Gita is, for Hinduism, the great and unsurpassed song that finds the secret of human life in the unquestioning surrender to and awareness of Krishna. The Bhagavad-Gita can be seen as the great treatise on the “active life.” But it is really something more, for it tends to fuse worship, action and contemplation in a fulfillment of daily duty that transcends all three by virtue of a higher consciousness: a consciousness of acting passively, of being an obedient instrument of a transcendent will.

 

Famous Poet T S Eliot, Austrian philosopher and social reformer Rudolf Joseph Lorenz describes 'The Bhagavad Gita'. “In order to approach a creation as sublime as the Bhagavad-Gita with full understanding, it is necessary to attune our soul to it.” It tells how in the midst of a fratricidal battle the lofty Krishna appears in spiritual form to the soldier Arjuna revealing the mysteries of universal ego hood and the path of yoga.

The first Governor of Bengal during the British Rule Warren Hastings who later became the first Governor General of British India strongly supported Charles Wilkins who translated the Bhagwadgita into English. Presenting that English Copy of the Gita to the Chairman of the East India Company Hastings said: “A performance of great originality, of a sublimity of conception, reasoning and diction almost unequalled, and single exception among all the known religions of mankind.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was introduced to Indian philosophy while reading the works of French philosopher Victor Cousin. His words about the Gita are: "I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us."

Friedrich von Humboldt was a Prussian philosopher, linguist, diplomat and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin. He is especially remembered as a linguist who made important contributions to the philosophy of language, ethno linguistics and to the theory and practice of education. He regarded Bhagavad-Gita as "Perhaps the most beautiful work of the literature of the world."

Humboldt began to learn Sanskrit in 1821 and was greatly moved by Schlegel's edition of the Bhagavad Gita, on which he published an extensive study. The Bhagavad Gita made a great impression on Humboldt, who said: “this episode of the Mahabharata was the most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show.”

After looking into the Gita, he wrote to his friend, statesman Frederick von Gentz -“I read the Indian poem for the first time when I was in my country estate in Silesia and, while doing so, I felt a sense of overwhelming gratitude to God for having let me live to be acquainted with this work. It must be the most profound and sublime thing to be found in the world”. He thanked God for having permitted him to live long enough to become acquainted with the Gita.

On June 30 1825, Humboldt lectured to the Berlin Academy of Sciences on the Gita, placing it firmly in the mainstream of the scholarship of the period. He found in the Bhagavad Gita his own “spiritual ancestors”. What appealed to him were its originality and its simplicity. Krishna's doctrine, he wrote, “develops in such a peculiarly individual way, (and) it is, so far as I can judge, so much less burdened with sophistry and mysticism, that it deserves our special attention, standing as it does as an independent work of art…” 


Aldous Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly fifty books- both fiction and non-fiction - as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. He found Bhagvad Gita as, “The most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind.” He also felt, Bhagvad-Gita is “One of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value is subject not only to India but to all of humanity.”

Hollywood superstar Hugh Jackman may have been ‘Wolverine’ for the world, but for his own self, he is deeply soaked in Hinduism. In many interviews, he has accepted that mysticism attracts him. He dedicatedly follows the Upanishads and Bhagwad Gita, scriptures that are fundamental to Hinduism. In an interview he said, “The scriptures that we follow are a mixture between the West and the East and would be from Socrates to the Upanishads, to the Bhagavad Gita, to a number of different texts. The star, who was born a Christian, also has a Sanskrit inscription engraved wedding ring which read “Om paramar mainamar” that means, “We pledge our union to a higher source.”

Annie Besant was a British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer, orator, educationist, and philanthropist. Regarded as a champion of human freedom, she was an ardent supporter of both Irish and Indian self-rule. She was a prolific author with over three hundred books and pamphlets to her credit. As an educationist, her contributions included being one of the founders of the Banaras Hindu University. She was also interested in reading about Indian philosophy. Her translated work of the Bhagavad Gita is titled ‘The Lord’s Song’.

The text from her book reads: “That the spiritual man need not be a recluse, that union with the divine life may be achieved and maintained in the midst of worldly affairs, that the obstacles to that union lie not outside us but within us such is the central lesson of the Bhagvad Gita.”

Bulent Ecevit was a Turkish politician, poet, writer, scholar, and journalist, who served as the Prime Minister of Turkey four times between 1974 and 2002. Bulent Ecevit was not only a politician but also a poet and a writer. He translated works by Rabindranath Tagore, T. S. Eliot, and Omer Tarin into Turkish.

In a 1974, in a British television interview, Bulent Ecevit, the then Turkish Prime Minister, was asked what had given him the courage to send Turkish troops to Cyprus . His answer was that he was fortified by the Bhagavad Gita which taught that if one were morally right, one need not hesitate to fight injustice.

References

Giridhar Sharma Chaturvedi: Gita Pravachan Commentary.

Elst Koenraad: The Argumentative Hindu

Lokmanya Tilak : Gita Rahasya

Madhusudan Ojha : ShrimadBhagavadGita: Vigyanbhashyam, Kandchatushtyatyakam

Motilal Shastri: Gita-Bhashya Bhumika;

Salil Gewali:Great Minds On India

Shankaracharya: Gitabhashya