Dialectical and Historical Materialistic Critique of the Bhagavad Gītā

Abstract

This research analyzes the origin, the views and the modern usefulness of the Bhagavad Gītā through the Marxist concept of dialectical and historical materialism. To the extent of my extensive study on the past works of the Gītā, it is found that it has not been approached from the perspective of the dialectical and historical materialism; so, my research intends to bridge the gap in regard to the existing knowledge of the text. The dialectical and historical materialism is an appropriate method to interpret the Gītā in the light of the research gap noted in the course of the literature review. This study, using the theoretical insights of the dialectical and historical materialism, interprets the text as a literary production of particular stages of Indian history and evaluates the content and the message of the text in the context of the particular historical struggles of Indian society. The study answers the three research questions that are concerned to the historical origin of the Gītā, its philosophic controversy and the social significance of the text in the modern world. The specific objective of the study is to educate the modern readers in relation to aforementioned issues of the text. The findings of the study show that the Gītā contains two Gītās within it: the original and interpolated ones. The original Gītā, set in early Indian slavery, carries the ideologies of the rising slave states and the interpolated Gītā, set in early Indian feudalism, carries the ideologies of post-Buddhist Brāhmaṇism. The Gītā has been found to be self-contradictory in its views as it conglomerates the divergent ideas of the different schools of philosophy. The incompatibility of different ideas of the Gītā makes the text not as an independent treatise but as a review synthesis of the different contemporary schools of thought. The study reveals that the Gītā is the literature of the ruling class people at the time of slavery and feudalism. The Gītā's ideal, vii expressed through its theories of knowledge, action, devotion, Cāturvarṇāh and its treatment to women, is superstitious, unscientific and discriminatory. The Gītā's these notions reveal the text's class affiliation to the ruling class people and become the major obstacle in the modern time for establishing the egalitarian society. The ruling class people, even at the present time, use the religious śāstras like the Gītā as their principal weapons to sustain the oppressive state power based on private property and classes. The study, through the exposure of the Gītā, educates modern people about hollowness of the scriptures of all religions in general and the Gītā in particular.