Dialectical and Historical Materialistic Critique of the Bhagavad Gītā
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Faculty of English
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,
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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.