Ram and Krishna are both Vishnu’s avatars.

Ram was the one who established the perfect

kingdom, Ram rajya. Lord Ram is alternatively Bodhisattva to Buddhists and Baladeva to Jains.
People belonging to all three religions are also aware of Vishnugupta Chanakya, through folklore,
as a shrewd Brahmin who used his cunning and intellect to cause the downfall of the old and
corrupt ruler of Nanda dynasty with a more worthy ruler, Chandragupta Maurya.

On the surface of it it may seem to most people to simply liken Chanakya’s notion of state with
that of Ram’s. However if one were to dwell deeper and even talk to those who study politics and
philosophy, they would be prudent to conclude that Chanakya’s view of kingship is rather
different, even incompatible, with the idea embodied in Ram rajya.

While Ram is more about wisdom and ideality, Chanakya is more about power. Chanakya is more
interested in the success (artha) of kingship, and views social order (dharma) merely as a tool to
achieve it. He is not interested in the idea of liberation from the material world (moksha). Ram, on
the other hand, is the embodiment of dharma, and the vehicle for moksha.

Chanakya is identified as Kautilya, author of the 2,000-year-old treatise on economics and politics,
Arthashastra, and of Chanakya-neeti, a collection of aphorisms on realpolitik. In popular cultural
memory, he was mentor to Chandragupta Maurya, who played a key role in overthrowing the
Nanda kings and resisting Alexander the Great’s invasion of India 2,300 years ago. Chanakya was
probably a Brahmin, but he is unique in that he was not interested in establishing brahminical
privilege, which makes his Arthashastra very different in tone from Manu’s Dharmashastra.

Between the Mauryan and Gupta empires (200 BCE to 200 CE), the Valmiki Ramayana was put
down in writing. The purpose was to establish a paradigm, that of god walking on earth in mortal
form, making this great Sanskrit epic a myth. It complemented the Mahabharata and its appendix,
the Harivamsa, which also performs the same function of establishing a paradigm: of god walking
the earth as mortal. But there is a difference. Ram upholds brahminical rules, Krishna defies it.
Ram of the Ramayana does not know he is god while Krishna of the Mahabharata knows he is.

Many people find the manipulative Chanakya closer to Krishna in personality. Both are
kingmakers and imagined as puppet-masters. But this reveals a poor understanding of Hindu
thought. For Ram and Krishna, as mortal forms of Vishnu on earth, are concerned with establishing
social order (dharma), not material success (artha), which is Chanakya’s main concern.

At the heart of the problem is the understanding of the word dharma. In popular translations, it
means righteousness, a word with roots in Abrahamic mythology, where it refers to aligning to
god’s will. In Hinduism, god is not rule-maker and certainly not judge. We are creatures whose
actions create a web of reactions that entrap us, and wisdom helps us navigate this karmic web.
This wisdom is revealed by sages known as Buddha in Buddhism, Tirthankara in Jainism, and
avatars of god in Hinduism.

One cannot explain dharma without considering karma. To explain dharma as ethics, morality or
righteousness without factoring in karma is like attempting to see a painting in the absence of a
canvas.
The word dharma had limited use in the Vedic period 3,000 years ago. It became popular only
after Buddha used it to refer to his doctrine 2,500 years ago. And so from around 2,000 years ago,
when the Panchatantra, Jatakas, Ramayana and Mahabharata were being put down in writing, we
also find the rising tension between the Buddhist Dhammapada and the Hindu Dharmashastra, the
former valourising the hermit’s worldview and the latter propagating the householder’s worldview.
Jains saw dharma very differently, as movement, and as such one of the six foundational principles
(dravya) of the universe, the others being inertia (adharma), time (kala), space (akash), substance
(ajiva), and spirit (jiva).

What was dharma remained the question. Was it movement? Was it walking the path of
contemplation and meditation that allowed one to outgrow one’s desires, one’s identity as
recommended by the Buddha? Was it performing rituals and family obligations, determined by
caste, as advocated by Brahmins?

For Chanakya, dharma was the logic used to establish kingship. Without it, there would be anarchy,
the law of the jungle. He advised kings to send spies to propagate the story in the market place that
gods created the raja to establish order in the world, and he could do that, create a secure ecosystem
where economics thrived, provided his subjects paid their taxes and obeyed him and respected his
policies. Chanakya used dharma cynically to prop up the rule of his king. Cynical is the key
adjective here. For Chanakya, dharma was a tool for artha, or material success. For Chanakya,
dharma was established through force and domination (danda-niti).

But in the Shatapatha Brahmana, composed 2,800 years ago, dharma is associated with
overcoming the jungle law (might is right) outside, and outgrowing our animal instincts within. In
Valmiki Ramayana, Ram is the embodiment of dharma: he is dharma-raja, august, decent, gracious
and upright, rude criticism from modern writers notwithstanding. There is no cynicism where Ram
in concerned. Even 1,500 years after the Sanskrit Ramayana when Tulsidas wrote his
Ramcharitmanas in Awadhi, the idea of Ram, the sincere king prevails. In the Hanuman Chalisa,
he is referred to as tapasvi raja, the hermit king. He is simultaneously hermit and householder, an
idea that emerged from the tension between Buddhism and Hinduism, an idea that Chanakya would
only scoff at, but not Krishna.

While Buddha, a prince who walked away from royal life, saw dhamma in the giving up of desire,
Ram was a prince who fulfilled his royal duties, but never got any pleasure from kingship. For his
being king also meant he had to give up his queen, of soiled reputation, and let his children be born
in the forest. Ram finds no happiness from his kingship. But his kingdom benefits from him as
they experience Ram rajya. By upholding his dharma, as the oldest son of the royal family, Ram
ensures his people enjoy artha, material success, and kama, sensory pleasure. It is about them, not
him.

But in the Arthashastra, it is all about the king. His power. His success. His security. The expansion
of his power. The kingdom is imagined as ringed by enemies. And so Chanakya advises the king
to befriend the enemies of his enemies, kings who inhabit the outer ring. Here, the policy is one of
eating or being eaten. The king is no different from an animal, one who seeks prey and fears the
predator, who is alpha in the pecking order, who needs to dominate and defend his territory to feel
safe. And this is where Chanakya diverges from Ram, and Krishna, and the larger Hindu
philosophy.

When Chanakya speaks of the meaning of life, which is the Vedic concept of purushartha, he refers
to three pillars: dharma, artha and kama, which is order, success and pleasure. He does not refer to
the fourth spiritual pillar of liberation, moksha. He does not care for it. It matches his cynicism,
almost mirroring the cynicism of a materialist atheist, such as the Charvakas (an ancient movement
of materialists) who felt the purpose of life was to live the good life, and all conversations of
nobility and transcendence are for fools, the omegas of the pack, who have to be duped or
dominated.

But both the Ramayana and Mahabharata, which reflect the Vaishnava worldview, yearn for the
transcendental. If Buddhism saw the ultimate goal of existence as nirvana, achieving oblivion of
the self, Vaishnavism saw the ultimate goal of existence as moksha, liberation of the individual
self (jiva-atma) by its immersion in the cosmic self (param-atma). And the way to liberate oneself
is not by giving up the world but by engaging with it as Ram, enjoying it as Krishna, both of whom
participate with detachment and focus on the success and pleasure of the other, not the self.

This is what Krishna is trying to tell Arjuna in his Bhagavad Gita. The point is not about family
but about kingdom, not about Kuru-vamsa but Hastinapur. The Kuru clan is but an instrument for
Hastinapur’s well-being, just as the Raghu clan was an instrument for Ayodhya. Ram knew that.
But Bhisma does not, Duryodhana does not, and even Arjuna does not. They all function for glory
of the self.

Krishna helps the Pandavas win the war against the Kauravas, often by bending the rules of war,
which for many Hindutva followers makes him the Indian Machiavelli, a forerunner of Chanakya,
but in that they miss the point. For Machiavelli, and Chanakya, crave power. Krishna does not. In
fact, in exchange for establishing dharma, all he gets is the curse of Gandhari, and he witnesses
the destruction of his own clan following a civil war. He is hardly a winner. Nor are the Pandavas,
who have to deal with the death of all their children. And who when they reach paradise have to
contend with the presence of the Kauravas there.

The final chapter of the Mahabharata, the Swargarhonika Parva, is often seen as the afterthought
to the real epic, just as many see the final chapter of the Ramayana, the Uttar Kanda, as the
afterthought of the real epic. For these final chapters shift the goal post and make the epics not
about great victories of heroic kings but one that wonders about the point of kingship.

In the final chapter of the Ramayana, the king of Ayodhya gives up his wife to protect royal
reputation from scandal, for people gossip about the propriety of a queen who has lived in another
man’s house. In the final chapter of the Mahabharata, the king of Hastinapur, having given up
everything, reaches paradise to find there not his brothers but his vile cousins. What is the message
here?

These dramatic inconvenient twists are where the spiritual awakening of Hinduism happens.
Twists that many rationalists and materialists and atheists would dismiss as mumbo-jumbo, for
they have much in common with Chanakya who believed life is about the self and not the other.
But 2,000 years ago, during a period when India was experiencing its earliest kingdoms and
empires, and torn between royal ambition on one side and the doctrine of renunciation made
popular by the Buddha, sages wondered what makes a good king. Can a hermit be a householder,
and can a hermit-householder be a king? Is it possible for a king to exist for the other? Would that
not make him a sage, a royal sage, a raja-rishi?

Ram, like his father-in-law Janaka, is a raja-rishi. Krishna tries, but fails, to make Yudhishtira a
raja-rishi. In his long discourse to Yudhishtira, the Shanti Parva, Bhisma realises why Krishna
orders Arjuna to pin him down to the ground. All his life, Bhisma thought only about his father
and his clan, not the people. And Yudhishtira hates the Kauravas not because they did not bother
about Hastinapur but because they did not treat his brothers, and his wife, fairly. It is all about him
and his family; there is not a moment’s thought for the kingdom. Quite in contrast to Ram, all
whose decisions are for the well-being of kingdom. A kingdom is not a king’s property, it is his
responsibility. And that is raj-dharma of the Ramayana and Mahabharata.

Ram rajya is a land ruled by a hermit-king. Not one who pretends to be a hermit, but one whose
mind is that of a hermit. A hermit is one who wants nothing but is aware of the needs and wants
of people around him. He does not judge them. He nurtures them as a parent is supposed to nurture
a child. Protect them (dharma). Provide for them (artha). Allow them to enjoy life (kama). And
eventually enable them to be free (moksha). This is not freedom to do whatever they desire, which
is the popular Western concept of individual liberty. This is freedom from desire, from attachment,
from hunger and fear, all that limits us, makes us self-indulgent and stops us from thinking about
the other. The hermit-king tries to make his subjects hermit-kings. He does not judge them, or
himself, harshly when they remain self-indulgent children. For he knows what cannot be achieved
in this lifetime can be achieved in another one of our infinite lives.

We have to ask ourselves, in the 21st century, what we want more: the artha of Chanakya or the
dharma of Ram rajya? For while Ram would surely welcome Chanakya into his kingdom,
Chanakya would dismiss his utopian worldview as naiveté, a fantasy of the gullible, to be used by
shrewd politicians to wrest power.

Management Lessons to be learnt

The story of Rakshas (name of man, not to be confused with mythological demons) comes to us
from a Sanskrit play called Mudrarakshas, which is roughly 1,500 years old. It is based on events
that took place in India, 2300 years ago. Legend has it that when Alexander marched from Persia
and attacked India, intending to conquer the sub-continent, a brahmin called Chanakya approached
King Nanda of Magadha, to raise an army against the Greek warlord.

Nanda, however, insulted him, and Chanakya swore to create a new king who would not only
defend the sub-continent, but also replace Nanda. Thus, he found and raised the perfect king, in
the form of Chandragupta Maurya. Chanakya’s treatise on politics and economics known as ‘Artha
Shastra’ has reached legendary status since then.
The play Mudrarakshas informs us that Chandragupta succeeded in defeating Nanda with the help
of another king called Malyaketu. Malyaketu, however, is not a trustworthy ally. He recruits a man
called Rakshas, the prime minister of Nanda, and together they plot to overthrow Chandragupta
Maurya. Malyaketu does this out of ambition, while Rakshas does this, because he wants to punish
the killer of his former master.

Chanakya recognizes the qualities of Rakshas and feels that this man should be the prime minister
of the new kingdom of Magadha. He does everything in his power to kill Malyaketu and uses
various tricks to get Rakshas to agree to become the prime minister of Magadha. He realises that
bribery or force will not work, and therefore, he uses trickery, manipulation and coercion to get
Rakshasa to agree.

We do not know if this story is historical, hence the word legend. We do know that historically,
there was a king called Chandragupta Maurya, there was a Mauryan empire, and there was
Alexander’s invasion of India, but the historical existence of Chanakya has been doubted by
scholars, as well as the existence of Rakshas. The word ‘mudra’ in the title of the play refers to the
signet ring of Rakshas, which is used to isolate him until he is forced to become Chandragupta’s
ally. But it is the historicity that matters. What matters here is the idea that is attributed to the
master of ancient Indian politics – Chanakya.

Here, Chanakya is not looking at Rakshas as the enemy. He looks at Rakshas as a potential ally, a
collaborator, a possible partner in the rebuilding of the country and the economy. This shows
Chanakya’s genius.

In today’s world, we often talk about Chanakya as a shrewd, master statesman, manipulator, and
strategist, who is able to overthrow the enemy. What we don’t talk about is Chanakya’s ability to
rise above petty enmity and see talent in the enemy camp, like in the case of Rakshas.

When we look at the modern corporate world, we often see CEOs prefer loyal people working
with them. We see rivalry in camps in the corporate world and when one camp wins, the other
camp is forced to resign or is gently sidelined out of the organization. However, if we really valued
Chanakya over and above his strategies to defeat the enemy, and also accepted Chanakya’s ability
not to bear grudges and use talent from every camp, we could create a great organization.

Often, leaders have to accept that everybody loyal to them does not have talent, and everybody
who opposes them is not talentless. A ‘Rakshas’ embodies the person who you do not particularly
like, and who is perhaps your enemy or rival, but is supremely talented. Therefore, through his
dissenting voice, through his disapproval, he perhaps helps you ground yourself and not get
inflated with positions of power.

I think this part of Chanakya’s life needs to be highlighted in current times, where we are too busy
wanting to destroy enemies, rather than recruiting talented enemies. There is a need to rise above
the concept of enemy, for the larger good of society and industry.