Beautiful and head on post Bheegs.
Let's count the possible ways (anything goes rule) that Draupadi could be held responsible:
1) Draupadi tells her Patis immediately after the dice game to screw the second dice game and go to IP and return with an army and the Pandavas oblige. [that did not happen]
2) While in exile Draupadi lashes on each pati and tells them to screw their promise and attack HP with Panchaal's army, which they do. [Did that happen? Don't think so]
3) Draupadi forces Bhim to makes those vows [Nope, Bhim made those vows on his own. The VH was the cause, but the fault lies with DDSK. I can't imagine anyone who would actually blame Panchaali for getting VHed ... but... just in case]
4) Draupadi was secretly plotting to conquer HP for her own evil and sadistic pleasure so she sent a message to Dury that she wanted to be with him and he should force Yudhi to stake her during the dice game he should set up. Hence why Dury stakes her, hence why Dury told her to sit on his thighs, hence why she was VHed [Now I'm being sarcastic!]
Just because an event acted as a catalyst, it cannot suggest that it was the sole reason for it. Thinking that Panchaali was responsible for the war is as pathetic as thinking that George W. Bush is a hero for launching the war on terrorism (for those that live in the US) or as pathetic as supporting racism or prejudice. The need to pin the issue on a woman is astounding pathetic, especially when there isn't a fair amount of evidence pointing towards it.
As a society, we should reform out of this regressive thinking. Maybe it's those people who view males to be extremely superior to females that see that women are the ones responsible.
Speaking from personal experience, we read a cartoon Ramayan in college and we had to write an essay on it. I explored which gender held the responsibility for Sita's kidnapping. Was it Sita and her extremely beautiful looks, or was it Surpanakha's lust? Perhaps it was Rama and Ravana's fault, since Rama went for the golden deer and Ravana maybe who orchestrated the entire thing? Sure each gender held a fair amount of responsibility - Sita really wanted the golden deer - but blaming Sita for the kidnapping was absurd. I came to the conclusion that from that cartoon Ramayan that was mostly images and a little text, that both genders held a relatively equal amount of responsibility, but maybe the males held a slightly larger amount.
The point is - if we are to think that the Mahabharat itself isn't color coded character wise - then why are we forcing ourselves to think that it is. If we begin to color code the characters, and as a result do something like WWing / BWing that the StarCVs have done, we would reach the same conclusion the CVs did. Most people here realize that the MB has grey characters - neither black nor white - a little bit of both. So it makes sense that a story with characters that are grey, should have pretty grey parts dispersed throughout it. Grey characters + grey parts should make the MB largely grey right?
Now since we are thinking that grey = complex, it makes sense to think that the MB is largely complex right? Again grey / complex characters with a bunch of grey / complex parts equals grey / complex Mahabharat (to simplify things). So coming to an extremely simple conclusion in something as complex as the Mahabharat ... think about it ... you might realize how foolish that sounds.
Edited by shyam09 - 9 years ago
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