In the previous episode, we were witnessing some important spiritual / management lessons and messages that Bhagawan Bala-Krishna is trying to convey to all of us from His divine “Kaaliya-Nardhana”. Of course, the spiritual message is loud and clear here – One of the most important ways through which a “Bhakta” can attain Bhagawan is through dance. Just like how we had witnessed music to be one form, here, Bhagawan Bala-Krishna illustrates that dance is also one form of coming closer to Bhagawan. Secondly and most importantly, we’ve witnessed how arrogance and greed are two detrimental qualities for living beings. Snake Kaaliya was an embodiment of these two qualities and through this episode, we had witnessed how people with arrogance and greed meet a ghastly end to their lives and ultimately they have to transcend to the “Naraka Lokha”. In our earlier Ramayana project too we’ve witnessed how Ravana was an epitome of arrogance and greed and how he was taken down by Bhagawan Rama. Ravana otherwise, was an extremely powerful and extremely talented person by nature. However, it was just because of his arrogance he had to meet his downfall.
If we look at the leadership aspect of things, readers might remember that during our Ramayana project we had discussed sixteen important qualities of a leader, through the “Kalyana Gunas” of Bhagawan Rama. In that, the very first quality of leadership that we had discussed was “Gunavaan”, which can also be equated to “Sousheelyam”. This simply means that a true leader is a person who goes down to the level of his / her followers to understand their grievances and problems, sits with them, discusses solutions with them and implements them for their benefit and upliftment. Even today in the corporate world, many organizations are extremely successful because they have leaders who fulfill this important quality of leadership. Many of us might know the likes of Shri. JRD Tata and Ratan Tata, who were great leaders of the Tata Group of companies in India. One of the reasons why employees in the Tata group of companies are extremely loyal to their organization is due to this innate quality of their leaders.
Now what happens if the leader becomes a control-freak and highly autocratic in functioning? In the management context, employee’s start losing the respect and trust towards the leader and in such organizations, we shall also witness huge attrition rates. Attrition rate is a HR terminology that indicates the number of employee’s leaving the organization per year in the percentage form. If the attrition rate (percentage) is very high in an organization, it means that the work culture and the leadership in the organization is extremely bad and detrimental to employee’s. Now the question here is, what makes such leaders a control-freak? The main reason is arrogance and because of this, they tend to misuse their power to bully people and derive monetary and non-monetary benefits out of it. In today’s scenario, we’re witnessing a lot of this – Right from our third-rated politicians, who come to power only to swindle and loot public money (The entire political class in India is an example for this), to few company CEO’s wherein corruption and scandals are their only goals of life – This problem pervades in every nook and corner of the society. Moreover, there are some people who become sadistic in nature just because they have the power and authority in their hands. Such leaders are extremely dangerous to the society and they can go to any extent to use people for their own selfish personal gains.
Thus, we can see here that the root cause of these kinds of societal issues is arrogance, and this is exactly what Snake Kaaliya is an embodiment of. Thus, Bhagawan Bala-Krishna is trying to convey the message that arrogance leads to downfall sooner or later. There can never be a situation wherein arrogance wins anything in this world. Bhagawan Krishna too in His later part of the incarnation, highlights the point through the Mahabharata war as well. No matter how many powerful people were present in the Kaurava camp, Bhagawan Krishna’s divine grace enabled the Paandavas to overcome all of them with ease. The Kaurava camp had the power and valor, but their arrogance brought about their downfall, isn’t it? This is the lesson that all of us need to learn as we move forward with our spiritual journey.
So for today, let us understand this lesson that arrogance paves way for our downfall, and let us do the needful with regards to this. We shall continue this discussion forward in the next episode and further move on with Sage Paraashara’s beautiful explanation of the next divine “Krishna Leela”! Stay tuned! 🙂
The Indian Dharma 