In the previous episode, we had witnessed a very important and an interesting continuation of Bhishmachaarya’s accord on the concept of “trust” as part of the bigger discussion on the various aspects of “Aapad Dharma”. He highlights this with a beautiful story of a bird named “Poojani” and King Brahmadatta. Both of them were thick friends and precisely at the same time, both of them had given birth to their kids. As we’ve seen, one fine day, the king’s child killed Poojani’s little one, which devastated the mother bird completely! In return, Poojani also inflicts heavy injury on the king’s child for the heinous crime that he had committed to her child. As King Brahmadatta came to know what had happened, he apologised to Poojani profusely, however, it was in vain! The Poojani bird had made up its mind by that time to fly away from King Brahmadatta once and for all! While leaving the palace, the Poojani bird explains a very important “Neethi” (Moral of the story) – Once the trust is broken, it is broken forever! Now that the Poojani bird has lost trust in King Brahmadatta’s child, she will be more insecure while living in the palace. Similarly, King Brahmadatta will also feel insecure about his child’s safety, while constantly thinking of whether the Poojani bird will inflict more injuries to him or not! Hence, the mutual trust that both of them had for each other has completely vanished with this unfortunate event!
This clearly shows how trust is a very important factor in any kind of relationship in this world! If the trust factor gets broken, some sort of enmity starts creeping in, and the relationship (no matter how thick it was earlier) will completely vanish within no time! Explaining this to Yudishtra in detail, Bhishmachaarya continues his accord further thus, “Oh Yudishtra! As a king, you should be very clear on one thing – You should know whom to trust and to what extent – For instance, you should never trust someone who is not trustable! At the same time, even if the other person is trustable, you should not completely trust him / her. You should maintain a fine boundary and should be able to back out quickly if the situation turns hostile at any point of time!” We can see this even in today’s context – Taking the current geopolitical scenario of today, post “Operation Sindoor”, India as a country has seen through the lens as to which countries are really trustable and which are not! For instance, the United States of America (US) had once been a “trustable” ally of India until that point, but post that, things have taken a “U-turn”, isn’t it? With the latest set of tariffs kicking in, India has seen through the hypocrisy with which the US has been operating – Openly supporting our enemy, Pakistan, and ditching us at crucial moments! Hence we can see clearly here that once a “trusted ally”, the US has completely moved away from India, and from this point onwards, it is going to be very difficult to restore the trust between the two countries! This clearly shows that even if we trust an ally, we should always keep a safe distance and not trust anybody 100%!
As we’re witnessing this eroding of trust, we are also seeing that restoring it back is a herculean task! It is not going to be easy for policymakers to repair the damage done by one person to the decades-old India-US strategic and business relationship. Moving on further with the “trust” element, Bhishmachaarya is now explaining that enmity and erosion of trust can happen due to five causes – Enmity because of women, Enmity because of land disputes, Enmity because of abusive language being traded between each other, Enmity due to caste issues and Enmity due to bad memories of the past! So for today, let us understand up to this point, and in the next episode, we shall expand these five important causes of enmity in detail with application to today’s context! Stay tuned! 🙂
The Indian Dharma 