The Mahabharata: An Inquiry In The Human Condition

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About the Author

Chaturvedi Badrinath is a philosopher and was born in Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh. He was a member of the Indian Administrative Service between 1957 and 1989 and spent thirty-one years serving in Tamil Nadu. Badrinath has been Homi Bhabha Fellow (1971-73) and Visiting Professor at Heidelberg University (1971), where he gave a series of seminars on dharma and its application to our times. Giving numerous lectures on Indian thought, he has also been an active participant in inter-religious an inter-Civilisational dialogue at various for across the world.

His other books include Dharma, India and the World Order: Twenty- one Essays (1993); Introduction to the Kamasutra (1999); finding Jesus in dharma: Christianity in India (2000); and Swami Vivekananda: the Living Vedanta (2006). Badrinath now lives near Pondicherry India.

Back of the Book

Chaturvedi Badrinath show that the Mahabharata is the most systematic inquiry into the human condition. Its principal concern is the relationship of the self with the self and with the other. This book not only proves the universality of the themes explored in the Mahabharata, but also how this great epic provides us with a method to understand the human condition itself.

Badrinath shows that the concerns of the Mahabharata are the concerns of everyday life- of dharma, artha, kama and moksha. It is through this everyday-ness, with its complexities as much as with its simplicity, that the Mahabharata still rings true. This book dispels several false claims about what is today known as 'Hinduism' to show us how individual liberty and knowledge, freedom, equality, and the celebration of love, friendship and relationship are integral to the philosophy of the Mahabharata, because they are integral to human life.

Using over 500 shlokas of the original text that he supports with his own lucid translations, chaturvedi Badrinath's The Mahabharata is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of this epic, not in the least, for his elegant scholarship and humanistic approach.