Arundhuti Dasgupta: Father, son and son-in-law

Yayati goes down in Mahabharata as the king who tried to overturn the natural order of things

In India, a wily patriarch is being upstaged by his son, while in the US the president is bringing his son-in-law into his office. Jared Kushner is all set to (officially) step in to Trump’s charmed circle of trust while Mulayam Singh fumes as he is silently but ruthlessly outsmarted by his son. The sway of the father-son (in-law), protégé-mentor relationship in public life continues to fascinate just as it did in ancient epic and myth.
 
This relationship permeates every section of the Mahabharata. Apart from the Dhritarashtra-Duryodhana relationship, starkly symbolic of an ageing father’s blindness towards his son, there are many other stories that point the needle towards the tortuous nature of the bond. There is a story about Yayati, for instance. He is the son of Nahusha, one of the revered kings of his time who ruled over the heavens for a while in Indra’s place.

 
Yayati comes across as one of the most entitled characters of the epic. He wants eternal youth, he wants to build a heaven on earth so that he never has to leave, he wants to ascend to heaven and be considered better than Indra and so on. Perhaps his ambitions were justified, given that he is a great king whose subjects are willing to follow him to the ends of the earth. But the epic portrays him as the man who overreached and pushed the limits of the father-son kinship.
 

Yayati marries Devyani, daughter of Sukracharya (the guru of the asuras). All is well in their kingdom until he offends his father-in-law by cheating on his wife. Sukracharya curses Yayati with old age. The king is unwilling to accept his fate and asks his sons for their youth so that he can have his fill of life. All his sons refuse except Puru, the youngest born from the illicit relationship with his wife’s maid. But Yayati soon discovers that no amount of time is enough to satisfy one’s lust for youth. He gives his son back his years and finds his way to heaven where he stirs up a whole new controversy.

 
Yayati goes down in the epic as the king who tried to overturn the natural order of things, with a warning that those who try to do so always end up in a bad way. His relationship with Puru (and to an extent with Indra, a father figure) has fascinated scholars. Puru was not the legitimate heir to the throne, either in terms of sibling hierarchy (he is the youngest) or lineage (his mother is not queen). Does the story offer a rather labyrinthine explanation of his ascension to the throne? Also, does it put filial devotion over birth order when it comes choosing one’s heir? These are the questions that surface there in the political turmoil in UP, too. This is also the dilemma that haunts many Indian business houses where fathers are debating how to carve up their empires among their children.   

 
The son-in-law has been an important fixture in the epic. The Pandavas for instance, are the best sons-in-law that Dhrupad, father of Draupadi, could have hoped for. He would never have been able to get them to fight their guru. Arjuna going up against mentor Drona would have been hard to explain within the narrative structure of the epic.
 
For Arjuna, who grew up without a father, Drona is the parent figure, critical element in a prince’s life in epic and myth. The mentor archetype has made its way into modern superhero tales as well but the interesting element that recurs through all its renditions is that the mentor must always die. Think Spiderman and Uncle Ben.

 
Interestingly, when Arjuna goes into battle against Drona, the mentor’s role is taken over by Krishna; this many scholars, including Irawati Karve, have pointed out marks a sharp turn in the relationship between Arjuna and Krishna who were until then more friends and comrades. The mentor-protégé relationship is also a stand-in for the father-son relationship, and in the Indian context the son is always subservient to the father figure. For Dhrupad, therefore, getting Arjuna as his son-in-law was fortuitous, even though the final slaying of Drona was done by his son, Dhristadyumna. Without the Pandavas on his side, he would never have amassed the military strength to set up the battle between his son and Drona. Is this what Donald Trump is looking for from his son-in-law-cum-aide; a way to get more people on his side?