Journal of Military Ethics

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/smil20

Ethics of War and Ritual: The Bhagavad-Gita and

Mahabharata as Test Cases

Matthew Kosuta

To cite this article: Matthew Kosuta (2020): Ethics of War and Ritual: The Bhagavad-Gita and
Mahabharata as Test Cases, Journal of Military Ethics, DOI: 10.1080/15027570.2020.1824578

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2020.1824578

Published online: 23 Sep 2020.

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JOURNAL OF MILITARY ETHICS
https://doi.org/10.1080/15027570.2020.1824578

Ethics of War and Ritual: The Bhagavad-Gita and

Mahabharata as Test Cases
Matthew Kosuta
College of Religious Studies, Mahidol University, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This article uses paradigms developed in the ethics of war debate, Ethics of war; sacred; ritual;
primarily jus in bello (just actions in war), and academic theories Bhagavad-Gita; militarism
developed for the study of religion: the dialectic of the sacred
and profane, and ritual studies – primarily sacrifice, festivals, and
rites of passage – to analyze the Bhagavad-Gita and the sections
of the Mahabharata that tell the story of the Kurukshetra War.1
The article focuses attention on the fact that along with Krishna
preaching Hindu dharma (religious socio-ethical duties) in the
Bhagavad-Gita, a militarist ethic is forcefully put forth within
Kshatriya dharma. The objective is to bring out salient points on
human behavior expressed by combatants in war through their
religious ethics and religious rituals. While some commentary is
offered on the meaning of the teachings presented in these texts,
the main goal is examining human behavior not textual meaning.
The article builds on studies that show religious ritual as a
powerful force in inculcating ethics and behavior in the pursuit of
war. The article comments on religion and war in general in order
to advance the understanding of human religious expression and
behavior in regard to war.

Introduction
The Bhagavad-Gita and the Kurukshetra War of the great Hindu epic the Mahabharata
(final redaction approximately 400 CE) provide rich territory for exploring the interplay
between ethics of war, religious ritual, and militarism. The Bhagavad Gita was spoken
just before the first battle of the Kurukshetra War. The war was fought as the culmination
of the long-running dispute between two families of the Kuru clan, the Pandava and
Kaurava, over who would rule the kingdom of Hastinapura. Succession of the throne
went to Yudhishtrira of the Pandavas who was the eldest of all heirs; however, the
Kaurava family was senior in the clan and thus Duryodhana, as eldest of the Kaurava,
claimed the throne. The story of the Mahabharata is the long story of the rivalry over
the right to rule. During this struggle, the Pandavas acted mostly in a righteous
manner (according to dharma (religious sosio-ethical duties)) and suffered many trials
and tribulations for their righteousness, while Kauravas, and in particular Duryodhana,
acted in a mostly unethical manner (against or at least bending dharma) and yet the

CONTACT Matthew Kosuta matthew.kos@mahidol.ac.th College of Religious Studies, Mahidol University, 999
Putthamonthon Road 4, Salaya, Nakhon Pathom 73170, Thailand
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 M. KOSUTA

Kauravas were able to gain the upper hand because of it. Finally, after many failed
attempts at settling who the legitimate ruler was, the two sides went to war. Significantly,
Krishna as lord of the universe directly interfered in the war on the side of the Pandavas
in order to advance his cosmic goals. In the end the Pandavas won a pyrrhic victory and
Yudhishrira became king, but the balanced righteous world envisioned by Krishna never
materialized.
The Bhagavad-Gita is a comparatively slim chapter within the Mahabharata. Robert
Minor states that the consensus is that the Bhagavad-Gita is an addition to Mahabharata
somewhere during the middle portion of its development (1982, xxxii). Within the Bha-
gavad-Gita, Krishna gives a grand vision of Hindu dharma and the paths of Yoga to be
practiced, while focusing on the Kshatriyan (knightly or warrior-noble) path within this
grand vision. The Bhagavad-Gita begins just before the great battle was to start. The
Pandava hero Ajuna refused to fight, slumping down in his chariot in despair at the
thought of fighting and killing his clansmen and teachers. This results in Krishna preach-
ing his doctrine in order to convince the Kshatriya Arjuna of his dharmic duty, kshatriya-
dharma, to fight in the battle about to take place.
The Kurukshetra War itself shows the tension between acting according to a prescrip-
tive religious ethics of war and the necessity to win the war. The Bhagavad-Gita and Kur-
ukshetra War also provide fertile ground for applying the religious studies paradigms of
the dichotomy of the sacred and profane and ritual studies in an attempt to better under-
stand the teachings of Bhagavad-Gita and the events of the Kurukshetra War.
This article highlights selected key teachings and events in the Bhagavad-Gita and
Kurkushetra War in order to provide new perspectives on the texts, events, ethics, and
on war in general. In studying the relationship between religion and war and more pre-
cisely religious ethics of war, I try to establish views of war from religious, ethical, and
militarist perspectives which aid in formulating a conceptual category I term “religious
militarism.” This concept is brought out in the analysis below using the aforementioned
ethical and religious studies paradigms. Finally, the intention of this paper is not to
provide an emic, or etic, interpretation of meaning of the Mahabharata, but rather to
draw out aspects of human behavior and the associated beliefs and events described in
the Mahabharata intertwined with that behavior.
Note that in treating the Kurukshetra War, or the Mahabharata in general, I am not
taking it as an allegory for a battle between good and evil within our own psyche, or any
other type of allegory for that matter. Rather, I follow Arvind Sharma who after an exten-
sive review of Hindu literature on the Mahabharata concluded that while pre-modern
commentators take the Bhagavad Gita as a spiritual text, “[…] hardly anyone tries to
spiritualize the setting of the Gita itself. The battle-scene and its site were accepted as
such literally” (Rosen 2002, 36). I think it important for this article and other similar
work to emphasize that for pre-modern – and many modern – Hindus, “accepted as
such literally” means that not only did the battle actually take place, but that the super-
natural being and events are taken as real: gods, ascetic powers, magic weapons and the
extraordinary feats of superheroes are part of the real religious world, the real world, and
are not meant to simply entertain. To what extent exactly these supernatural phenomena
were believed certainly varied from person to person, and some allegorizing may have
taken place, but we must guard against applying anachronistically our Enlightenment
rationality and secularism on the composers of and believers in religious texts such as
 JOURNAL OF MILITARY ETHICS 3

the Mahabharata. Remember, material or objective evidence is unnecessary for religious

belief. E.B. Tylor ([1874] 2012, 277) noted in 1874 that allegorizing myth actually accom-
plishes the opposite of the intention “[…] where the interpreter believed himself to be
reversing the process of myth making, he was in fact only carrying it a stage further in
the old direction, and out of the suggestion of one train of thought evolving another con-
nected with it by some more or less remote analogy.” He calls this allegorizing a “simple
art” ([1874] 2012, 277). Despite what I take as his warning, allegorizing religious texts has
always taken place and has boomed in the modern era with erosion in belief in the super-
natural and the advent of psychology. However, let us remember that, for example, today
in the contemporary world, tens, perhaps even hundreds, of millions of Christians and
Muslims believe their scriptures (or at least large parts thereof) as some kind of literal
truth. Thus, despite the idealized and exaggerated presentation of war in the Mahabhar-
ata, this article treats the Kurukshetra War as Hindus traditionally have: a real descrip-
tion of that particular war.
The overarching objective of the article is to draw conclusions on the ethics of war and
on rituals – human behavior – by analyzing the teachings and events presented in the
Mahabharata, more specifically those found in the Bhagavad-Gita and sections on the
Kurukshetra War. This is accomplished by applying four methods and theories.
First is the application of paradigms used in discussions of modern ethics of war:
Pacifism, Militarism, Just War, and Realism. This type of analysis on Hindu scripture
has been done by other scholars; with some having published before I conceived my
initial ideas and some after. One aim is to add new nuance to existing expositions,
while a second aim is to lay the groundwork for the analysis using theories of ritual
and the sacred-profane dichotomy.
Second, the sacred-profane dichotomy is applied to the Mahabharata heroes’ status as
Kshatriya, their practice of asceticism, and to the Kurukshetra War. This brings out
underlying features of militarism and war not usually explored and also lays groundwork
for ritual analysis. The dichotomy of sacred-profane has been widely used and widely cri-
ticized; taking into consideration its limitations, I have always found it useful in organiz-
ing data and highlighting features.2
Third, I apply method and theory produced in ritual studies, both religious and
secular; I have drawn eclectically from signaling theory, divergent modes of religiosity,
and specific studies of ritual sacrifice and rites of passage. These theories are applied
to the violations of the ethics of war and the events in the Kurukshetra War in order
to make generalizations about ritual, ethics, and war. This analysis produces the most
novel and salient findings of the article.
Finally, the article introduces the conceptual category I have been developing, “reli-
gious militarism,” which seeks to make explicit the often implicit linkages and overlap
between the religious and the military. This article is entirely framed by that concept.

Ethics of war: Dharma-yuddha and Kutu-yuddha

The first point of note is that the Kshatriya are by definition a militarist class (Ramachan-
dra Dikshitar 1999, 5–21; Malinar 2007, 41). It is a Hindu king’s duty not only to protect
his kingdom, but to actively seek to expand its wealth and territory, including by military
means (Brekke 2006, 115). For the Kshatriya, battle is in and of itself a good. Battle tests,
4 M. KOSUTA

validates and expresses a Kshatriya’s courage, honor, and manhood. Victors in battle
obtain earthly rewards, while the fallen warriors, whether victor or vanquished, are
said to attain heavenly rewards (see Brekke 2006; Roy 2014, 471–484; Sutton 2000,
298, 300–301). Furthermore, the descriptions in the Mahabharata often show the Ksha-
triya as enjoying the fighting. The Kshatriya class is also a religious class along with the
other three classes in Hinduism (Brahman, Vaishya, and Shudra). Thus, fighting and
ruling are the dharma, religious duty and/or religious way of life, of the Kshatriya and
as such their essence. The Kshatriya ethics of war are thus religious ethics.
Kshatriya-dharma is a perfect example to illustrate the concept of “religious militar-
ism” (Kosuta 2017). Briefly put, religious experience, the sacred, is described as some-
thing transcendent, at once fascinating and terrifying, attractive and repulsive, etc.
This is exactly how war and combat are often described. Ernst Jünger, who presents a
more secular description of combat, nevertheless describes war with exactly these
aspects and emotions (see Jünger 1997). It is easy then to see how religion and war,
the religious and the militaristic, can come together and bond – thus, the concept “reli-
gious militarism” is first the coming together of the transcendent experience of religion
and the transcendent experience of war. Second, “religious militarism” is religion – the
belief in non-empirical beings, forces and states – interwoven with militarism, or conver-
sely, military beliefs, practices, and actions carried out in a religious context. To a certain
degree this is to be expected as religion for pre-modern peoples, and still for many
modern people, governs all areas of life and thus military life.
The Kshatriya have an elaborate religiously based battlefield ethic – jus in bello. This
code is presented in various Sanskrit texts including the Laws of Manu, the Mahabharata,
and others. Some main points include: Kshatriya must fight equals in rank and fight the
same type of troop (anga or limb; that is chariot vs. chariot, elephant vs. elephant, etc.) or,
if mixed combat between limbs occurs, then combatants must assure that a fair ratio in
numbers exists between competing types of troops; fight someone with the same type of
weapon; fight one on one; not kill surrendering troops, and so on. These rules move the
Kshatriya toward the what we would call the Just War camp, for these are just and fair
means in war; they are in Hinduism dharma-yuddha. However, a Just War adherent
will still not accept Kshatriyan moral codes because of the Kshatriya militarist validation
of war as desirable. Notably, the Arthashastra, a rather more secular than religious
manual for kingship, advises a distinctly realist, often called Machiavellian, ethic that
if implemented would violate much of Kshatriya-dharma, especially Kshatriya jus in
bello, resulting in kutu-yuddha, unregulated, unjust war where realism and deception
are advised.
Despite dharma-yuddha rules, and even though the Kurukshetra War is a highly ideal-
ized ancient Indian battle, its narration depicts a mass melee where the above rules are
routinely broken. For one, mixed fighting amongst the “limbs” appears to be the norm
rather than being interdicted. That these rules are often transgressed comes as no surprise
here or in any other battle given the fact that those involved are out to kill each other. The
Mahabharata shows the difficulty of abiding by an ethics of war because this ethic
appears, in a realistic sense, to be both counterproductive (they reduce the chance of
winning the war) and counterintuitive (they put our own warriors-soldiers at risk in
order to treat the enemy fairly). Just War theory admits that any set of battlefield
ethics is prone to be broken, but that having some type of guidelines and making
 JOURNAL OF MILITARY ETHICS 5

some effort to enforce them is better than leaving the battlefield a place of amoral
conduct. Kshatriya ethical codes seem to agree. However, most of the transgressions of
ethical codes go completely unnoted in the narration as warriors simply fight it out; pro-
blems do arise when a main character is involved in a breach of ethics that results in the
death of another main character. Here, both sides make charges and countercharges of
who broke which rule and who broke it first.
In the Kurukshetra War one of the regularly violated rules of war is the stipulation to
fight one-on-one or “man to man”. I will highlight the major jus in bello violations
because this sets the tone for the subsequent analysis.
The first death of a major hero resulted from such a violation of Kshatriyan ethics.
Arjuna managed to kill Bishma by hiding behind Sikhandin, whom Bishma would not
attack because he was in his just-prior previous life a woman. As Arjuna and Sikhandin
both attacked at the same time, the attack was not a one-on-one fight and Arjuna used
Sikhandin as a human shield.
Another important group attack occurred when Pandava warriors, including the five
sons of Draupadi, several other warriors, and Abhimanyu (the son of Arjuna) tried to kill
the elephant of Bhagadatta. No Pandava seemed to care that they were breaking a code of
conduct in their collective effort to kill that elephant (the attack fails, though Bhagadatta
was later killed by Arjuna). Yet, when the table turned and a Kaurava group attack
occurred against a Pandava warrior, the Pandava roundly condemned this attack. In
this attack, Abhimanyu had his chariot and armor destroyed by several prominent
Kaurava warriors, and he was then killed in a club duel with Duhsasana’s son.
The deaths of the Kaurava warriors, Bhurishriva and Drona, were of an even greater level
of transgression; both were killed while sitting in meditation. Bhurishriva had his right arm
cut off by Arjuna while he was fighting Satyaki. Arjuna excused his act of attacking an occu-
pied opponent first by stating that it is only proper for fellow companions to come to the aid
of others, and then by stating that Bhurishriva had disarmed Satyaki and was about to kill
him, which would violate the prescription against killing an unarmed man. After this,
Arjuna brought up the death of Abhimanyu, and asked the rhetorical question of which
side violated Kshatriyan ethics first. When Bhurishriva, having had his arm cut off by
Arjuna, sat down to prepare for his impending death, Satyaki took that opportunity to
kill him, thus violating the prohibition against killing an unarmed man – the very regulation
Arjuna had just cited as his excuse for defending the unarmed Satyaki from Bhurishriva. In
order to kill Drona, King Yudhishtrira, at the urging of Krishna, tricked Drona into thinking
his son was dead. Drona laid down his weapons, quitting the fight. When he sat to meditate,
Dhrishtadyumna, brother of the wife of the five Pandava brothers and commander of the
Pandava army for the duration of the war, took the opportunity to cut off his head.
The next high-profile case came when Arjuna killed the defenseless Karna when Karna
was trying to free the wheel of his chariot which was stuck in the mud.
The final death involving a violation of ethics was that of Duryodhana after the main
war was over. During a club duel with Bhima, Bhima cheated when he struck Duryod-
hana with an illegal, and thus a completely unexpected, blow to the thigh.
By the end of the Kurukshetra War, all three main Pandava brothers (Yudhishtrira,
Arjuna, and Bhima) violated Kshatriyan ethics of war – religious ethics of war – in
order to defeat the key Kaurava opponents.
6 M. KOSUTA

For a Kshatriya, killing in combat or a duel is good; killing someone sitting in a

park, or sitting in his chariot, is murder. Kshatriya dharma, as described in many
Hindu texts, established rules against killing in cases such as those of Bhishma,
Bhurishriva, Drona and Karna; and not surprisingly these and other such killings
are condemned in the Mahabharata. As Alf Hiltebeitel puts it, “The Mahabharata
war is the scene of numerous questionable acts which the text does not hesitate
to call sins” (1990, 244). However, other Hindu texts such as the Vedas, Arthashas-
tra, and the much later Sukraniti take a much more Realist approach, as Bharat
Karnad forcefully emphasizes (2014, 202–206). He also notes that Krishna acted in
a Realist manner (2014, 206; we will return to this point later). This dichotomy
suggests that within Hindu culture there was a debate over Just War practice and
political Realism. Notably, the Arthashastra and Sukraniti are considered practical
manuals for kingship and have a secular tone; they are decidedly not expositions
of Kshatriya dharma. The Mahabharata and especially the Bhagavad-Gita are speak-
ing to a social class and prescribing a religious model of behavior for social equals.
The Arthashastra and Sukraniti are about kingship and military matters “in the real
world” where an army would have been made up of professionals, mercenaries, and
conscripts drawn from all classes; thus religious prescriptions and class ethics are
simply not applicable.
The jus in bello of the Mahabharata offers a certain degree of restraint and chivalry
towards an opponent that allows for more amicable relations after the battle or war is
over, as put forth in Just War theory. Not regulating the battlefield or allowing rules
to be continually transgressed leads to bitterness and often an escalation of the killing.
More and more animosity was created as the war progressed because the Kshatriya
ethic, an integral part of their essence, was becoming meaningless. Fighting by the
rules for kingship or for your king was perfectly understandable to and righteous for
the Kshatriya, but the Kurukshetra War transgressed these norms.
Pacifism and Realism both oppose Just War theory, and by extension they stand in
opposition to Kshatriyan rules, as a mirage that tricks people into thinking that war
must either be opposed completely or can be controlled and is thus permissible, when
in fact, the rules will simply be broken – and a Kurukshetra type war is exactly what
occurs. Realists who view war as a viable option in settling interstate conflicts argue
that ethics or rules of war constrain the means necessary to achieve the ends, and the
rules will be broken in extreme cases anyway – and again a Kurukshetra type war is
exactly what occurs. A realist would probably argue that the Kaurava were naive for
not breaking the rules more often. Yet, why were all these transgressions of the Kshatri-
yan warrior code taking place? In the end, all of the major Pandava transgressions lie at
the feet of one hero – Krishna, that very Krishna who preached proper Kshatriyan duty to
Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita before the start of the Kurukshetra War.3 At one point
Krishna flatly stated that the Pandavas cannot win if they fight by the Kshatriyan
ethics. For Krishna, his end or goal of maintaining the cosmic balance was for him as
God of the ultimate importance, and thus the Pandavas could not lose.
All the Pandava violations of Kshatriyan ethics of war served to enrage Ashwattaman
(one of the handful of Kshatriya on the Kaurava side yet alive at the end of the war), the
son of the unjustly slain Drona. V.R. Ramachandra Dikshitar seems to echo Ashwatta-
man’s feelings when he states of Kshatriyan ethics of war: “It was therefore realized
 JOURNAL OF MILITARY ETHICS 7

that the waging of war without moral standards degraded the institution into mere
animal ferocity” (1999, 58). Ashwattaman’s anger was so great that after the war was
over, he along with the surviving Kaurava combatants Kirpa and Kritavarma went and
slaughtered the remaining Pandava victors in their camp. This was yet another necessary
transgression of the Kshatriyan dharma because in Krishna’s cosmic plan all the Ksha-
triya must die and these Pandava Kshatriyas survived the actual war. However, unlike
the Pandava who transgressed the rules at Krishna’s behest and went unpunished, the
Kaurava ally Ashwattaman was punished for his transgression, even though his trans-
gression directly aided Krishna in accomplishing his goal.
In terms of Kshatriyan militarism, which is quintessential “religious militarism,” I
will highlight one main aspect. Militarists ritually socialized to adhere to a religious
ethic of war cannot be easily moved to break that ethic. It is understandable that
the various warriors cannot always restrain themselves from killing an adversary
when the opportunity presented itself; but, as militarists comprising the socio-religious
military class and as strictly regulated warriors by their socio-religious duty (dharma),
the religious militarism of the Kshatriya should guide them firstly to righteous battle
(dharma-yuddha) and secondly in killing and winning. Indeed, in the Mahabharata,
the warriors feel pride and gain honor even when they manage to drive another
hero from the field of battle without killing him, and the warriors in the Kurukshetra
War mostly hold to their dharma; however, Krishna’s cosmic plan (his political plan)
necessitates a Pandava victory, and that victory can only be achieved by violating the
Kshatriyan ethics of war. Thus, the fault and blame of these transactions are not
attributed to the heat of the battle, blood lust, past hatred and revenge, or even the
political goals of the Pandavas and Kauravas. The fact that it takes Krishna, God
himself, to convince Pandava warriors to violate Kshatriyan ethics of war demon-
strates that limitations on violence in war can be, and in reality are, deeply instilled
in warriors and soldiers.
In real-world terms, Krishna comes across as a Realist, perhaps even the extreme of
Realism; any violation of ethics is proper to achieve his desired end. Any thought of
Just War is thrown out. The effect of Krishna’s Realism was to turn his preaching in
the Bhagavad-Gita and the whole of class dharma of the Kshatriya on their heads. The
goal of maintaining the balance of the cosmos was achieved only by the transgression
of dharma (violating religious ethics of war) rather than by the fulfillment of dharma (fol-
lowing religious ethics of war).

Sacred-profane and ritual: Bhagavad-Gita and Mahabharata as test cases

This section applies elements of the sacred and profane, ritual sacrifice, and rites of
passage to the Bhagavad-Gita, Kurukshetra War, and war in general, thereby also throw-
ing light on religious militarism.
Militarism appeals to a wide variety of people and cannot be, and in fact never has
been, contained in a class division. In the Mahabharata, there are the class crossover
Brahmans-warriors Drona, Kirpa, and Ashwattaman, and the sūta Karna (the foster-
parents of Karna were sūta – Kshatriya father and Brahmin mother), the celibacy of
the Kshatriya Bishma, and the ascetic practice of these and other major Kshatriya
heroes both Pandava and Kaurava. Malinar discusses the acetic path as one that appealed
8 M. KOSUTA

to Arjuna as a way to avoid killing his kinsman in the coming war and generating nega-
tive karma (Malinar 2007, 38, 105–107; the theme appears throughout her book); ascetic
practice minimizes the creation of new karma and can even eliminate past karma thus
leading more quickly to liberation (moksha). In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna puts forth
the doctrine of acting in the world but disregarding the fruit attained by action; this
allows one to fulfill class dharma while not suffering the karmic consequences. In this
way, Arjuna can fulfill his dharma and act like a warrior, but limit karma like an ascetic.
My interest is in the social status of ascetics and the aura of sacredness this pro-
duces.4 Ascetics in Hinduism have stepped outside the class structure; though their
previous class identification can follow them – for example, Mahavira and the
Buddha were both Kshatriya. Asceticism is generally seen as the most efficient path
practice to attain liberation (moksha). This social and religious distinction makes
them the most sacred group of people in Hinduism, and this leads to perceived super-
natural power and to real-world status and influence. The most successful warriors in
the Mahabharata have all practiced asceticism and austerities of one kind or another.
That they are so skillful and powerful should come as no surprise, as ascetic-warriors
or monk-warriors, though rare and controversial, have always ranked among the
world’s elite warriors. Historical examples include: early Arab Muslim ascetic-warriors;
Catholic monk-warriors such as Knights Templars and Hospitallers; Medieval Japa-
nese Buddhist monk-warriors; and the famous Shaolin Monks. Though mythical,
the heroes in the Mahabharata are no exception. This combination creates the pinna-
cle of “religious militarism” and by that superior warriors motivated and inspired by
their deep religious faith and martial ethos. This faith and ethos result in high morale,
and morale is a key factor in military efficiency.
Ritual is a significant factor in generating highly emotional states, and thus to gener-
ating higher morale. As Whitehouse and McQuinn note, ritual is “one of the most power-
ful mechanisms by which groups may be formed, inspired, and coordinated” (2013, 597).
Using Signaling Theory we see that the ascetic lifestyle in general and many of the more
ritualized aspects of asceticism, in particular, constitute high-cost, hard-to-fake signals
that relay to others in the religious-cultural community the commitment of the
ascetic. Asceticism is costly in terms of the time and resources demanded of the individ-
ual and involve various degrees of self-deprivation and pain. These are essential com-
ponents in what makes asceticism sacred. Small societies and groups frequently have
initiation and other rituals that are high-cost and hard-to-fake in order to bind the par-
ticipants into highly cohesive units with high morale and ability to endure pain and
suffering (Alcorta and Sosis 2013, 581–582, 586–587; Whitehouse and McQuinn 2013,
600–605). In relation to the military, “[c]ross cultural studies suggest that violent and
painful rites may serve to bond males in societies where warfare is most prevalent”
(Alcorta and Sosis 2013, 587).5 Additionally, ascetic life and ritual, as well as Kshatriya
ritual and training, are infused or primed with religion at every stage. It is generally
thought that religious devotion can heighten morale. Jeremy Pollack ran simulations
to test the “confidence” of groups and individuals when primed with supernatural inspi-
ration before combat simulations. Groups acting as teams primed with supernatural
inspiration self-reported higher levels of confidence in the team and in team performance
than the control groups. Similarly, in simulations where individual actions were needed
over teamwork, participants again showed higher levels of confidence in themselves and
 JOURNAL OF MILITARY ETHICS 9

in their individual performance than the control groups (Pollack 2017, 1–32). Returning
to our Brahman-Kshatriya and Kshatriya-ascetics, we can see that the above factors of
high-cost, hard-to-fake rituals and supernatural priming combine to make Mahabharata
heroes the pinnacle of Hindu militarism. As Kshatriya battle is similar to a duel, the
confidence boost firstly contributes to their own skill in combat, and secondly contributes
to group cohesion in that they have confidence in their allies who also have practiced
asceticism. The fact that enemies may have performed the same ascetic practice will be
negated by the process of demonization which results in the enemy being perceived as
being of inferior status.
We now move to specific types of religious ritual (religious rituals of sacrifice, festival,
and rites of passage) and we will see how war in general and the Kurukshetra War specifi-
cally express each of them. A note on ritual that must be kept in mind when one thinks
about how ritual works, can be found in the words of Whitehouse and McQuinn:
The causal structure of a ritual is irretrievably opaque in the sense that it would be odd,
foolish, or even subversive to seek or expect a causal rationale for the content and sequen-
cing of the procedures. Instead we justify the actions with reference to custom, reciprocity,
duty, myth and symbolism. (2013, 597)

First, the battleground can be seen as the altar for the sanctified killing that takes place
there. Madelaine Biardeau (1986) draws close parallels between the deaths in the Kuruk-
shetra War and the soma sacrifice (an unidentified plant juice), especially the deaths of
Bishma, Bhurisriva, Drona, and the slaughter of the Pandava camp by Ashwattaman.
Other scholars also see the war as sacrifice.6 Sacrifice in a religious sense means to
render or make sacred. I want to stress that I take the Kurukshetra War as a ritual of
sacrifice, not analogous to or parallel with Hindu sacrifice. Malinar summarizes Biardeau
and Malamoud saying that the parallelism of battle to sacrifice serves to make the vio-
lence of the warrior non-violent as in a sacrificial context (2007, 50). I fully agree that
battle or war as ritual will diminish or nullify the violence. I disagree in taking Hindu
warfare and battle as parallelisms of sacrifice – they are sacrifice in a fully ritual sense.
Battle and war as ritual are structured differently and are more fluid than set-piece
Vedic and other Hindu rituals; yet, they remain ritual nonetheless. The Kshatriyas
killed in the battle are rendered sacred by their deaths, being offered up to the divine,
so that the dharma remains pure and the cosmos in balance. Krishna then is the high
priest of this grand sacrifice on the field of battle; this is tapas-kshetra in the extreme,
where the extreme asceticism of the warrior and his willingness to kill and be killed
burn away in the hottest of fires all impurities so that a new more pure world can be
born. The dead warriors, whether victor or vanquished, having been rendered sacred,
attain heavenly paradise. Killing in war is sacrifice, thus sanctified, and this sanctification
is exactly what separates and distinguishes killing in war from murder in the Hindu
profane world.
Next, there is the theme of war as ritual and as festivals of excess, which Roger Caillois
parallels with pre-modern festivals (1963). As above I argue there is no parallelism, but
rather what Caillois describes is actually a purpose of war as ritual. The joy of waste and
destruction, the coming together of a society for a single event, the building-up of stores,
that could be well used for comfortable living, and wasting them all; in the Kurukshetra
War the warriors, chariots, weapons, elephants, horses, and so on are destroyed in
10 M. KOSUTA

unchained fury and folly; but there is a purpose in all this destruction, “One imagines
himself transported back to that time of chaos and fertility where everything produces
everything. Nature and Man come out rejuvenated by this fountain of youth” (Caillois
1963, 212 [my translation]). Note that this expresses the militarist thinking that a mor-
ibund society needs the destruction and waste of war to destroy the old society and usher
in societal rejuvenation.7
When a warrior goes on campaign, he leaves behind the world of the profane includ-
ing a suspension of daily life’s morals, most notably that against killing. Interestingly, the
battlefield of the Kurukshetra War was originally named tapas-kshetra (austerity-field);
later it is changed to kurukshetra because of the many austerities performed there by
so many Kuru ascetics. This is significant, for the warriors in battle also perform
tapas. From the militarist perspective, combat is a self-actualizing experience, as
ascetic practices are for ascetics. Just as ascetic practice transforms an ascetic for the
better, undergoing the trials of battle transforms a warrior for the better, and the more
extreme the austerities – that is, the greater the sacrifice an ascetic performs – the
greater the power gained; the more fierce the battle – that is, the greater the sacrifice
by the warrior – the greater the sacred aura attained. How fitting then that this war
for cosmic balance takes place on already established holy ground. In all respects, this
is a fusion of religious belief and practice with militarist belief and practice and serves
as a perfect example of religious militarism.
Third, as shown by van Gennep ([1909] 1981) and Turner (1977) war fits as a rite of
passage, and here I will apply this to the Kurukshetra War. Cultures throughout the ages
have had preparatory rituals as armies march out and purifying rituals when they return
– a passage from the state of order (village, city) to the state of disorder or chaos (the
outside world). Specifically, in regards to Kshatriya marching out to war, Ramachandra
Dikshitar (1999, 63, 65) notes several religious rituals such as praying to gods and planets
and seeking astrological and other divinatory predictions. In the Mahabharata, we find
the three-part series of rites of passage: (1) the separation stage where the army marches
out, usually with an accompanying religious ritual to mark the fact; and then, (2) the
margin/liminal stage, which has the army on campaign, truly at war. Here I follow van
Gennep in that the margin is not completely sacred but rather a place between two
realms being neither sacred nor profane, but nonetheless functionally similar to the
sacred (van Gennep [1909] 1981, 28).8 This margin in military terms is the “no man’s
land” that separated settled peoples, whether village, town, or city state.9 The warrior-
soldier now separated from the order and norms of secular home, and in fact now oper-
ating by opposite norms, finds the interdiction against murder suspended, and thus in
the margin, killing is permissible. Here in the margin, the warrior-soldier is tested and
perhaps sacrificed. Nonetheless, as part of a rite of passage the margin must still be a
realm with guiding ethical and ritual restrains (in practical terms: ethics of war). In no
way is any and all behavior permitted. I argue that ethics of war are the ritual components
of war that attempt to safeguard a warrior-soldier’s humanity. A warrior-soldier who
loses too much connection with the ordered world will not be able to reintegrate into
society and he will remain ‘trapped’ in the margin even after returning home. And
then, finally, we have (3) the reincorporation stage, which occurs when the warrior-
soldier is reintegrated back into the ordered, profane life of home. The warrior-soldier
who, having passed the test and undergone a final “decontamination” ritual, returns to
 JOURNAL OF MILITARY ETHICS 11

society a new and better man. The civilian population now treats him in accordance with
his experience of the margin/sacred, with reverence due to a hero; but in line with the
ambivalence of the sacred, he may still sometimes be seen as a killer.
The ambivalent nature of war as a manifestation of the ambivalent nature of the sacred
also appears in the Kurukshetra War: victory and defeat, gain and loss, glory and dis-
grace, order and chaos, exaltation and despair, life and death, death and life (heavenly
reward), destruction and rejuvenation, all push and pull warriors engaged in battle.
The Bhagavad-Gita shows its own ambivalence to war, and in fact to life and death, in
Krishna’s teaching to Arjuna, which I have distilled here:
A Kshatriya kills, but no one dies; no one dies, because everyone is already dead;

everyone is already dead, but be my instrument to kill them.10

Angelika Malinar does an excellent job of describing ritual action “turning the wheel of
sacrifice” in Hinduism, and how Krishna’s teaching of acting but relinquishing the result
of action at first negates Vedic ritual action, and then later reinterprets ritual into a
system where Vedic sacrifice and asceticism are accommodated within Krishna’s doc-
trine of action done out of duty and not for its results (2007, 79–94). The important
point for us in Malinar’s exposition is that for a ritual to work there must be confidence
in the efficacy of the ritual and that the method or rules must be completed correctly.
Failure to do so means the ritual becomes non-existent (asat) (2007, 211–212). This
directly supports my conclusion that Krishna’s intervention in the war caused key
ritual norms to be broken, and the ritual of sacrifice that was the Kurukshetra War
became non-existent.
Alf Hiltebeitel also sees the Kurukshetra War as a failed ritual (1990, 296). He makes
three points connected with this, and I agree on two points, but differ on one. First, we
agree that the Kurukshetra War failed as a ritual of sacrifice and that the Pandava
breaches of Kshatriyan ethics caused this. Second, Hiltebeitel finds that Ashvatthaman’s
night raid and killing of the Pandava host in camp completes the sacrifice of the war
(1990, 319). Above I noted that Biardeau takes the attack as a parallelism of sacrifice.
Here I disagree. I find this attack a result of the bitterness and hatred caused by the
major breaches of jus in bello during the war, and just as Just War theory would hold,
an unrestrained war leads to difficulties in reconciliation and continued cycles of vio-
lence. I think that Hiltebeitel is taking the ritual of battle as analogous or a parallelism
to sacrifice, as Biardeau does, rather than as an actual ritual. There is nothing actually
ritualized, no established ritual parameters, about the Ashvatthaman’s attack that can
make it an actual ritual; thus, taking as it as analogous to ritual sacrifice is in error.
Finally, I agree with Hiltebeitel’s observation that the ashvameda ritual (horse
sacrifice) that Yudhishthira performs after the war is over is a ritual of atonement or
expiation (prāyaścitti) for the failed Pandava ritual performance of the Kurukshetra
War (1990, 292–296).
We can now see why in the end the Kurukshetra War failed to bring a perfectly
balanced cosmos and social paradise on earth.
First, as near-perfect religious warriors, the Pandava and Kaurava heroes were even
more bound to their dharma, to their ethics of war, than standard warriors or soldiers,
and thus when forced to transgress their ethics by Krishna, the battle becomes more
12 M. KOSUTA

destructive and more traumatic than standard battles. So when Krishna coerced the
Pandava heroes to break their Kshatriya jus in bello, which had been inculcated in
high-cost, hard-to-fake religious rituals and training, their own sense of shame and the
Kaurava disgust and anger were obvious outcomes.
Second, as with all things sacred there exists an inherent ambivalence which fluctuates
between extremes – good-bad, righteous-unrighteous – that destabilizes balance. Thus,
within the realm of the religious, dharma, and cosmic balance, there is an inherent
instability rather than a stability as usually claimed.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, botched rituals do not work – they do not
produce the desired results: the wind does not fill the sails, rain does not fall, or, in
the case of the Mahabharata, one does not get a balanced cosmos and a perfect
society. I am not making the claim that rituals actually do produce physical effects if
done properly (as noted above rituals are not causally related to their goals), but that
if they are done properly, people are generally psychologically satisfied regardless of
the outcome. But purposefully botched rituals not only do not satisfy people, they
antagonize and bring recriminations. The Kurukshetra War and others like it go
beyond a traditional, regulated ritual performance of Kshatriyan battle. Remember,
many rituals are violent and within their religious context the violence of the ritual is
both celebrated and negated. The extreme point to which Krishna pushed the war, his
extreme Realism, caused a collapse of all three types of rituals outlined above. The
ritual sacrifice violated its own rules and sacrificed too much. The ritual festival of
battle became an orgy of extreme killing and waste. The breaking of the rituals of
ethics of war in the margin created a permanent separation, trapping warriors – psycho-
logically – in the margin, making true reincorporation impossible. Thus, we find three
ruined, and thus failed, rituals. All the horrors of war remained an open wound that
tainted the new society to come. The terrifying aspect of the sacred eclipsed the fascina-
tion, thus destroying instead of restoring the balance in society.

Conclusions
The Mahabharata Kshatriya were highly averse to breaking their code of ethics, their
dharma, even in order to win the war, so averse that it took God himself to coerce the
Pandavas to break their ethics. The Mahabharata does not put blame on bloodlust,
hatred, and anger for these ethical transgressions. Violations of ethics do occur through-
out the Kurukshetra War, but the violations that cause the most animosity, that enflame
passions the most, are those performed at the insistence of Krishna. For all the high ideals
taught in the Bhagavad Gita and held by the Kshatriya, in the real world, political neces-
sity – Realism – often triumphs over religious norms. Nevertheless, even when sanc-
tioned by God, this immoral behavior and extreme killing created bitterness and
tainted the victory.
For the Mahabharata Kshatriya, there was an intimate relationship between religion
and war, particularly in their emotional and psychological makeup. We can easily extend
this to pre-modern warriors and soldiers in general. The close combination of military
and religious practice can create elite warriors and soldiers. War and the battlefield con-
tained religious rituals of sacrifice and of great festivals and despite secularism, and the
lessening of the supernatural grip, most often still do.
 JOURNAL OF MILITARY ETHICS 13

Ethics of war is ritual within the margin, the field of war. In a rite of passage and as
ritual it must be performed with confidence and correctly. I have argued that ethics of
war has religious ritual components that must be acted out during war – after all,
Hindu dharma is action. These three rituals of sacrifice, festival, and passage serve to
commune with the sacred and maintain order in the cosmos or the socio-cultural
order. Not following the prescribed ritual actions for religious believers will result not
just in the loss of expected material outcomes (whether this be empirically verifiable
or not), but in the real psychological loss of meaning and justification. Krishna may
have achieved his religious and/or political goal, but neither the Kaurava losers nor
the Pandava winners were truly satisfied with the result. Not allowing for the proper
expression of religious ritual left the psychological wounds of war open regardless of
the material considerations. The Mahabharata shows (whether it meant to or not)
that the psychological, the emotional, and here specifically the religious life of people
must be taken into consideration, alongside political-material considerations, when
waging war – think of the modern soldier and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Finally, the Mahabharata shows an intimate link between war and religion, the
warrior and the religious, expressed in the concept of “religious militarism.” Modern
liberal and religious apologetic circles wish to completely separate war from the religious,
maybe even to strip soldiers of their sense of and right to religious belief and practice
expressed through military actions. The Bhagavad-Gita and Kurukshetra War constitute
one example that shows this liberal and religious apologetic stance as ahistorical and
counterfactual to religious traditions themselves.

Notes
1. The historicity of this war is in doubt. However, Hindu tradition places it in approximately
3100 BCE, with Indian scholars proposing dates ranging from approximately plus/minus
2000 years from the traditional date.
2. See Paden (2017) for an excellent exposition on its usefulness.
3. This is a point often noted by scholars, for example, see Hiltebeitel (1990, 244, 287) and
Whitaker (2004, 163).
4. For this study I am primarily following theories of the sacred-profane put forward by
Mircau Eliade (1969, 1987, 1989); Roger Caillois (2002); Arnold van Gennep ([1909]
1981, 11–41); and William Paden (2017).
5. For secular examples, think of military boot camp, then Ranger training, and then Seal train-
ing – the suffering is not just preparation for physical difficulties of combat.
6. See Brekke (2006, 115); Ramachandra Dikshitar (1999, 56, 64); Hiltebeitel (1990, 318);
Rosen (2002, 19–20); Sutton (2000, 302–303).
7. This theme is addressed from similar points of view in such books as Aho (1981); Coates
(1997); Evola (2011); Jünger (1997, 2003), to mention but a few.
8. Turner (1977) treats the margin/liminal stage as a sacred stage.
9. For examples, see Leblanc (2003, 210-211) and Keegan (1976, 8–9).
10. This is my own distillation of this point.

Notes on contributor
Matthew Kosuta is an Assistant Professor at the College of Religious Studies, Mahidol University,
Thailand, having joined the college in 2006. He was a key member in establishing the international
MA and PhD programs. He has held the positions of Director of the International PhD Program
14 M. KOSUTA

and Vice Dean for International Relations and Research. Professor Kosuta specializes in Thera-
vada Buddhism; religion and politics in Southeast Asia; and religion, astrology and divination
in Thailand; and he works extensively on religion, violence and war. He is a former Senior
Fellow at the Center for Khmer Studies in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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