Women in Mahabharata - Kunti
T.W. Assault.
Ahalya Draupadi Kunti Tara Mandodari tatha.
She is born as Pritha, the oldest child of Aryaka-Shoora and the sister of Vasudeva, Krishna's father.
The first complication in Kunti's life is revealed on the eve of the war of Kurukshetra, when she says to Krishna these lines:
"Pitaram tava eva garheyam na-atmaanam na Suyodhanam, yenaaham Kuntibhoja-yah dhanam dhoortaira iva-arpita!" [My father did this- I blame neither myself nor Duryodhana, when he gave me away to Kuntibhoja like I was a bag of cash!]
"Baalaam maama Aaryaka-sa tubhyam karindati kandu hastakaam, adadaata Kuntibhoja-yah sakha sakhye mahaatmane!" [When I was young enough to play with a ball at Aryaka's house, he gave me away to Kuntibhoja, to honour his friend's friendship, and became this great man!]
"Saaham pitraa cha nikritaa, shvashura-ishcha parantapa, atyanta-dukhhita Krishna kim jeevita-phalam mama?" [Rejected by my father, tortured by my father-in-law (Bheeshma/Dhritarashtra), bearing such dejection, Krishna, what is the value of my life?]
This adoption should have happened (if it was inevitable) when Pritha was an infant, and not when she is 9-10 years old and already attached to her biological parents. When Pritha is torn away from everything she knows and loves in Mathura, her parents, siblings and friends, and thrown into this unknown land in India’s heartland, into the household of this almost-a-stranger uncle of her, there happens a fundamental shift in her brain. The abandonment issues and the insecurity that bubbles up as a direct result of her father’s actions, casts a long shadow over the rest of her life. This experience sets her up for a long life of mistrust of her surroundings and a razor-sharp survival instinct that often crosses the line right into cruelty.
With a second’s notice, Pritha becomes Kunti, transforming from a girl to a woman, far before her time. The insecurities in her brain are farther complicated when she hears that her father has pretty much wiped her off the family tree, and is parading her younger brother Vasudeva-Aanakadundubhi as his firstborn.
Now, Kuntibhoja is not a monster, he raises Kunti with reasonable love and independence. Still, there always remains a distance between them, thanks to, again, Kunti’s age and awareness during the adoption.
One day, after this, when some time has passed and Kunti is almost a young lady, Durvasa appears at their doorstep. Knowing the rishi’s nature, Kuntibhoja runs to Kunti, imploring her to take up the responsibility of keeping the rishi happy. Now, here comes another complication: Kuntibhoja knows how Durvasa is, and he is still asking Kunti to step in, on his behalf. The question is whether he would do the same, if Kunti were his biological daughter? The question arises in Kunti’s mind too.
Kuntibhoja says, “You’re a smart woman, Pritha, the great Aryaka-Shoora’s daughter, Vasudeva’s sister! Your father has delightedly given you up to me! And yet, you know how women from inferior families are by their nature fickle, so I must warn you to remember your humility!”
How did this dialogue enter Kunti’s sensitive, teenage mind? “Pritha” (and not Kunti), “delightedly given you up”, “inferior families” and “remember your humility”? Is it like this that if Durvasa’s happy then you’re Kuntibhoja’s pride, but if you mess up you are Shoora’s shame?
She responds, “My King,” with all the respect suited to a member of his staff and not his daughter, “Your command to serve this brahmin is beneficial to me as well.” Then she dedicates herself to serving Durvasa, like a son, like a student, like a sister.
Kunti later confesses to Vyasa, “I had many reasons to take offence, but I was silent.” What a terrifying turn of phrase immediately following the descriptors Vyasa gives above!
After a whole year of atrocities, Durvasa is finally satisfied. “Even with so much effort, I cannot find any fault with you!” He says (you were trying to?!). He offers Kunti a boon, but she rejects it, and Durvasa, even more pleased, addressed her as ‘anavadyaangi’ [unparalleled beauty] and offers to teach her a secret mantra, one that would attract even the Gods to her. First of all, why did he look at a 11–12-year-old Kunti and decide that this course of action was appropriate? Also, if we are to try and remove the layer of magic from this mantra, did Durvasa just teach her to flirt?
One day, early in the morning, she wakes up and seeing the rising sun. Curious to test her mantra, she calls upon Surya, the sun god himself. Alternatively, did she just see a person from the Deva tribe, on vacation, just strolling by the riverbank off of her balcony? Either way, once she realizes that the mantra works, terrified, she asks the man to leave.
Surya immediately, tightly grans her hand, and changes his tune, “Once I have come here, I won’t return until you’ve ‘paid’ me. Your father doesn’t know I’m here, so I wish to have a child with you, and you will comply, or else…All my friends are also watching, and I won’t have them make fun of me on account of your rejection! You are still young, and hence I am still talking, otherwise…”
When Kunti realizes that she cannot escape him, she starts negotiating. She wants, for starters, a promise that this incident will remain a secret. When Surya agrees, Kunti asks for his kavacha-kundala for the child. Maybe Surya takes them off, as some sort of a future child support? If Kuntibhoja finds out and then throws her out of the house, then she can at least sell those and raise the child!
The obviously Surya does what he wanted to, and disgustingly, Kunti loses consciousness, and that doesn’t stop him. She only comes back to her senses when Surya has left. Remember, the girl is thirteen still! We should remember that, and how this entire incident played out, before tipping the scales completely in her son’s favour.
Kunti then hides her pregnancy from her father with loose drapes and overall secrecy. She gives birth to the child, alone and silent and scared, with only a young, friendly midwife for company. After this, she puts the baby in a basket, seals it off and sets it afloat on the river Ashva (more likely she probably sent off the midwife to find a good family). She is absolutely broken by this action that she has to take, but she simply cannot keep him and still give him a good life when she herself has almost no standing within the family!
A couple years go by, and Kunti is now known across the subcontinent for (1) her beauty, and (2) more importantly, her religious propensity. Kuntibhoja arranges a swayamvara for her and Kunti is immediately drawn to and ultimately chooses Pandu.
Here, there are a few things to be said. For starters, right before the swayamvara, we see Bheeshma and Vidura discussing Pandu’s marriage prospects. Bheeshma, here talks about Kunti as the ‘Yadavi girl’. Researchers speculate that the Yadavas and Kurus might have had a primary agreement, and the swayamvara was just a farce.
I’ve written somewhere before that Bheeshma and Vyasa are veritably the two sides of the same coin. So, it is not a stretch to see that when Vyasa has an obvious soft spot for Gandhari, Bheeshma covers for Kunti from day 1. Bheeshma tells Karna, many, many years later, that he knew about him from before the swayamvara. He was in fact impressed with the finesse Kunti had shown in handling her situation (and her mantra, obviously), and had decided that she was the perfect candidate to become the Kuru-kingdom’s next Queen.
After the marriage, Kunti still spends most of her time in her religious endeavours (most probably a technique to avoid ‘romantic times’ with Pandu owing to her own trauma relating to the same), and Pandu, who most likely already knew that he couldn’t have kids, spends his time happily conquering around, knowing that his wife is not going to find out about him very soon.
Only, Bheeshma, the ever-nosy grandfather, sympathetic to Kunti’s trauma, thinks that maybe Pandu is intimidated by her sanctimonious personality (and I feel like Bheeshma is also in denial about Pandu’s issues, and only accepts it after the curse incident), and gets him a ‘barbie doll’ in the form of Madri (this is a criticism of Bheeshma, not Madri) to play with, thinking even Kunti will be glad to have an excuse to stay away.
Now, much as Kunti didn’t want to ‘play’ with Pandu, her abandonment issues resurface full-force, aimed at both Bheeshma and Pandu, when Madri arrives in Hastinapura. Only one month after this marriage, Pandu leaves again to conquer kingdoms, comes back and then takes his wives to the forest, gets cursed and then permanently moves out to the forests. In this time, Pandu had called the people who used ‘niyoga’ dogs (maybe from his mother’s experience), but eventually comes back to the same solution.
Pandu takes Kunti out in secret one day and asks if she had any children before their marriage and that he wouldn’t judge only if she let him adopt them. Even with such a free rein, Kunti stays silent about Karna. Perhaps, her fear about not letting her fathers down had morphed into not wanting to let her husband down, by admitting that he hadn’t been her ‘first’. Then, when Pandu tries to convince her to perform ‘niyoga’, she pleads with him (almost begs him) to not make her go through with it. Although she doesn’t share her story with him, we the readers know exactly what trauma is fuelling her terror at this moment.
However, in the face of Pandu’s crestfallen face, she finally tells him about Durvasa’s mantra, but not Karna. She somehow suppresses her trauma in the face of her love for her poor husband. She agrees on the condition that she wouldn’t have any control over the process: when, where and with whom, everything was to be determined by Pandu.
The real process of it was most likely harrowing (at least from my perspective). Since they lived pretty close to the trade route, Kunti probably had to go sit on the road, wait for a person matching Pandu’s list of criteria, and then lure him back with the mantra. Still, she does it, just because she loves him.
First with Dharma, she has Yudhishthira and then with Vayu, Bheema. After this, Pandu decides to up his game, and perform Tapasya before the next child. This time, we see Pandu much more involved in the process, as he, with Kunti, performs tapasya over an entire year, and actually talks with Sakra-Indra, the then king of the Devas, as they make an agreement, and Arjuna is born.
Then, Pandu asks again. This time Kunti, despite her love for him, is annoyed. Already, we can see just how humiliating the previous three times has been for her, never mind the trauma that has been so thoroughly re-invigorated. Researchers go as far as to even discover a kind of a k*nk on Pandu’s part.
Then, Madri corners Pandu one day, accusing him of unfairly favouring Kunti. She refuses to give up her veneer of a don’t-care attitude, and asks Pandu to order Kunti to teach her the mantra, because she wants a son but will not herself bow to Kunti to get it done.
Pandu too, knowing Kunti’s resolve, agrees readily. Kunti too takes some pleasure in being able to finally get a hand above her co-wife who had been so unfairly tied to her so soon after her marriage. She allows Madri to use her formula, but with a warning to her to use it only once.
When Kunti sees that Madri has summoned the twin Ashwini gods, she is furious, and goes to chastise her husband saying a lot of things, among which there are several derogatory quips about Madri’s character (‘ku-stri’).
One day, when Yudhishthira was almost a teenager, Pandu, distracted by the weather walked off into some cave, and Madri followed him, notably, her dress only half-tied. Then, Pandu dies, mid-process, and Madri yells out for Kunti, and warns her not to bring the children.
When Kunti sees Pandu dead, it’s like for some time her brain stops working. When Madri recollects the incident, she admits to Kunti that yes, she had followed Pandu, and been flirtatious. However, it had been Pandu who had ‘attacked’ her. How tragic, that Kunti, in this moment, does not recognize that her life’s primary trauma has just been reenacted here, act for act!
She devolves to blaming Madri. Among other things, she also brings up Madri’s kingdom, which we know, how the MB Aryans had become racist against Madra and Gandhara. The words Kunti uses here to insult Madri will be heard once again, directed at Madri’s brother himself and they will come from none other than Kunti’s oldest son!
When Kunti declares that she is going to commit sati (not by fire, rather asphyxiation), Madri stops her, saying (1) she fears that Pandu might be unsatisfied without her in heaven, and (2) she would not be able to give the same impartial care to Kunti’s sons as Kunti could give to her twins, and kills herself, right there in front of Kunti.
Then, their neighbour rishis, pack them up and deliver them, alongside the corpses of Madri and Pandu, to Hastinapura. Kunti and her sons are then given a rather modest lodging, and even when Bheema is poisoned we see that Kunti has no one to lean on apart from Vidura, and even he seems unable to really help her out at this time.
Many years later, when the Pandavas have finished their education, Kunti’s first son walks back into her life, and she watches in horror as two of her sons pledge lifelong enmity to one another.
Then, during the Varanavat, we see somewhat the cruel streak in Kunti, where she, with a clear head, knowingly pushes a Nishada woman and her five sons towards a sure death while she herself and her sons run to save their lives. After this, again she slips into her normal compassionate self, where Hidimba finds it more productive to just propose marriage to her, than waiting around for Bheema to clock it, and Kunti too gives her the respect of the Kuru-family’s first daughter-in-law, and designates her son Ghatotkacha as a ‘kuru-putraka’ [a Kaurava child] even though Bheema and Hidimba never technically get married. She also then pushes Bheema before the Baka-rakshasa in Ekachakra leaning on the absolute trust she has on his physical prowess.
Finally, Vyasa comes to herd them off to Kampilya, and leaves for her a hint as to what to do with Draupadi (this is most probably a retcon, but is good for drama nevertheless). When Arjuna and the brothers bring Draupadi to her, without seeing she asks them to all share her. Then, she is quite sorry, and Yudhishthira too primarily releases both Arjuna and Draupadi from this conundrum, but Arjuna himself falls back into it again. But then, after many debates with many people, finally Draupadi gets married to the five brothers and they all return to Hastinapura. Right after the marriage, Kunti hands off the baton to Draupadi as she gives three ‘jobs’ to her new and the first official daughter-in-law: (1) to crown herself the Queen of the Kurus with her husband (Yudhishthira) by her side (2) to crown Yudhishthira as the King of the Kurus by her own authority, and finally (boringly) (3) to produce an heir for this throne. When they go to Indraprastha, Kunti enjoys a rather short-lived retirement as Draupadi happily picks up the mantle of being the annoying voice-of-conscience for the five brothers.
When the Pandavas are about to leave for their 13-year exile, she refuses to speak to them, talking instead exclusively to her daughter-in-law, trying to give her the courage to survive this before returning to Hastinapura to live with Vidura this time. She tells Draupadi to take extra care of Sahadeva (reminds her to feed him and lull him to sleep like she did, pushing Draupadi to take on almost a maternal role with her youngest husband) and then laments that if she had known this would happen, then she would not have come back from Shatasringa at all, and then tries in vain to stop Sahadeva from also going to the forest.
At the end of the exile, we see her first lament to Krishna about how all wives on Pandu’s side, especially herself and Draupadi, have always been disrespected by Hastinapura, and she presents an extremely rousing speech to be conveyed to her sons. She goes as par as to say that by not avenging Draupadi’s insult with enough violence, her sons have disrespected her as well. She says she would not even bless them, and consider her sons dead to her, until the moment that they finally declare war on Draupadi’s offenders.
Kunti also blames Karna equally, and the nicest thing she can think to say about him is that Karna never thinks before he acts.
However, she still thinks to try one last time and come clean to Karna about her past experience. Problem is, that Karna already knows. Even beyond the conversation he has with Krishna some time back, he probably has known about Kunti for quite some time now. Kunti doesn’t know that she hasn’t got the element of surprise that he had been banking on.
When he spots Kunti standing in the sun, he introduces himself with quite some salt in his words, “Raadheyohaham Aadhirathih” [born of Radha, the son of Adhiratha]. It works, and Kunti, with some anger in her voice, recounts her story in short, with much less emotion than she had hoped to imbibe. Karna curses her out, in ornamental language though, and refuses to change sides. Kunti, reading the finality in his tone, embraces him for the first and last time, and leaves with a promise from Karna to not kills the four Pandavas aside from Arjuna. She is however heartbroken as Karna sends her away without once calling her ‘mother’.
When, after the war, Kunti final comes clean to her remaining sons, Yudhishthira, almost out of character, starts lashing out at her, believing that Karna switching sides might have stopped the war. He goes as far as to curse at all womenkind for her decision. Neither Kunti nor Krishna however tell him just now that they had each tried, in their own ways but had been rejected.
After the war, we see Kunti serving Dhritarashtra and Gandhari, almost like a daughter. I feel like, her actions here, devoid of any apparent remembrance of the injustices meted out to her, is the product of a quiet sense of superiority. Perhaps, somewhere subconsciously, she likes that the two people who were the primary reason for her suffering are now so absolutely dependent on her. I do not think that was Kunti’s primary reason though, on the surface, she was probably just following society’s rules of the submission of the younger family members to the elders.
When the ex-royal couple finally leave for the forest, Kunti quietly leads them herself, only breaking the news of her wish to stay on with them to Yudhishthira when they are already in the forest. She apologizes to her son for never having told him about Karna, instructs him to remember his brother, and resolves to atone for it by leading the hard life with her remaining in-laws. Among other things, she warns Yudhishthira to never scold her favourite Sahadeva.
Some researchers posit also that she had taken great offence to how Yudhishthira had insulted her love for her firstborn all those years back, and she wasn’t going to wait around in Hastinapura for that disrespect to escalate, maybe from latter generations too, if not from her own sons.
After some time, not able to stay away, the Pandavas run back to Shatayupa’s ashram again to see his mother, uncle and aunt. Here too, Sahadeva, runs to embrace her ‘like a child’. He even begs to stay with her from here on, refusing to return to the capital until his brothers physically pry him off. Now, in Vyasa’s and her entire family’s presence, Sahadeva still held in her arms, she again confesses, apologising once more for abandoning Karna, and requests Vyasa to show him once more, this time with the full glory of being a brother of the Pandavas and Kauravas. Vyasa, gives his finally verdict, declaring Kunti completely innocent in the face of her family situation, and uses some magic to bring all the dead back to life for a night. Kunti watches on, with complete satisfaction, as her six sons finally unite on the bank of Ganga.
Yudhishthira too asks to stay with his mother, serving all three of them, and tells Kunti that he is no longer enjoying being Hastina’s ruler (did he ever?). Kunti forcefully sends all of them back, and dies soon after in a forest fire, along with Dhritarashtra and Gandhari.
