What Ancient India Actually Taught Us About Morality and Hypocrisy
“The gods of India did not hide desire.
They ritualized it, legislated it, and sometimes broke their own rules.
Our modern world does the opposite — we hide desire, moralize it,
and secretly imitate the same acts behind closed doors.”
I. The Mirror of Myth
Our scriptures are mirrors, not manuals.
The Mahābhārata, the Purāṇas, and the Rāmāyaṇa never pretend that human beings are simple creatures.
They present a world where power sanctifies transgression and duty redeems desire.
Draupadī becomes wife to five men because her mother-in-law, Kuntī, issues a careless command — and because obedience to one’s mother was holier than social custom.
Krishna rescues sixteen thousand imprisoned women and marries them all, transforming social scandal into divine compassion.
Arjuna lives a year disguised as a woman; Vishnu seduces gods and demons alike as Mohinī.
These are not deviations. They are deliberate exposures of human complexity, immortalized under divine light.
The ancients did not repress impulse; they domesticated it.
Desire was not sin but a force to be managed — sometimes restrained, sometimes released, never denied.
II. When the Sacred Broke Its Own Laws
Every time a god or hero crosses a line, the text adds a warning:
“naitat samācaret ajñaḥ” — Let the ignorant not imitate this.
The message is simple: divine acts may suspend law to restore balance, but mortals cannot invoke them as excuses for indulgence.
Arjuna’s cross-dressing, Krishna’s playful theft of the gopīs’ garments, Shiva’s surrender to Mohinī — each episode contains both transgression and transcendence.
Desire can overpower even divinity, yet awareness redeems it.
The difference between lust and liberation is consciousness, not circumstance.
Modern religion hates such grey zones.
We prefer binaries — pious or perverse, saint or sinner.
The ancients gave us paradox instead.
III. The Politics of Purity
Power has always moralized its own appetites.
When a king abducts, it becomes elopement; when a commoner loves across caste, it becomes sin.
When Krishna elopes with Rukmiṇī, it’s divine romance.
When Jayadratha drags Draupadī by the hair, it’s an outrage.
Same act, different verdict.
Ancient India accepted hierarchy as part of cosmic order — what gods or kings could do, others could not.
Modern India claims equality yet preserves the same privilege through silence and selective outrage.
We make laws to display virtue and loopholes to indulge vice.
Our morality is managerial, not moral.
IV. Desire in the Age of Pretence
Every modern moral panic — from women’s clothing to consensual love — hides the same anxiety our epics already explored:
the fear that we are not as pure as we pretend.
The Mahābhārata’s polyandry, the Purāṇas’ gender fluidity, even the Bhāgavata Purāṇa’s caution against imitating divine rāsa-līlā — all acknowledge that desire is an elemental human constant.
Civilization does not erase it; it educates it.
The gopīs’ surrender to Krishna is holy not because it is sensual, but because it is total.
The same act without awareness is lust.
The moral axis was never the body — it was the mind.
Our shame toward sexuality isn’t morality; it’s insecurity wearing a halo.
V. The Ruthless Lens
To be ruthless is not to be cruel — it is to be honest.
The ancients recorded lust, jealousy, envy, and betrayal without censorship.
They believed that denying truth was a greater sin than committing it.
We, their descendants, prefer optics to honesty.
If society truly valued chastity, it would reward integrity, not theatre.
We punish exposure but celebrate deception.
The devout who fast by day often feast on hypocrisy by night.
Every temple, every parliament, every household has its own Mahābhārata, rewritten daily in secrecy.
VI. Lessons from the Chaos
- Study, don’t sanitize.
Epics exist to examine the human spectrum, not to supply moral bullet points. - Divine acts are metaphors, not permissions.
Gods break rules to test dharma, not to endorse indulgence. - Morality without honesty breeds hypocrisy.
A lie about virtue is deadlier than an honest flaw. - Discipline without compassion becomes tyranny;
compassion without discipline becomes decay. - Ruthlessness is clarity.
It is the courage to see — in others, and in oneself — without flinching.
VII. Closing Reflection
Civilization was never meant to be sterile; it was meant to be self-aware.
Our ancestors worshipped gods who laughed, desired, erred, and repented — because they knew perfection without confession breeds rot.
If modern society truly wants morality, it must first reclaim honesty.
“The ancients wrote their contradictions into scripture.
We write ours into hashtags.”
The Krishna Ledger 