Afghanistan: Bhagavad Gita & Business Schools

India’s favourite spiritual book, The Bhagavad Gita, has made a dramatic impact at Harvard, Wharton and other business schools with its universal message of “concentration, consistency, and cooperation”. In a nutshell: “You can’t succeed in business (or war) unless you develop the intellect, which controls the mind and body.”

The Gita remains relevant in the conduct of any war, including Afghanistan. But first about business schools. At one time it used to be fashionable in management circles to quote from the sixth century B.C. Chinese classic The Art of War. However, the recent trend shows the growing inclination towards introspective Bhagavad Gita.

The New York-based Business Week says that Bhagavad Gita is the favoured text in the US for ideas about leadership. Let me quote from an earlier issue of the magazine: “The ancient spiritual wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita seems at first like an odd choice for guiding today’s numbers-driven managers.

“Also known as Song of the Divine One, the work relates a conversation between the supreme deity Krishna and Arjuna, a warrior prince, struggling with a moral crisis before a crucial battle. One key
message is that enlightened leaders should master any impulses or emotions that cloud sound judgment.

“Good leaders are selfless, take initiative, and focus on their duty rather than obsessing over outcomes or financial gain. ‘The key point,’ says Ram Charan, a coach to CEOs such as General Electric Co.’s (GE ) Jeffrey R. Immelt, ‘is to put purpose before self. This is absolutely applicable to corporate (or political and military) leadership today’.

“The seemingly ethereal world view that’s reflected in Indian philosophy is surprisingly well attuned to the down-to-earth
needs of companies trying to survive in an increasingly global, interconnected business ecosystem.

“While corporations used to do most of their manufacturing, product development, and administrative work in-house, the
emphasis is now on using outsiders. Terms such as ‘extended enterprises’ (companies that outsource many
functions), ‘innovation networks’ (collaborative research and development programs), and ‘co-creation’ (designing
goods and services with input from consumers) are the rage.

“Indian-born thinkers didn’t invent all these concepts, but they’re playing a big role in pushing them much further. Prahalad, for example, has made a splash with books on how companies can co-create products with consumers and succeed by tailoring products and technologies to the poor.

“That idea has influenced companies from Nokia Corp. (NOK ) to Cargill. Harvard Business School associate professor Rakesh Khurana, who achieved acclaim with a treatise on how corporations have gone wrong chasing charismatic CEOs, is writing a book on how U.S. business
schools have gotten away from their original social charters.

“Vijay Govindarajan, a professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business whose books and consulting for the likes of Chevron (CVX ) and Deere & Co. (DE ) have made him a sought-after innovation guru, links his theories directly to Hindu philosophy. He helps companies figure out how to stop reacting to the past and start creating their
own futures through innovation.”

More here…

And now Afghanistan war and the Bhagavad Gita. Chapter one in the Gita introduces the scene, the setting, the circumstances and the characters involved determining the reasons for the Bhagavad-Gita’s revelation. The setting is a battlefield. The circumstances is war.

The main characters are the Supreme Lord Krishna and Prince Arjuna, witnessed by four million soldiers led by their respective military commanders. After naming the principal warriors on both sides, Arjuna’s growing dejection is described due to the fear of losing friends and relatives in the course of the impending war and the subsequent sins attached to such actions. Thus this chapter is entitled: Lamenting the Consequence of War.

More here…

And here…

Here are a few quotes….Mahatma Gandhi: “When disappointment stares me in the face and all alone I see not one ray of light, I go back to the Bhagavad. I find a verse here and a verse there , and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming tragedies —
my life has been full of external tragedies — and if they have left no visible or indelible scar on me, I owe it all to the teaching of Bhagavad Gita.”

Herman Hesse (1877-1962), German poet and novelist, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1946: “The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life’s wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American Philosopher, writer, Unitarian, social critic, transcendentalist: “In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny.”

Now a personal note: Some friends have asked me to suggest the best commentary on Bhagavad Gita, and where can they find it. Tough question…. Well, there are a few well-known commentaries on Gita —- by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mahatma Gandhi, Sir Edwin Arnold (The Song Celestial), etc.

My favourite is, of course, Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God by Swami Prabhavananda (Translator), Christopher Isherwood (Translator), and Aldous Huxley (Introduction), written and first published in Ramakrishna Mission, Hollywood (the USA) in 1940.

I tried the efficacy of this book in, of all the places, Saudi Arabia where I worked as a journalist in the late 1970s. When a well-meaning Arabic scholar said that I should consider converting myself to Islam because I was missing “something very beautiful in life”, I replied I would consider his suggestion but first he should go through Prabhavananda/Isherwood’s translation of the Bhagvad Gita.

I explained to the Islamic scholar that I was able to enjoy more the beauty and the grandeur of The Bible, The Quran, The Guru Granth Sahib and other scriptures only after reading the Bhagavad Gita. Surprisingly, the scholar agreed to read the Gita, and I handed him over the book.

After about a fortnight, the Islamic scholar met me again and uttered four memorable words that I would not forget in my lifetime: “I agree with you.” …. My wife does not like the joke that had I converted myself to Islam the way was open for me to marry four times!!!!

I won the book under reference as a prize in a State-wide Rabindranath Tagore poetry recitation competition at the Ramakrishna Mission Ashram when I was a teenager in a New Delhi school. The book has been my companion ever since.

The book is available for Indian Rupees 35 (less than a dollar) at the Ramakrishna Mission Ashram, Panchkuian Road, New Delhi. Whereas the Amazon website sells it online at $ 6.95. Whenever I visit the Ashram, I normally pick up eight or 10 Gita books for free distribution among friends.