Shakuni, also called as Saubala, Prince of Gandhar (now in Afghanistan) is quite infamous for being the master conspirator of events that lead to the biggest war in Indian History- The Mahabharat! War between brothers, belonging to 2 clans- Pandu-sons, called as Pandavs and Kuru-sons, called as Kaurav! Though these clans belonged to the same Kuru Dynasty.
Shakuni was mighty angry with Bhisma for bringing the proposal of blind prince, Dhritrastra for his dearest sister, Gandhari, who was scared of darkness. He found it insulting and demeaning not only because Dhritrastra was blind but also because of the way, Kuru Dynasty destroyed his royal line, years ago!
It is said that in some military campaign of either, Shantanu, Bhishma, or Pandu, Gandhara came under attack from Hastinapur. Hastinapur conquered Gandhar, killed the king AchalaSuvala, and imprisoned all the male members of his line, saying that line was full of adharma. This included Shakuni and his 100 brothers. Since all of them were sparsely fed in the prison, the family decided that at least one of them could survive and gave all the rice to Shakuni, the most cunning of them all, so that he could live on to take revenge. He swore to avenge this insult by slowly destroying Kuru Dynasty. He mainly worked through provoking hatred between the Kauravas and Pandavas; his plans lead to the biggest wars in Indian history.
Shakuni loved his sister very dearly and was possessive of her. Her act of voluntarily blindfolding herself does not bode too well with Shakuni, who constantly advises her to take off her blindfold and see Bhishma’s destruction, but she refuses. Time and time again, he expresses the anger he felt for the injustice that Gandhari had to go through by leading her entire life with a blindfold.
Shakuni planned many attacks on Pandavas at many occasions. Such as:
– Instructing an adolescent Duryodhan to mix poison into Bheem’s food
– Hiring Purochana to kill the Pandavas and Kunti in the Palace of wax.
– Secretly hoping, that great sage Durvasa to curse the Pandavas in anger, he asked the sage to visit the Pandavas in the forest knowing that the Pandavas would then have nothing to feed him.
– Before the war he advised Duryodhana to feed Shalya’s(Nakul and Sahdev’s maternal Uncle) army and make Shalya him their ally to fight against the Pandavas.
– During the war he aided in the deceitful killing of Arjun’s son Abhimanyu by breaking the war protocol.
Being a master in sorcery, Shakuni had his blessed dice, which would always follow his will. Unaware of this fact, the Pandavas were defeated in the gambling match. Shakuni encourages Duryodhana, Dussasana, Karna, and the others when they taunt and humiliate the Pandavas.
Another ‘legend’ goes in this way, in which it is said that Gandhari had some problem in her astrological chart which indicated that her first husband will die soon after the marriage, to over-comethis problem, she was first married to a goatand the animal was slaughtered, so she became a widow before marryingDhrithrashtra. A few years later, Dhritrashtra got to know about this and he imprisoned the entire Gandhara family and the king Subala, Gandhari’s father and his 100 sons and treated them very badly.
Every day only one a handful of rice was given to each of them to eat. As days passed one by one started to die of hunger. King Subala realized that this was not how their dynasty was going to end. By now the amount of anger on Dhrithrashtra had augmented and so he came up with this plan of every one in prison sacrificing their food and handing it over to one person and make that person strong and be responsible for the downfall of Dhrithrashtra, the youngest and wittiest son,Shakuni and everyday all would offer their food to him. He could not bear the sight of his father and brothers dying of hunger everyday.When Subala realized he would die soon because of starvation, he requested Dhritrashtra to forgive Shakuni and also promised that he would be guardian to his sons. He finally pitied his father-in-law and agreed to this.
But before he breathed his last, he told Shakuni to make a dice using his thigh/backbone/ashes and create a powerful magic dice which spins at the requested number. He wanted this to be the reason for the downfall of Dhritharashtra and his dynasty.Shakuni, as vowed was the guardian of the 100 Kaurava sons and was the one responsible for the Kurukshetra war, which he did by aggravatingKauravasagainst the Pandavas which led to the almost destruction of the Kuru Dynasty as per his father’s wish!
Now, the question is whether Shakuni was justified in being the “tool” that led to the destruction? – The answer is Yes! Because his family was severely wronged by the Kuru Dynasty and an injustice was meted out to them when Gandhari was betrothed to Dhritrastra. He did see that Gandhari was happy in hr marriage, but because he had to fulfill the wish of his father, he still carried out his plan of destroying the dynasty; but this time, he wanted his favorite nephew, Duryodhan to be the sole ruler of this dynasty. This he did thinking Gandhari wanted the same. Had he known that Gandhari was always against this war, and ignored to bless “vijayibhava”, translates to ‘Victory is Yours’; to Duryodhan before the war, then probably Shakuni might not have carried out this planning of pitting the brothers against each other!
By: Archa Dave
