In all of this, we know nothing about Subhadra’s consent, or who she would have chosen in the swayamvar had the decision been left to her. The word used here is ‘ aropyat’, which is strangely the same word that Valmiki used to describe the abduction of Sita in Ramayana. With Krishna’s approval, Arjun abducts Subhadra (fig. 1) because he doesn’t know what Subhadra’s decision in the swayamvar would be.įigure 1 | The Critical Edition of Mahabharata However, marriage by abduction is also a possibility for Arjun (fig. Krishna replies that swayamvar is the acceptable form of marriage for Kshatriyas. His desires are awakened ( kandarpa samajayata), and he asks her brother Krishna about her. It begins with Arjun coming to Dwarka during a festival, and seeing Subhadra. The ‘Subhadra Haran’ episode in the Mahabharata is brief. Subhadra’s voice has been silenced and all the wrongdoings against her have either been disregarded or worse, romanticised. Subhadra’s painful story of abduction in the Mahabharata remains buried because of the nationalist glorification of Arjun and Abhimanyu over time. Generations of authors have glossed over a significant act of violence by their heroes, without which the Mahabharata (in its composed form) wouldn’t have been possible. The coronavirus lockdown in India has revived the Ramayan and Mahabharat series on Doordarshan for a younger generation, and has reinforced the collective silencing of Subhadra’s story, rather than ‘wronged’ Draupadi or Sita’s. Some figures have been deified and their wrongs condoned. However, over the last millennia and a half, this grey has slowly been erased. None of its main actors are flawless. And it is this shade of grey that adds to its importance. The epic encodes violent moments in our collective history. There is an old saying that one shouldn’t keep the Mahabharata in their home.