Leadership and dharma: The indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata and their significance for leadership today

Abstract

As Shakespeare’s Henry IV put it: ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown’ (Henry IV, Part 2, Act 3, Scene I, Pages 26-31). This adage is so because a leader faces bewildering choices and an array of possibilities that make decision-making difficult. On the one hand, the leader is circumscribed by tradition. Yet to go forward he must embrace modernity. There might be a course of action that has enjoyed historical legitimacy, but it is either inapplicable in the present era or a newer and clearer vision reveals it to be prejudiced, discriminatory and unjust to various sections of people who were excluded from it. He faces the challenge of inspiring communities different from his own, communities whose aims and precepts differ divergently. He must function in a world that changes dramatically every year, with new technological innovations that transform lives and, in doing so, generate social changes of their own.