गरल युग में रावण और कंस
When poison descends into the heart instead of pausing at the throat
(This essay supplements my earlier reflection on Mahādeva, Bhōlenāth, and garal-śamanam. Read it here →
https://open.substack.com/pub/akshat08/p/830?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=124980)
Indian political language today is no longer argumentative; it is ingestive.
We are not merely hearing hatred—we are eating it daily.
Hindu–Muslim, strī–puruṣ, jāti–dharma: these are no longer debates but diet.
And when poison becomes food, the body politic does not fall ill quietly—it turns toxic outward.
Indian civilization has named this condition before.
It called it Rāvaṇa-rāj and Kansa-rāj.
Ravana and Kansa: poisoned kings, not foolish ones
Both and were capable rulers.
Learning, strength, and legitimacy were not absent. What was absent was garal-śamanam—the discipline of containing inner poison without exporting it into society.
Ravana’s poison was ego camouflaged as merit.
Kansa’s poison was fear camouflaged as security.
Power did not corrupt them; it broadcast their inner toxin.
The crucial difference: heart vs throat
Here lies the most important civilizational insight:
“दिल की जगह अगर गले में,
संगीत में ज़हर ठहरा होता—
गले के नीचे न उतरता—
तो वही ज़हर अमृत बन सकता था।”
Shiva drinks poison—but he does not swallow it into the heart.
He holds it in the throat.
The throat (viśuddha) is the space of voice, vibration, song, restraint.
Poison held there becomes transformed, not transmitted.
When poison descends into the heart, it turns into hatred.
When it stops at the throat, it can become music, prayer, warning, wisdom.
Why Neelkanth is not blue-hearted
Classical myth never says Shiva’s heart turned blue.
Only his throat did.
Because the heart is where poison becomes identity.
The throat is where poison becomes expression without contagion.
This is why sangeet—measured sound, disciplined breath, rāga-bound emotion—was always seen in India as a civilizational detox technology.
Anger that becomes music does not riot.
Pain that becomes poetry does not lynch.
Modern politics: poison swallowed, then vomited
The modern political ruler does not pause at the throat.
He swallows resentment whole—and then vomits it back as slogans, binaries, and daily outrage.
This is the inversion of Shiva.
Shiva absorbs poison so society does not have to.
Modern power feeds on poison so society must.
That is the difference between Neelkanth and the demagogue.
The Shiv-āśīrvād paradox returns
Ravana was a Shiva-bhakta.
Kansa patronised temples.
Symbolic legitimacy was never missing.
What was missing was Bhōlenāth-guna—innocence without calculation—and viśuddha-discipline—the ability to stop poison before it enters the bloodstream of society.
Shiva gives power easily.
He does not guarantee maturity.
Polarisation is what happens when poison bypasses the throat
When rage is not processed through voice, art, ethics, or restraint, it seeks shortcuts:
- It becomes identity politics
- It becomes gender hatred
- It becomes caste humiliation
- It becomes religious obsession
This is garal without viśuddha—raw toxin, no filter.
Why Indian epics remove the king, not the people
In the Ramayana and Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Lanka and Mathura survive.
The king falls.
Because the disease was never the people—it was undigested poison at the top.
Civilizations survive by knowing where poison must be stopped.
Democracy without viśuddha becomes Ravana Raj
Democracy demands leaders who can hold tension without amplifying it.
When leaders instead convert every anxiety into outrage, democracy becomes a ritual—like Daksha’s yajña—grand, loud, and spiritually empty.
This is why Indian thought feared adhikāra without adhikāra-yogyatā: authority without inner fitness.
The only real test of Shiv-bhakti in politics
Not temple visits.
Not chants.
Not symbolism.
The test is simple:
Can you hold society’s poison at your throat—
in speech, in song, in restraint—
without letting it descend into the heart of the nation?
If yes, poison becomes amrit.
If not, you are not Neelkanth—
you are merely intoxicated by venom.
Closing warning
India has survived many Ravanas and Kansas because it remembers one truth:
Power that eats hatred eventually dies of indigestion.
Shiva does not destroy such rulers.
They dissolve themselves.
Pull-quote (Substack highlight)
दिल में उतरा ज़हर नफ़रत बनता है,
गले में रुका ज़हर संगीत बन सकता है।
यही नेलकंठ और रावण का फर्क है।
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