Well, didn’t Vyasa place the Gita in proper perspective with ‘the end of the chapter averment that it is the quintessence of the Upanishads and the Brahmasutras’. Yet this futile exercise of backward integration of the Gita with the Upanishads and others continues, giving raise to myriad interpretations to what is essentially a simple and straightforward message that Krishna intended for average human comprehension. In modern parlance, Bhagavad-Gita is like the Board Note, and it does not behove the board members to pore over the relevant files.
Though some well-meaning men and women have all along tried to straightjacket the Gita as a ‘Book of Work’, still it is the scriptural tag that sticks to it. Admittedly, this is not only detrimental to the Great Gita but also the misfortune of the common man who would have otherwise ventured to read it, and benefited as well. Thus, this work should be viewed as the outcome of an urge to place the Gita in its proper perspective for the utmost common good. On the degree of its success could depend how it would have served the cause of the Lord and that of man for whose benefit the Gita, the Treatise of Self-help, was fashioned, though not as scripture. It pays to recall the words of Krishna,
‘That thee heard of this wisdom
For task on hand now apply mind’.
Now it is left for all to deliberate and decide whether the Gitaper sewas Krishna’s unrivalled divine revelation, or Vyasa’s philosophical discourse nonpareil. It is noteworthy that each of the eighteen chapters of the Gita has this post script - this chapter, with so and so designation, has the bearing of the Upanishads, possesses the knowledge of the Brahmasutras and deals with the science of its application. And the Upanishads, as we all know, were but the works of man, though of divine proportion.
Thus, if we were to concede that the Gita was a divine disclosure, then that would suggest that Krishna borrowed from the Upanishadic philosophy to fashion his discourse! Won’t that mean Lord Vishnu in Hisavataras Krishna, relied on the works of man to formulate moksha for him! That is an absurd proposition, at any rate that is, isn’t it? Well, it’s a matter for man to deliberate and decide.
Last but not the least is the sectarian twist some interpolations give to the Gita to the hurt of the majority of the Hindus. Understandably, the offended sections view this secular text with suspicion, and thus keep away from it altogether, missing so much as a consequence of the same. In ‘All About Interpolations’ that follows, this aberration is sought to be corrected, and it is hoped that for the general good of the Hindus this aspect of the Gita would be set right for all times to come.