The Other Side to Drona & Ekalavya's Story

Most of us would have heard about Ekalvya’s story. It’s about how a low caste boy with his utmost dedication, sincerity and devotion towards his master and archery makes himself a best archer and how an narrow minded guru Dronacharya just to keep up his word that Arjuna would be the best archer in the world, mercilessly asks for Ekalavya’s thumb as guru dakshina thereby destroying Ekalavya’s life entirely. Although Ekalavya is still renowned to be a great student and is even taken as example for being an ideal student, a student who obeyed the words of his master without any hesitation, Drona is more seen as an evil and narrow minded guru.

Throughout my childhood I was under a similar impression that Drona was an evil man to do such a sinful act. We’re told the story in such a way that we instantly start hating Drona, start pitying and respecting Ekalavya.

As I learned more about Drona I came to know that he was not as bad as he is being portrayed to be. Infact he was a very good person. A highly learned and a brave Brahmin. This led me to think why did he do such a sinful act by asking a thumb of Ekalavya. First and foremost he is a Brahmin and most often Brahmins are kind hearted and not people who fight for their name and glory. This is totally against what Drona did, cutting a thumb of a person is in no way kind heartedness and the story says that Drona promised Arjuna to make him the best archer now when Arjuna saw a person who was better than him he reported it to Drona and Drona after seeing that Ekalavya can be a big competition to Arjuna asks him his thumb finger as guru dakshina there by disabling him for archery forever.

So were people like Bheeshma, Vidur and Krishna wrong in calling Drona a great Brahmin. No shastra or Vedas justify disabling a person just to keep up ones promise amd after reading about Drona I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t have gone against it. So to understand why Drona did it I had to go back and understand what happned that prompted Drona to do such a sinful act.

The story goes by saying that, “one day the pandava princesses go roaming in the forest along with their pet dog and Dronacharya.  The dog runs ahead of them and reaches Ekalavyas hut. On seeing Ekalavya the dog starts barking at him. Ekalavya was  practicing archery at that time and the barking dog irritates him and distracts his concentration. Ekalavya gets agitated by this and fires arrows after arrows at the dogs mouth thereby making the dogs mouth immovable and critically injuring the dog. Ekalavya rejoices and starts practicing again. The dog crying in pain goes back to the pandavas. Pandavas on seeing their dog critically injured become agitated but Arjuna who has an eye for precision starts thinking who could have so carefully placed arrow in a dogs mouth thereby stopping it from barking. Drona also see this and all of them go in search of the person who did this to their dog. They all reach Ekalavyas hut and Ekalavya on seeing his master Drona pays respects and on asking says that he is the one who shot arrows at the dog because it was disturbing him from practicing. Drona after listening thinks for a while and says that he appreciates the boys dedication and sincerity towards him and archery and then asks for Ekalavyas thumb as guru dakshina.

So what did Drona think  that made him do such a terrible thing ? Surely it wouldn't be for the word that he gave to Arjuna. Any teacher would be having only to see his student excel and a good teacher never shows partiality. We can say that Drona was a good teacher because he taught Arjuna more than what he taught Ashwathama ( his own son ) because he knew Arjuna was a better student than Ashwathama. So there should have been something highly justifiable for Drona to take such a decision. What could that be ?

Thinking about this I came to a conclusion that archery (Dhanur Vidya)  is no small thing. Dhanur veda says a highly skilled bowman standing in the middle of a town can alone save the town from 10,000 enemies. Hence it gave great power in the hands of the practitioner. But as the saying goes "with great powers comes great responsibilities". So a teacher before teaching anyone something powerful should also judge if the student is responsible enough to handle those powers. Just dedication and sincerity is not enough to judge a student, his capability also needs to be assessed. 


Drona came to know that although Ekalavya was highly dedicated and sincere he was not capable enough to handle the power that came with mastering dhanur vidya (archery). A person who lost his calm just because of a barking dog and hurt it so badly surely cannot be a person who will be able to control his anger in adverse situations. He would not hesitate using his powers on anything and would even go ahead and destroy everything if he gets out of control. Drona understood that the power was not in the right hands and that he has to do something to stop Ekalavya. And the only way to stop him was to stop him from practicing archery and without a thumb a person cannot do archery and hence asks for it as guru dakshina. I have no idea what destruction Ekalavya would have bought if Dronacharya hadn't stopped him at the right time. Although it made Dronacharya a bad man he did take the blame silently to the benefit of the society. Another gesture of a noble man.

We humans always have this tendency of finding fault with a good person portray him bad and showcase a bad person with utmost respect.