अधर्मं धर्ममिति या मन्यते तमसाऽऽवृता ।
सर्वार्थान्विपरीतांश्च बुद्धिः सा पार्थ तामसी ॥ १८.३२ ॥

adharmam dharmam-iti yā manyate tamasā’’vṛtā |
sarvārthān-viparītāmś-ca buddhi: sā pārtha tāmasī || 18.32 ||

Tāmasika buddhiḥ

Now Krishna describes the tāmasika intelligence:

When the intelligence is enveloped by delusion and as a result regards the ‘wrong’ as ‘right’, and perceives everything contrary to what is, then it is tāmasika.

Tamo-guṇa goes a step further in affecting the intelligence to an utterly dangerous level. It subdues man to such an extent that he thinks impropriety to be propriety. It construes everything in a contrary manner. The effect of tāmasika intelligence is gravely vicious.

Kaikeyi was the youngest of the Ayodhya queens. King Daśaratha liked her most. Manthara, her maid, brought the news of Rama’s coronation to be held the next morning. Kaikeyi was so delighted to hear this that she instantly gifted her maid the necklace she was wearing.

Manthara threw it away sternly with derision, deploring her mistress’s inability to sense the grave impending danger. Rama’s coronation, she thought, would make her queen a poor slave of Kausalya, Rama’s mother. She could not bear to see such a fate. So her plan was to stop the coronation somehow. She felt her mistress still had the power to do it, something Kaikeyi herself did not even imagine and could not believe at first. The queen lent her ears to Manthara’s scheme and persuasions, until at last she was completely won over by her evil doctrines. Thereafter, Kaikeyi did exactly the way Manthara prescribed and lay on the floor to enact the saga that finally led to King Daśaratha heeding her designs for Rama and Bharata.

Daśaratha could neither refuse nor accept the plight. Rama, on knowing the demand from Kaikeyi about his forest life of fourteen years, left the palace the same day, wearing ascetic costume. Seeing his chariot speed from the palace, Daśaratha left his prāṇa (life forces), calling and wailing “Rama, Rama…”.

Was Kaikeyi right in her display and insistence? Was her demand justified by any norm? Did she not, by that, thrust widowhood on herself? She made herself the object of scorn and contempt of Bharata, her own son!

What was gravely wrong, heinous and tragic, Kaikeyi felt was right, pious and benevolent. How could this be? Tāmasika intelligence is behind the whole indiscretion and catastrophe.

There are instances when, on finding his beloved change her stand, the lover gets estranged and takes to the extreme step of even killing her – the very person, whom he loved so much thus far. Can the sweet sentiment of love lose its character so suddenly and be so violent and inconsiderate? How does the same emotion lead one to molestation, putting the very manliness to severe shame and ridicule? This is all due to the havoc that tamas works in the intelligence. The resulting delusion and perversion can go to any extent of causing harm and disorder.

In the 16th chapter, Krishna grouped people into two categories, calling them daiva and asura. The good and divine were listed as daiva, and the bad and heinous came under asura. Now he brings all under a general three-fold categorization, effected by prakṛti’s own sattva, rajas and tamas guṇas. This obviously means that any individual or group can be influenced in varying degrees. The seeker has to look within for the shade of each and strive to effect the necessary change, correction and improvement, for which there is adequate scope imbued in each by prakṛti itself.

As looking in a mirror allows one to be face to face with his own image, so too this analysis based on guṇa-traya enables the seeker to identify the undesirable elements and get rid of them by judicious and sustained effort.