Debashis Chatterjee - Timeless Leadership: 18 Leadership Sutras from the Bhagvad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita is a timeless text of about 700 verses. It is a spiritual classic that originated in India many years before Christ was born. The book appeared as an episode in the battle of Kurukshetra in Northern India. The Bhagavad Gita takes the form of a conversation between Krishna and Arjuna. The themes of the conversation range from the vast Cosmos to the innermost soul of a human being, often referred to as the Self.

Timeless Leadership weaves this battlefield conversation into a narrative on the problems faced by leaders such as Arjuna and the solution provided by Krishna from a perspective that is both compelling and contemporary. This conversation between Arjuna and Krishna is narrated by Sanjaya to the blind king Dhritarashtra, who is eager to know the outcome of the battle; thus the book is a narrative within a narrative.

The Dean of the Harvard Business School, Professor Nitin Nohria, in an informal conversation, described to me the relevance and message of the Gita in a way that cleared any doubt I had about the contemporary relevance of this text. He said, What Emerson is to America and Confucius is to China, Krishna is to India. I have known several Indian CEOs who have made it to the Fortune 100 list to echo the same feeling about Krishnas teachings to Arjuna. I trust this work is relevant for leaders around the world. I hope Krishna inspires leaders of all kinds to lead in their world in a way that makes the world a happier and a safer place for new generations.

This book is the result of a decade-long attempt to transcreate rather than translate the Gita for insights in leadership. The Gitas unrivalled status as a spiritual classic rendered in Sanskrit made this trans-creation a formidable task. A literal translation of the ancient text would create insurmountable roadblocks for todays readers. I have read through more than 200 interpretations of the Gita, ranging from people well-known in the western world, such as Gandhi, Emerson, and Thoreau, to revered authors from the Indian tradition, such as Swami Vivekananda, founder of the Ramakrishna Mission, and Swami Chinmayananda, founder of the Chinmaya Mission, and a wide variety of more contemporary authors.

From my research I have presented 18 sutras from the Gita. Each sutra serves as a cognitive unit or a chapter title that compresses the message of the whole chapter. The word sutra literally means a thread (as in a thread that weaves the beads of a necklace together) that combines different subthemes of a chapter as a unified whole. In well-known Indian texts such as the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali or Vatsayanas Kama Sutra, the word sutra denotes a short aphoristic statement that holds the attention of the reader or listener to the essence of the texts message. In Buddhist texts, the oral teachings of the Buddha were recorded in the form of sutras. This served as a device for the reader to memorize the text with greater ease.

The Sanskrit word sukta, which means well spoken or good news, according to some scholars has the same meaning conveyed by the word sutra. This has the same import as the word Gospel, which refers to Christs teachings. I have done the best I could to present the good news that Krishna delivers to Arjuna in the midst of the battlefield. I have taken the liberty to recreate the message of the Gita so as to make it more communicative to contemporary audiences around the world. In this, I believe, I have been able to glean 18 key messages of the Gita without diluting the core of its status as a sacred text. In short, I have not traded reverence for relevance.

The 18 sutras of the Bhagavad Gita have deep philosophical as well as practical implications for leaders of the third millennium. In this book, Krishna literally guides Arjuna and indeed all leaders like Arjuna through the ABCs of leadership. Here, A represents Authenticity or truth, which is the core value of leaders; B stands for Being, which is the raw material for becoming a leader; and C stands for Convergence, which a leader achieves between his current reality and his goal, or between a problem and its solution. Indeed, as a text, the Bhagavad Gita does not separate the problem from the solution. Arjuna, a leader-in-the-making, discovers the breakthrough solution to lifes most persistent problems in the midst of the battlefield. Corporate warriors and leaders who see themselves in this millennial march of evolution of humankind and human-centered organizations may find the message of the Gita truly life-changing.

Timeless Leadership will have served its purpose if the readers of this book find something of relevance to their life and work that is for them both timeless and timely.