ABSTRACT
This chapter complicates a usual caste reading by situating the episode of Ekalavya and Droṇa – generally viewed as an erasure of subaltern actors and agency through the lens of caste hegemony – within a novel theory of education, involving a focus on the relationship between ‘spontaneous action’ and ‘reflective ethics’, as well as the ‘ethics of presence and absence’. According to Sarukkai, this episode – allegorizing the Mahābhārata itself – can provide an analytical resource regarding the motivation for agency without allowing thematic preponderance to issues of revenge and promise. We have here a picture of learning in the absence of a teacher or where the teacher is presenced iconically – Ekalavya practices in ‘front’ of Droṇa’s idol and ultimately learns through drawing out his own resources, that is, by discovering the teacher in himself. As an allegorical figure for education, Ekalavya thus holds together the tension between teacher/student and presence/absence. Sarukkai also explains the gift of Ekalavya’s thumb on the plane of ‘substitutability of action’, which is seen as effected in the subject through ‘ontological possession’. The taking of the thumb serves as ‘metaphorical merging’ since Ekalavya’s action is Droṇa’s own.
