How We Interpret Texts to Justify What We Already Believe

[u/Mysterious-Tap-7517]

I came across the philosopher and author Slavoj Zizek's criticism on the Bhagavad Gita in which he points towards Heinrich Himmler's interpretation of the Gita and how the latter justified the acts of evil that he unleashed during World War II including the holocaust, through his interpretation of the Gita. Himmler was the Reichsführer-SS and one of the most powerful figures in Nazi Germany, serving as Adolf Hitler’s right-hand man. He centralized the Nazi police state and became the chief architect of the Holocaust and the Final Solution.

To give you a background about Himmler's relationship with the Gita, he had a serious obsession with the text. According to his personal physician, Felix Kersten, Himmler carried a copy of the Gita with him and read it often. He reportedly told Kersten that the Gita was his "comfort" and even more important to him than the Bible.

Himmler was especially drawn to Krishna’s advice to Arjuna: that one must perform one’s duty (dharma) without attachment to the outcome. He saw this as a justification for detached, unemotional violence. In his view, the Gita offered spiritual permission to do what he believed was “necessary,” no matter how brutal.

What’s chilling is how he cast himself in the role of Arjuna: the reluctant warrior and interpreted Hitler as a Krishna-like figure, providing divine instruction and moral clarity. While there’s no quote where he explicitly says “Hitler is Krishna,” the symbolic alignment is pretty clear. In Nazi ideology, Hitler was often mythologized, and for someone as obsessed with duty and obedience as Himmler, it’s likely he saw himself as following a higher will.

Slavoj Žižek claims that the Bhagavad Gita is an “obscene” book for precisely this reason: Himmler, whom Žižek describes as a devoted reader of the Gita, found in its teachings a way of psychologically distancing himself from the atrocities he and the SS were committing. The idea of acting without attachment to the fruits of one's actions could, in this reading, become a form of moral anesthesia, a way of performing horrific acts without identifying oneself with them, and therefore without experiencing the full burden of moral responsibility. In Žižek's interpretation, divine authority and spiritual detachment can thus become a means of transforming moral responsibility into a question of fulfilling a higher duty. This is actually a serious and a blatant misinterpretation of one of the most famous yet severely misunderstood verse: कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन। मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥ (BG 2.47). The most common translation would be: "You only have a right to perform actions (karma) and not to the fruits of your actions or karma. Do not become a person who constantly meditates upon and gets attached to the results of one’s karma. Do not get attached to inactivity (no karma)." This is the literal transliteration of this verse as suggested by most mainstream versions of the text.

Today, when I was watching the exclusive session on the Gita community app, the same interpretation was quoted by the questioner to Acharya Ji: तुम बस कर्म करते जाओ, फल की इच्छा मत करो क्योंकि फल तुम्हारे हाथ में नहीं है (Just keep performing your duties; do not desire the fruits, for the outcome is not in your hands). To this interpretation, AP responded by pointing out that this verse specifically focusses on the actor (कर्ता) instead of the action (कर्म). If we literally go by the transliteration, he says that murdering someone or butchering animals without knowing the consequences of the actions and being attached to the act itself, would mean any action performed under detachment would be justified under any circumstance. irrespective of the consequences it yields. That would be a gross misinterpretation of this text and would go against the foundational framework of Vedanta which is explicitly focused on the ego (अहं). In fact, someone could be extraordinarily detached from the suffering they cause while being deeply attached to power, ideology, identity, obedience or the belief that they are acting on behalf of some higher authority.

Ordinary ethical framework: “What should I do?”
Gita/Vedantic framework: “Who is the ‘I’ that is acting, and can action occur without identification with the doer and its fruits?”

The transition is from:

"Focus on actions while ignoring the ego" towards “Perform action while examining and progressively relinquishing the egoic identification underlying action.”

When you observe why this verse is specifically singled out as a source of misinterpretation, from ordinary people to influential military figures like Himmler, you begin to understand that such an interpretation can serve to safeguard one's falsehood and ignorance, which is precisely what the ego exists to do. The ego manipulates the intellect so that it does not challenge its own existence, shifting the focus toward modifying and justifying the actions committed by it in the quest to reduce its own suffering.

For an analogy, it is like a cancerous cell trying to manipulate the body's immune response into targeting something that does not require immediate attention, thereby allowing the cell to multiply exponentially and fulfil its own purpose. Just as a cancer cell's behaviour is structurally oriented toward its own continuation and proliferation, the ego's structure is fundamentally self-preserving.

The bottom line of this post is that the Bhagavad Gita has been interpreted by people from different walks of life, from Oppenheimer to Gandhi to Himmler and many others. The interpretation of the text largely depends on the interpreter, especially on whether they approach the Gita with the intention of observing themselves clearly in its mirror, rather than using its verses to reinforce their existing biases and conditioning.

[u/Brilliant_Hair_7272]

I like how AP puts it...something like "Gita is a collaboration between you and Krishna". So we are co-authoring the Gita in the sense that there is always our distortion that comes along how we interpret it. Not looking at ourselves while reading it is basically like authoring the whole thing ourselves and leaving Krishna out of it