International Women’s Day.
Let us remember the great women from the Great Indian History.
Queen Kunti was the wife of King Pandu and mother of five illustrious sons known as the Pandavas. Kunti was gifted with beauty and character; she rejoiced in dharma and was great in her vows. She also possessed an unusual benediction that she could invoke any demigod and by him obtain progeny. Soon her husband died of a curse and Madri, another wife of Pandu gave her up life. Thus five Pandavas were left in the care of Kunti. She struggled a lot and raised the Pandavas in spite of the hurdles by Duryodhana and his relatives.
Kunti was Lord Krishna’s aunt (He had incarnated as the son of her brother Vasudeva), yet despite this conventional tie with the Lord, she fully understood His exalted and divine identity. She knew full well that He had descended from His abode in the spiritual world to rid the earth of demoniac military powers and reestablish righteousness. Just before the great war, Krishna had revealed all this to her son Arjuna in words immortalized in the Bhagavad-gita.
After Mahabharata War, just before Krishna was about to leave Hastinapura, Kunti prayed to Krishna not to leave. Kunti’s words—the simple and illuminating outpourings of the soul of a great and saintly woman devotee—reveal both the deepest transcendental emotions of the heart and the most profound philosophical and theological penetrations of the intellect. Her words are words of glorification impelled by a divine love steeped in wisdom.