A Critical Review of V K Ahuja, Krishna and Mediation (National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam 2023) 200 pp, ISBN 978-81-954276-3-5

I. The Provocation of a Thesis

Can mythology legislate? Can theology mediate? are the divine missteps of a god, documented in a 5,000-year-old epic, a lesson to twenty-first-century judges that Hart, Fuller, and Dworkin would have failed to teach them? Professor V K Ahuja, Vice Chancellor of the National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam and Senior Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi, responds to these questions in the affirmative, with qualification and consequence in Krishna and Mediation. Professor Upendra Baxi, whose foreword provides some of the book's most astute commentary, notes that while Indian mediators often invoke divine origins for their work, Ahuja's work is one of the “first books to systematically study the celestial origins of the theory and practice of mediation in India”.¹ That is a measured and accurate claim. The text is a curious hybrid: legal history, comparative jurisprudence, spiritual biography, and policy critique.

II. The Architecture of the Argument

The book contains eight chapters. In Chapter 1, we are introduced to the distinction between "conflict" (genus) and "dispute" (species), grounded, in turn, in the principle of “yataḥ kṛṣṇas tato dharmo yato dharmas tato jayaḥ” (where there is Krishna, there is dharma; where there is dharma, there is victory), as laid down in the Mahabharata , a verse that Ahuja identifies correctly and provocatively as the embedded jurisprudential motto of the Supreme Court of India itself.
Chapter 2 surveys modern mediation theory with admirable density. Citing Vikram Bakshi & Ors v Sonia Khosla (Dead) by Lrs², Salem Advocate Bar Association, Tamil Nadu v Union of India³, and Moti Ram (D) Tr Lrs & Anr v Ashok Kumar & Anr⁴, the author traces the jurisprudence of confidentiality, voluntariness, party autonomy, and transformative outcomes. He finds these not as novelties of Anglo-American process theory but as qualities already latent in the classical ideals of madhyasth (the disinterested third-party facilitator explicitly invoked in Chapter 6, verse 9 of the Gita.
Chapter 3 catalogues the Solah Kala (sixteen qualities) of Lord Krishna and maps each quality onto the profile of an ideal contemporary mediator: daya (compassion); dhairya (patience); kshama (forgiveness); nyaya (justice); nirapeksha (impartiality); and niraskata (detachment ). Initially presented as piety, this chapter reveals, on closer inspection, an intricate argument: that the character traits of a successful mediator were not formulated by Western ADR theorists, but by Sanskrit cosmology thousands of years ago.
Chapter 4, the heart of the book, meticulously reconstructs Lord Krishna' s use of Mediation in Hastinapur in an attempt to resolve the conflict between the warring brothers. Ahuja does not read the incident as mythology but as a playbook of mediator conduct: pre-mediation caucusing with Pandavas (obtaining informed consent), refusal of Duryodhana's hospitality (avoiding appearance of bias), escalation from pure mediation to conciliation when the first proposal failed (offering five villages in compromise), public display of impartiality, and finally, termination when there was an absence of good faith.
Chapters 5 and 6 situate mediation in international and domestic law, respectively, tracing the Singapore Convention on Mediation (United Nations Convention on International Settlement Agreements Resulting from Mediation 2018), the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Mediation 2018, and India's domestic journey from Section 89 of the Civil Procedure Code 1908 to the Mediation Bill 2021. Chapter 7 confronts the 50-million-case pendency crisis, invoking Hussainara Khatoon v Home Secretary, State of Bihar on the constitutional status of the right to a speedy trial⁵. Finally, Chapter 8 serves as a powerful call to action for every pillar of the justice system, exhorting lawyers to become champions of mediation by advising clients to choose it over litigation, acting as ethical facilitators, and drafting clear settlement agreements to shift from an adversarial mindset to collaborative problem-solving; urging policymakers and the executive to create a “vibrant ecosystem” by building infrastructure, promoting awareness, and prioritizing the Mediation Act, 2023 and other legislative measures to institutionalize this indigenous method; encouraging judges and the judiciary to act as enablers by proactively referring cases to mediation, viewing it as an essential ally rather than a rival in delivering "fairness beyond legal justice" and clearing the massive backlog of pending cases; and directing law schools and educators to "start from the beginning" by not only teaching mediation but also establishing "Mediation Clinics" for hands-on practice, thereby sensitizing future advocates to the problem of pendency and instilling a positive, solution-oriented approach from the very start of their legal education.

III. What the Book Gets Decisively Right

The book's most original and argumentative contribution is its claim that Lord Krishna's failure to successfully mediate the conflict between the Kauravas and Pandavas is jurisprudentially relevant. Ahuja refers to former Chief Justice T S Thakur's quip – “If you fail, it does not make a difference as even Lord Krishna had failed in his attempt”⁶ and former Chief Justice N V Ramana's statement: “Imagine how these kingdoms would have prospered if the mediation had succeeded.”⁷ Both judicial quotations are invoked not for rhetorical flourish but as authoritative proofs for the proposition that the act of mediation itself has normative weight, regardless of success or failure.
In Gita Chapter 3, verse 21, Krishna tells Arjuna: “Whatever actions great persons perform, common people follow.” For Ahuja, this is not just ethical philosophy but a theory of norm-generation: Krishna knows he will fail because his attempt at mediation is precedent-setting, and it structurally compels future litigants to mediate. Failure is therefore pedagogically more effective than success because it demonstrates that the duty to use mediation (nishkama karma - action without desire for its fruits) does not depend on success. The Gita's teaching of “karmanyevadhikaraste- you have the right to act but not to the fruits of the action”- becomes a philosophical justification for mandatory pre-litigation mediation according to Ahuja.⁸
Additionally, the work shows an unanticipated confluence with Joseph P. Folger and Robert A. Baruch Bush's notion of transformative mediation. Bush and Folger contend that “mediation's greatest value lies not only in its potential to find solutions to people's problems but also in its capacity to change people themselves for the better,” as Ahuja observes (p. 59). By using this viewpoint, the book emphasises that mediation is a transformative process that fosters interpersonal connections, mutual understanding, and personal development rather than merely a means of settling conflicts.
The reconstruction in Chapter 4 is one of the most forensic reconstructions in the literature of a classical Indian mediation. The observation that Lord Krishna's refusal to eat in the home of Duryodhana was a gesture of impartiality ("while going for mediation, it is unethical to accept hospitality from one of the parties") does not read like romanticism but like an ethics lesson for today's mediators, which has not lost its normative weight under institutional frameworks such as those contemplated by the Mediation Act, 2023. The book also makes a rather covert historical claim: that the adversarial system is a colonial, and not universal legacy, and that the recovery of mediation in India is not modernisation but recovery. The fact that the British courts were constituted in 1775 and that this "marked the erosion of community-based indigenous dispute resolution mechanisms in India" is no longer a subversive proposition - it has the support of former Chief Justice Ramana in a Summit address. Still, Ahuja embeds it into a wider civilisational narrative that spans the Treta Yuga, colonialism and the Mediation Act, 2023.⁹ This civilisational arc is the book's grand structure.

IV. Critical Lacunae and Analytical Tensions

There are significant shortcomings in the book. The most glaring is methodological: Ahuja makes powerful historical claims - especially about the universality of the Solah Kala framework and the analogy between ancient Indian panchayat procedure and modern mediation theory - without engaging the historiography of Dharma shastra. The scholarship of Patrick Olivelle on the Artha Shastra, Timothy Lubin and Donald Davis on Hindu law, and Rosane Rocher on dharma, whom Ahuja mentions parenthetically, are not brought into a consistent methodology for the reading of ancient texts as legal documents.
This creates a vulnerability. The argument that the Gita Chapter 6, verse 9's reference to madhyasth constitutes evidence that "mediation was an inseparable part and parcel not only of indigenou s justice delivery system, but also of Indian culture" is suggestive rather than demonstrative. A single reference, in a highly respected source, needs to be backed up by a comparative study of Dharma shastra jurisprudence, archaeological or epigraphic evidence of mediation practice, as well as the work of such scholars such as Kane and Lingat, who have studied classical Indian legal procedure. This book is aware of these sources - it refers to Kane's History of Dharma sastra - but it does not make full use of them.¹⁰
A second issue relates to the distinction between mediation and conciliation. Ahuja correctly points out that the terms are used interchangeably in several jurisdictions and in the UNCITRAL Model Law of 2002 (p. 130), and correctly identifies when (in the Hastinapur episode) Krishna transforms from mediator to conciliator - when he suggests the five villages. But the author does not explore the consequences of this role fluidity for the formal structure of the Mediation Act, 2023, which draws a distinction. This is a missed opportunity, given the author's evident command of both the classical episode and the contemporary legislative framework.
The chapter on the Russia-Ukraine war (Chapter 5) raises geopolitical ambition that is not fully realised. The proposition that India should take on "the character of Krishna" in mediating the conflict is normative but not analytical. The distinctive features of international inter-state mediation (regulated by Article 2(3) and Article 33 of the UN Charter¹¹ and by considerations of state diplomacy that are not present in the Mahabharata episode) and intra-party civil dispute mediation is not considered. The resort to India's G20 Presidency as an opportunity for mediation is timely, but it needs to be more engaged with the law of international mediation and the doctrine of good offices to be convincing.
Although Krishna and Mediation is a work of true scholarly uniqueness, its implementation occasionally falls short of its goals . However, its main argument that the characteristics of the ideal modern mediator had previously been theorized in classical Indian law, and that Lord Krishna's mediation mission at Hastinapur is the ur-text of contemporary ADR theory, is both tenable and important.

References

1. Upendra Baxi, 'Foreword' in V K Ahuja, Krishna and Mediation (National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam 2023) 21. ↩
2. Vikram Bakshi & Ors v Sonia Khosla (Dead) by Lrs (2014) 15 SCC 80. ↩
3. Salem Advocate Bar Association, Tamil Nadu v Union of India (2005) 6 SCC 344. ↩
4. Moti Ram (D) Tr Lrs & Anr v Ashok Kumar & Anr (Decided 7 December 2010) ↩
5. Hussainara Khatoon v Home Secretary, State of Bihar 1979 SCR (3) 532. ↩
6. Justice T S Thakur, quoted in Ahuja (n 1) 122; 'Lack of Professionalism by Arbitrators Bringing Bad Name to the Country: CJI Thakur' DNA India (2016) ↩
7. Justice N V Ramana, 'Mediation for Everyone: Realising Mediation's Potential in India' (India-Singapore Mediation Summit, 2021) quoted in Ahuja (n 1) 121; see also Thyagarajan Narendran, 'Imagine How Kingdoms Would Have Prospered Had Lord Krishna Succeeded in Mediating Kurukshetra War: CJI NV Ramana' (LawBeat) ↩
8. Bhagavad Gita Ch 2, v 47. ↩
9. Justice N V Ramana, 'Mediation for Everyone' (n 7), quoted in Ahuja (n 1) 67. ↩
10. P V Kane, History of Dharmasastra (1946) Vol 3, 280, cited in Ahuja (n 1) 34. ↩
11. UN Charter, arts 2(3), 33; United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982, art 279, cited in Ahuja (n 1) 128. ↩