Taking a Knee to Take a Stand: An Analysis of The Bhagavad Gita's Application to the Take a Knee Movement

Abstract

Despite there being significant advancements with respect to issues related to racial inequality in America in the past century, minority oppression continues to exist today (e.g. police brutality). To raise awareness of these issues, football and basketball players around the country have been kneeling to the national anthem. In response, President Trump and countless others have lashed back, saying “A football game...is no place to protest,” and that “Numerous players, from different teams, wanted to show their ‘outrage’ at something that most of them are unable to define.” This essay views the virtuousness of the Take a Knee movement, but through an Eastern perspective. The Bhagavad Gita, a poem in which Arjuna, the general of the Panadav army, struggles with the morality of fighting and killing his cousins in war. In response to Arjuna’s crisis, Krishna, Arjuna’s charioteer and the king of another kingdom, discourses to Krishna the ideas of dharma, yoga and samkhya, and the three gunas. These same principles can be applied to the justification and righteousness of the Take a Knee Movement. Because the athletes dissociate their actions from the reward of those actions, work towards equalizing society, while still continuing to fulfill their roles as athletes, the Take a Knee Movement exemplifies righteousness and should continue to raise awareness to some of the greatest problems in America today.