ASOKA: A Very Impressive Indian Film

Every semester in my Eastern Religions class, I speak briefly about King Ashoka in India. He won a series of wars and become the Mauryan Emperor. Afterwards, he converted to Buddhism.

I just watched a beautiful Indian movie about his life called ASOKA. (There's an accent on the S that makes it an 'sh' sound). It takes a little getting used to seeing the Indian musical productions inserted here and there, but they are lovely, too. But the story is remarkable. Ashoka garners our sympathy in the beginning. He's a terrific warrior-athlete who is also very handsome and charming. But his character grows darker and darker as time goes on. We are drawn into his dark quest as a kind of Clint Eastwood revenge cycle. He has been done wrong, and we appreciate his right to fight back. But with success, he goes over the top. There's no end to his thirst for revenge, and by the end, the whole world is his enemy. He tells us that he doesn't care if he destroys everything. There's a beautiful love story in the midst of this that is, at first, the tragic cause of his undoing, and then, later, is the cure that brings him back to his senses. We don't get to see the results of his conversion. I wish that we could have. Buddhism was established in India by his conversion in the 3rd-century BC. I would love to have seen how that developed. But this movie helps us understand why the powerful emperor might have grown tired of war, and how he might have come to see the folly of his ways. Personally, I was very moved by the tragic dimension of this story.