Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh's poem "Bhūl-Ghalatī" (Mistake-Error) stands as a profound meditation on the intricate relationship between power, consciousness, and resistance. The poem opens with the striking image of "Mistake-Error" seated upon the throne of the heart, clad in armour, with weapons gleaming and eyes flashing like sharp stones. This is not merely a description of political tyranny but a psychological and moral diagnosis of how power establishes itself within human consciousness.
The title itself is significant: "bhūl" suggests a lapse of judgement, an inability to recognise something morally significant, while "ghalatī" carries a stronger sense of wrong judgement and its consequences. Together, they suggest not an isolated lapse but a process in which initial failure of awareness develops into faulty judgement and ultimately moral failure. Muktibodh uses this semantic doubleness to suggest that power is sustained not by external coercion alone but by the countless small lapses, misjudgements, and compromises through which individuals and society gradually construct its armour.
The poem presents a court scene where power manifests through multiple dimensions: the enthroned "Mistake-Error," the ranks of mansabdars, poets, Sufis, scholars, and commanders who stand silent, and a wounded prisoner in handcuffs who dares to meet the sovereign gaze with his own eyes. This tableau becomes a metaphor for the relationship between power and society that extends far beyond any particular historical moment. The court is not merely a royal building; it is an ideological structure of power held together by social institutions, traditions, positions, prestige, and fear. The architecture of the court—its pillars, arches, throne, and bastion—gives spatial form to hierarchy and discipline, organising behaviour and making the hierarchy of power visible at every moment.
What makes Muktibodh's vision particularly complex is his refusal to separate external power from internal psychological states. The throne upon which "Mistake-Error" sits is not in a palace but within the heart. This suggests that power first appears as an external institution and then gradually becomes part of the human being's inner structure. The armour that "Mistake-Error" wears is fashioned from "my weaknesses and yours," implying that oppressive power survives not because it is inherently invincible but because it is sustained by the complicity, fear, and compromises of the society over which it presides. The poem thus moves beyond a critique of authoritarian rulers to examine how power infiltrates consciousness, shapes desires, and becomes accepted as natural and normal.
The figure of the wounded prisoner embodies the possibility of resistance. Though his body bears the marks of violence—"long red stains glistening across his body, blood flowing from them"—he remains morally autonomous. He wears handcuffs but his gaze remains fearless, hurling "blue flashes of lightning" at the sovereign. His "conscience" has been brought captive, yet power has failed to possess his consciousness. This reversal is central to Muktibodh's ethical vision: the imprisoned body and the free spirit stand against the free body and the imprisoned consciousness. The prisoner's declaration of "rejection" (nāmanzūr) becomes the language of resistance that requires no elaborate speech, only refusal. When he says "self-determined," he declares that his consciousness does not depend upon the approval of external power.
Against this figure of resistance stands the collective silence of the court. The mansabdars, poets, Sufis, scholars, and commanders all remain silent. Muktibodh's question here is directed not solely at the autocratic ruler but at those who possessed the capacity to speak, knowledge, prestige, and social standing, yet chose silence at the decisive moment. The bringing together of Al-Ghazali, Avicenna, and Al-Biruni is a deliberate poetic conflation from the point of view of historical chronology; they did not all belong to the same court or historical period. Muktibodh gathers different intellectual traditions into a symbolic court to ask: if a knowledgeable person falls silent before power, what ethical purpose does that knowledge serve? This silence is not merely the result of fear; it also signifies intellectual and moral failure. Power does not always require violence; at times, silence itself becomes its most effective instrument of discipline.
The poem then moves towards the possibility of awakening. A "strange groan" breaks out "from among us," followed by "I too suddenly came to my senses." The poet does not place himself outside the crowd as a detached observer; he is part of the very court he describes. His consciousness emerges from within the same collective captivity. This refusal to separate self-examination from social criticism marks the poem's ethical complexity. The individual participates in the making of power and then becomes its victim; he fears power, is fascinated by its pomp, compromises with it, and allows its gaze to take up residence within himself.
Beyond the bastion of the court, someone reaches the far side and disappears among dark valleys and dense trees. This nameless figure, in some unknown region of uncharted passes, amid the haze of golden radiant reflections of truth, is gathering an army. The poem concludes with the promise that "the secret golden inscription of our own heart will emerge and become terrible in its force." This "secret golden inscription" is a powerful metaphor for Muktibodh's moral imagination: there is, hidden within us, an inscription of truth that has not yet revealed itself. It has been suppressed but not destroyed. Power may lay waste to the settlements of the heart, but it cannot completely erase that secret inscription engraved within it.
Read through the lenses of various theoretical frameworks, the poem reveals its multilayered significance. Through Michel Foucault's concepts of power and surveillance, the court becomes a metaphor for the wider apparatus of power that exists outside the individual while simultaneously establishing its dwelling place within. Through Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony, the poem reveals how power establishes itself within people's consciousness, desires, social aspirations, and sense of prestige. Through Hannah Arendt's concept of the "banality of evil," the silence of the court becomes a moral crisis in which ordinary people, through blind obedience to established authority, become complicit in grave acts of wrongdoing without engaging in moral reflection. Through Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis, "bhūl" becomes an active structure of suppressed moral consciousness, guilt, and self-denial, where what has been excluded from consciousness becomes the ruling power within. Through Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history, "Alamgir" ceases to be merely a historical individual and becomes a metaphor for the active relationship between history, memory, and power in the present.
Ultimately, "Bhūl-Ghalatī" does not end with a declaration of the destruction of external power but with the possibility of the awakening of conscience. The poem's true antagonist is not another king but the power that turns the human being against himself from within. When the "secret golden inscription" emerges, the individual ceases to be merely an object to be watched beneath the gaze of power; he becomes a subject capable of looking, recognising, rejecting, and resisting. This transformation constitutes the central achievement of Muktibodh's discourse on power, inner conflict, and resistance.
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*Professor and former Head (Retd.), Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad. This is the abridged version of the author's original paper
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