Krishna is the god supposed to be the most popular in contemporary Hinduism. He is certainly the best known abroad because of the Krishna Consciousness movement, better known as the Hare Krishnas. But Krishna is not any one god we are talking about. Like the Hinduism that spawned him, Krishna is an umbrella term of reference for a multitude of gods all going under the same name. There are many Krishnas, and all of them together add up to a very confusing package indeed. People may think that they are talking about the same Krishna, but the subject matter is so various and so contradictory that no consensus is possible. That would have delighted Krishna by the way, the Classic Trickster God, and famed for being naughtily ambiguous in all that he said and did. No other form of godhood in India has evoked so much adoration and so much condemnation, sometimes simultaneously. Krishna is therefore not so much a god as an ongoing mythical, social, cultural and psychological phenomenon in the Life of India.

To begin with is the name. Even many devout Hindus are unaware that his name literally means 'Black'. His name describes the hue of his skin, dark as the night, and a perpetual embarrassment and discomfort for an India obsessed with fair skin. It is a curious phenomenon that Ancient India had no trouble with the concept that a black man may have been the supremely handsome male of all time, but from medieval times onwards the whitewashing, in some cases as in murals literally, began. His skin is described as deep blue, is explained as the result of a venomous snakebite with the poison flooding his system and turning the skin the characteristic blue. In the many movies and mythological serials made about him, they do not even bother with such rationalizations, they cast a fair skinned actor and that is that. The ability of the Trickster to get under the skin and disturb the comfortable assumptions of people is never clearer than in India's many delusional measures to escape from the reality of the name Krishna, which means 'Black'.

But who this Black One may have been, is a matter of even greater confusion. The earliest reference we have to him is in the Chandayoga Upanishad, where Krishna, son of Devaki, as our hero is, is described as a great scholar. It is curious to note that the first reference we ever have of this god refers to his intellectual accomplishments and not, as is usual, to his saving powers of strength. Most scholars are agreed that Krishna in his present form was not a Vedic hero but an amalgamation of local culture heroes with the great character of that name in the epic, the Mahabharatha. He seems to be an impossible mix of defender of the myth of pastoral, an agriculturist strongman, an urbane intellectual and prime hero of the martial races. Was he a local god who was too strong to be ignored and assimilated in Hinduism's famous 'include and transcend' maneuver? Was he a great warrior prince promoted to deific status over the ages? Was he a great religious reformer and unifier, pointing the way forward and revitalizing a faith that was already showing signs of decrepitude? Was he a primal nature god, cheerfully contemptuous of the norms of so-called civilized society, indulging in bacchanalian ascents to the divine energy in all of us? Was he a great proponent of love being sufficient, and caste and theology could fall by the wayside. Was he an advocate of realpolitik and necessary Machiavellian ruthlessness? Was he an adorable Puer Aeternus, Eternal Youth god, for whom all of the above would have been beside the point? It is gratifying to be able to give a categorical answer.

We don't know.

Krishna is Krishna - all of these and none of them.

It must be understood that the myths and stories about Krishna are a work in progress; they are being constantly added to, even down to this very day. Research is constantly throwing up new twists to this never-ending tale from the various regions of the country. It's to be noted that the intellectual and heroic scale of Krishna was first delineated in the Mahabharatha and that has remained practically unaltered in essentials in future versions. What grew to gigantic proportion are the tales dealing with his childhood and his many amours, apart from a host of sundry battles that he, as an avatar of Vishnu is mandatorily obligated to fight. As the stature of Krishna grew, he is even supposed to have fought and defeated Shiva, whereas in earlier tales he is, like all other avatars of Vishnu, a devotee of Shiva. Krishna is also celebrated in dance and music to a scale unprecedented for any other form of divinity in the world. The story line of Krishna as it is accepted today is somewhat like this. He was born to a nobleman in the city of Mathura. His uncle, cousin to his mother Devaki, was the great and evil Kansa who had deposed the king Ugrasena, his father, out of his eagerness to enjoy the throne. (In retrospect let it be said that Kansa may have had a case. Krishna died at the age of 116 and Ugrasena was still alive then and still ruling over the throne Krishna had restored him to!) Krishna's father was named Vasudeva and except for a famous exploit in spiriting his newly born son out of their prison he was not particularly notable. For Kansa had put his sister and her husband under house arrest, terrified by an oracle that proclaimed she would bear his destroyer. In spite of his appalling cruelty, slaughtering all the babies born to them, the Destined Slayer manages to be saved and is brought up in the village of Gokula by Nanda and Yashoda, the most famous foster parents in Indian history. Vasudeva's other wife used to live in Gokula too and she had an older boy called Balarama, who grew to be Krishna's closest friend. Of course, in course of time the secret was out but they had become as close as brothers anyway.

This spiriting away of the savoir who would overthrow the tyrant has many parallels with Jesus's story and then Kansa does a Herod in sending out a demon slayer of babies named Putana. Krishna performs his first miraculous act when he suckles the evil female and literally sucks her life out. By then she had managed a one-person version of the slaughter of the innocents on her own. The many miracles that Krishna performed in childhood are impossible to recount here. With each act of valor, Kansa's despair grew and he tried wilder and wilder schemes to kill this strange boy. At the age of twelve, Krishna had enough of this constant persecution and he traveled boldly into Mathura where he performed feats of strength and then fell upon his evil uncle and beat him to death with an elephant tusk.