There is a scene in the Mahābhārata that feels hauntingly relevant today. Exhausted and parched, the Pandava brothers come upon a shimmering lake guarded by a crane. One by one, the brothers ignore the crane’s warning not to drink before answering its questions.
Each falls dead by the water’s edge. Only Yudhiṣṭhira, the eldest, stops to listen.
The crane asks questions about justice, humility and duty. Yudhiṣṭhira responds with patience and reflection. His willingness to engage, to be questioned, restores the life of his brothers.
The story, known as the Yakṣa Prashna, is often read as a lesson in duty and moral order. Yet a closer reading unsettles that simplicity: a figure from the margins—a crane, not a king—holds power accountable. The crane reverses the expected order of power and knowledge, showing that wisdom does not belong solely to those at the center but often emerges from those who are rendered peripheral.
Across democracies today, that humility before questioning feels endangered. In both India and the United States, leaders treat inquiry as an attack.
Reporters are branded “anti-national.” Critics are silenced. Press briefings turn into monologues.
The urge to suppress questioning is the modern equivalent of drinking from the lake without listening to the crane — and what dies first is not the questioner but the conscience of the community.
A Conversation by the Well
Another story of power meeting the margins also begins beside water.
In John 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman drawing water at midday—a woman doubly marginalized by gender and ethnicity. She initiates the exchange: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”
Rather than silencing her, Jesus engages. The conversation flows between social boundaries and spiritual thirst, between history and hope. In the end, it is the woman—not the religious leaders or the disciples—who carries the conversation forward, becoming a witness to what she has encountered.
Like Yudhiṣṭhira before the crane, Jesus chooses to listen and learn through dialogue. Both moments unfold around water, a place of need and revelation, where those considered “less powerful” are unafraid to raise questions and speak back to power.
Faith as Accountability
Read together, these texts offer an interreligious reflection on accountability and humility. Yudhiṣṭhira’s strength lies not in his royal kingly status but in his willingness to engage the questions of a crane—a creature easily dismissed. Jesus’ strength lies not in asserting religious authority, but in conversing with a woman whom society had silenced.
In both narratives, power is redefined. It is not control or certainty, but the capacity to listen. Both Yudhiṣṭhira and Jesus model a leadership grounded in relational wisdom, a recognition that truth emerges through dialogue, not decree.
This stands in sharp contrast to many of today’s leaders, who confuse defensiveness with conviction. When those in power become allergic to questions, whether from a journalist, a citizen, or a woman at a well, the social fabric begins to unravel.
The Art of Listening
In a world where religion is too often used to divide, these stories invite us to treat listening as a sacred interreligious and democratic practice.
The crane and the Samaritan woman each occupy spaces of marginality, yet both speak with authority that unsettles the powerful. Their questions remind us that truth and democracy depend on dialogue, not dominance.
Listening across boundaries of faith, gender, and power is not weakness; it is an act of courage that keeps communities alive. It is what sustains dharma (duty) in the Mahābhārata and justice in the gospel.
When we refuse to listen to the voices at the edge and the ones who question, we become like the fallen brothers at the lake: powerful perhaps, but spiritually and politically parched. In a democracy, the people themselves are the cranes and the woman at the well—the ones who must keep asking, challenging, and reminding the powerful that authority without accountability is an illusion.
To listen, however inconvenient, is to let conscience, justice, and democracy breathe again.
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Dr. Sharon Jacob is a board member of Progressive Christianity and the Associate Professor of New Testament and Postcolonial Studies at Claremont School of Theology. Her research and writing explore the intersections of postcolonial theory, affect, and sacred texts, with a focus on interreligious dialogue and justice-oriented readings of scripture. This essay expands on themes first explored in an earlier reflection on the Yakṣa Prashna, now reimagined through interreligious and democratic perspectives.
