When the Kaurava and Pandava armies stood before each other on the battlefield of Kurukshetra at the beginning of the Mahabharata war, any logical person would have predicted the Kaurava army to win. Apart from the fact that it had maharathis such as Bhishma, Drona, and Karna, there was also the matter of its huge lead in numbers. In the Mahabharata age, armies were measured in akshauhinis. One akshauhini consisted of 21,870 elephants, 21,870 chariots, 65,610 horses, and 109,350 infantry, totalling 218,700 fighting units. The Kaurava army comprised 11 akshauhinis consisting of over 2.4 million soldiers. The Pandava army, on the other hand, was much smaller—comprising only 7 akshauhinis consisting of over 1.5 million soldiers. The numerical advantage the Kauravas had was huge.
The Kauravas were also the more influential of the two as they had a large kingdom and had more allies, compared to the Pandavas, who had been without a kingdom for 13 years. In addition, there was another factor that would have certainly resulted in defeat for the Pandavas, though it was not known at the start of the war. Arjuna, the greatest warrior on the Pandava side, was having doubts about the ethics of fighting a war against his teachers, grandfather, and cousins. Without any consideration for what would happen to the Pandava army prospects in the war without him, he was secretly preparing to lay down arms and retreat from the war. Due to all these factors, a Pandava win in the war was highly unlikely, if not impossible. What converted a potential Pandava defeat into a victory was their allegiance to dharma and the resultant interventions of the divine in their favour.
Before the start of the war, when both sides were trying to gather as many allies as possible, both Arjuna and Duryodhana had gone to Dvaraka to persuade Sri Krishna to be on their side. Sri Krishna gave Arjuna the choice to take either his entire army or himself in a non-combatant role. Arjuna’s decision to choose the latter changed the entire course of the war. In his place, Duryodhana would have chosen the army, for it would have given him an advantage in terms of numbers. But the Pandavas preferred to have divine support. When Arjuna had his moment of confusion and indecision, Sri Krishna shared wisdom with him in the form of the Bhagavad Gita to end his escapist attitude and bring him back to a warrior’s duty. Additionally, in tackling Drona and Karna, Sri Krishna’s advice played a crucial role. So, it makes sense to adhere to dharma to have the divine on our side, because we never know in what ways it may intervene to make our endeavour successful.