With the US-Iran conflict, we are witnessing powerful nations exercising their strength with little restraint. These wars have caused immense suffering without any clear or justifiable purpose. This sparks the questions—is a strong person justified in using power however they see fit? Is might always right, or is there a morally better way? The Spiderman motto is worth recalling here: with great power comes great responsibility. Our epics teach the same principle through the story of Hanuman.
Hanuman, being the son of Vayu, the Wind God, was immensely powerful from birth. Things that were impossible for even grown-ups to do were literally child’s play for him. He once mistook the Sun for a ripe fruit and flew into the sky to try to swallow it. To prevent this calamity, Indra struck Hanuman with his thunderbolt. Hanuman fell onto a mountain summit, and his left cheekbone was shattered. Thus, he received the name Hanuman. In Sanskrit, hanu means cheekbone and man means disfigured, so Hanuman means the one with a disfigured cheekbone. Vayu became deeply upset and withdrew all air from the three worlds. This caused immense suffering for all beings. To placate Vayu, Lord Shiva revived Hanuman, and gods such as Indra, Varuna, Agni and Brahma granted him various boons.
Instead of learning restraint from this episode, Hanuman began using his immense powers for childish pranks. He would go to the hermitages of rishis and disrupt their sacrifices by throwing away the ritual materials. The rishis patiently tolerated his boyish antics for a long time because they did not want to be too strict with him. Eventually, however, their patience was exhausted, and they cursed him to forget his powers, remembering them only when they were truly needed and when someone reminded him of them.
This occasion came when the vanaras were searching for Sita. On learning that she was being held captive by Ravana in Lanka, which was a hundred yojanas across the ocean, the vanaras became demoralised because none of them was confident enough in their powers to attempt such a huge leap.
Old bear Jambavanta, who was also part of the search party, was the only one old enough to remember Hanuman’s powers and the curse because of which he had forgotten them. When he reminded him of his powers, Hanuman confidently asserted that he would not only leap to Lanka and back but, if required, bring back the entire Lanka with Sita in it! This shows us that the greater one’s strength is, the greater the restraint is needed to be imposed upon it. Strength without restraint is not power, but recklessness.