Structural Imbalance in the Mahabarata
The Mahabarata is an ancient Indian epic poem that discusses the Kurukshetra war, a massive and bloody conflict between the Pandavas and Kauravas over the throne of Hastinapura. The Pandavas were a group of 5 brothers with superhuman capabilities, and the Kauravas are a group of 100 brothers who are framed as the antagonists in the poem. The Pandavas and Kauravas are cousins as their fathers are brothers. They always had a bitter rivalry even at a young age, often due to jealousy of each others’ abilities. Through a series of events caused by their rivalry and mutual hatred, things would escalate into a large scale war over the throne.
There is a major character in this epic named Bheeshma, who is the older half-brother of the grandfather of both groups. Bheeshma’s father wanted to marry the daughter of a fisherman, but the fisherman would only accept if he could guarantee his descendants would be the ones to ascend the throne. As a selfless act towards his father, he vowed to never assume the throne, always serve the throne, and never marry, ensuring the fishermen’s descendants (who would be the Pandavas and Kauravas) would be the rulers of the kingdom. This allowed his father to marry the girl, though with his heart heavy with grief over his son’s sacrifice. This sacrifice, as well as his virtue and abilities in combat drew admiration from across the subcontinent, and he would continue to serve the throne loyally. He becomes a major mentor figure to both the Pandavas and Kauravas and thus forms a strong positive bond with both of groups. He loved his grandnephews on both sides and they both loved him as well. However at the dawn of the war, Bheeshma is forced to side with the Kauravas and serve as their commander, due to his oath to always serve the king, who at the time was the father of the Kauravas. This would be followed by his eventual death and the Pandavas’ victory.
We learned that structurally balanced graphs can be divided into two subsets such that all nodes node in each sub-graph are allies, but everyone in one sub-graph is enemies with everyone in the second sub-graph. If you illustrate the relationships between the Kuru family as a network of alliances, you would observe positive relations between the all the Pandavas and positive relationships between all the Kauravas. In addition, all Pandavas would have a negative relationship with all Kauravas. However, the node representing Bheeshma would have a positive relationship with both Pandavas and Kauravas. Thus, Bheeshma is a link in the family tree that prevents the graph of relationships involving the Kauravas and Pandavas from being structurally balanced. This link also has a lot of weight as he has strong affection for all Kauravas and all Pandavas, which total to 105 direct connections. Things did not end well among the two groups and Bheeshma was eventually forced to pick a side which is an implication of a social network lacking structural balance.
Resource:
https://aeon.co/essays/the-indian-epic-mahabharata-imparts-a-dark-nuanced-moral-vision