"Waste no more time, Arjuna," cried Madhava. "Send your
shaft and slay your wicked enemy." Arjuna's mind was wavering. His hand hesitated to
do what was not chivalrous.
But when Krishna said this, the poet says: "Arjuna accepted this
command of the Lord and sent an arrow which cut and severed the head of the Radheya."
The poet had not the heart to impute this act to Arjuna who was the
embodiment of nobility. It was the Lord Krishna that in cited Arjuna.
To kill Karna when he was vainly trying to raise his chariot out of the
mud in which it had stuck. According to the code of honour and laws of war prevailing
then, it was wholly wrong.
Who could bear the responsibility for breaches of dharma except the
Lord Himself?
The lesson is that it is vanity to hope, through physical violence and
war, to put down wrong.