SHAKUNI.

Shakuni  also known as Saubala , Gandhararaja  and "King of the Kingdom of Subala" was the prince of Gandhara Kingdom in present-day Gandhara, later to become the King after his father's death and one of the main villains in the Hindu epic Mahabharata. He was the brother of Gandhari and hence Duryodhana's maternal uncle. Portrayed as an extremely intelligent but devious man, Shakuni is often credited as the mastermind behind the Kurukshetra war. Shakuni had a son named Uluka.

It is believed that Shakuni was the personification of Dvapara Yuga.

Shakuni was born in Gandhara in modern-day Afghanistan to King Subala. He was a great devotee of Lord Shiva.

It is said that in a military campaign by Bhishma, Gandhara came under attack from Hastinapur. Hastinapur conquered Gandhar, killed the king Achala Suvala, and imprisoned all the male members of his line, saying that line was full of adharma. This included Shakuni and his 100 brothers. Since all of them were sparsely fed one handful of rice for all of them every single day.   in the prison, the family decided that at least one of them could survive and gave all the rice to Shakuni, the most cunning of them all, so that he could live on to take revenge. Eventually, King Subala, bends the knee to make a permanent mark of the injustice. Considered a man of dharma, his family is allowed to live.

Shakuni was unhappy with his sister Gandhari's marriage to Kaurava prince Dhritarashtra. He was especially angry with Bhishma for bringing this proposal as he found it insulting and demeaning, not only because Dhritarashtra was blind, but also because the Kurus had destroyed his line years before. He swore to avenge this insult by slowly destroying Bhishma's clan. He achieved this by poisoning the mind of his volatile nephew Duryodhana into instigating the war with the Pandavas, which destroyed the Kuru line. Thus, he is seen by many as one of the key persons that caused the Kurukshetra War.He was the mastermind in corrupting the relation between sons of Gandhari and Kunti which led to the great war.

Some popular versions of this story focus on Shakuni's anger over Hastinapur. But that version is not present in the original Mahabharata and is found mostly in modern versions of the epic. Likewise, some versions of the story describe Shakuni using the bones of his dead parents to create dice that will never lose him a game, as Shakuni's father's soul enters the dice to make it roll to whatever number Shakuni wanted.

Shakuni is perhaps best known for masterminding the infamous Game of Dice between the Kauravas and the Pandavas. A master of sorcery, Shakuni had his blessed dice which would always follow his will. Unaware of this fact, the Pandavas were defeated in the gambling match. Shakuni encourages Duryodhana, Dushasana, Karna, and the others when they taunt and humiliate the Pandavas.

Shakuni is also one of the masterminds behind the Kurukshetra War. His intentions include his desires a) to avenge the defeat of Gandhara by Hastinapur years before, b) to avenge the torture and murder of his father, King Subala, by Bhishma, and c) to avenge the insult Bhishma made when he insisted on Gandhari's marriage to a blind man. Shakuni's main enmity was with Bhishma, who had humiliatingly defeated and ravaged Gandhara, when Hastinapur was expanding its territories. He wanted to destroy the Kuru empire and the royal lineage itself, as a revenge for what was done to his people.

Ways in which Shakuni incited war include:

·         Advising an adolescent Duryodhana to mix poison into Bhima's food.

·         Hiring Purochana to kill the Pandavas in the Palace of lac.

·         Before the war he advised Duryodhana to feed Shalya's army and make Shalya his indebt, making it compulsory for him to fight on the side of Kauravas

·         During the Kurukshetra war he abetted in the killing of Arjuna's son Abhimanyu by cheating and breaking the war protocol.

Shakuni's only saving grace is his extreme love towards his sister Gandhari. Her act of voluntarily blindfolding herself does not go down too well with Shakuni, who constantly advises her to take off her blindfold and see Bhishma's destruction, but she refuses. Time and again, he expresses the anger he felt for the injustice that Gandhari had to go through by leading her entire life with a blindfold.

It is notable indeed that in his endeavour to avenge the destruction of his family, or maybe to help his nephews out in defeating the Pandavas, Shakuni himself never properly ruled his own kingdom. Seeing the atrocities he meted out on Pandavas, keeping Kauravas in front, Sahadeva, one out of the five Pandavas vowed to kill Shakuni and avenge all that he did to hurt their dignity and prestige. Shakuni had two sons, Uluk, who was killed by Nakul and Kalikeya, who was killed by Abhimanyu. Shakuni himself was killed by Sahadeva on 18th day of Mahabharat.

Symbolically, Shakuni represented the Dwapar Yuga, a time when brother would kill brother in the quest for power, and Shakuni was the catalyst.