Dhritarashtra— The Blind King
Dhritarashtra, the blind king of Hastinapura in the Mahabharata, is the father of the hundred Kauravas, whose love for his eldest son blinds him morally as surely as he is blind in body.
Born blind
Dhritarashtra is the eldest son of the sage Vyasa and Queen Ambika, born blind because his mother closed her eyes at the sight of the austere sage. For this reason the throne first passes to his younger brother Pandu; only after Pandu renounces the kingdom does Dhritarashtra rule, with his queen Gandhari at his side.
The father of the Kauravas
Gandhari bears him a hundred sons, the Kauravas, led by Duryodhana. Though Dhritarashtra often knows what is right — and is counselled tirelessly by his wise brother Vidura — his attachment to Duryodhana (putra-moha, the blinding love of a son) makes him unable to restrain his son’s cruelty. Time and again he permits injustice he could have stopped.
Grief and renunciation
This moral weakness ripens into catastrophe: all hundred of his sons perish in the war, and the old king is left to mourn in the care of the Pandavas he had wronged. After years of grief, he retires with Gandhari and Kunti to the forest, where the three die serenely in a wildfire, released at last from the world.
Dhritarashtra is the epic’s great study of moral blindness — the soul that sees the right yet cannot act upon it, undone not by ignorance but by attachment. His tragedy warns how love untempered by justice can destroy all that it seeks to protect.