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Injustice, and the long fuse it lights.
The disrobing of Draupadi in the assembly hall is the epic's moral hinge. What makes it unbearable is not only the act but the silence of the room: Bhishma, Drona, Vidura, Dhritarashtra — men of standing who each had a reason to say nothing.
The Mahabharat is precise about the cost. The war eighteen years later is, in one reading, the bill for that afternoon. Injustice witnessed and unopposed does not stay where it happened.