Of Divine Weapons and Legal Limits: The Brahmastra, Nuclear Ethics and Disarmament Law

This article brings Hindu mythology into dialogue with International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and contemporary nuclear disarmament debates by examining the Brahmastra. Known in Hindu literature as the supreme divine weapon, it is an early analogue to modern weapons of mass destruction. In the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the Brahmastra is portrayed as an all-consuming force that tests the wielder’s morality and whose misuse invites cosmic ruin. Through a comparative analysis of dharmic injunctions such as restraint (dama), duty (dharma) and non-violence (ahimsa), this article traces their resonance with IHL’s principles of distinction, proportionality and humanity. It then connects these ethical insights to modern disarmament law, including the NPT, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), and key UN Security Council resolutions. The central argument is that Hindu philosophy and Public International Law converge on a shared ethic of restraint: the legitimacy of force depends on the capacity to control and recall it, and weapons whose effects escape such control, as nuclear weapons do, cannot be reconciled with the limits both traditions impose. Reading the Brahmastra as a civilizational parable of self-restraint, the article affirms that enduring security comes not only through deterrence but through the ethical and legal renunciation of indiscriminate destruction.