I recently heard a podcast in which a speaker, formally trained in Hindu spirituality, alleging that we are giving Karna more credit than he deserves. True, fate had not been kind to him. Being a product of an unceremonious, society-unsanctioned union, his mother, Kunti, decided that the best course of action was to abandon him in a vessel by the river, to be taken away by the waves, armed only with grand ornaments on his body.