Hello. I'm wondering what do you think about Indra and his deprivation of heir status situation?
Hi there, nice person. Well, I think that Hagoromo was obviously a biased father with no parenting abilities and a clear, shameless favouritism for one if his children. He ruined their children's lives by seeding discord between them and acting in a blatantly unfair way. He had two sons who were perfectly complementary to each other and, instead of stetting them to cooperate, he left all the power to one hoping the other would just submit to him and serve him in exchange for nothing. This was his idea of "love and cooperation", favouring one part while the other just gives in and accepts whichever humiliation and dishonour. He claims to seek peace, but peace can't never be cemented on injustice and discrimination, something many heroes of the story never seem to grasp.
Indra was left with nothing but a rock, where his father even engraved warnings against power for his successors, a testimonial of how much he distrusted Indra and how he extended that distrust to all his bloodline, even those who were not even born yet. The stone tablet is a testimonial of Hagoromo's everlasting prejudice. It is extremely upsetting and, when Indra is portrayed as evil, jealous or unreasonable, I seriously can't believe people can't consider how betrayed and failed he must have felt.
As I was telling once to a mutual, imagine you own a farm and you have two children. One knows how to handle animals, grow crops, and manage all the work in the farm, but he is null with people. The other knows nothing about the work, but he excels at finding clients, suppliers, organises exchanges with the community... Would you leave the farm to the "people person" child and expect the other to just be ok with it and work for free under the lead of the child who knows nothing about how the business works? And when the excluded child gets angry as expected, you blame him for the farm not working properly? "Oh, my child does not want to be used and treated unfairly, so now the farm does not work and people go hungry, he is so mean!"
That is what Hagomoro did here. He gave the power solely to the dumb child, hoping that "power of friendship" would compensate for his lack of talent and knowledge. But the dumb child and his descendants could never make peace. And this was not only due to the fact that Indra and his descendants were angry at their unfair treatment and challenged their greedy relatives. When the "Asuras" are in charge of power, all they have is nice words and empty promises, but in reality they only create chaos and their only worry is to keep hoarding power and influence. They can't achieve anything because they don't know how to do it. They are simply not capable and they only care for themselves, despite their friendly façade. They are of course expert people pleasers, which makes them good manipulators and demagogues, but never good leaders.
In summary, Indra was treated unfairly and he is the victim in this story. (And, as his last living descendant, if I ever see Hagoromo again I will stuck that stone table up his ass)
