The Gita is a conversation held in the pause before a battle: Arjuna sees his teachers and cousins in the opposing army, and refuses to fight. Krishna's answer moves from duty to the imperishable self to the three paths and finally to devotion, and the poem's enduring power is that the crisis is recognizable — a person paralyzed by a genuine moral conflict. Gandhi read the battle as allegory for the struggle within; others read it literally. Both readings have shaped modern India.