Your own duty, done poorly, is better than another's done well.

Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read svadharma and paradharma in the plain varna-and-ashrama sense: the duty enjoined for one's caste and stage of life. They tie the verse tightly to the surrounding teaching on attachment and aversion. The point of bringing this verse in, they say, is to show that just as the natural activity prompted by passion and aversion is to be shunned, so too is another's duty to be shunned; both are off the path of the good. One of these voices offers an alternative, deeper reading as well: the contrast can be taken as between the 'dharma of the senses,' the sense-activity born of craving toward objects, and the 'dharma of the Self,' the path of Self-knowledge. On that reading the Self-dharma alone is to be pursued, because the sense-dharma is unreal while the Self-dharma, even unadorned, brings liberation, and death within it is liberation itself, whereas the other ends only in continued worldly rounds.

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Ānandagiri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators deny that svadharma and paradharma here mean caste-and-stage duties at all. Their argument is that another's caste-and-stage duty is plainly without merit, so it would not need this special forbidding, and there is no occasion in the context for a praise of the warrior's duty and a blame of the brahmin's. So they read svadharma as karma-yoga, the discipline of action, and paradharma as jnana-yoga, the discipline of knowledge, for one who is still joined with matter. Karma-yoga is one's own duty because one is fit to take it up by oneself; it is easy and carries within it freedom from heedlessness. Jnana-yoga is, for such a person, another's duty, because it cannot be taken up by oneself, it is hard, and it is liable to heedlessness, which is why it is fraught with fear. The striking claim is about death: for one in karma-yoga, even dying with the fruit unattained in this single birth is better, because the path is unbroken by harm and one can begin again, unagitated, in the very next birth. A defectively done karma-yoga, completed in a later life, still yields the fruit; the defect only delays the fruit, it does not lose it. But a severed jnana-yoga loses its form, so its fruit will not arise even in later births.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read svadharma as the dharma of Bhagavan, the work the Lord has placed in one's own hand according to one's qualification, and paradharma as a deluding, borrowed practice. The reasoning turns on the moment of death and remembrance. Even a defective performance of the Lord's dharma is useful at the time of death because it makes one remember Bhagavan, so death in one's own dharma is conducive to liberation. The other's dharma, practiced in earlier life, becomes at the moment of death a remembrancer of its own worldly objects; it brings on the vision of the messengers of Yama and afterward serves as the instrument of the torments of hell. That is what makes it the maker of fear. Even half-done, the path of grace recalls itself at the last. One of these voices adds that this guards the seeker from the mistake of borrowed sadhana: the work fitted to one's qualification is the one to keep.

Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya

Bhakti

These commentators keep the varna-and-ashrama reading and answer the seeker who finds his own duty, such as war, painful and imperfectible while another's, such as non-violence, looks easy and equally worthy of the name dharma. Their answer is that the worth of a duty lies in its fit to the agent, not in its abstract attractiveness; death in one's own duty carries one to heaven and beyond, while another's, being interdicted for that person, carries one to hell. One cites scripture that lists contrary duty, another's duty, semblance, imitation, and deceit as the five branches of unrighteousness, to be abandoned. One addresses the apparent counter-cases of figures who seem to have taken up another's work: those exceptions were carried by the greatness of their own austerity, and even so hardship and censure are recorded of them; the ascetic life becomes one's own duty only when, the old impressions having dwindled, one has earned the right to it. The Marathi voice in this group dwells warmly on homely images: a brahmin should not eat another's dainties, one should not pull down one's own thatched hut on seeing others' brick houses, a sweet drink that is good in itself is harmful to one with worms; what suits another is not therefore good for you.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Dvaita

These commentators read the verse as the close of an argument that began with Arjuna's earlier objections. The thought 'the action of war is a fierce one' is met by 'better is one's own dharma.' The key is the connective force of the word 'still' or 'even so': although action must indeed be performed, the qualification to be supplied is that one would not act with fierce, unavoidable attachment and aversion. So this verse, together with the nearby instructions to fight free of fever and not to fall under the sway of attraction and aversion, anticipates and sets aside Arjuna's recalled second objection. The stress here is less on the metaphysics of svadharma and more on how this verse caps the surrounding flow of reply.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Bhedabheda

This commentator reads the verse as a declaratory passage of praise in the varna sense. One's own duty has the very advantage of being one's own; even if deficient, even if carried out in whatever rough manner, it is more praiseworthy than another's well-performed duty. He handles the word 'even' carefully as a concession: it might sound as if death in one's own duty is no real prosperity while prosperity from another's duty is real, but that is not so. In truth prosperity comes from one's own duty and non-prosperity from resorting to another's. So one's own duty is to be performed. He then frames the question that follows: by what is a person driven, who though he knows better runs after sin, which is just what Arjuna goes on to ask.

Śrī Bhāskara

Modern

These commentators carry the verse into broader, more accessible terms. One reads it as straightforward duty-ethics: the duty of a warrior is to fight a righteous battle, and even dying in one's own duty is better than living in another's, which has its pitfalls. One universalizes it past caste: a sweeper and an accountant each have their work, and the more inviting work should not draw one away from one's own; before God work is judged by the spirit of dedication in which it is done, not by the kind of work, and whoever acts in a spirit of dedication fits himself for salvation. One argues that svadharma means the code of duties prescribed by the smriti-writers according to the four castes, allocated to suit each one's qualities for the welfare of all, and not the science of release; whatever occupation one has adopted becomes one's 'religion,' and since some fault can be found in any occupation, that is no reason to give up one's own; if necessary one must die in its performance. The non-sectarian devotional voice in this group stresses the inner attitude: another's duty may look well-furnished, easy, and pleasing and may bring wealth, comfort and honour, yet ends in fear; one's own may look poor, hard, and joyless and bring lifelong hardship, yet practiced in nishkama-bhava, free of desire, possessiveness and attachment, it ends in welfare. For this voice the decisive point is that it is only raga and dvesha in the doing of svadharma that bring sin; done free of attraction and aversion, no sin attaches, so Arjuna should do his warrior's duty in that spirit.

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas