See I have not read Bhagavatham. I don’t know much about it. But what I have heard is Lord Krishna freed present days Iraq. Iraq was ruled by a person called Narakasur. He had 16000 wives and he made everybody miserable. The whole population was miserable. It’s in Iraq. His son was Bhagadatta. And because of Bhagadatta that city came to be known as Baghdad. So what Iraq has to face now, it has faced 5000-years ago also. 5000-years ago, Iraq had same type of regime. When I was in Iraq, they told me in Kurdistan there are a hundred villages, where there is not a single male because Saddam Hussein killed every male. In those hundred villages, the amount of suffering people had! We went through some of the villages and (there were) all women only women. They came up and they were talking. They were sharing their story. It is chilling that in this age such a demonic mindset can exist. You have heard about similar incidence in Uganda as well. Someone stored many skulls in the fridge. Haven’t you heard this? Yah. And in Cambodia, millions of people, even today there is an exhibition in Cambodia. One communist general in Cambodia, he told everyone to go and do farming. And people didn’t know farming. People, who were businessmen, who didn’t know anything about farming, he forced them. Those who said no, he killed them off. Millions were killed. One-third of the population of Cambodia was killed by one man.
So such a demonic mindset existed 5000-years-ago also. And he had married 16000 women, captured them, and made them his slaves. So when he was slain by Sri Krishna, he freed them. The 16000 women then said now we will all commit suicide. They all wanted to commit mass suicide. Because in those days there was a taboo about woman without her husband. They were not having such a respect in the society, and especially a wife of a demonic person has no respect. So they all told Krishna, “Because our families will not take us because we have been married to this guy. And the world will not accept us because they will see us as the wife of this demonic person who has destroyed the lives of millions. So it is better we die.”
Then Sri Krishna said to them, “No. I will give my surname to you. You need not call yourself as so-and-so, wife of Narakasura. In that place you can call you are my wife. Because Krishna was a very well respected and highly acknowledged person. Then, they can live with dignity so he said he gave dignity to their life by giving his name or his sanction to be their husband or to treat him as husband. This is one story, one aspect. So all those 16000 concubines were given a respectable life by Sri Krishna by marrying them. Isn’t that such a noble thing he did? So he gave them new life. But his real wives were Rukamini, Satyabhama, and Jambavathi.