Panchali's Pledge is the English translation of Bharati's seminal work, Panchali Sabadham, which reimagines the pivotal Game of Dice incident in the Mahabharata, where coerced into playing a game of dice by Duryodhana and Sakuni, Yudhisthira, the eldest of the Pandavas, stakes and loses his kingdom, his wealth, his brothers and finally his wife, Draupadi. Enraged at the quiet indifference of those present in the assembly to her plight, Draupadi finally takes a pledge to avenge her ignominy with the blood of the Kauravas.

Bharati wrote and published the first of the two-part minor epic in 1912 while living in the French territory of Pondicherry to escape British persecution. It was intended as a political allegory of the ongoing freedom movement and as an affirmation of the latent power in women.

Usha Rajagopalan's translation seeks to complement what Bharati himself set out to do with the original text: to 'create an epic using simple pharases, a simple style,easily understood prosody and rhythm which the common man appreciates'.