Upvoted your comment it was grayed out by downvotes at that time. You raise important questions and that gladdens my heart enormously. It is surprising how rare this is. Usually I see most fall for the Hindu supremacist narrative cloaked in various shades of PC (I say this as an athiest hindu, I am not religious and yes that is not a contradiction once you dig into hinduism). I understand why this happens, the expat generation wants to be in touch with their roots and want their kids to be aware of those roots. A perfectly noble emotion, but what happens is that groups with vested political interest barge in to make a make a killing out of this opportunity. A section of the Hindu right has been trying for years to churchify Hinduism, organize it into a centralized political power. Thankfully this has not happened but not for lack of concerted effort and resources. They are quite livid because the Muslim right got an upper hand over their own country, Pakistan, whereas they themselves got saddled with the moderates who dont want their country to be based on a religious identity. This grates at them continuously.

I wont impose one view or the other about the nature of the religion and the discourse because I trust skeptical curiosity more than anything else. Be skeptical, be questioning you will find a fascinating story built around deep human thought originating almost from the birth of civilization, organization, politics and propaganda.

I see Gita as propaganda and persuasion at its finest (I say this as respectful "I am wow'ed" acknowledgement, not as disparagement, it is a masterpiece): how to build a irrefutable logical system that makes people do your bidding out of their own volition. I am yet to see a more refined and subtle tool for mass control: dont question, just do what you are supposed to, but never for the pleasure of doing it. How is one supposed to know what I am supposed to do, there it goes vague. I know I am repeating myself but it is just a masterpiece and so cleverly and persuasively argued. Any form of central governance would love to have something like this. This is certainly not all that is there to Gita, it is a piece that deserves many reads and lots of reflection. For me, some parts resonate.

If you do get a chance I will highly recommend reading Mahabharat and from as close to the source as possible. If you want an English text you cannot go wrong with Rajagopalachari's translation, the English is a tad dated but on purpose. He has a kids version but get the real deal.

Where this epic looms over others (just in my opinion and taste) is that the story is so modern, the characters so realistically gray. There is absolutely no one character there who can claim moral high ground. Likewise, no one is really unmitigated evil, their actions (for the most part) are indeed sensible from their point of view, but their actions come to bite them all, be it Krishna too. [Contrast this with Rama of Ramayan. Rama could do no wrong, whatever he did it was just papered over but from a position of moral superiority. Burned his wife, no problem there is a reason, mutilated a woman who proposed to his brother no problem there is a reason...]

Read Mahabharat first just as a fascinating story, without the religious and historic baggage. After that you can re-read it and you will find layers and layers of abstractions. One such interesting layer is that it is really a contest between two master schemers of the highest order: Shakuni (a member of the Afghan royal family, Kandahar to be precise, and an in-law of the Delhi based Kauravas) and Krishna. Shakuni wants to destroy the Kauravas from the inside (for due reasons), Krishna joins willingly from the outside but wants to protect the Pandavas perhaps to have influence over the Delhi based powerhouse. What would be much harder, and I am not there yet, is to read the sanskrit version. It is said that there is ample evidence that it has been written over years, accumulating new verses on the way (there is nothing controversial about this). This is based on the style of sanskrit in use, for example the verses that talk about Krishna's exploit (for example the Draupadi stripping incident and verses from Gita too) seem to be in much more modern sanskrit, rhyme, meter (relatively speaking) than the rest and many believe that these verses were included later. There is still a lot of Mahabharata that exist in a form that are called srutis (oral tradition: stories, ballads, folk songs, plays) that you wont find in the sanskrit sources.