Sanskrit
यया धर्ममधर्मं च कार्यं चाकार्यमेव च । अयथावत्प्रजानाति बुद्धिः सा पार्थ राजसी ॥ ३१ ॥
yayā dharmam adharmaṃ ca kāryaṃ cākāryam eva ca ayathāvat prajānāti buddhiḥ sā pārtha rājasī
Translation
That by which one understandeth away Right and Wrong and also what ought to be done and what ought not to be done, that Reason, O Partha, is passionate.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Rajasic buddhi mistakes dharma for adharma and confuses what should and shouldn’t be done — not through inversion exactly, but through unreliable discrimination that gets the boundary wrong in a shifting, inconsistent way. Paired with verse 30, this defines rajas here as noise rather than malice: the rajasic intellect isn’t committed to wrongdoing, it’s just untrustworthy.