Udhayanidhi Stalin’s politically astute, if somewhat rash, equation of “Sanatana Dharma” with “mosquitoes, Dengue, Malaria, fever and Corona” calls to mind Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: the Origin of our Discontents. In this book she draws an analogy between ancient diseases of the permafrost coming to life and a perennial expression of caste discrimination, oppression and atrocity in the world. Udhayanidhi Stalin has certainly called attention to himself by this, and even parties allied to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) find their knees quivering a bit in the face of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s wrath.
The internet says that Sanatana Dharma is a term coined in the nineteenth century. Is this true, or are the BJP spokespersons who defend the term’s eternal heritage correct?
Surendranath Dasgupta’s magisterial five volume History of Indian Philosophy (from the Vedas to the 19th century) has about 10 index entries to the word Sanatana. None of them are associated with the word “dharma”. They all refer to an individual Sanatana, who was mentioned as a yogacharya by Gaudapada (approximately 6-7 Century CE).
Gavin Flood of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies traces the conceptual equivalent (not exactly the term) to the Puranas, which were composed somewhere between 350 and 750 CE. The term means, according to Flood, something like paradharma, or supreme dharma, which goes beyond all dharmas. It was also used in bhakti literature (which starts with the Azhwars from 500 CE onwards).
So the term is not all that ancient.
From the nineteenth century, the term Sanatana Dharma has been used to unite the different sects of Hinduism without differences. The Hindu Mahasabha followed this agenda. Today, the Indian Government’s Indian Culture page, has a flipbook copy of a text published in 1916 by the Hindu College Benares titled Sanatana Dharma: an elementary textbook of Hindu religion and ethics. Being a student guide, it is an obvious mishmash of concepts from different eras, desperately trying to unite the divergent strands of Hinduism by stressing commonalities. Representing a less belligerent era, this book advocates unity of Hindus, but also respect for other religions. Today, belligerence is rampant in the voices of all who defend Sanatana Dharma.
The term Sanatana Dharma is the ideological keystone of the RSS, BJP and VHP. Clearly they would like to have these words etched in stone – as unchanging as the meaning the phrase is intended to denote. But, this unchangeability of codes of conduct is an assertion perpetrated by both the colonial rulers and the hindutva nationalists in different ways. The latter stress on an unchanging identity of dharma, and thus parallel the colonial charge of the ahistoricity of Hinduism which is as wrong as it is stupid.
Recent research has shown that the idea of dharma has never stood still. Starting with its use to mean foundation or support in the Rigveda, it has waned, and waxed again leading to a crescendo in Manu’s Dharmasastra, written about 150 AD, and beyond. It starts with being the duty of kings, is transformed into the duty of householders and of age groupings (ashrama). It is caste specific, hierarchical and socially inegalitarian – but the principle of social equality as we think of it likely didn’t exist in any religion in the ancient times, though equality before the eyes of god was propagated in both Christianity and Islam.
Dharma has also meant something different for men, women and for members of different castes. These were not only impositions from above. Rather they were self-imposed disciplines of social and personal conduct which have been appropriated and hierarchized by every tendency to bring these practices under a unitary but deeply hierarchical umbrella. And this umbrella was not unchallenged.
It was also a term of contestation between ancient religions and social ethics – Buddhism, Jaina thought, and Carvaka philosophy all had different notions and valuations of dharma. Ashoka’s Kandahar bilingual (Greek and Aramaic) rock edict uses the term dharma as a principle of conduct. This is translated into the Greek as eusebeia, which DD Kosambi has interpreted to mean piety, reverence and respect. A dharmic life is one of reverence (for existence). Arguably, Hinduism as an entity (even before it was named) came together as a subscription to a specific configuration of the concept of dharma.
Four thinkers who guide modern Indian history on the changing values of Hinduism come to mind: Ram Mohan Roy who was willing to critically look at Hinduism from a modern perspective; Vivekananda who forged steps towards a new interpretation of karma in his Karmayoga; Gandhi who reinterpreted the idea of dharma (even as he called it “sanatana”) in his theological innovations; and Radhakrishnan who gave the Bhagavadgita a broader interpretation than that of the war in which it was situated, as a metaphor for a respectable way of life in modern times.
It is time to give Hindutva’s petty self-image a run for its money. Hindu thinkers need to develop the courage to explore these diverse meanings of dharma, discard the resentment, defensiveness and insecurity that drives their historical small-mindedness (and often egregious violence). What would dharma mean in modern times? This has been the perennial. i.e., constant ever changing, question. How would one integrate its self concept with the modern needs of social equality of all before the eyes of the law? What would dharma mean in relation to the other religions it rubs shoulders with? And the answers contemporary Hinduism finds to these questions can be as diverse as those indicated by its previous history.
The point is not to find justification for our recalcitrant anachronism by asking: what about Christianity’s (or neoliberalism’s today, for that matter) crusades, or for that matter, the senseless acts of some militant versions of Islam. Our ethical models can never be those that confirm for us why we are authorised to be small minded and vengeful.
If Hinduism wants to sit at the table of world religions as a leader, it must rise above pettiness, embrace social equality and respect for other religions, and adapt to changing circumstances of life in this world. And a strand of greatness lies entwined in its history.
The author is a political theorist and may be contacted at r.srivats@gmail.com.