This is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of:

Dharma: Hinduism and Religions in India.

by: Chaturvedi Badrinath. Edited by Tulsi Badrinath. Penguin Viking. October 2019.

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The concerns of Indian philosophy are the concerns of human life everywhere. Indian philosophy is not ‘Hindu’ philosophy. There has been, from the sixteenth century onwards, a tremendous misconception that there is something called ‘Hinduism’; that ‘Hinduism’ is a religion, which is a world-denying and otherworldly religion; and that the civilization of India is really Hindu religious civilization

The absolutely central concern of all Indian thought is dharma. The concept of dharma enshrined the totality of the Indian understanding of man. As for understanding India, the question ought to have been: What is dharma?, and not what it became instead: What is Hinduism?

Just as the word dharma is untranslatable, being unique in its content, and the word ‘religion’ conveys no part of its meaning, the word ‘religion’ is similarly untranslatable in any of the Indian languages for the concept of ‘religion’ is altogether absent in Dharmic language. As a consequence ‘religion’ is Dharma translated invariably as ‘dharma’. Thus we have Isai-dharma for Christianity, Islam-dharma for Islam, Buddha-dharma for Buddhism, Jain-dharma for Jainism, and so on.

The word ‘Hindu’ is not to be found in any of the ancient texts. The invading Arabs coined the word circa eighth century AD, perhaps for the very first time. It is an undeniable fact that ancient thinkers of India were not addressing themselves to ‘Hindus’; they were concerned with man as such. They did not give themselves any specific identity as people.

It is a fact of profound significance that the only identity they gave to themselves was in terms of dharma—which they conceived to be the identity of man anywhere.

If people found it difficult to define ‘Hinduism’, and still more difficult to keep any one definition from being rendered false even by a simple fact, it is because, made desperate by conflicting beliefs, a common name was sought under which the most elusive, easily confusing, and complex diversity of faiths and of living could be brought.

There has thus been the double error of identity. First in gathering the diverse faiths, beliefs and practices into a fictitious ‘Hinduism’, then in taking that to be a ‘religion’. This error still persists.

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I raised this issue with Sri Jayendra Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Kanchi. He said:

“I agree that the words “Hindu” and “Hinduism” are not our words. But they have been in usage now for a very long time and cannot be abandoned overnight, without inviting confusion. The concept of dharma is undoubtedly central, and I have been emphasizing that myself, but the common people, the masses, now call their religion Hindu dharma.”

The question here is not one of words, but of substance. The question is whether the use of the words ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’ has, in obscuring the ancient Indian understanding of human life, also altered our self-perceptions today to a degree that our organized political life is artificially fragmented, breaking away from the wholeness of life, and has therefore led to the mindless violence we witness today. The question does not pertain to semantics; it is related to the abiding substance of Indian civilization, dharma, from which we have moved away just at the time when we need it most.

The Dharmic quest was more for completeness than for perfection. Just as thinking, feeling and doing were to be harmonized in a human completeness, so also man’s life was to be harmonized with the lives of animals and of trees and plants….

What is dharma?

This had troubled even Yudhishthira who is depicted in the Mahabharata as the very embodiment of dharma. At one place he announces, almost with despair: “whether we know or we do not know dharma, whether it is knowable or not, dharma is finer than the finest edge of a sword and more substantial than a mountain. On first sight, it appears clean and solid like a town; on a close logical look, it vanishes from the view.”

It was believed that just as there is in the universe an impersonal order, a kind of spiritual law that sustains it, rta, there is a similar order in the affairs of human beings called dharma. It binds human beings just as the universe of gods is bound by rta. Together, rta and dharma constitute the fundamental order of the whole universe.

Derived from the root word dhr, ‘to support, to uphold, to sustain’, dharma means that reality in which everything, all life, is supported, sustained, enhanced. But what is that reality, and by what means can we know its nature? These two questions are not independent of each other, one of substance and the other of method, but are woven into each other. In the Mahabharata, therefore, which is the most comprehensive inquiry into the human condition, they are raised side by side, in contexts that are as varied and diverse as human life is…

The very first thing to be grasped about dharma is that it is not a philosophical presupposition, or a mental construct, and therefore, like them, liable to be overthrown. Nor is it derived from divine revelation, and for that reason a matter essentially of faith.

It is the reality inherent in human life, in which, in all its diverse expressions, it is forever sustained.

That means the questions concerning dharma are the questions concerning human life. That is what they clearly are in the Mahabharata.

That means, moreover, that all statements as to what dharma is, derive their validation neither from any philosophical system, nor from any religious faith, but from the contents of human relationships and the questions which they raise.

Equally it means that the method of determining what dharma is, and of answering the numerous questions that must, because of the complexity of human situations, come up, is suggested by those very situations, and cannot be constructed as a framework on premises unrelated to life. Dharma, as truth and reality and joy, is profoundly relational, as everything else in life is clearly relational.

After all the complexities of human life have been taken into account, analysed honestly and faithfully to human realities, the Mahabharata says, in the voice of Bhishma:

“All the sayings of dharma are with a view to nurturing, cherishing, providing more amply, enriching, increasing, enhancing, all living beings: in one word, securing their prabhava. Therefore, whatever has the characteristic of bringing that about, is dharma. This is certain.”

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All the sayings of dharma are with a view to supporting, sustaining, bringing together, and in their togetherness upholding, all living beings: securing, in one word, their dharana. Therefore, whatever has the characteristic of doing that, is dharma. This is certain.

All the sayings of dharma are with a view to securing for all living beings freedom from violence, ahimsa. Therefore, whatever has the characteristic of not doing violence, is dharma. This is certain.

Thus, whatever has these three attributes, in their togetherness, is dharma.

Conversely, whatever has the characteristic of depriving, starving, diminishing, separating, uprooting, hurting, doing violence, debasing and degrading, is the negation of dharma. Whatever brings that about, is, in one word, adharma.

Furthermore:

“Whatever has its beginning in justice that alone is called dharma: whatever is unjust and oppressive, is adharma. This is the rule settled by those who can be respected.”

This is not ‘religion’. It is ‘foundation’—independent of any particular religious faith. The Mahabharata adds:

“If one dharma is destructive of another dharma, then it is wickedness in the garb of dharma, and not dharma.”

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The main concern of dharma is with the universal foundations of human relationships; of the relationship of the self with the self and of the self with the other. Life, from the beginning to the end, is manifestly a complex system of relationships, through which human life is lived. The other is not necessarily the human other. The other is also nature, earth, trees, plants, rivers, lakes, hills, mountains and the sea…

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The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad has a short parable, the parable of the three da-s. At the end of their education, god, man and asura, the primitive, ask Prajapati, the Primordial Man, their father, for the final instruction. To each of them he utters the syllable da, and asks each of them whether he understood what the syllable da signified to him.

‘Yes,’ said god, ‘you ask me to practise dama, self-control.’ ‘Yes,’ answered man, ‘you ask me to practise dana, sharing, giving.’ ‘Yes,’ answered asura the primitive, ‘you ask me to practice daya, compassion.’

Prajapati says to them that they had, indeed, understood rightly.

‘Ever since,’ the parable says, ‘the thunder in the sky has repeated that ultimate instruction: da, da, da. To the gods, given to pleasure: self-control; to man, given to acquisition: share, give; and to asura the primitive, given to anger and violence: compassion.’

Repeated in the thunder of the sky, what Prajapati’s instruction says to us is this: the happiness of the other is an essential condition of one’s own happiness. This is dharma, the foundation of human order.

[Chaturvedi Badrinath was born in Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh. a philosopher, he was a member of the Indian Administrative Service, 1957-89, and served in Tamil Nadu for thirty-one years (1958-89). His other published books are ‘Dharma, India and the World Order: Twenty-one Essays’ (1993), ‘Introduction to the Kama Sutra’ (1999), and ‘The Mahabharata – An Inquiry into the Human Condition’ (2006). He passed away in Pondicherry in February 2010. Courtesy: The Beacon and Penguin Viking. The Beacon is a web-based only feature magazine of writing and reading (long-form essays, fiction and poetry) that believes in confluences more than in consensus.]