SANATANA DHARMA OR DHAMMA SANTATI? A Call for De-Weaponising

Description

‘When someone favours his own religious community and speaks disapprovingly of other ones, all this from a blind devotion to his own religious community, thinking that he will accordingly lend lustre to his own religious community, the more he acts like this, the more he harms his own religious community.’ [RE XII of Asoka]

samavaya eva sadhu [RE XII of Asoka]

Decolonising the Indian mind and sanātana dharma are two ideas that have hogged the limelight in recent times. Renaming the Rajpath as the Kartavya Path, construction of the new Parliament building, insistence on using Bharat in place of India, imprinting Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s maritime legacy on epaulettes of Indian Naval officers in the name of Indianising their ranks, and, above all, the characterisation of the Constitution of Free India as a colonial document are all being justified in the name of the need to ‘decolonise’ the Indian mind. Curiously, however, the invocation of sanātana dharma to defend ‘Hindu dharma’ by the same people betrays a peculiarly ‘colonial’ imprint.

This Cameo investigates several issues involved in the invocation of this idea in early India in both brahmanical (of the brāhmaṇas) and non-brahmanical (of the śramaṇas) traditions. Absence of hatred and enmity, love for all, non- injury/non-violence, truthfulness, purification, lack of malice, avoiding unpleasant and hurtful words, kindness, compassion, forbearance, and equanimity are such components of sanātana dharma or dhamma santati that defy all sectarian labels. These can’t be exclusive preserve of any dharma or dhamma. It is sanātana or santati – not in the sense of ‘eternal’ but in that of ‘flow of continuity’. It is not an unchanging perpetual but universal. The Cameo calls for de-weaponising and de-toxification of the present-day use of sanātana dharma in some sections of the Indian society. This was delivered as a ‘Special Lecture’ at the 82nd Session of the Indian History Congress (December 28-30, 2023) held under the auspices of the Kakatiya University, Warangal.

Krishna Mohan Shrimali  is a former Professor of History, at University of Delhi.