Sanatana, A Living Being

Why do people want the static, frozen ‘dharma’ of colonial-era reactionaries?

- Purushottam Agrawal

The Sabarimala controversy offers an opportunity to reflect on the fate of an expression often used by conservative Hindus. This expression—Sanatana Dharma—is also becoming popular among NRI Hindus and others who feel embarrassed at the “alien” origins of the term ‘hindu’. But what does it really mean? Amarakosha, the most respected Sanskrit thesaurus dated to the 4th century AD, explains ‘sanatana’ as ‘nitya’ (literally ‘eternal’) and Hemachandra, in his 12th-century dictionary, defines it as ‘achyuta’ (unfailing). The connotation in both cases is clearly ‘perpetual’. Monier Williams, in his 1899 dictionary, collates the various meanings and defines the word as ‘eternal, perpetual, everlasting’.

The term ‘dharma’, in Indic uses, refers to the inherent nature of things and beings; meanings such as universal morality, professional ethics and moral order flow from that. You have on the one hand the dharma that everyone must follow and the dharma specific to one’s function or situation—e.g. rajdharma (duty of the king or state), gurudharma (duty of a teacher) or putradharma (duty of a son). Then there is the whole complex of dharmas assigned to various caste groups.

There has always been great scope for interpretations in the ideas contained in ‘dharma’, i.e. law and righteous conduct. In the royal assembly episode of the Mahabharata, Bhishma rationalises his silence at the ultimate humiliation of Draupadi by taking recourse to the “subtle ways of dharma”. Draupadi laments: “An assembly without elders is not an assembly, those who cannot speak up for dharma are not fit to be called elders, the dharma which is not rooted in the Truth cannot really be dharma and the truth which is pierced by deceit is not the Truth at all.”