Dharma: What the Word Means

Yajnavalkya's list of the sources of right conduct. Treated in [The Sources of Dharma].

The Mahabharata's account ties dharma to what prevents harm and sustains society, which is why the epic is a standing source for the proposition that dharma exists for the welfare of beings.

Duty rather than right. The single most examinable structural point. The Indian tradition is organised around what a person owes; the modern Western tradition is organised around what a person may claim. A society of duties and a society of rights can produce the same conduct and arrive at it by opposite reasoning, and the difference is worked in [Dharma as the Foundation of Legal Ordering].

The judicial recognition

A.S. Narayana Deekshitulu v. State of Andhra Pradesh, AIR 1996 SC 1765, is the Indian authority a student should cite, and it is the only Supreme Court decision that examines the word at length.

Facts. Archakas and other office holders of Hindu temples in Andhra Pradesh challenged provisions of the Andhra Pradesh Charitable and Hindu Religious Institutions and Endowments Act 1987 which abolished hereditary rights in temple offices, contending that the offices were part of religious practice protected by Articles 25 and 26.

Held. The legislation was upheld: the office of an archaka is secular in character even though its duties are religious, and hereditary succession to it is not an essential religious practice. In reaching that conclusion the Court drew a considered distinction between religion and dharma, holding that the word "religion" in Articles 25 and 26 was used by the Constitution makers in the sense conveyed by the word dharma, that the two words are commonly but wrongly used interchangeably, and that the English language had no parallel word to dharma, which is why "religion" was used in those articles.

Why it matters here. It supplies judicial authority for two propositions this chapter asserts: that dharma has no English equivalent, and that dharma and religion are different things. Without it the chapter would rest on textbook assertion, and MU's rubric on all eleven papers is to cite relevant case laws.

What dharma is not

Not a code. There is no single text stating dharma exhaustively. The Dharmashastras record and systematise it; they do not enact it.

Not divine command in the simple sense. Dharma is not a set of orders issued by a god and valid because ordered. It is an order of which the gods are also part, which is why the Vedic conception of rta matters.

Not immutable in application. The tradition recognises apad dharma, the dharma of distress, permitting departure in extremity, and it recognises that dharma varies with time, place, station and stage of life. What is fixed is that there is a right way; what varies is what it requires.

Not identical with what is enforceable. Much of dharma was never justiciable.

A worked example

A judge in the classical tradition is asked to decide a dispute between a moneylender and a debtor who cannot repay because of a famine.

On dharma as cosmic order. The famine is a disturbance, and the decision should restore rather than aggravate the balance.

On dharma as social duty. The moneylender's dharma includes not enriching himself from another's calamity; the debtor's dharma includes repaying what he owes.

On apad dharma. In extremity, the ordinary obligation may be modified, so time may be given and interest suspended.

On dharma as righteousness. The decision is judged by whether it is right, not merely by whether it applies a rule correctly.

Compare a modern court. It would ask what the contract says, whether frustration or force majeure applies, and whether any statute gives relief. The classical route reaches a similar answer by a different road: through the obligations of the parties rather than through the terms of their bargain.

Quick revision

1. Dharma, from the root dhr, to hold or sustain: that which upholds the world, the society and the individual.
2. No English equivalent. It carries cosmic order, religion, duty, righteousness, law, justice and right living at once.
3. Three levels: cosmic, descending from rta; social, as varnashrama dharma; individual, as what this person here ought to do.
4. Organised around duty rather than around right, which is the structural difference from the modern Western tradition.
5. A.S. Narayana Deekshitulu, AIR 1996 SC 1765: religion in Articles 25 and 26 was used in the sense of dharma; the two are commonly but wrongly used interchangeably; English had no parallel word.
6. Not a code, not simple divine command, not immutable in application, and not confined to what is enforceable.
7. Apad dharma permits departure in extremity, and dharma varies with time, place, station and stage.

Test yourself

1. Give the derivation of dharma and the sense it carries. From the Sanskrit root dhr, to hold, bear or sustain, so that dharma is that which upholds. The traditional gloss is dharayati iti dharmah, that which sustains is dharma, and the sense carried is of the principle holding the universe, the society and the individual in their proper order.

2. Why does no English word translate it, and what judicial authority says so? Because it carries cosmic order, religion, duty, righteousness, law, justice and right living at once, and every English word captures one sense and loses the others. A.S. Narayana Deekshitulu, AIR 1996 SC 1765, says so: the English language had no parallel word to dharma, which is why the Constitution makers used "religion" in Articles 25 and 26 in the sense conveyed by dharma.

3. State the three levels at which dharma operates. Cosmic, as the order that sustains the universe, descending from the Vedic conception of rta in which moral and natural order are one; social, as the arrangement holding a society together through the duties attaching to station and stage of life; and individual, as what a particular person ought to do given who they are and what circumstances they face.

4. What is the structural difference between dharma and the modern Western conception, and why does it matter? That dharma is organised around duty, what a person owes, while the modern Western tradition is organised around right, what a person may claim. It matters because two systems can require the same conduct by opposite reasoning: a duty of the strong to protect the weak, and a right of the weak to be protected, differ in who must act, who may complain, and what follows if nobody does.