When it comes to true independence, I share the opinion of the writer of this article, Karthik Vaidhinathan, who says, that it is only when we learn to remove our western lens and start viewing ourselves in the more ancient (vedic) traditional categories, and also use these categories to understand the rest of the world, that the real Independence of our civilization is achievable Dharma literally means that which supports or upholds or maintains the order of the Universe (called Rta). This is a much more far reaching categorization than religion or culture. While religion in the western sense typically refers to an institutionalized framework where a church maintains a list of commendments to follow, dharma is a more deeper principle and is not applicable to humans alone, but pertains to everything in existence. So for instance, what upholds an atom or maintains its existence? It is that the sub-atomic particles in the atom are adhering to their dharma (of doing what they ought to be doing). When we come to the human realm, we all humans have our own social identities. Not one, but several. We carry these as various kinds of labels, depending on where and to what parents we were born, what we studied, what professions we chose, what organizations we choose to belong to, what kind of relationships we enter into with other human beings etc. For instance, we all would be, in relation to other people, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, friends, co-workers, fellow citizens, and so on, at the same time. We could belong to birth based groups (jAtis) or membership based groups (sanghas). What “upholds” all these labels then is the dharma of human beings. My brotherhood to my sibilings is upheld by my properly adhering to brotherly dharma. My sonhood to my parents is upheld by my properly adhering to filial dharma. My citizenship to my country is upheld by my adhering to the dharmas of the citizenry and so on and so forth. Thus, the separation between religion and culture would be a meaningless thing in our viewpoint, because dharma encompasses both these western categories. So, a westerner might consider his eating etiquette at a dinner table as belonging to the realm of culture and a secular act, while going to church on sunday with his family as a religious act. But from our viewpoint, both are acts of dharma – the former a dharma to be followed at the dinner table as by adhering to it, he/she is upholding good relations with those who are eating with him (as it is expected behaviour at the table) and the latter upholds the institution called the church, which is a membership based group he/she belongs to.
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 05:45:38 +0000
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