Bharat Dharma

Bharat Dharma................................................Shrikant Vasudeo


Let us understand the word Dharma. It is NOT exactly same thing as Religion as per its popular understanding. Even the word ‘Religion’ is in use only since 13th century. Its root is ‘ligare’ = to bind, connect. ‘re-ligare’ means to ‘again bind or connect’. This interpretation has been proposed by St Augustine and accepted by modern scholars like Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell. Interestingly, the Sanskrit word Dharma also has the meaning of ‘that which upholds or supports’. This comes from the root word ‘Dhr’ – to hold. In this sense, we are in harmony with the English understanding of the word Religion. However, things have not remained that simple. Though the original meaning of the English word religion is to bind or connect, its popular understanding is something like a ‘set of beliefs and practices that connect our human world with the spiritual world’. There are necessarily the elements of sacred books, dogmas, preachers, church, rites, sacrament, moral laws worship etc.

Coming back to the Hindu religion. To call our religion a ‘Hindu’ religion is only a ‘matter of convenience’. We just want to make the matter simple and therefore call ourselves Hindu – because there has to some name to our religion, and the word Hindu comes handy due to its widespread usage – initially by the foreigners and then by the natives of the land. However, when we go to the root of it, we can observe that ‘labeling’ our religion as a ‘Hindu’ religion is grossly inadequate and misleading. We need to look into some other directions. When I am disowning the word ‘Hindu’, am I saying that we do not have any religion ? NO. We do have religion in the popular sense as explained above. Then is it only the problem of just ‘naming’ our religion ? If this were so, it would not have been much of a problem. It is not just the issue of calling our religion ‘Hindu’ or ‘ABC’ or ‘XYZ’. It is only a superfluous objection. The problem is not that we do not have a religion, but that we have too many religions in the popular sense of the word religion ! If we decide to give a ‘Group Name’ to our religion as ‘Hindu’, then while explaining the Hindu religion, I have to systematically explain the religion Hindu 1, Hindu 2, Hindu 3 and so on and so forth for each of the set of beliefs, dogmas, rituals, worship, priest etc. We may run into religions running into not just hundreds or thousands but into hundreds of thousands !

If I were to attempt to define or explain Hindu Religion, I have to make liberal use of the words ‘mostly’, ‘most likely’, ‘by and large’, ‘generally speaking’, ‘believed to be’, ‘can also be understood as’ etc. If I use too many instances of these phrases, the central theme looses its firm base. It becomes too vague. Can I say with equal liberty that ‘Christians generally believe that Jesus was son of god’ or that ‘By and large, Muslims believe that Prophet Muhammad received the revelations from Allah’. It will be taken as sacrilegious – I may even be killed by some fanatics !. But in the case of Hindu Religion, I have no other alternative than to use these generalist phrases, and that too most liberally.

Hindu Religion does not have rigid dogmas demanding belief on pain of eternal damnation, no theological postulates, even no fixed theology, no credo distinguishing it from antagonistic or rival religions, there is not papal head, no governing ecclesiastic body, no church, chapel or congregational system, no binding religious form of any kind obligatory on all its adherents, no one administration and discipline. Hindu Religion admits all beliefs, allowing even a kind of high-reaching atheism and agnosticism and permits all possible spiritual experiences, all kinds of religious adventures. Even the social law varies with different castes, communities and regions.

Here is the real problem. Not for the Indian mind but for the foreigner. We are used to have a ‘nice little compact’ package of every product or philosophy. We have such ‘packages’ in other religions. There is none in Hindu religion. We are living in a ‘digital’ thinking environment. Hindu system is anything but digital. It is more a question of ‘subjective’ experience than the ‘objective’ definition. If you ask me to ‘fit’ my philosophy into your ‘digital format’, I will give your ‘few digits’ of our religion. It is like asking for DNA of MAN in order to understand him. Man is much more than a bundle of DNAs.

Having given vent to my anxiety and anguish over this matter, I will now attempt to explain the ‘general thread’ running through what is so popularly called a ‘Hindu’ religion. Before that, let me give my own name to our religion. I will love to call it ‘Bharat Dharma’. This name more aptly fits into our ‘system of religions’.

Bharat Dharma has four essential belief patterns.
1 Belief in a highest consciousness or state of existence which is universal and transcendent of the universe.
2 Need for self preparation to grow consciously into this truth of greater existence.
3 Well founded way of knowledge and spiritual discipline.
4 For common man on the elementary stage of evolution, it provided an organization of individual and collective life.

The belief in highest consciousness is such that from it all comes, in which all lives and moves without knowing it and of which all must one day grow aware returning towards that which is perfect, eternal and infinite. The self preparation is by development and experience. The well founded way of knowledge is also well explored, many-branching and always enlarging way of knowledge. For common person, it provided an organization of individual and collective life, a framework of personal and social discipline and conduct. It facilitated mental, moral and vital development. This was to enable Man to move each in his own limits and according to his own nature in such a way as to become eventually ready for the greater existence. Hinduism has encompassed every facet of LIFE. It has left out no part of life as a thing secular and foreign to the religious and spiritual life. The whole of life was DIVINISED.

Does our Bharat Dharma include other religions like Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism etc ? Well, the answer is Yes and No. To the extent these religions ‘align’ themselves with the basic tenets of Bharat Dharma, they are part of it. And they indeed do. Therefore, every Christian, Muslim, Parsi can proudly call themselves as belonging to the Bharat Dharma. There is no issue of having a ‘duel citizenship’ of two religions, simply because these two ‘labels’, as already explained above’, altogether relate to two different things – one to the RELIGION in the popular sense of the word (e.g. Christianity, Islam etc) and other to the ‘Philosophy of Life’. They seamlessly ‘blend’ into each other rather than run parallel to each other or run ‘cross roads’ to each other.

Following aspects of any religion are NOT part of Bharat Dharma
1 Belief in the ‘exclusivity’ of the ‘access to the Divine’. Belief that the person of other religion is ‘outside’ the ‘grace’ of the Divine.
2 Intolerance to the people of faiths other than one’s own religion.
3 Super Zeal to ‘save’ the people of other faiths by converting them to one’s own religion – either by force or by conceit in the garb of charity, fame, employment or other tangible and intangible benefits.
4 Using violence towards people of other religions in the name of one’s own religion.
5 Expressing disrespect to the religious practices of other faiths.
6 Most importantly, NOT treating our motherland – Bharat – in highest esteem.

It is a fact of history that India has taken under her shelter people of all faiths from the world over for thousands of years. Bharat Dharma has been ENRICHED rather than THREATENED by these people of religions which has originated outside the her soil.
The intrinsic part of the Bharat Dharma is the understanding of the ARYAN people. The Aryan is NOT the nomadic people who invaded India from north. This is an absolutely wrong and misleading understanding of the Aryan. In the words of Sri Aurobindo : ‘Whoever seeks to climb from level to level up the hill of the divine, fearing nothing, deterred by no retardation or defeat, shrinking from no vastness because it is too vast for his intelligence, no height because it is too high for his spirit, no greatness because it is too great for his force and courage, he is the Aryan, the divine fighter and victor, the noble man.’ This also sums up the basic tenet of Bharat Dharma.



The above is the broad outline of Bharat Dharma. In working out the details, there are difference between different sects, schools, communities, races and regions. Nonetheless, there is also a general unity of spirit, unity of core type and form and of spiritual temperament. This enables it to create in this vast fluidity an immense force of cohesion and a strong principle of oneness. There is an underlying belief in Bharat Dharma that the concept of Highest Consciousness is a living spiritual Truth, an Entity, a Power, a Presence. And most importantly, this Truth is ‘accessible’ to all according to their degree of capacity. It can be realised in actuality in a thousand ways. Moreover, this realization of Truth is made possible in this very life as well as beyond life. This Truth was to be lived and even to be made the governing idea of thought and life and action of our day to day living system.

This is Bharat Dharma.

Shrikant V Soman

Originally prepared on 7 November 2007
Revised on 23rd April 2009