In the raging controversy on sanatan dharma and its belief system in Hindu religious practices, triggered by DMK heir and minister Udayanidhi Stalin when he said it must be eradicated like a disease because it was against the idea of social justice, Dr Karthick Ram Manoharan, assistant professor at the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru, throws some light on the different interpretations of the sanatan dharma concept and whether it divides political beliefs between north and south India.
Dr Karthick is well-known for his research on the politics of identity, specifically focusing on questions of caste, religion and gender. However, it’s his research on political atheism, that later culminated in a book last year, Periyar: A Study in Political Atheism, on the intellectual and political thought of the rationalist anti-caste thinker Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, that could throw light on how Dravidian parties like the DMK have drawn their political core from Periyar and his reformist beliefs. Quite unlike the regressive politics of Hindutva which says it draws its conviction from sanathan dharma, going by its fiery defence of the latter.
Excerpts from an interview:
Udayanidhi Stalin was addressing a conference on the eradication of sanatan dharma so no one should be surprised by his utterances, but is Hinduism in the north defined by only sanatan dharma and Vedic traditions, whereas in the south there are various other forms beyond sanatan dharma, and which have also challenged the Vedic sanatan dharma?
Yes, absolutely. Let me start with the Tamil trajectory. For the Tamil Shaivites, the key religious text is the Periyapurana, but nowhere in the whole text is any mention of sanatan dharma. This is not unique to Tamil Nadu only – in Karnataka, for the Lingayats, the Basavana Vachanas are their most sacred prayers for the sect but there is no mention of sanatan dharma.
Is this what differentiates Hinduism in the north and south?
Actually, it gets complicated when we look at the Sanskrit scriptures or what we consider to be mainstream Hinduism. It’s commonly accepted that the shrutis are considered to be more authoritative than the smritis, yet we are unable to find any sort of reference to sanatan dharma in the Vedas or Upanishads.
However, the idea of sanatan dharma is most prominently mentioned in the Mahabharata, not by itself but along with other concepts like varnashrama dharma (caste) in dharma shastra or stree dharma and, most importantly, raj dharma. In the Sanskrit Shivapurana, the idea of sanatan dharma finds mention only twice, that too in a marginal way.
Scholars who have worked extensively on Hindu history like Audrey Truschke define sanatan dharma as a means of self-identification of a religious community, a concept that appeared only in the 19th century. And it came most often to differentiate an orthodox or a conservative viewpoint as opposed to a reformist viewpoint.
Even well-known Sanskrit scriptures or popular religion, sanatan dharma does not have any dominant presence in the way, say the idea that Shiva is god, or Rama as mariada purushotham, or that Krishna is an incarnation. So, compared to these ideas, the concept of sanatan dharma does not really have much of a dominant presence in the religious scriptures.
Dr Karthick Ram Manoharan. Photo: Special arrangement
But the RSS-BJP terms Truschke anti-Hindu for her research on Hinduism?
Yes, but take Vaishali Jayaraman, a young scholar who has delved deep into the concept of sanatan dharma and who takes a very positive approach to it, she notes that this idea of sanatan dharma does not really find any mention in the Vedic corpus and that it’s only in the Puranas and Mahabharata that it finds mention and even when it does, it does not really have a consistent meaning.
Is it sanatam dharma that differentiates Hinduism in the north from the south?
I believe the south has diverse religious traditions but this is true of the north as well. We generally assume the north to be a sort of a monolith but even here, there is no uniform consensus that sanatan dharma is the only way to go forward. Take the Arya Samaj, a reformist movement from the north – now, we may disagree with some of their politics but we have to acknowledge that the Arya Samaj was essentially calling for a return to the Vedas, and the Vedas clearly do not have the concept of sanatan dharma.
As I mentioned earlier, it was only in the 19th century that sanatan dharma gets associated with a sort of a north Indian conservative Hindu position which was opposed to reform. Remember there were reformers like Dayanand Saraswati, Swami Vivekanand, who are today seen as Hindu icons, but at that point of time they were reformers who challenged orthodox Hindu belief systems.
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How did reform movements come to stay in the south?
Reform movements in the south tended to be religious where it tried to establish a direct connection between the individual and God without the mediation of complicated scriptures or ritual practices of Sanskrit-speaking elites. So, the very popular Bhakti movement which emerged in Tamil Nadu or the Lingayat movement which emerged in Karnataka were in a sense movements against certain ossified forms of ritualistic practices.
The Bhakti movement in Tamil Nadu which was led by Tamil saints called Nayanars, and the Lingayat movement in Karnataka, were all not just articulated in the native languages but they also greatly contributed to the flowering of Kannada and Tamil literature. In a sense, they were also democratic because this was the language of the people, it wasn’t language used by a minority elite section alone, thus making it a popular religion with a stress on devotion rather than rigid conformity to ritual.
To elaborate, the Nayanmars believed just reciting ‘Om Namo Shiva’ was enough rather than reciting all of the Vedas together. This in a sense undermined the authority of people who held knowledge as an exclusive property. This was not a challenge to Hinduism but an articulation of another form of Hinduism, just like the Protestants who imagined a new form of Christianity.
How did the Dravida parties like the DMK come to make this their political core, and how does it contravene with the idea of sanatan dharma?
Periyar, who is seen as the father of the Dravidian movement and who rebelled against caste hierarchy, had said some really harsh things about religion which are unimaginable today. In fact the DMK is mild compared to him. Take his highly critical writings on the Ramayana, where he alleged that the epic upheld casteist principles. The reports of his Dravida Kazhagam often contained satires on religion and provocative cartoons of gods.
But he was not just an atheist. I believe that Periyar’s concept was a political atheism which attacked not just religion, but also how religion tends to influence state power, the dangers when religion and state power come to be one as it can fundamentally impinge upon the democratic rights and freedoms of the individual. It can’t be more true than it is today.
While observers of the DMK tend to draw a straight line from DMK to Periyar, I don’t think that’s the case. The DMK when it was formed, considerably toned down the attacks on religion, and DMK founder C.N. Annadurai believed that everyone belonged to one community and one god, an idea derived from Tamil Shaivism.
DMK leaders stood for social reform but also created spaces where criticisms of religion could also flourish. Both Annadurai and M. Karunanidhi were privately atheists but did not hinder the religious practices of partymen or the public. The Dravidian electoral parties in general continue to be inclusivist even today with respect to religion.
For instance, one of the main criticisms against Udayanidhi Stalin is that while he attacks sanatan dharma, his mother is a devout believer. People jibe him saying why don’t you ask her to change first, but it’s a false accusation because the DMK has never forced anyone to give up their religious beliefs.
Is all this alien to the north, going by the BJP’s raging attack against Udayanidhi Stalin?
First, Udayanidhi Stalin is not the only person to say this – Thol Thirumavalavan, the Dalit leader and MP from VCK party and who is in the DMK-led alliance in the state, has also made equally if not even more strong statements than Udayanidhi Stalin on sanatan dharma. Or Samajwadi Party leader in Uttar Pradesh Swami Prasad Maurya has also made strong statements criticising the Ramacharitramanas and Hinduism. The Congress’s Priyanka Kharge has come out fully in support of Stalin.
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Is this the difference between Dravidian politics and the BJP’s sanatan dharma?
The first problem is that the BJP does not define what it means by sanatan dharma. For instance, BJP leader in Tamil Nadu Khushboo Sundar made a statement that she is a Muslim but people have made temples for her, and that for her is sanatan dharma. I’m not sure by what standard or authority has she made the statement.
We still do not know what the BJP means when it says it supports sanatan dharma. Does the BJP support the definition of the past two centuries where it has been associated with a very conservative position on issues of caste, women and religion? This is not true in the south with so many social reform movements that have worked to eradicate injustices because of caste, patriarchy and religion. Sanatan dharma was never popular and it has been criticised extensively by the reformists.
Is this what differentiates between the north and south?
I don’t want to frame this as a north versus south debate, I want to frame this as Hindutva versus an egalitarian, inclusive politics, in ideological and political terms, rather than in regional terms. After all, there has been a lot of resistance even in the north against sanatan dharma and Hindutva; but can the BJP tell us what sort of Hinduism it wants to defend – is it this extremely conservative and most regressive approach to Hinduism it wants to protect? Forget radical reformers, I think even Gandhians should be uncomfortable with this.
Also, has the BJP, which now celebrates Dr B.R. Ambedkar as an icon, read his book Riddles of Hinduism? Udayanidhi’s utterances on sanatan dharma are extremely mild compared to Ambedkar’s critique on Hinduism.
So, the BJP should tell us what is sanatan dharma, where are they deriving this concept from and is it integral to Hinduism? Can the BJP tell if sanatan dharma is found in the Vedas or Upanishads; and where and how it is used in the Puranas? There are other more prominent concepts in the Puranas and itihasas such as the concepts of varnashara dharma (caste duties) and stree dharma (duties of women). Today, many anti-caste activists have been openly criticising varnashara dharma, and many feminists have been openly criticising stree dharma. What is the BJP’s stand on this?
And if we are to speak constitutionally, we have this idea of ‘essential religious practices’. Does sanatan dharma come under essential religious practices? If so, on what authority? These are questions the BJP has to answer before demanding apologies for criticising sanatan dharma
Isn’t it odd that Tamil Nadu is having conferences to ban sanatan dharma even though it’s an alien concept?
If I’m not wrong, I would say discussions and criticisms against sanatan dharma and Manusmriti have got really strong after the BJP came to power in 2014, because the BJP has made it part of the national discourse. Tamil Nadu has always had anti-caste discourse but the BJP is forcing anti-sanatan dharma politics in the state with its policies, like NEET entrance exam or diluting caste reservations etc. Many activists in Tamil Nadu, and not just political leaders like Thol Thirumavalavan and Udayanidhi Stalin, see this as part and parcel of the sanatan dharma or Manu mentality of the BJP.
The BJP is blowing it out of proportion only keeping elections in mind. It may work outside Tamil Nadu but will have no effect in the state.