Who’s afraid of Sanatana Dharma?

DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin’s recent attack on Sanatana Dharma, whereby he likened the Hindu religion to a pestilence and called for its eradication, set off a predict­able storm of public opinion. As often happens with angry tempests with the sensitive issue of faith at its centre, much noise was made with little light shed on what was being attempted to be debated, what was at stake. What is Sanatana Dharma? What did those calling for its extermination know about the target of their

attack? Did those taking offence at the attack and defending Sanatana Dharma know enough either?

In his famous Uttarpara speech (1909), Sri Aurobindo had said: “We speak often of the Hindu religion, of the Sanatana Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatana Dharma is life itself; it is a thing that has not so much to be believed as lived.”

The ‘automatic’ translation of the word sanatana is ‘eternal’ and this

denotation subsumes the connotation of ‘universal’. “It is the Hindu religion only because the Hindu nation has kept it… But it is not circumscribed by the confines of a single country, it does not belong peculiarly and forever to a bounded part of the world. That which we call the Hindu reli­gion is really the eternal religion, because it is the universal religion which embraces all others. If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal,” Sri Aurobindo had argued.

The basic parameters of a discussion on Sanatana Dharma had been set in that speech. Because Hindus themselves do not usually know what Sanatana Dharma means, we must therefore begin with a definition, and such definition must incorporate everything packed into the word sanatana, beginning with eternal and universal. In the following pages, two scholars known for their depth of knowledge in Hindu scripture and philosophy, the Sanskrit language, and Indic civilisation enter the arena built by the current controversy to explore and elucidate what most people tend to approach with insufficient information and inadequate understanding.

DMKHinduismreligionSanatana DharmaUdhayanidhi StalinVedic traditions