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Western religions, the central law of the world and its peoples is singular and unified, and
revealed and governed from above.
In dharmic traditions, the word a-dharma applies to humans who fail to perform
righteously; it does not mean refusal to embrace a given set of propositions as a belief
system or disobedience to a set of commandments or canons.
Dharma is also often translated as "law," but to become a law, a set of rules has to be present
which must: (i) be promulgated and decreed by an authority that enjoys political
sovereignty over a given territory, (ii) be obligatory, (iii) be interpreted, adjudicated and
enforced by courts, and (iv) carry penalties when it is breached. No such description of
dharma is found within the traditions.
The Roman Emperor Constantine began the system of "canon laws," which were
determined and enforced by the Church. The ultimate source of Jewish law is the God of
Israel. The Western religions agree that the laws of God must be obeyed just as if they were
commandments from a sovereign. It is therefore critical that "false gods" be denounced and
defeated, for they might issue illegitimate laws in order to undermine the "true laws." If
multiple deities were allowed, then there would be confusion as to which laws were true.
In contrast with this, there is no record of any sovereign promulgating the variousdharmashastras (texts of dharma for society) for any specific territory at any specific time, nor any
claim that God revealed such "social laws," or that they should be enforced by a ruler. None
of the compilers of the famous texts of social dharma were appointed by kings, served in law
enforcement, or had any official capacity in the state machinery. They were more akin to
modern academic social theorists than jurists. The famous Yajnavalkya Smriti is
introduced in the remote sanctuary of an ascetic. The well-known Manusmriti begins by
stating its setting as the humble abode of Manu, who answered questions posed to him in a
state of samadhi (higher consciousness). Manu (1.82) tells the sages that every epoch has its
own distinct social and behavioral dharma.
Similarly, none of the Vedas and Upanishads was sponsored by a king, court or
administrator, or by an institution with the status of a church. In this respect, dharma is
closer to the sense of "law" we find in the Hebrew scriptures, where torah, the Hebrew
equivalent, is also given in direct spiritual experience. The difference is that Jewish torah
quickly became enforced by the institutions of ancient Israel.
The dharma-shastras did not create an enforced practice but recorded existing practices.
Many traditional smritis (codified social dharma) were documenting prevailing localized
customs of particular communities. An important principle was self-governance by a
community from within. The smritis do not claim to prescribe an orthodox view from the
pulpit, as it were, and it was not until the 19th century, under British colonial rule, that the
smritis were turned into "law" enforced by the state.
The reduction of dharma to concepts such as religion and law has harmful consequences: it
places the study of dharma in Western frameworks, moving it away from the authority of its
own exemplars. Moreover, it creates the false impression that dharma is similar to Christian
ecclesiastical law-making and the related struggles for state power.
The result of equating dharma with religion in India has been disastrous: in the name of
secularism, dharma has been subjected to the same limits as Christianity in Europe. A nonreligious society may still be ethical without belief in God, but an a-dharmic society loses its
ethical compass and falls into corruption and decadence.