Problem is not Sanatan Dharma. It’s what politics has done to it

Sanatan Dharma is not an identity to be defended against another. It is a discipline of living. (C R Sasikumar/File) Recently, I wrote that the Sansad Chalo protest was Sanatan Dharma in action. Young people had come from different corners of India, from different faiths, castes, and backgrounds. They stood together for education, a cause larger than themselves. They shared food, made space for strangers, protected one another and somehow became a community without asking who belonged to which community. To me, that was Sanatan Dharma. But it met with a huge backlash. My response section got filled with labels. Sanghi. BJP stooge. RSS sympathiser. It made me wonder: When did speaking of Sanatan Dharma automatically place you on one side of Indias political divide? Perhaps the problem is not Sanatan Dharma. Perhaps it is what politics has done to it. To understand this, remember what many Indians thought they were voting for in 2014. It was more than a change of government. After generations of looking at ourselves through borrowed eyes, Indians were beginning to look inward again. Millions wanted more than economic growth. They wanted to rediscover themselves. The BJP understood that longing better than any other party. It presented itself not merely as an alternative government but as the custodian of India’s Hindu inheritance. In doing so, it came to define what “Hindu” politics looked like. But what if much of what we now associate with that politics is the opposite of the tradition invoked in its name?Sanatan Dharma is not an identity to be defended against another. It is a discipline of living: Sat before propaganda, nyaya before power, dhairya before intimidation, purvapakshya, understanding the opponent’s point of view before indoctrination, and lokasangraha, the welfare of all before one’s tribe. Set against these, perhaps what we have witnessed in the last 12 years is not the flowering of Sanatan Dharma but its shrinking. Consider intolerance and stereotyping. If you question the government, you are labelled anti-national, foreign-funded, a Chinese agent. How did this happen in the land of the Upanishads? Our foundational texts are conversations, dialogues, debates. The Bhagavad Gita exists because Arjuna questions Krishna, Gargi questioned Yajnavalkya. Hindu thought accommodated an astonishingly diverse spectrum. Disagreement was evidence that it was alive. This is why stereotyping in popular culture troubles me too. When films such as Dhurandhar repeatedly place Muslim or Pakistani characters within a familiar silhouette of villainy, I worry not only about the social consequences but about the storytelling. Real human beings are inconveniently complicated. Great storytelling unsettles our prejudices. Propaganda confirms them. Then I get into my car and meet Ehsan, my driver. He is Muslim and has one daughter. He does not plan to have more children but aspires to educate her, and give her choices his generation did not have. The stereotype collapses. Many of our problems with population or social reform, that we lazily turn into a religious one, are often an education and development problem. When we start focusing on education, women’s agency, healthcare and economic security, they begin to change. It is for this same reason secularism must also mean equality before the law. If India is secular, why should governments run temples? What forms of state support for religious pilgrimages are justified? And why should marriage, divorce, inheritance, adoption or polygamy be governed differently depending on one’s religion? Religious freedom cannot mean unequal citizenship. These are the questions a Uniform Civil Code should allow us to debate openly. Reform what needs reform, but through Parliament, law, education and reason. A living society questions. A confident government answers. Therein lies the deeper challenge before the BJP. If Sanatan Dharma is truly the inheritance it seeks to protect, it cannot appear only in