This speech by eminent Marathi polymath, P. L. Deshpande, led me to read Savarkar’s essay खरा सनातन धर्म कोणता? (What is the real sanatana dharma?). Here I present a brief summary and analysis.
Savarkar begins by noting two assumptions of sanatani people. Firstly, they think reformers or progressives (sudhāraka) are out to uproot sanatana dharma. Secondly, sanatana, in their view, refers to any custom that should be followed without objection, as a duty. This, Savarkar observes, makes sanatanis reluctant to abolish any custom regarded as sanatana, even if its clearly harmful in practice, and regard the reformers who seek to abolish it as committing sacrilege against dharma.
But its important to bear in mind that Savarkar expresses pride in sanatana dharma (आम्ही स्वत:स सनातन धर्माचे अभिमानी समजतो) and so it is his peculiar definition of sanatana dharma that we need to understand which includes social reform and abolition of regressive, irrational customs.
He points out that the term sanatana dharma as ordinarily used is flawed by the vast array of texts and theses that it encompasses: from shruti-smruti to shani-mahamatya, from the apaurusheya claims of the Vedas to the prohibition on eating brinjals, from contemplation on the supreme brahman in the Upanishads to the taboos on inter-dining, from which direction to face while urinating in the day or night to realising that true happiness lies in contentment. And then there are outright contradictions: verses in the Manusmriti that extol the consumption of meat and others that proscribe it. This indiscriminate ascription of “sanatana dharma” to all these sundry rules is not just the fault of simple-minded folk but a characteristic of all the smrutis and puranas. As Savarkar puts it in his inimitable Marathi:
वरील प्रकारच्या सार्‍या मोठ्या, धाकट्या, व्यापक, विक्षिप्त, शतावधानी, क्षणिक आचारविचारांच्या अनुष्टुपाच्या अंती अगदी ठसठशीतपणे ही एकच राजमुद्रा बहुधा ठोकून दिलेली असते की, “एष धर्मः सनातन:!”
Furthermore, Savarkar points out that other religions too make the claim that their rules, just as expansive in their scope from the trivial to the sublime, carry the same force as sanatana dharma and it is impossible that the same God could have given contradictory sanatana dharmas to different religions. Therefore, it is only due to their stupid faith (मूर्ख श्रद्धा) that humans have abused the category of sanatana dharma. In order to understand the thing to which the term can be properly applied, one needs to firstly be clear on the term itself.
Savarkar says:
सनातन शब्दाचा मुख्य अर्थ शाश्वत, अबाधित, अखंडनीय, अपरिवर्तनीय.
The word “sanatana” chiefly means eternal, incontingent, without exception, immutable.
The word “dharma”, on the other hand, has come to be applied in the following contexts:
- What bears or regulates a thing is its dharma i.e. its nature. The dharma of water is to flow, of fire is to burn, etc. Or the law of gravitation is a form of dharma.
- This same meaning gets applied to other-worldly (pāra-laukika) and spiritual (pāramārthika) goods such as heaven, hell, reincarnation, God, the living being, the world, etc. Gradually, the term dharma came to be exclusively applied only to such goods and in this sense carries the meaning of “religion”.
- Those worldly practices that determine a person’s fate in the post-mortem world is also called dharma and takes the meaning of āchāra.
- Finally, there are practices with a purely worldly orientation such as legal matters and politics (rājanīti, rājadharma) which at one time were in the scope of smruti dharma but have passed over time into the secular, human realm. Savarkar calls such dhama as “nirbandha”.
Given the meaning of sanatana, to which of these four senses of dharma is it properly applicable?
Here Savarkar’s answer is that the term “sanatana dharma” can only be applied to the first category. The laws of nature and scientific truths that humans have grasped through direct perception and demonstrated through experimentation, these alone constitute sanatana dharma. They apply to all humans equally irrespective of their religion or other differences.
हा खरा सनातन धर्म आहे. इतकेच नव्हे तर हा खरोखर मानवधर्म आहे.
This is the real sanatana dharma. Not just that, this is the real human dharma (or what we may call ‘humanism’).
Savarkar says that the sun, moon and other phenomena are not deities that become pleased or displeased on a whim but things that are bound by the rules of sanatana dharma. To the extent that humans grasp these rules, they are able to correctly interact with these phenomena. If a ship riddled with holes is launched into the sea then it will sink even if the sea is propitiated with a heap of coconuts and protected by perfectly recited Vedic mantras. On the other hand, if it is a ship built on scientific principles then the sea will carry its passengers safely even if these are Veda-burning, alcohol-consuming, beef-eating degenerates.
जी गोष्ट समुद्राची तीच इतर महद्‌भूतांची. त्यास माणसाळविण्याचे महामंत्र शब्दनिष्ठ वेदांत वा झेंदावेस्तात, कुराणात वा पुराणात सापडणारे नसून प्रत्यक्षनिष्ठ विज्ञानात (सायन्समध्ये) सापडणारे आहेत. हा सनातन धर्म इतका पक्का सनातन, इतका स्वयंसिद्ध नि सर्वस्वी अपरिवर्तनीय आहे की, तो बुडू नये, परिवर्तन पावू नये, म्हणून कोणताही सनातन धर्मसंरक्षकसंघ स्थापण्याची तसदी कलियुगात देखील घ्यावयास नको. कारण या वैज्ञानिक सनातन धर्मास बदलविण्याचे सामर्थ्य मनुष्यास कोणासही आणि कधीही येणे शक्य नाही.
What is true of the sea, the same with the other elements. The great mantras to humanise them are not to be found in the affirmed-by-word Vedas, Zend-Avesta, Quran or Purana, but the affirmed-by-perception science. This sanatana dharma is so strong, so self-established and immutable in every way, that no Sanatana Dharma Protection Group need be set up even in Kaliyuga to protect it from change or destruction. For, no human can ever have the power to transform this scientific sanatana dharma.
But what about the fact that scientific truths are neither exhaustive nor inviolable with regards to the claims they make about the world? Savarkar notes this fact and responds that as new truths are discovered or old truths are improved,
या वैज्ञानिक स्मृतीत न लाजता, ना लपविता किंवा आजच्या श्लोकांच्या अर्थांची अप्रामाणिक ओढाताण न करता नवीन श्लोक प्रकटपणे घालून ती सुधारणा घडवून आणू, आणि उलट मनुष्याचे ज्ञान वाढले म्हणून त्या सुधारणेचे भूषणच मानू
… in our scientific smruti, without embarrassment, without concealment, without dishonestly twisting the meanings of existing shlokas, having added the new shlokas we will make the improvement, and consider it as an embellishment for it advances human knowledge.
Two important points to note from the foregoing. Firstly, in the view of Savarkar, science is the source of sanatana dharma, scientific treatises are the smrutis and the laws they expound are the shlokas. Scientific progress is not a problem but a clarification of sanatana dharma.
Secondly, science expresses the proper relation between humans and the world. In Hindu religious texts, in particular, the world is alive and they exhort Hindus to pray to the seas, the rivers, the mountains, the sun, etc. as if they are living persons. Science, on the other hand, is often seen as a form of disenchantment, of humans separating themselves from the natural world. But Savarkar appears to be suggesting that science is, in fact, the proper way to connect to the natural world. So, while Savarkar does not say this explicitly, I think it would be fair to say, as an example, that a scientific study of the sun and the various tools developed to harness solar energy would be – in his view – the proper way of relating to the sun, rather than reciting the Gayatri Mantra.
I have spent much time explaining how the qualification “sanatana” applies to the first meaning of dharma as natural law (srushti-dharma) because, as I said above, in Savarkar’s view, that is the only meaning of dharma to which it applies. None of the other three categories of dharma are “sanatana” as the term has been defined above.
As to the second category consisting of items such as ishwar, jiva, jagat, purvajanma, punarjanma, svarga, narak, etc., Savarkar says that it should be possible to make inviolable statements regarding their existence or non-existence, and of their nature, if existent. A survey of the extant texts on these subjects would show, however, that none of them can be considered sanatana. Unlike science, they are not demonstratable and their authority arises entirely from their word (shabda-pramana) and the testimony of certain personages (apta-pramana) based on their private, supersensuous experiences.
This in itself is not an issue for everything is not demonstratable in the world and to a limited extent, some truths have to be admitted on the testimony of experts. But the problem is that there is no consensus between the aptas or shabdas in their claims about the para-laukika and paramarthika truths. Savarkar observes that we need to at least take into account the following persons as aptas: Kapila, Patanjali, Adi Shankar, Ramanuja, Madhva and Vallabha. The para-laukika and paramarthika truth, whatever it may be, has to be one but all these aptas make mutually contradictory claims. They cannot all be right and yet it’s impossible to decide which one of them is stating the truth.
The same, Savarkar says, is true of shabda-pramana. All religious scriptures claim an apaurusheya status, as divinely inspired, and yet they expound mutually contradictory truths: what is sacred in one, is profane in another and vice versa. And again, like the aptas, there is no objective point of view from which one can judge who is right and who is wrong.
Savarkar thus concludes that there is no knowledge of the dharmas of the paralaukika and paramarthika goods, which can qualify for the title of “sanatana”. If such knowledge is ever forthcoming then by all means, it can be celebrated as sanatana. But till then, it can only be accepted as क्लृप्ति which he translates as “hypothesis”, as a semblance of truth (सत्याभास) but not truth itself.
As for the third category of achara, the conclusion is obvious from the above discussion. When the final destination or goal is itself not properly understood, then it is pointless to speak of the proper conduct to reach there or attain it. No injunction or prohibition that derives its value from the support it will provide in the other world can be regarded as sanatana.
Finally, with regards to the fourth category of nirbandha, these are not regarded as sanatana even in the smritis themselves being overridden in times of distress (apad-dharma) or with changes in the yuga.
This essay reveals Savakar as an atheist, rationalist, humanist with a strong commitment to the development of a scientific temper, a quest usually associated with Nehruvian secularists. He removes the qualification “sanatana” from where Hindus typically apply it – the paralaukika and paramarthika truths revealed in shruti-smrti and the achara connected with them – and reserves it specifically for scientific truths that stand the test of direct perception and are provable through demonstration. In other words, he is telling the Hindus explicitly that if they are devoted to sanatana dharma, then they better undertake scientific research instead of following the prescriptions and proscriptions given in the shruti-smruti texts or the various treatises of the aptas.
Another important point on which Savarkar is at odds with most Hindus is that he makes no distinction between dharmika texts (shruti, smruti, darshanas…) and other religious texts (Avesta, Bibles, Quran…), or between the teachings of “our” rishi-munis and “their” prophets. These are equal in their claims of divine provenance and as repositories of the infallible truth – if you admit one, then you must admit all of them – and none of the dharmas they proclaim are sanatana (except, of course, those which are verified by science). They are still trying to figure out the truth of the paralaukika and paramarthika and if and when they do, their findings can be admitted as sanatana dharma. As they stand now, they only contain hypotheses.
Of course, none of this striking in itself, for such ideas are pretty commonplace in atheistic writings. What is particularly striking is that a man renowned as the father of Hindutva should think this way and what does it mean for Hindu dharma itself. Most Hindus would regard Hindutva as the political arm of Hindu dharma, a form of mobilisation to protect Hindu dharma. But it should be evident from his essay that Savarkar was a far more revolutionary thinker – a द्रष्टा नेता a visionary leader, as he is often called in Marathi.
As a humanist, his focus was on the welfare of the Hindu people, not their dharma and the introduction of his essay observes that the Hindus had become reluctant to challenge dharma because they regarded it as sanatana – something that they were obligated to uphold against the transgressions of the reformers. But Savarkar is suggesting that what the Hindus regard as their dharma is not really sanatana, it is merely the attempt of an ancient people to discover the truth and should not be misunderstood as the discovery of truth itself. And now modern science has opened a new path and that is the path Hindus should take if they are seriously committed to sanatana dharma.
It should be clear from the foregoing why Savarkar did not attain much popularity as a thinker. The right wing would have disowned him because he was dismissive of sanatana dharma as they understood it. And the left wing disowned him because he was equally critical of all religions – none of their truths carried a sanatana value for him and the fallacies and regressiveness of all religions called equally for criticism and change. His literature and patriotism were his only saving grace. The immense sacrifice and hardships he undertook in the struggle for India’s independence and the supreme love for the motherland he expressed in his masterful poetry – that is all that he is remembered for and for which he yet serves as an object of reverence.
Truth and Falsity 