The Great Indian Novel

A Note on Dharma

Of the many Indian words and expressions in this book, the meanings of most of which are readily apparent from their context (or from the glossary), the one term it may be necessary to elucidate is ‘dharma’.

Dharma is perhaps unique in being an untranslatable Sanskrit term that is, none the less, cheerfully defined as a normal, unitalicized entry in an English dictionary. The definition offered in Chambers Twentieth-Century Dictionary is ‘the righteousness that underlies the law; the law’. While this is a definite improvement on the one-word translation offered in many an Indian Sanskrit primer (‘religion’), it still does not convey the full range of meaning implicit in the term. ‘English has no equivalent for dharma,’ writes P. Lal in the Glossary to his ‘transcreation’ of the Mahabharata, in which he defines dharma as ‘code of good conduct, pattern of noble living, religious rules and observance’.

My friend Ansar Hussain Khan suggests that dharma is most simply defined as ‘that by which we live’. Yes — but ‘that’ embraces a great deal. An idea of the immensity and complexity of the concept of dharma may be conveyed by the fact that, in his superb analytical study of Indian culture and society, The Speaking Tree, Richard Lannoy defines dharma in at least nine different ways depending on the context in which he uses the term. The nine (with page references to the Oxford University Press paperback edition in brackets): Moral Law (xvi), spiritual order (142), sacred law (160), salvation ethic (213), totality of social, ethical and spiritual harmony (217), righteousness (218, 325), universal order (229), magico-religious cycle (233), moral, idealistic, spiritual force (294). Lannoy also quotes Betty Heimann’s excellent version in her 1937 work Indian and Western Philosophy: A Study in Contrasts: ‘Dharma is total cosmic responsibility, including God’s, a universal justice far more inclusive, wider and profounder than any Western equivalent, such as “duty”.’

The reader of The Great Indian Novel is invited, upon each encounter with dharma in these pages, to assume that the term is used to mean any, or all, of the above.

Shashi Tharoor