Towards a second coming of dharma

Alasdair Macintyre’s work, After Virtue makes a profound analysis of the ethical condition of our contemporary society.  As the name of the book suggests, he says that modern western society has no space for virtues. What it has are practices. But these practices are not animated by virtues. The pursuit of virtues has no room in contemporary society. These practices emanate from emotivism. This means they remain mainly in tune to individual tastes and feelings. Therefore, moral choices become simply differences in tastes. This kind of morality expels common universal moral standards as well as virtues (moral qualities) from human life. Such a morality leads to a raw assertion of power. In this regard, we may think of Fredrick Nietzsche who proposes a pursuit of will to power.  Such crass pursuits of power often culminate into social Darwinism and are a logical outcome of such our moral condition. Following this thread of thought, let us try to recognize the moral condition that is teeming in our country.  Although, Macintyre responds to the moral condition of the western society that he belongs, we can reflect in the light of his ideas and find parallel notions from our society and relate them to recognize the moral condition of our society. Indian society manifests a strong tradition of the pursuit of dharma (righteousness). Dharma animates all human action. When one fails to live up to one’s dharma one will lose ones final destiny (mokxa). This means there are human actions/ practices that can be abstracted from dharma and become un-merit worthy. Thus, in some way dharma provides us the way (marga) and purpose/goal for our life. 

Unfortunately, the politico-moral condition in our society seems to indicate that we are moving away from its alignment with dharma. We seem to have stepped into a moral state that may be described as a post-dharma era. We may name our plight by following Macintyre and call the situation that afflicts us as ‘after Dharma’. Maybe, our PM Modi clearly hinted at it when he declared the coming of new India soon after the tremendous victory of BJP in UP.  In a Post-dharma era, we still have practices but we seem to have lost sight of dharma. That is why we may have become captive to emotive issues like cow protection when the 21st century India has several other urgent issues that require our attention. The investment of our energy in cow protection has often led us to forget the sacredness of human life. The life of a human being has lost its value while the value of the holy cow has grown by leaps and bounds.  This situation seems to indicate a loss of primary dharma. We seem to have lost our moral compass and often choose cow protection as the highest value in comparison to the life of a human being. The issue is not about cow protection but it is more about the means chosen for cow protection. The violent and illegal means illustrate the loss of dharma. The violence that includes heinous crimes like murder unfortunately has become a means of cow protection and is a clear indication of our abandonment of dharma. Such a loss of dharma impoverishes Hinduism. Hence, some among us might even hold that we have indeed moved into a new India that takes us into what may be described as an era ‘after Hinduism’ or time of degeneration of Hinduism.     

The death of dharma that we find in our society is similar to the death of God in the western society. Nietzsche declared the death of God and said that we humans have killed him.  Maybe we have to admit our role in the reining loss of dharma in our society. In India, we have not come to the death of God but have willingly embraced the death of man (woman). In the rising of the holy cow, we have the unholy dyeing of humans. Hence, the loss of dharma takes us to the death of humans. Human being is no longer an end in itself but has become a means to attain what one deems as sacred and ascribe high value. That is why our society is becoming more and more heartless and intolerant where human life has lost its sacredness and dignity. The statecraft of the reigning ruling dispensation seems to be in tune with this loss of the value of life of an ordinary citizen in our country. Hence, we have practices. They are religious, economic, political and other. But we lack dharma that animates them.  Thus, without being cynical, we must face this loss of dharma that afflicts all areas of our life today. This loss also affects democracy. It may not be wrong to say that we are in an era that may be called:  ‘after democracy’. 

The hollowing of democracy    is visible everywhere. We have democratic institutions and practices. But we lack democracy. We have elections yet we lack ethical elections. We often sell our vote for a price to dubious candidates and parties.  This also confirms the sate of loss of dharma that we are facing today.  A sense of loss can trigger recovery. The loss of dharma unfortunately was mainly a result of a quest for a recovery of other losses that some of us felt in our complex encounter with colonization as well as the pursuit of neo-liberal economy (a form of neo-colonization) by recent Governments . A reactive recovery of the losses can result in a greater loss. Thus for instance, a violent recovery of loss that informs cow protection becomes a huge loss to genuine Hinduism.  Recent demand to dump democracy so as to establish Hindu Rashtra in our country is yet another indicator of the death of dharma in our country.  This loss of dharma shows that ruling BJP is trapped into a ‘Paradox of Power’.  Although, it has become a dominant force, it clearly has not power over the unreasonable and monstrous passions unleashed by the right wing forces. These forces seem to say ‘if not now then when?’ The tiger that is nurtured by the BJP has come back to bite it.   Hence, it’s both urgent and inevitable to bring about a second coming of dharma in our society.  

(The author is Professor of Rachol Seminary.)