Current challenges

Circumstance and relevance

  • The motivations described earlier still drive us today, and we must do our best to imbibe the spirit (not the letter) of the classical dharmashAstra thought and refine ourselves as individuals and communities.
  • Hindu culture and civilization is facing an existential threat.

“But it has a dangerous rival – a memetic complex of a pathogenic type that arose in the Afro-Asiatic milieu of West Asia. This rival is the one which has extinguished the system across the former IE world and taken up the riches generated by the IE system as its “secular” property. Branches of this rival system are now baying for the blood of the last great bulwark of the old IE system.” (MT20151212)

Current slippage from dharma

  • आत्मविस्मृतिः - Our society (or a large part of it) has slipped away from dharma. In many ways, our civilization is in a state of senescence (../method of analysis of history here).
  • क्षात्रे धर्मभ्रंशः (म्लेच्छशासनम्,भूहरणम्, आङ्ग्लपूरणम्, मूर्खप्रजाप्रभुत्वम्, अतिशयारक्षणम्, सद्ब्राह्मणासमर्थनम्) → दारिद्र्यम् (विशिष्य भारतीयसंस्कृतेर् अध्येतृषु), लोभोऽपि कश्चित् → विक्रयणम् → आत्मविस्मृतिर् व्यापिनी → जुगुप्सा क्वचित् → कामेनार्थेन च साकम् भारतीय-सत्त्वस्य रक्षणम् तैः। [KV16]

Constitution of India

  • Abandonment of much of the dharma memeplex in favor of a west-aping constitution in India has happened.
  • Ambedkar claimed that his constitution took the best from the dharmashAstra-s; but this is not so. That guy did not have any deep scholarship in the dharmashAstra-s (maybe just enough to denounce them). It’s more like he copy-pasted from non dharma-shAstra sources (“The Constitution borrowed largely from the Government of India Act, under which India was governed and which was the basis of transfer of power, and from the American, Australian, and Irish constitutions.”).
    • bhImrAv was a fighter guy, whose revulsion flooded out whatever little compassion he could muster for the authors of the dharmashAstra; so that in the end he did not understand their motives well at all (either for want of desire or effort) .
  • PV kANe points out several problems with it in his last volume. The most tragic of it, in my view, is the fundamental shift from duties to rights. If only he had the depth of understanding that the duty-frame used in the dharmashAstra-s are superior!
  • If the dharmashAstra-s were to be followed, we might have had something like the remarkably high-functioning old Mysore kingdom, dominated by the brahma-kShatra classes, with a powerful highly accomplished and upright prime minister appointed for a short term by the king, house of representatives drawn from the subjects; strong patronage and support for Hindu scholarship and traditions.