Thread by @vakibs

This is an interesting article that needs to be deconstructed and debunked.

"In the matter of conversion to another faith, no public trust is ever involved as it is a matter exclusively of personal choice."

Is religion a personal choice? What is "religion" anyway? (Thread)

https://twitter.com/ShashiTharoor/status/1381951118289346561

There is no universal definition of "religion" (or "faith"). In fact, the various Sampradāyas of India are not faith-based, but practice based. Even the philosophical tenets (like the 8-fold noble path of Buddha) are not "faith based". They are a practice driven by self-inquiry.

Some scholars, like S.N. Balagangadhara argue that even the reconstruction of Indian Sampradāyas as "religion" is problematic. The native word is "Dharma", which is a universal ethic, which is grouped into "Sampradāyas" (traditions) that are not mutually exclusionary.

What exactly is Dharma? Is it entirely a matter of personal choice? Something like clothes, or movies, or food preferences. Is it entirely devoid of "public trust" or "commons"?

When we ask this question, it becomes immediately clear that this logic cannot be applied to Dharma.

Dharma (from the root Dhṛ: to support/sustain) connects an individual to the rest of the universe. In fact, Dharma is the exact opposite of "personal choice".

So when an alien term "faith" is interpreted as a personal choice and imposed on Dharma, it is a mutilation of Dharma.

In Dharmic understanding, there are Pancha Ṛṇabandha (5 debts) that connect one to the universe. They are:

1) Dēvaṛṇa: Duty to the illuminating forces
2) Pitṛṛṇa: Duty to ancestors
3) Ṛṣiṛṇa: Duty to sages
4) Mānavaṛṇa: Duty to humans
5) Bhūtaṛṇa: Duty to nature

Dharma is a methodology for repaying these 5 debts (Ṛṇabandhas) through the process of action: in the 3 realms of mind (Manasā) speech (Vāchā) and physical action (Kārmaṇa).

There is nothing about "personal choice". In fact, that would be a Manōvikāra (mental distortion).

The simplest way to understand Dharma is as a duty. What person would say that a duty is a personal choice? Only a narcissistic, self-indulgent and ignorant person who has not grown up to cultivate social relationships.

But Dharma also has several higher levels of meaning.

The famous saying from Mahābhārata and the Manusmṛti says धर्मो रक्षति रक्षितः "Dharmō rakshati rakshitaḥ" (One who protects Dharma is protected in turn). This is reflective of an intelligence: an adaption to nature and thus towards sustainability (Dharma means to sustain).

Again, at this level of the higher meaning, Dharma is not a personal choice. The personal choice will align with Dharma only when the person has that holistic intelligence towards the universe. Prof. Vamsee Juluri called this with the memorable phrase "Saraswati's Intelligence".

There is a higher meaning for Dharma than sustainability. It is about stability within one's own consciousness. That peace will come only through self-reflection, and an understanding of the limitations of the human condition. Dharma has to satisfy that yearning for liberation.

This most refined meaning of Dharma is also apparent from etymology: the conscious experience must be "sustained". At this sublime level, we can argue "Dharma is a personal choice". But "Person" is not what we call as "individual".

No, it is "Purusha" ("Being" with Capital B).

So, at all the levels of meaning, "Dharma" is antagonistic to the interpretation as "faith, which is a personal choice".

At its most basic level, this radical individualism is a discarding of the Ṛṇabandhas. It is discarding one's ancestors, one's languages and one's culture.

Discarding the Ṛṇabandha towards nature is also apparent: an ugly yearning to pollute and destroy, to claim all living beings as "resources to be used for the pleasure of man". This is the cause of the ecological crisis engulfing us. Such individualism is clearly Adharma.

Discarding the Ṛṇabandha towards Ṛshis is tantamount to neglecting one's own literature, sciences, cultural practices and everything that past sages have given us to make life beautiful and illuminating. A greedy universalism is obscuring the Ṛshis of other world cultures.

Discarding the Ṛṇabandha towards other humans (Mānavaṛṇa) results in racism, parochialism and even sociopathic behaviour. This is clearly Adharma. It resulted in slavery, genocide and colonialism.

Discarding the Ṛṇabandha to Dēvas, is like blinding one's own eyes.

If a "faith" condemns one's ancestors to forever burn in hell, to turn one's back on them and to discard whichever cultural mores and practices given by them, is it a "personal choice"?

Is it a question where "no public trust is ever involved"?

I would argue to the contrary.

India has a long history of open philosophical debate, the germination and flourishing of diverse Dharmic Sampradāyas, with many of them even making a large impact outside India.

Let us see how the propagation of Dharmic Sampradāyas deals with question of ancestral duties.

The most important example is obviously Buddhism which has spread all over Asia. How does "conversion to Buddhism" work in practice? Would the ancestral culture or ancestral duties be discarded? No.

There is no "conversion to Buddhism". The past practices are actually nurtured.

This is where the bone of contention lies. There are now religions, which are not necessarily rooted in a Dharmic ethic (and which don't recognize the 5 Ṛṇabandhas and even actively destroy them) that are on the prowl. Should they get an unalienable right to propagate Adharma?

I would argue that the path to Dharma should always be left open as a dialectic: more accurately phrased, as a Samvāda. A consequence of this is that we need to allow people to propagate Adharma. What we might think of as Adharma might be reflective of our own perception.

On the other hand, there cannot be an unalienable right to propagate Adharma. It cannot be justified through an absurd phraseology such as "one's faith is a matter of one's personal choice". It is all bullshit mumbo-jumbo that has no meaning to India's own philosophical history.

I think this opportunistic nonsense and the associated philosophical guile by is inevitable, as long as our means of debate are in a foreign language. We must draw this debate into our own native Indian languages. Only then can we see the bullshit clearly for what it is. (End)