by Naresh Jotwani
The two words dharma (धर्म) and ‘religion’ are not synonyms. Dharma means ‘that which upholds’ or ‘essential nature’. Dharma is a root word in Sanskrit, whereas ‘religion’ is derived from the Latin word religare.
DeepSeek gives the following background (see Note 1), which in fact also includes a second possible derivation of ‘religion’ from Latin:
The Latin verb religare means ‘to bind back’, ‘to tie fast’, or ‘to restrain’. It is formed from the prefix re– (‘back’ or ‘again’) and ligare (‘to bind’ or ‘to tie’) … Many scholars trace the English word ‘religion’ back to this root – suggesting that religion is that which ‘binds’ people to the divine or holds human communities together. (However, the early Christian writer Lactantius argued for a different origin: religere, meaning ‘to re-read’ or ‘re-choose’.)
But this DeepSeek result includes an unjustified extrapolation – the two words ‘people’ and ‘communities’. The Latin word has no such implication, the equivalent of ‘religion’ being religio. Once again, from DeepSeek:
For ancient Romans, religio meant a sense of duty, moral obligation, scrupulousness, and ‘justice rendered to the gods’ … It was more about the correct performance of rituals and the feeling of awe that kept the world in order.
Thus, going by its root meaning, the word ‘religion’ should apply both to an individual and to a group. Scholars of recent centuries seem to have added the words ‘people’ and ‘communities’, seen in the first DeepSeek result.
To sum up, two meanings of ‘religion’ seem to be applicable today, none of them the exact equivalent of the Latin religio.
• In an individual’s life – his spiritual journey – his ‘personal religion’ binds or anchors him to the eternal truth, or ‘God’.
• A so-called ‘organized religion’ is built on the foundation of a common need of the community. It works on the social or psychological needs of ordinary people. Inevitably, the commonly felt needs create a career opportunity for the cunning, who figure out how to cater profitably to ‘strong market demand’. Naturally, truth largely goes missing in action.
Over time, all the ‘organized religions’ of the world have split into factions. Within any ‘organized’ faction: (i) no two individuals are alike, and (ii) disputes occur all the time. Thus it is fair to conclude that an ‘organized religion’ rarely fulfils the spiritual needs of anyone who signs up full time.
Jesus Christ lived through a period of great turmoil in the region, as the ruthless might of the Roman empire dealt with clever and independent minded locals. Christ’s message was that of love and charity, as against greed. He promised deliverance to his followers, who were mostly ordinary folk.
When does a person reach out for deliverance? For most ordinary people, a bit of hardship is alright if they are allowed to live in peace and with a degree of self-respect. Nobody really demands perfect economic equality; in fact, many earn their livelihood working for the rich. ‘I am alright. Just let me be!’ – an ordinary person says, as he adapts and copes.
But turmoil most definitely does occur when even the otherwise forbearing people are under unbearable distress. Turmoil certainly did occur in the period when Jesus lived and taught. His teachings include useful, practical sayings addressing the daily economic and political reality of the people. These are a couple of his famous sayings:
Man shall not live by bread alone.
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God.
Why are similar themes are not found in Gautam Buddha’s teachings? Were they not both speaking about ‘truth’ and/or ‘deliverance’?
Buddha lived in pre-Alexander India. Specific instances of suffering which moved him were disease, old age, death … et cetera. There is no record that he witnessed extreme economic hardship or extreme imperial cruelty. Indeed, what he witnessed was ‘kid stuff’ compared to the cruelty that Romans and others of that region dished out on a regular basis.
Buddha traced the root cause of suffering to desire, whereas the followers of Jesus Christ suffered from extreme deprivation and cruelty. It would be inhuman to say that desire was at the root of their suffering – when in fact they desired only deliverance from extreme deprivation and cruelty.
Gautam Buddha and Jesus Christ addressed two totally different audiences, separated greatly in time, space and economic/political conditions. Any comparative study of the two respective ‘religions’ must take into account the vastly different socio-economic conditions from which they arose.
From the perspective of absolute non-duality – अद्वैत, advait – these two ‘religions’ must be seen as two expressions of the one eternal truth. All the ‘organized religions’ – and their various branches – must be seen as different expressions of the one eternal truth. Needs of ordinary people give rise to these parallel ventures, and socio-economic-political conditions mould their specifics.
In the year 1900 CE, India went through a horrific famine. Shri Bhailalbhai Patel of Gujarat was a well-known engineer and one of the founders of the Swatantra Parry. He witnessed the famine when he was twelve. Decades later, he recalled (see Note 2):
As months passed, on our way to school, we saw human corpses, only skin and bones, with foam at the mouths. Dead bodies were crudely disposed off; their stink remained in the air for two years. In the fields, crows, vultures, dogs and foxes fed on dead bodies; even years later, we saw human bones there. Today I understand well the story that those bones were telling us – the tragic story of human cruelty towards fellow humans … Food prices were low, but people had neither work nor money. Religious institutions had mountains of wealth; some religious leaders lived in luxury, profligacy and waste. Not one of them lifted a finger to save the dying. In those calamitous conditions, Christian missionaries did act. In exchange for accepting their religion, they helped many people survive the famine.
In Bhailalbhai’s original Gujarati text, the reference to ‘religious institutions’ includes some of the biggest such names in Gujarat.
Were the missionaries moved by compassion – or a did they only see a growth opportunity in the conditions? We will never know. But the key question is this: When offered food, would a starving family even think about such a question? Would they not see the saviour as an angel? Or a messenger of God?
The undeniable fact is this: The established ‘religious institutions’ of Gujarat did not fulfill the simple requirements of basic humanity; a ‘foreign religion’ did.
A well-known ‘religious’ sect of Gujarat, which makes a big thing about being vegetarian, has a major centre in a village in Gujarat. A villager from nearby mentioned to the author that he knew of cooked non-veg dishes being secretly supplied at night to monks at the centre. The villager did not seem bothered by the hypocrisy; after all, his friends were getting the orders.
In that same ‘religion’, great importance is attached to the headship of a centre, since that goes with much power and influence, including political influence. Stories of criminal acts also surface once in a while.
That brings up the obvious question: Which ‘organized religion’ is free of scandal?
Scandalous stories linked with the several western Christian churches hit the headlines on a regular basis. The following amazing quote is by the historian Edward Gibbon, referring to the period around the year 1400 CE, when there were multiple contending seats of the Papacy. About John XXIII, one of the contending claimants, Gibbon writes (see Note 3):
The more scandalous charges were suppressed; the Vicar of Christ was accused only of piracy, rape, sodomy, murder and incest.
More examples can easily be dug up. Very basic insight into human behaviour makes it clear that, in any ‘organized religion’, the needs of the organization and its office-bearers take precedence over truth. Every time. Therefore the chances of a seeker finding the eternal truth while living in such a setting are only slightly better than those of the proverbial ‘snowball in hell’.
Just to remind the reader, neither Gautam Buddha nor Jesus Christ set up ‘an organization’. Many ashramas, in India and probably elsewhere, run on the basis of austerity and the absolute minimum of informal ‘organization’.
Note 1: DeepSeek has been used here as a smart web search tool. It gathers information from a few websites, compiles and formats the information, and cites the referred websites with the result.
Note 2: Based on his memoirs, written in the late 1960s.
Note 3: This famous quote is from Edward Gibbon’s magnum opus: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
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