Gods, Demons, and the Great Indian Confusion: Dharma versus Communalism
The Old Game of Wordplay
India, land of a thousand tongues and a million gods, has always had a way with words. We turn mantras into missiles, slogans into scripture, and sometimes, deliberately, confusion into policy. One such confusion that festers in our public life today is the blurring of two utterly different ideas: Dharma and communalism. One is the timeless rhythm of existence, the other a toxic by-product of politics. But, as with so many things in modern India, the counterfeit is often peddled as the real.
Dharma: A Symphony, Not a Slogan
In Sanskrit, Dharma comes from dhri, to sustain. It is what keeps the universe upright when everything else tilts. It is not a sect, not a ritual, not even a religion in the narrow Western sense, but the music that holds life together—truth, justice, compassion, duty. The Rig Veda whispered millennia ago: Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti—Truth is one, the sages call it by many names.
Swami Vivekananda, who had little patience for hollow piety, thundered: “They alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.” His vision of Dharma was expansive, a river into which many tributaries could flow. Osho, the iconoclast, went further. “Whenever religion becomes organized, it loses the fragrance of truth,” he said. For him, Dharma was not an institution but an inner search: “Truth is not outside to be discovered, it is inside to be realized.” Between Vivekananda’s trumpet-call to service and Osho’s meditation on self-realization, we glimpse Dharma as it truly is—elastic, inclusive, liberating.
Communalism: The Counterfeit Coin
Now contrast this with communalism. Communalism is not faith but its counterfeit coin. It parades as religiosity but is minted in the furnaces of fear and suspicion. It is the belief that one community’s triumph depends on another’s humiliation, that the temple cannot stand unless the mosque falls, that purity can only be found in exclusion.
It is worth remembering that communalism in India was not born in the temple courtyard but in the counting house of politics. The British perfected it as divide and rule; post-independence politicians have refined it as divide and win elections. From the blood of Partition to the rumour-factories of WhatsApp, communalism is a story written in headlines and hashtags, more about power than prayer.
When Dharma Builds Bridges and Communalism Builds Walls
The difference is almost childishly simple. When a gurudwara opens its langar to all, that is Dharma. When a cow is lynched in the name of religion, that is communalism. When a church tends to the sick without asking their faith, that is Dharma. When mobs burn that same church, that is communalism. Dharma integrates, communalism dismembers. Yet the counterfeit is now pushed so aggressively that many mistake the poison for the cure.
The Politics of Confusion
This deliberate confusion is the masterstroke of our age. To question communalism is to be told you are questioning faith. To demand equality is to be accused of insulting tradition. To resist bigotry is to be branded anti-national. As Osho foresaw, “Religion becomes a shield for violence, politics uses it as a mask.” We live precisely in that masquerade.
The RSS-BJP ecosystem has perfected this sleight of hand. Dharma is reduced to a costume for power; communalism is dressed up as cultural pride. Loudspeakers blare not devotion but domination. Hashtags are hurled like stones. Every dissenting voice is painted as a traitor, every minority citizen as a threat. It is a theatre where the sacred is sacrificed daily on the altar of propaganda.
Vivekananda’s Warning in the Age of Trolls
Vivekananda, who once dazzled Chicago with his plea for universal tolerance, saw this danger long before Twitter was invented. “Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence… had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now.” One can only imagine what he would have said of today’s troll armies, spewing venom under the guise of defending faith.
The Existential Choice Before India
For India, the most diverse democracy on earth, the distinction between Dharma and communalism is not academic—it is existential. If we live by Dharma, we preserve pluralism, we defend tolerance, we nourish our democracy. If we descend into communalism, we barter away all three for a handful of electoral slogans.
The irony is that those who claim to “protect” religion are often its greatest vandals. They confuse decibel levels with piety, mobs with morality, spectacle with spirituality. True Dharma does not need slogans. It is quiet, like the hand that feeds the hungry. It is intimate, like the prayer whispered without cameras. It is eternal, like the truth that survives long after propaganda collapses.
Conclusion: Choosing the Real Over the Counterfeit
The task before us is both simple and difficult. We must learn, again, to separate the eternal from the ephemeral, the genuine from the counterfeit. Dharma is eternal, communalism is transient. Dharma liberates, communalism enslaves. Dharma sustains, communalism corrodes.
In reclaiming Dharma we are not defending one religion against another; we are defending humanity against its own worst instincts. India’s future—indeed, the future of all plural societies—depends on choosing the real over the counterfeit, the symphony over the slogan, the bridge over the wall.
Author’s Note
Siddhartha Shankar Mishra is an Advocate at the Supreme Court of India and a writer on law, politics, and society. He believes in reclaiming the universal essence of Dharma from its communal distortions.
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