The B.R. Gavai incident: What ‘sanatan’ is and what it isn’t

A shoe was hurled at the Chief Justice of India inside the Supreme Court. Not the first such act of fury — some will remember the famous incident of 2008, when an Iraqi journalist had flung his shoe at then US president George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad.

That act had its own context — the plunder of an ancient civilisation for oil and strategic control, albeit in the name of democracy. When the Western powers had got what they wanted, Iraq’s rulers, once allies and by no means innocent, were rechristened ‘sponsors of terror’.

But, to return, the shoe in both these instances was flung in rage.

For the powerless of India — the poor, the Dalit, the Adivasi, the woman — the shoe has long been a weapon to show them their place. No one takes note when they are abused. And even when it does occasionally register, it is seen as personal misfortune.

When the blow lands on the powerful, though, it becomes a matter of national outrage.

Civilised society should not condone any such act. Yet the symbolism cannot be wished away. The latest incident — a shoe hurled in defence of ‘Sanatan Dharma’, and that too at a Dalit judge — carries its own layered meanings.

In villages across India, the upper castes still refuse to eat food cooked by Dalit hands. There have been protests over mid-day meals prepared by Dalit women. Religion may not prescribe this behaviour, but it is invoked nevertheless to justify it.

‘Sanatan Dharma’ is the new war cry. Women are told they must not wear jeans — in the name of tradition. Patriarchy has anaesthetised their sense of agency so completely that they now hold placards against their own freedom, while men in jeans stand beside them as the enforcers of said ‘sanatan’ culture.

Does sanatan dharma exempt men from its codes of purity? Are their jeans somehow more sacred?

During our freedom struggle, in the battle for Swaraj, we sought liberation not only from the British empire but also from the shackles of sundry narrow identities — of caste, creed, sect, region...

Today, the privileged are flaunting these parochial identities — even while dissing the fight for social justice, for dignity, recognition and rights, as ‘identity politics’.

Those born to privilege are wearing their caste labels with pride — as if social equality were a zero-sum game. Where the privileged have had millennia of a socially sanctioned right to discriminate and dominate, the socially marginalised and oppressed have only the Constitution to fall back on. And in a surreal perversion of justice today, the privileged are crying foul about ‘attacks on Sanatan Dharma’ by the dispossessed.

What is ‘sanatan’?

The Vedas don’t really offer an elaborate definition of ‘dharma’. But the Rig Veda (10/190/11) does say that dharma springs from ṛta — the natural order and truth.

The Brihadāraṇyaka Upanishad defines dharma itself as satya, or truth; beyond truth, there is nothing. The Yoga Vasistha too interprets dharma as truth.

The word ‘dharma’ comes from the root dhṛ, which means ‘to hold, to bear, to sustain’.

So the great seeker of truth saw the quest itself as dharma. Dharma, then, is not about sectarian hatred. In dharma, no one is superior and every path is worthy of respect. The foundation of that truth is ‘ahimsa (non-violence)’. Truth can only grow in the kindergarten of ahimsa.

Ahimsa gives us the strength to engage with diversity, with difference — a faculty every truthseeker must possess. Where there is arrogance about one’s own belief, truth loses its testing ground. That’s why ahimsa is called the consort of dharma.

In the Vishnu Purana (Book 1, Chapter 7), ahimsa is described as the life partner of truth; adharma and violence are also paired. It’s ironic, then, that a shoe was hurled in the name of Vishnu.

Also, since this whole controversy unfolded in the name of ‘sanatan’, it’s worth asking what it really is.

The Atharva Veda (10/8/231) offers a beautiful answer: ‘Sanatan’ is that which is eternal like day and night — without beginning or end — but, like day and night, ever renewing. So, sanatan is self-renewal, not fossilised tradition. It is not the act of throwing a shoe, nor the refusal to wear jeans.

Sanatan is like the four ‘sanat bandhu’ in the Upanishads, the eternal celibates, untouched by the ignorance of ego, and therefore capable of renewing themselves every day.

Sanatan is that spirit of constant questioning, challenge, renewal — the scientific, truthseeking tradition that was insulted by hurling a shoe in its name.

Where there is no truth, there is neither dharma, nor civility, nor ‘sanatan’. And no matter if those in power cheer such actions — this is not dharma.