SanAtana Dharma

[Venkatraman Iyer]

>Many hindus have for a couple of centuries called their religion for
>"SanAtana Dharma". Do this refer only to the exercise of hinduims by
>the hindus or do it also include the religion as "an act of God" as well,
>like sRSTi, sthiti, saMhAra, anugraha etc. Jon.

The label, sanAtana has a specific meaning as it is used
for a century or so in Punjab.

I am enjoying the observations of
Agehananda Bharati, The Denial of Caste in Modern
Urban parlance, 1987
"the most conspicuous example being of course that
of the Arya Samaj (Jones 1966), where every member
or believer is encouraged to call himself or herself
a brahmin by adding "Sharma" to the name. This, in
the fourth generation of Arya Samajists, has since
been passed on like a "true" caste name, from father
to son and daughter. This causes much mirth among
articulate non-Arya samaji Hindus, ie., sanAtanis [3],
who scoff at "Sharmas" when they suspect that they
are *us taraH ke sharma* "Sharmas of *that* kind",
ie., Arya Samajis whose forebears were really of low
caste background, and that their conversion to the
Samaj made them or their ancestors think they were
actual brahmins in the traditional, sanatani sense
of the word."

"[3] It should be registered that the identification
as "sanAtani" (i.e., belonging to the "eternal"
religion) in the Panjab and closely adjacent regions
is purely privative, quite different from other parts
of the country. In the Panjab, "I am a sanAtani" means
only "I am not an Arya Samaji" and "I am not a Sikh"
(and of course, not a Muslim or Christian) much as
the Hawaiian Japanese statement, "I am a Buddhist"
means little but "I am not a Christian."

----------------------

Agehananda Bharati also writes elsewhere in the same paper:
" During World War II many English girls befriended by
black G.I.s thought they were American Indians. It is
said that whenever a British girl asked a soldier,
"are you American Indian" he would say "yea, yea, babe,
American Indian." There was, in that ad hoc hierarchy,
nothing wrong with being black, but American Indian
was a notch nobler, and more productive."






_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.