Delhi High Court seeks government response on PIL to teach difference between dharma and religion in schools

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought the response of the Central and Delhi government on a public interest litigation (PIL) to distinguish between ‘dharma’ and ‘religion’ and to include a chapter on the same in school text books. .The PIL filed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Ashwini Upadhyay said that the nature of religious identities differs when it comes to “Abrahamic religious traditions” and “Indic/dharmic religious traditions” like Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.He also alleged existence of a "conversion industry" associated with Islam and Christianity. A Division Bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela heard the matter and gave the time to respondents to file their replies. The matter will now be heard on January 16, 2024. .The PIL contended that dharma is not religion, therefore, the government should use proper meaning of religion, not dharma, in documents like birth certificate, Aadhaar card, school certificate and other documents.In his plea, Upadhyay said that in the West, the term 'religion' is used to describe faiths like Judaism, Christianity and Islam. However, reference to Hinduism as a religion is wrong and purely from a Western context. He said that the word religion has an underlying implication that there is only one religion that is true because religions are mutually exclusive and therefore, all other religions are false.However, India’s dharma-based systems of living does not believe in the same.“This is the biggest difference foreign ‘religions and India’s dharma-based systems of living. One binds; the other liberates. When the followers of Jesus and then of Mohammad first came to India, they got accepted as any other human beings, but their ‘faith’ came in the way of mingling freely with the benevolent hosts. And for the hosts it was weird to discover their unusual attachment to ‘faith identity’ and the associated negative bias based on it,” the plea stated.It said that in the hands of ‘mentally deranged’ people, a religion can be highly dangerous and the “twisted brained holy warriors” have killed more people than the rest of the warriors in history.“It is a big relief for the humanity that no other ‘religion’ has emerged in the last 1400 years. Typically, a religion revolves around an imagined God – an entity who watches things from “somewhere above”. He reveals the so-called “Only Truth” through a Messenger (in Islam) or Son of God (in Christianity) that gets written in the Book – Bible or Quran. Everything outside the Holy Book is simply false. And believers must believe in it entirely, unquestioningly.” .Dharma is non-divisive, non-exclusive and non-conclusive while religion can be understood as panth/sampradaya, he stressed.He stated that there been a “serious translation error” by “superficial experts” in translating Hindu Dharma, Buddha Dharma and Jain Dharma as Hindu religion, Buddhist religion and Jain religion. The plea stated reducing dharma to a concept like religion has been disastrous and “in the name of secularism, dharma has been subjected to the limits..He further said "as part of its unspoken political agenda", a religion ordains the believers to convert others into their religion and there is a big "conversion industry" associated with Christianity and Islam. The plea alleged that once the population of Muslims or Christians in any society becomes “politically significant” they start demanding "fancy things in the name of religion and, if denied, they pretend persecution!""Lately, China has been facing the dirty political game of missionaries who have converted significant numbers in some parts of China. In some other areas with significant population of ‘Muslim converts’, Chinese authorities had to cut their so-called ‘religious freedoms’ to restore social harmony and prevent radicalization."