The test is straightforward. Whatever aligns with Shruti is dharma. Whatever defies Shruti, however old or beloved, is not. Shruti demands only one thing: self-knowledge. Everything else is ornamental. Without Vedanta, Hindu identity risks becoming ritual without philosophy, sound without meaning. Offering flowers may express devotion, but it is not Sanatan Dharma. Seeing the Self is.
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Originally published in The Pioneer on 20 dec '25.
The morning begins in a house where everything is already decided by the past. The daughter is told to speak softly, dress “modestly”, and remember that a woman’s honour lies in obedience. The son is served first because “that’s how it has always been.” The maid uses the back door because the front is “not for her kind.” A neighbour’s illness is dismissed as fate, a child’s curiosity as an omen. If someone disputes these practices, an elder will quote a verse from a scripture they have never read and insist that this is the culture and tradition. Discrimination turns into discipline, casteism becomes order, superstition becomes faith, and fatalism becomes wisdom, mandated by texts they neither understand nor care to.
The Upanishads are sitting in the same city, unread. Yajnavalkya's debates on the self, Nachiketa's meeting with Death, and Ashtavakra's unyielding advice to Janaka: these works that used to define a civilisation’s understanding of reality are now collecting dust, as astro downloads grow. Ask a devotee about the Kena Upanishad, which asks “By whom is the mind directed?”, and you get a blank stare. Ask about a ritual fast, and every detail is offered with aplomb.
