16 – Unpacking Sanātana Dharma: Genealogies and Potentialities of a Pliable Concept
From its sporadic and diverse occurrences in pre-colonial textual traditions (Goldman 1997; Lutgendorf 1991) to its consolidation as a marker of “orthodox” resistance in the 19th century (Zavos 2001), sanātana dharma has been increasingly mobilized in contrasting ways by several groups, including traditionalists, reformists (Kasturi 2010; Dimitrova 2007), tantric practitioners, and theosophists (Strube 2023). Hindu nationalist organizations have successfully co-opted it, seemingly solidifying sanātana dharma into a formula that links their version of Hinduism to notions of eternity and truth. However, even within hegemonic discourses, sanātana dharma is reworked and adjusted to new agendas (such as social justice and environmental crisis) and its meanings continue to shift.
Throughout history, critiques of sanātana dharma often stress the concept's entrenchment of inequality and caste discrimination and are nowadays increasingly likely to provoke outrage and legal actions. Yet, at the margins, social and religious groups creatively adopt sanātana dharma to negotiate their place within the South Asian religious landscape (Howard 2017) and even use it to address global challenges.
The concept of sanātana dharma thus resounds like a mantra across time and socio-religious, political, and legal spheres both locally and globally. But what is sanātana dharma? How and why is it appropriated by various groups to inform the (re)definition, expansion, limitation, or transcendence of religion, specifically Hinduism?
Despite its broad reach, a comprehensive and critical account of its historical and contemporary uses, as well as its potentialities, is still lacking. Our panel invites contributions grounded in philological, philosophical, historical, and ethnographic methodologies to pluralize this pliable yet contentious concept vis-à-vis past, present, and future negotiations of Hinduism.