The Delhi High Court has asked the Central government 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 was filed by the PIL man of India the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Ashwini Upadhyay who claimed that the nature of religious identities differs when it comes to Abrahamic religious traditions and Indic/dharmic religious traditions like Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.
Advocate Upadhyay also added that existence of a “conversion industry” associated with Islam and Christianity.
A Division Bench comprising 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.
As per the PIL dharma and religion, are two separate things and the government should use proper meaning of religion, not dharma, in officials 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.
Lawyer added that the word religion has an underlying implication stating only one religion to be true because religions are mutually exclusive and therefore, all other religions are false.
He added that India has a dharma-based system as religions and India’s dharma-based systems of living. One binds; the other liberates.
Explaining his point, the lawyer said that when the followers of Jesus and Mohammad first came to India, they too got accepted as any other human beings, but their ‘faith’ came in the way of mingling freely with the benevolent hosts.
He added that said that a religion can be highly dangerous if given in hands of fanatics and twisted brained holy warriors who have killed more people than the rest of the warriors in history.
It was also said that the humanity had no other ‘religion’ in the last 1400 years. Typically, a religion revolves around an imagined God – an entity who watches things from “somewhere above”.
Dharma is non-exclusive and non-conclusive while religion can be understood as panth/sampradaya.
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 also said that dharma in the name of secularism, has been subjected to the limits.
Upadhyay citing about the conversion industry associated with Christianity and Islam ordains the believers to convert others into their religion.
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!
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