That!
From Pre-Vedic Roots to Post-Vedic Reinventions
Koenraad Elst examines Dharma's contested concepts — idolatry, Vedic history, the Hindu label — with scholarly precision and genuine argument.
Overview
What does it actually mean to call something Dharma — and what has been lost in the generations of superficial treatment that followed Nehru's framing of India's civilisational inheritance? Koenraad Elst begins with a working definition: Dharma as the correct way of engaging with other beings and with the cosmos, encompassing ethics, ritual, and society's role in upholding the order called Rta. From there he moves into contested territory — the questions that have accumulated and been deflected.
What is idolatry, and how has the term been misapplied? Why does the Hindu label provoke such ambivalence even among those it is meant to describe? How much of the Vedas and Epics records actual history, and in what timeframe and geography does that history sit? How did the belief in the superhuman origin of the Vedas develop? What distinguishes the competing Hindu calendar systems?
Elst approaches these as an Orientalist scholar who takes the texts seriously and the controversies personally. The result is a book that treats Dharmic thought not as folklore to be celebrated but as a body of ideas to be examined — rigorously and without the condescension that has marked so much Western and postcolonial scholarship.
-:ABOUT THE BOOK:- Faced with the Nehruvian-instilled crass super_ciality regarding Dharma, we set out to rediscover its cornerstones. Clarifying Dharma's basic concepts is needed, but not too di_cult. For example, "Dharma is the correct way of interacting with human and other beings around us (ethics), through the practice of virtues; as well as with the beings above us, gods and ancestors (religion), through the right observances and rituals. It is human society's contribution to upholding the cosmic order (Ṛta). Adharma, by contrast, is living without norms, self-righteously, in oblivion of realities higher than ourselves." Among the basic sources of Dharma, we focus on the controversial ones. What is "idolatry"? Why call yourself "Hindu" at all or why refrain from it? What much of the Vedas and the Epics is real history? In what timeframe to situate their historical core, and at what (sometimes unexpected) place? Wherefrom stems the belief that the Vedas are of superhuman origin? What are the merits of the competing Hindu calendar systems? Orientalist Dr. Koenraad Elst proves to be the right man to address these Dharmic controversies.
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