Ok, let’s talk about it:

How to not read the dharmashāstra-s

I find it amusing when people add “interested in dharma…”, usually pairing it with other interests and hobbies of theirs, in bios or description on social media platforms of their accounts. I do not point this out as a flaw, but the implications of such descriptions tend to reduce dharma to a hobby or an intellectual exercise, completely ignoring the part where dharma is meant to be followed, as in your day-to-day actions, and hence is not merely something to be thought of or read about, but something that must be practiced actively. The reason I do not call this a flaw is because obviously such people are not a monolith entity who all share the same meaning of “interested in–” and might very well be great practisioners of dharma. But my average experience has been otherwise.

There is a general apathy in practicing dharma, and I am a bit stringent on this part in that I mean actually practicing your varṇadharma in the areas where you can. Since people want dharma to be relevant in some fashion, there is an emphasis on reading more about dharma, which is a little too much for my liking. “What is the Bhagavadgītā saying about varṇa by birth?”, “what is the Manusmṛti saying about the status of a Shūdra?”, “what does Rāma say while exiling Sītā?”, among others are some of the mainstream discussions about the dharmashāstra-s that focus on the non-critical points of the scriptures. I call it “non-critical” because such questions do not help in one’s practice and only until a few centuries ago, people were deriving completely different learnings from the same shāstra-s, instead of looking at them from a “pragmatic”, social-welfare-esque perspective. Also because of these discussions, a person who wants to explore dharma through the shāstra-s would know more about the non-critical parts like whether or not varṇa is by birth and why should oil be poured in a Shūdra’s ear if he hears vedapāṭha. Hence, the cycle of intellectual, democratized, irrelevant opinions continue flowing into more apathy and hatred for dharma or for the more narcissistic of us, the ideas of “reforming” dharma. Due to this, the focus on actually performing dhārmika kārya-s only suffers.

I do not think it fruitful, or even necessary to discuss why such a phenomenon exists now. You can actually blame everyone here, since this cannot a be work of a single entity, even though there might be a catalyst, but rather such degeneration has been going on for a good century or more. I think it is much better if we discuss why shāstra-s should be studied to only improve our understanding of dharma in order to practice it. I think it is also crucial that I emphasize that you cannot attain any siddhi just because you understood what Kṛṣṇa said in Bhagavadgītā. And that it is entirely irrevelant what Manu says about a status of a Shūdra because that is not what historically happened, not because it was a non-adherence to Manusmṛti, but because people knew what adhering to a dharmashāstra actually meant.

Why read the dharmashāstra-s?

You see, we are a culture that has always had numerous intellectuals giving their inputs. Some were accepted others were discarded. This is not probably an intended attribute of the civilization by the ṛṣi-s, but something that ended up happening because of multitudes of ideas about society, individual and just different subjects of study existing all throughout history. Manu, a king, is expected to know more about a social organization and law enforcement than say, a Yājñavalkya who is a master of adhyātma. Of course, both of these have overlapped and varṇāshrama can only be understood with the underlying ontology of Veda-s, but here is where the multiplicity of opinions comes into being. So while everyone agrees that dharma is supreme, they might recommend different ways to practice and implement dharma. Luckily for me, such is exactly the teaching of Manu himself:

श्रुतिद्वैधं तु यत्र स्यात् तत्र धर्मावुभौ स्मृतौ। उभावपि हि तौ धर्मौ सम्यगुक्तौ मनीषिभिः॥

“Where there is conflict between two Vedic texts, both are held to be Dharma; both have been rightly pronounced by the wise to be Dharma.”

And it needn’t mean that only following varṇadharma is hundred percent required – I do not have a heart of stone, you know. There is the sāmānya dharma of being truthful, humble, donating to the poor and learned, honoring the ancestors and praying to devatā-s, mainting cleanliness and other things that can be followed by everyone irrespective of their status. It is just that such sāmānya dharma can be directed into varṇadharma and different people of different statuses follow different rituals. Additionally, one is not expected to learn about dharma directly from the shāstra-s as far as practice is concerned. Different kārya-s like dhyāna, jāpa, ghaṇapāṭha, etc., are physical actions that are learnt only through the guidance of a father or a guru. Hence, your family or your guru is also the source of information for not only such nityakarma-s but also all the stories from purāṇa-s. As much as this was the mainstream in the last few centuries, I do not expect people to study under a guru, in a gurukula or send their children either. But dharmashāstra-s are accessible online, so that is where most people are going to flock to. Irrespective of this fact, the intention to read the dharmashāstra-s must not change, i.e., continuous practice. So, to sum it up, the answer to “why should you read dharmashāstra-s” should be to practice dharma daily. Has that been drilled into your head yet?

How to actually read the dharmashāstra-s

With the intetions now clear (hopefully), we shall discuss the how. This does not mean that there is any actual process or vidhi, even though Manu does suggest various rules of studying like the proper attire and the direction one must face. I think such regulations can be eased out a little for now. Of course, it is better if you can commit to these, but if you cannot, then read it with the same respect and diligence anyway.

A trend among those seeking dharma through shāstra-s is directly jumping to reading the Bhagavadgītā. For those who would not be aware, Bhagavadgītā is a part of Mahābhārata, and the Bhagavadgītā read separately specifically starts from the 23rd chapter of the larger Bhagavadgītā upaparva in Bhīṣma parva. It begins with Arjuna asking Kṛṣṇa to bring their chariot in the middle of the battlefield of Kurukṣetra and then refuses to kill his relatives. Now, most people, and specifically the people whose first proper reading of a Hindu scripture is Bhagavadgītā, completely miss out on the emotional weight of Arjuna’s viṣāda here. Sure, you can probably understand why Arjuna is sad and dejected, by placing yourself in his position, but you would not know who Arjuna himself is.

Arjuna is the only person during the events of Mahābhārata who has remained victorious in every encounter he has had (except against Rudra but that is too tall an order). Arjuna has faced the most dire of conditions and emerged triumphant. He has always been on the backfoot, but manages to cut down the obstacles with his dexterity and bravery. This is your protagonist, you follow his journey for thousands of shloka-s before reaching this moment. In fact, Arjuna’s dejection is outright hypocritical because once Pāṇḍava-s were done with their exile, Arjuna was in full favor of a war, while Yuddhiṣṭhira and Bhīma – BHĪMA OF ALL PEOPLE – were against the war! Such things may have been covered in the bhāṣya-s by the ācārya-s but there is huge difference between just reading a short summary of these and actually having followed Arjuna at every step and then seeing him dejected. Arjuna being the best of men, his dejection is not merely his own but a loss of confidence of all mankind. It is with all this context that Bhagavān starts motivating and instructing him about his dharma. Arjuna’s dejection is useless, because ultimately everything will die, either at the hands of Arjuna or Bhagavān himself. Neither is this a case for nihillism because you are responsible for making a world in which everyone gets mukti from wretched saṅsāra. And this is only possible if you channel your dharma through varṇāshrama. How many people who read Bhagavadgītā in isolation from rest of Mahābhārata can really claim to understand what varṇāshrama is? Bhagavān’s instructions are extremely direct, with ācārya-s having written elaborate commentaries on them to explain how it meshes with the larger dharma. And on this note, just because ācārya-s wrote on Bhagavadgītā separately gives us no excuse to follow them in reading it. Of course, the ācārya-s would have read Mahābhārata, along with other purāṇa-s, smṛti-s and the upaniṣad-s before offering any opinion of their’s even on a single akṣara. Bhagavān’s instructions are only the theory when it comes to following dharma. Bhagavān does not really go into the how side of things. He just lays out the duties of all the people and why is following these important. The how is answered in Shānti and Anushāsana parva-s of Mahābhārata. Varṇāshrama is deeply reflected upon in these parva-s, covering many different scenarios and stories of the ancients. It is these parva-s that actually compel you to act, and commit to the actions, while Bhagavān’s precepts justify such actions at an extremely deep level. Bhagavadgītā does not encourage you to visit tīrtha-s, or talk about reconciling differences between different darshana-s, or which yajña-s are to be performed when. One can be smug and say they are not required to know any of these because Bhagavān himself that only bhakti in him will emancipate you but then such comments only make it more clear that reading Bhagavadgītā in isolation teaches you nothing about the larger civilization and its important attributes that have been praised by Bhagavān himself at other points.

I would understand if people read the 18 chaptered Bhagavadgītā as a starting point, with the knowledge that there is more to learn and also that it is a part of a much, much larger story. But such is not the case. People read few commentaries on Bhagavadgītā, if at all one properly, claim to understand what karma, jñana and bhakti yoga-s mean then… do nothing. No one follows varṇāshrama just because they read Bhagavadgītā. You cannot claim to have done this if you have not read rest of Mahābhārata or had the guidance of some other vidvān along side. And this is only a case of reading one part of the scripture then going around claiming you understood literally anything. People tend to give the same treatment to other purāṇa-s and smṛti-s. Why would you read the Manusmṛti while never attempting to understand its application or the history it is connected with? There have been 0 recorded cases of oil being poured into a Shūdra’s ear for literally any reason, let only hearing vedamantra-s, in the past 3 millennia. This is a huge amount of time if you do not realize. The same Manusmṛti also talks about many more things other than just the position of women and shūdra-s but such things are never the focus. Such divinity is treated only as an imagination of brāhmaṇa-s (of course lmao) and comments on women and shūdra-s are treated as some lived reality.

Each generation is a little different, goes through different circumstances and that can definitely bring about some discord in understanding things that happened about 2000 years ago. But the point here is, we must acknowledge that we do not live in a society of 2000 years ago. We just simply do not have the experience of people who claimed to follow Manusmṛti. Only with such an acknowledgement, only while recognizing that our ancestors were not primitive savages who based their understanding of the world on complete hatred for other groups can you actually claim to understand what the smṛti-s are getting at. To sum this section up, one must read the scriptures in their totality, not isolating certain parts, and then passing judgements without any experience of dharma and dhārmika societies.

Conclusion

If your entry into dharma has been through the dharmashāstra-s, always remember that dharma is meant to be enacted, not merely theorized and thought of. And you can only achieve this if you have read the said dharmashāstra-s in their totality, and also with the understanding of the proper historical and societal context.