S.P.
VAGISHWARI
Christ
University, Bangalore
Paper Title: "Dharma as a Binary Identity"
Abstract
Human
history has consistently witnessed a dependency on certain systemic identities
by institutionalized structures be they political, social, intellectual or
cultural, as a process to legitimize and justify their articulations. These
articulations may be symptomatic representatives in the form of Power,
Authority, Ideology, Community Autonomy and Regionalization. However what
strengthens their argument is the intertwining of their ideas with widely
accepted notions of righteousness, ethics and morality. Thus History constantly
demonstrates this symbiotic equation between its process and the concept of
Dharma, which is thought of more as righteousness in Asian context rather than
as Religion.
This paper attempts
to explore the extraordinary interface between the world of History and the
concept of Dharma in the context of Indian subcontinent, wherein Dharma
occupied a binary position in relation to politico-cultural institutions in the
ancient and early medieval past. The main argument of this paper is that while
Dharma as righteousness was a virtue, it also became a significant political
tool once it was institutionalized. Thus the interface between the secular and
sacred was not uniform or universal but contextualized to meet the requirement
of the State, Society and Communities. Dharma in ancient and medieval history
of India was considered as much an individual virtue as a trajectory to
legitimize governance and administrative initiatives by Institutions of
authority. This paper maps the process of an uninterrupted predicament for institutions
of power which range from State to Guilds to Monasteries when Dharma had to be executed
as an ennobling idea as well as a manipulative strategy.
Dr.
S. P. Vagishwari is currently the Head of the Department of History, Christ
University, Bangalore. she graduated from Bangalore
University with a Masters and MPhil degree in history. Her Doctoral dissertation
was on The Architecture of Western Gangas. Areas of academic interests are
History and Visual Aesthetics, Historiography and Karnataka Studies.