Somewhere between the raucous vortex of X (formerly known as Twitter) and the dry-paged solemnity of Immanuel Kant, we lost out on something important. Liberty, that once-glorious ideal, now finds itself in crisis—atomised and disenchanted. It stumbles along, propped up by procedural rights, drained of its soul. And this is true not just for the West but for India too, where liberalism has been adopted with the hesitant enthusiasm of someone trying to eat salad at a wedding buffet.
But in the dusty corners of an older civilisation that still inhabits India’s soul, there lingers another idea, often misread or patronised by the very elites who mouth slogans about decolonised thought. That idea is Dharma—a form of liberty rooted both in the sovereignty of the self and in the sacred obligations one holds toward others.
This article is not a plea for theocracy or nostalgia; it is a call to reconsider whether we must remain tethered to Enlightenment-era blueprints that never quite fit the Indian psyche. Can we imagine a liberalism shaped by the architecture of harmony and intimacy within the collective? In short, can Dharma offer a version of liberty that is less brittle, more civilisational, and perhaps, finally, our own?
Sovereign self and its discontents
Western liberalism was born in the salons and smoke-filled studies of a Europe looking to escape the long shadow of kings and popes. Its heroes, philosophers John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Bentham, and John Stuart Mill, offered man the promise of autonomy and freedom from the suffocating grip of authority. And in time, that promise blossomed into rights—civil, political, sexual, expressive—like badges on a sash. Thus emerged the modern liberal subject: sovereign, rights-bearing, but alone.
This solitary self had a peculiar burden. He had to invent his own meaning and govern his own desires. With no higher Dharma to guide him, he was condemned to curate his identity on apps, fight wars on social media, and seek transcendence through self-care routines. He was free, but often disoriented. Liberalism, in its zeal to liberate the individual from all obligations not chosen, has inadvertently created a citizen unmoored from kin and context. Such a person is a philosophical fiction.
This idea of freedom as ‘freedom from’ becomes corrosive when exported to cultures like India. It encourages disdain for tradition and rejection of inherited obligations, without offering any ethical structure in return. In a society as interdependent and layered as India, this becomes socially destabilising. The result is seen in broken families, dying languages, a weakened civil society, and cultural mimicry masquerading as modernity.
More worryingly, liberalism has become ideological and hegemonic. In the name of tolerance, it enforces cultural relativism. In the name of neutrality, it banishes religion from public life. India, with its long and plural history, cannot afford such flattening.
Dharma
Dharma, that vexing, untranslatable term, offers something different. Not a set of commandments etched in stone, nor a universalist code to be imposed from above. It is situational and layered. It speaks to both rights and roles. Both of choice and of responsibility. A father has a Dharma. So does a teacher, a judge, a king, a neighbour. Liberty here is not the absence of restraint, but the alignment of the self with rightful duties, duties that arise from one’s position in the web of life.
This may sound stifling to the liberal ear, accustomed as it is to the idea of choice as sacrosanct. But Dharma invites discernment. The Mahabharata is replete with dilemmas and crises of conscience. Yudhishthira must lie to win the war. Arjuna must kill his kin. The Bhagavad Gita, perhaps the most sophisticated philosophical work on liberty, teaches that one’s svadharma (individualised duty) is the path to moksha, or ultimate freedom. Dharma helps an individual transcend ego through meaningful responsibility.
These are stories of agonised moral reasoning. The liberal caricature of Dharma as orthodoxy misses this subtlety. Dharma demands that one ask: “What is the right thing to do, given who I am, where I stand, and what the situation demands? It is not “I think, therefore I am” but “I act rightly, therefore I evolve.” It is liberty with context and with texture.
Freedom and obligation
Western liberalism, especially in its post-Rawlsian avatar, begins with rights and designs society backwards. Dharma begins with relationships. It assumes you are born into a web of obligations, and that this web is a gift. The son owes the father; the teacher, the student; the host, the guest; the husband, the wife. These relationships are fewer shackles and more sutures, holding society together in quiet, often invisible ways.
In liberal discourse, such obligations are viewed suspiciously. They threaten the purity of autonomy. But an entirely rights-based world slowly corrodes its own foundations. What begins as liberty becomes litigation. Every human interaction is up for contestation. No one owes anyone anything unless notarised. The result is a society that is fair but frigid, procedurally just but emotionally arid.
Dharma, on the other hand, offers a form of relational liberty. You are free not because you owe no one anything, but because your place in the world is woven into a fabric of duties. You matter both because you stand apart and because you belong.
This model avoids both Western-style atomism and Eastern authoritarianism. It affirms liberty but insists that liberty must serve virtue. It tolerates diversity but demands a unifying ethical substrate.
Who bears the burden of order?
It must be said: Dharma is not egalitarian in the way liberalism wants to be. It embraces hierarchy, but this hierarchy is not one predicated on status, but responsibility. A king’s Dharma is heavier than a servant’s. A teacher is held to a higher moral standard than a student. To the liberal, this smells of feudalism. But it is better understood as a division of ethical labour.
In liberal regimes, everyone is equal under law, but equally fragile, equally overburdened by the myth of self-sufficiency. In dharmic thought, equality is reframed. The weakest are not expected to be strong alone; the strong are expected to act first. A father sacrifices before a son. A leader falls on his sword before the led.
Such a model demands a moral elite and expects virtue from those with power. And in this lies a quiet challenge to our present. What if our ruling classes were judged by their adherence to Dharma? What if responsibility were the central virtue of citizenship?
A civilisation of restraint
The Dharmic idea of liberty is revolutionary, for where liberalism rages against tradition, Dharma seeks to renovate it. Where liberalism expands freedoms, Dharma refines them.
This civilisational temperament – patient and non-messianic – is often mistaken for passivity. But it is restraint, not inertia. In a world spinning faster with each notification ping, Dharma offers a slower ethic. One that prefers coherence over conquest and continuity over rupture.
Dharma’s liberty is expressed in the quiet dignity of lived roles: the neighbour who feeds the stray dog every night; the judge who resigns rather than violate his conscience. No bill of rights can account for these small acts of Dharma. But they are what hold a civilization up when the scaffolding of state and market begins to shake.
Hard questions for dharmic liberalism
Any attempt to place Dharma at the heart of a renewed liberal order must confront its historical burdens and institutional ambiguities. A civilisational idea cannot guide a modern polity unless it is willing to interrogate itself with the same seriousness it brings to critiquing others. If Dharma liberalism is to be more than a poetic alternative, it must answer difficult questions about power and protection.
First, in practice, hierarchy has often hardened into status rather than duty. Social roles meant to distribute ethical labour have, at times, become instruments of exclusion. A Dharmic framework must therefore clarify how responsibility remains fluid and morally earned rather than inherited and socially enforced.
Second, Dharma presumes that roles carry meaning and that obligations cultivate moral growth. But what of roles that are experienced as confinement rather than calling? What protects the individual who refuses an inherited expectation, like the daughter who rejects a prescribed life or the dissenter who challenges community norms? A Dharmic liberalism must distinguish between obligations that nurture and obligations that suffocate. Without such a distinction, ‘belonging’ may quietly become compulsion.
Third, if society is conceived as a web of duties, who safeguards those whose identities fall outside dominant moral expectations? Liberal rights emerged historically as shields for the vulnerable. A Dharmic system must articulate how minority voices are protected when communal harmony becomes the highest value.
Fourth, there is no single, uncontested interpretation of Dharma. Traditions, regions, sects, and philosophical schools have long debated its meaning. This plurality is a strength, but also a challenge. A modern Dharmic liberalism must acknowledge interpretive diversity as intrinsic, not accidental. It must resist the temptation to codify one reading as civilisational orthodoxy.
Also read: Indian millennials are too traditional to feel free, and too modern to feel at home
The return of a gentle power
The need for Indian Liberalism 2.0 becomes even more urgent in the face of rising woke-ism – a mutation of Western liberalism obsessed with identity and moral relativism.
A Dharmic liberalism has practical implications:
- Education: Instead of teaching value-neutral liberal arts, instill niti (ethical conduct), viveka (discernment), and seva (service). Introduce children to Indian philosophical traditions and not just Rousseau and Marx.
- Law: Move from adversarial jurisprudence to more reconciliatory nyaya panchayat models. Recognise the role of community institutions and family elders in dispute resolution.
- Environment: Shift from Western ‘rights of nature’ language to the idea of prakriti as mata (nature as mother). Ritual ecology, like river worship and tree veneration, should inform sustainability.
- Economy: Encourage dharma-based capitalism, where artha (wealth) is pursued for sacrifice and redistribution through personal ethics.
The West is entering a post-liberal age, riven by internal contradictions. India must enter a post-colonial liberal age, rooted in memory. Liberty that forgets Dharma is rootless; Dharma that rejects liberty is brittle. But liberty guided by Dharma? That may be the civilisational compass India has been searching for.
Pranav Jain is an IPS (P) officer and a columnist. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)