[2013] dharma yuddha vs jihad

8/10/2019 [2013] Dharma Yuddha vs Jihad

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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DHARMA YUDDHA & JIHAD

By Koenraad Elst

Published on 9thJune 2013

Many people from very diverse quarters say that all religions have a concept of holy war. In this, at least,

they are all equal. Thus, the recent cases of self-defence against Muslim attacks by Buddhists in Thailand and

Myanmar are taken to prove that even the ostensibly non-violent Buddhists have their notion of holy war,

now on display. Similarly Hinduism has its own dharma yuddha, literally (they say) religious war.

Some add that the one exception to this rule, hence the most peaceful religion of all, is Islam. We have all

heard about jihad, thinking this is the holy war par excellence, but now we are told that we have been

mistaken all along. Even Osama bin Laden didnt know true Islam, he was wholly wrong about the meaning

of jihad. They assure us that jihad is merely an inner struggle against the evil in ourselves, not a war against

unbelievers. At the very most, it can be a struggle in self-defence when the unbelievers attack us. Let us see

what the truth of this can be.

Dharma Yuddha

The proverbial war in the Hindu worldview is the great war of the Bharata clan, on which the mega-epic

Mahabharata elaborates. This epic philosophizes profusely on the principles of dharma yuddha even as it

describes the successive episodes of a real-life war. Yuddha means struggle, war. Dharma, sustenance, that

which sustains, effectively means maintaining the correct relation between the part and the whole, playing

your specific role in the whole that you are part of. It approximately means both religion in the sense of

relating to the cosmos and ethics in the sense of correctly relating to the beings around you. Dharma

yuddha means struggle in accordance with ethics/Dharma, chivalrous war. But does the epic describe a

dharma yuddha at all?

First off, there is no religious conflict on the horizon. The Bharata war pits two branches of the same family

against each other. They practise the same religious tradition, just as they have the same teachers, live in the

same area, speak the same language and share the same ethnicity. Clearly, dharma yuddha does not mean

war against the unbelievers. No command is given anywhere to take up hostilities with a religious out-group,

nor with any linguistic or ethnic or any other group either. Coincidence has it that two groups of cousins are

in a position to compete for the same throne, and attempts at finding a peaceful compromise fail.

But secondly, the actual war is only partly a dharma yuddha. The rules for a dharma yuddha are articulated,

but fall into disuse the longer the battle rages. The reader is treated to a complete contemplation of the

principles of dharma yuddha, but the epics characters are shown as practising them less and less. During the

build-up to the war, the Pandava brothers with their friend and adviser Krishna make several attempts to solve

the conflict peacefully, and are rebuked by their Kaurava cousins even when they express willingness to make

great concessions. They only resolve to make war once they have no other option. And even when the war


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starts, Arjuna finds all kinds of reasons to forfeit his claim and withdraw from the battle, until Krishna

convinces him that it has become necessary.

During the war, however, they let the rules of justice in war relax gradually, commensurate with the other

partys breaches of the code of chivalry. Thus, when the enemies leader Duryodhana has fallen from his

chariot, the rule that someone in an incapacitated state should not be attacked, would normally apply. Yet,

Krishna orders to strike him while he is down. Duryodhana had been a party to the forced disrobing of

princess Draupadi, an un-ethical act, so Krishna is not impressed when he now invokes the well-known rules

of ethical warfare: Where was your Dharma then? So, the other sides breaches of Dharma are increasingly

used as a justification for breaking Dharma too.

The battle rages for eighteen days. The change it has wrought, is best realized by Krishnas brother Balarama,

who has missed the battle. He has gone on pilgrimage along the Saraswati River and returns just at the end of

the hostilities. He is amazed and indignant at the size of the destruction and the decline into non-Dharmic

behaviour. But that is how war goes: at the start, as in 1914, you march off with a flower in your gun, singingsongs of victory, you even play football with the enemy soldiers during breaks; but as soon as you have seen

some of your comrades die, you get angry and eager for revenge by any means, so war becomes more cruel the

longer it lasts.

The epic is by no means a childrens story in black and white, or a hagiography for a saintly Krishna. The bad

guys always have a decent motive or a legitimate excuse for their conduct (for instance, Duryodhana has

welcomed the illegitimate son Karna after the latter was spurned by the Pandavas), and the good guys have

their own past to blame for the misfortunes that befall them. They are all far from perfect, and the dharma

yuddha is an ideal which they try to uphold as long as the going is good, but which they betray more and

more as the battle gets grimmer.

The concept of Dharma Yuddha is akin to the later European concept of Just War. The Just War theory is

linked with names like Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Hugo Grotius. It lays down that war

should only be started in self-defence, after attempts at a peaceful solution, and with a real chance of victory.

During the war, the means used should be commensurate with the aim, non-combatants should be spared,

and peace overtures from the other side should be answered. The same principles are already articulated

briefly in the Dhanurveda and the Mahabharata.

Jihad

In Islam, the first blood that flows is that of an unbeliever who laughs at the Muslims praying with their

bottoms up in the air: he is hit by the Muslims with an animals bone. There is no trace of self-defence: an

unbeliever exercises his freedom of expression and the Muslims decide to become violent. Later, Mohammed

would have a handful of critics assassinated and another handful formally executed. This is the model and


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justification for the murders or attempted murders of writers, cartoonists, film-makers and other critics of

Islam during the modern age.

When Mohammed and his followers migrate to Medina, they are welcomed but soon realize that unlike the

natives, they have no source of income. So, they start attacking caravans. Mohammed is credited with

organising 82 raids (ghazwa, hence also razzia) and with leading 26 of them in person. The passengers were

held in captivity until their families paid the ransom. Mohammed gave permission to his men to rape their

hostages. At first he instructed them to practise coitus interruptus (often cited in pro-Islamic arguments as

proof of how progressive Mohammed was, even condoning birth control!), later he decided that it didnt

matter.

These raids set the pattern for holy war against the unbelievers. They were called jihad fi sabil Allah,

exertion on the path of Allah. Mohammed used the money gained to buy weapons and horses to equip his

growing army. Nothing internal there, no character struggle against the evil tendencies within oneself, only

an external military endeavour. Given the repeated Muslim initiative to strike first, it is also not required thatthe other side commits aggression; self-defence is no requirement. All Mohammeds subsequent struggles

against various categories of unbelievers are called jihad. So we have it on Mohammeds own testimony that

jihad means a military struggle against the unbelievers.

When Islamic or pro-Islamic apologists (such as David Cameron in May 2013, after a British soldier was

murdered by two Muslims in Woolwich) say that an act of violence against unbelievers is a betrayal of

Islam, they imply that an Islamic court would punish the murderers. But in fact, before an Islamic judge, the

culprits could easily invoke the precedent behaviour of Mohammed himself. The words and acts of the

Prophet are the basis of Islamic law. All fatwa-s (juridical advice) ultimately answer the question in this form:

what has Mohammed done in a similar situation? The only reason for doubt in some judges mind could be

that in a particular case, an act of violence would yield such negative publicity as to do Islam more harm than

good. But the mere fact that the Islamic cause was furthered by violence against the unbelievers would be a

sound emulation of the Prophets precedent. Whether it was strategically wise to kill soldier Lee Rigby (and

thus mobilize British public opinion against Islam) is questionable, which is why the British Muslim Council

tried to limit the damage by falsely swearing that the act was un-Islamic; but it was at any rate fully in

accordance with Mohammeds precedent and hence with Islamic law (sharia).

There are hundreds of farewell letters, farewell video and suicide notes in which Islamic fighters and terrorists

explicitly say that they are going to pay the ultimate price for the sake of Islam. For instance, Mohammed Atta

of 9/11 fame and Mohammed Bouyeri, who killed Theo van Gogh, said that Islam made them do it. Not

Islamism or fundamentalism but Islam. I take them seriously and believe them at their word. By contrast,

the experts overrule these mens first-hand testimony and assure us that it may have been any reason but not

Islam.


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Wherefrom then the claim that this jihad is merely the little jihad, while the real jihad or great jihad is an

internal struggle? Firstly, note that all the above is not really being denied by this claim. Jihad is relabelled as

little jihad, but is acknowledged nonetheless. Preachers who have to motivate their flock to overcome the evil

tendencies in themselves like to picture this as a heroic enterprise, so they compare it to a war. But of course,

the metaphor of a figurative holy war is only possible because the physical holy war exists.

The comparison happens to be particularly popular in Sufism, a movement originating in the grey zone

around Islam. Mostly, Sufism drew from East-Persian Buddhism and from Turkic Shamanism. The ecstatic

trance pursued by the whirling dervishes is nothing but the shamanic trance witnessed in e.g. Genghis

Khan. The fana (annihilation) described by the Sufi poets is an adaptation of the Buddhist nirvana. This

preservation of non-Islamic influences was aptly recognized by wary Islamic theologians. Mansur al-Hallaj was

beheaded for saying: Anal Haqq (I am the True One/Allah), an adaptation of the Upanishadic saying

Aham Brahmasmi, I am Brahma. Only after Sufism was sufficiently assimilated did orthodox Muslims judge

it useful for propaganda purposes among the masses.

With success, for Sufi music, though only superficially Islamic, is very popular in Pakistan and Bollywood.

Sufi phrases have hoodwinked many would-be experts into exclaiming that here is the real, peaceful Islam.

In reality, Sufis mostly became sweet-talking Muslims who were just as hard-headed when it came to fighting

the infidels. The Sufi master Muinuddin Chishti, venerated even by silly Hindus, acted as a motivator and spy

in the conquest of North India by Mohammed Ghori. At any rate, if you think that peace and inner

struggle are the real Islam, take the test and try to convince a sharia court that war against the unbelievers is

un-Islamic.

Khalistani Dharma Yuddh

The Sikhs are a Hindu sect particularly devoted to Vishnu in his incarnations as Rama and Krishna. Most of

the Sikh Gurus are named after them, e.g. Guru Govind Singh was named after Krishna, the cowherd

(govind). He founded a military order, the Khalsa, in order to defend Hindu dharma. But in the 19th

century, the Sikhs, with their history of resistance against the Moghul empire, saved many British colonizers

during the Mutiny, perceived as an attempt to restore the Moghul empire. Out of gratitude, the British

decided to upgrade Sikhism, not just by reserving many army jobs for Sikhs, but by turning Sikhism into a

separate religion.

This Sikh separatism caught on, and by the 1920s Sikhism was led by a faction pushing for a distinct religious

identity. Since they could not start altering their holy Granth, a collection of hymns with Hindu themes, and

standing proof of Sikhisms Hindu character, they altered or reinterpreted everything else. Thus, for their

holiest shrine, the Sanskrit name Hari Mandir (Vishnu temple) was replaced with the Urdu name Darbar

Sahib (revered court-session). Hindu icons such as the Vishnu statue in the Hari Mandir were removed,

along with the Brahmins serving them. To take distance from Hinduism, Islamic concepts were borrowed or


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Hindu terms were reinterpreted in an Islamic sense. Thus, an Islamic fatwa became the Sikh hukumnama

(command-letter).

In this climate, it was inevitable that among separatist Sikhs, dharma yuddha (in its Panjabi pronunciation:

dharam yuddh) would be emptied of its Hindu content and take on the meaning of jihad: war against the

unbelievers. In India this means in effect: war against the Hindus. In the 1980s, this term was used for the

wave of terrorism against the Indian state and for the creation of a Sikh state called Khalistan (land of the

pure). This struggle was supported by the global hub of terrorism, Pakistan (also land of the pure), even

though there is a historical hostility between the Sikh community and Pakistan, the successor state of the

Moghul empire. It also had the sympathy of many Sikhs in the West as well as from poorly informed

Westerners. Though the Khalistani struggle in India died out in the early 1990s, there still are some centres of

Khalistani ideology in the West.

The Khalistanis sense of religion is proverbially crude. This recrudescence resonates well with the cluelessness

about the fine points of religion among the secularist class, which holds the reins of power in India. Everyhazy prejudice by a Western tourist can also be heard from the mouth of Indian journalists and cabinet

ministers. Government-sanctioned schoolbooks teach that all religions are basically the same. They are all

assumed to preach government-sanctioned ethics and, except for casteist Hinduism, they are all presented as

egalitarian. Since the existence of jihad cannot be entirely denied to any Indian who follows the news, the

next line of defence is to shield Islam from criticism by alleging that all religions are the same. One way to do

this is to spread the false notion of Hindu terrorism, another is to blur the terminology and equate Hindu

chivalrous war with Islamic holy war. The use of dharma yuddha as a synonym of jihad, war against the

unbelievers, is unhistorical and incorrect.

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[2013] dharma yuddha vs jihad

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