The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c4.s1.4

c4.s1.4

There is, then, strong support for the notion of India’s unchanging tradition which goes well beyond mere resilience under pressure of changing circumstances. It is even guaranteed against such pressures by the absence of worldly causes or motivations. But it is exactly this unworldliness that brings out a problem. The dharma is universal and as such must take into account worldly concerns and interests, but at the same time its atemporal character requires a total withdrawal from those secular realities. The dharma does not propound a fixed institutional order, as we are all too prone to assume; it poses an insoluble dilemma.