..One concern from which everything in Indian thought flowed, and on which every movement of life ultimately depended was the idea of Dharma, order, which was not any positive order but the order taht was inherent in all life. Derived from the Sanskrit root word dhr, 'to sustain' dharma means That, whereby, whatever lives, is supported, upheld and sustained. The least that is involved in any realistic conception of Dharm/order is the condition that there be room in it for every expression of individual development based on his temperament, capacity and circumstances, provided the general flow of social life was not disrupted either by anarchy of ideas, or by the anarchy of individual desires.
In such a Dharmic society, idea of gods is just a secondary means, primary being Dharma, to sustain freedom and life in the SanAtan/eternal tradition of the east.
Dharma in fact cuts across the very polarity, religious-secular, which had affected the history of the modern West so deeply, and affects it even today. This polarity, of late, is imported in various societies along with the modern democracy and in absence of a proper understanding of the concept of "secularism" and "religion"...
