Citation- Deepak Srinivasan

Let us have a look at one of the controversial texts that has been roiling Indian society for a very long time now – the Manusmriti, which has inspired many heated debates.

The protesters believe that the text is the defining document of Brahmanical Hinduism, and also the key source of gender and caste discrimination in India. The defender of Manusmriti project it as a pivotal canonical source of religious law for Hindus.

This indicates that there is a serious misconception among the modern educated elite over the actual status and role of the shastras in Hindu religious life and cultural traditions that has been inspiring major misreadings of religious tenets for centuries now. These common misrepresentations are an unfortunate byproduct of colonial education and scholarship, due to which we keep defending or attacking the same hackneyed quotations from the shastras and the epics which, incidentally, colonisers used for the purpose of creating a new discourse about these writings.

So let us have a look at the history behind this controversy in order for us to have a more informed and rational debate.


In the late 18th century, the British began to study the ancient shastras to develop a set of legal principles that would assist them in adjudicating disputes within Indian civil society. In fact, they found there was no single body of canonical law, no Hindu Pope to legitimise a uniform legal code for all the diverse communities of India, no Shankaracharya whose writ reigned all over the country. Even religious interpretations of popular epics like the Ramayana failed to fit the bill because every community and every age exercised the freedom to recite and write its own version. We have inherited hundreds of recognised and respected versions of this text, and many are still being created. The flourishing of such variation and diversity, however, did not prevent the British from searching for a definitive canon of Hindu law.

Perhaps more egregiously, in their search, the British took no steps to understand local or jati based customary law or the way in which every community – no matter how wealthy or poor – regulated its own internal affairs through jati or biradari panchayats, without seeking permission or validation from any higher authority. The power to introduce a new custom, or change existing practices, rested in large part within each community. Any individual or group respected within that biradari could initiate reforms. This tradition of self-governance is what accounts for the vast diversity of cultural practices within the subcontinent. For example, some communities have inherited matrilineal family structures in which women exercise a great deal of freedom and social clout. Some disapprove of widow remarriage, while others attach no stigma to widowhood and allow women recourse to easy divorce and remarriage.

The multiplicity of codes was a major reason for the wide divergence in judgments, interpretations and reports provided by the pandits appointed to assist British judges presiding over the newly established colonial courts. Often, the same pandits even gave different opinions on seemingly similar matters, confounding the judges of the East India Company. The British began to mistrust the pandits and became impatient with having to deal with such a range of customs that had no apparent shastric authority to back them, since that made it difficult for them to pose as genuine adjudicators of Hindu law. The British were even more nonplussed because they had a history of using the common law system, based on precedent. However, given the myriad opinions of the Indian pandits, they couldn’t depend on uniform precedents to make their own judgments.

In order to arrive at a definitive version of the Indian legal system that would mainly be useful for them, the East India Company began to recruit and train pandits for its own service. In 1772, Warren Hastings hired a group of eleven pandits to cooperate with the Company in the creation of a new digest of Hindu law that would govern civil disputes in the British courts. The Sanskrit pandits hired to translate and sanction this new interpretation of customary laws created a curious Anglo-Brahmanical hybrid. The resulting document, printed in London under the title, A Code of Gentoo Laws, or, Ordinations of the Pandits, was a made-to-order text, in which the pandits dutifully followed the demands made by their paymasters. Though it was the first serious attempt at codification of Hindu law, the text was far from accurate in its references to the original sources, or to their varied traditional interpretations. The British lent new zeal in bringing actual substance to the new identity markers imposed by Europeans on the diverse non-Muslim inhabitants of the subcontinent. The codification of their so-called “personal laws” became an important instrument in that endeavour.

This codification still could not put an end to the conflicts of opinion. The British mistrust of the pandits increased, along with their frustration at the way they thought they were misleading the court primarily by favouring the interests of their own caste, and dealing with a spectrum of customs that were not certified by any apparent shastric source.

The resulting confusions and reports of corruption led William Jones to work on a more ‘definitive’ code of Hindu law, as a reference work for Europeans in India. He was determined that the British should administer to the Indian people the best shastric law that could be discovered. Jones went on to translate Manusmriti. It became one of the most favoured texts of the British. A policy decision was taken at the highest levels in the India Office to keep this particular document in circulation and project it as the fountainhead of Hindu jurisprudence, for the purpose of perpetuating the illusion that the British were merely enforcing the shastric injunctions by which Hindus were governed anyway, and that they had inherited the authority to administer this law.


The British consistently promoted the myth that Hindus were governed by their codified versions of shastric injunctions. The educated elite in India, whose knowledge of India came mainly from English language sources, were thenceforth systematically led into believing that the British were actually administering Hindu personal laws through the medium of the English courts. This was part of a larger myth-building exercise, whereby the people of the subcontinent were taught that theirs was a stagnant civilisation. The ignorant assumptions of the colonial rulers, that social stability in India was due to the supposed proclivity of its people to follow the same old traditions, customs and laws that had allegedly remained moribund for centuries, slowly came to acquire the force of self-evident truth over a period of time, both for those supporting as well as those opposing British rule.

Since then, the dynamism of customary law has been in constant conflict with the frozen and artificial Anglo-Shastric law. Dharmashastras, for instance, were not strictly religious treatises. Dharma itself means the aggregate of duties and obligations – religious, moral, social and legal – delineated for every individual and collective performing a specific role in society. For example, the obligations and duties of a person in his role as a king (raj-dharma) are different from his obligations as a husband or son (pati-dharma or putra-dharma). Similarly, guru-dharma demands specific responsibilities from a teacher just as shishya-dharma binds students to their own set of obligations. Even war demanded a very rigorous code – yuddha-dharma. The list is endless and refers mostly to secular duties.

Similarly, the smritis are collections of precepts written by the rishis, the sages of antiquity. Smritis are presumed to be the compositions of human authors, not gods; these authors make it clear that they are merely anthologising traditions handed down to them over generations. They did not hesitate to propose changes and reforms in their writings. For instance, Apastamba, whose work embodies the customs of certain regions of southern India, and who authored one of the most respected Sutras, takes care, at the end of his work, to impress his pupils with the statement: “Some declare that the remaining duties (which have not been taught here) must be learnt from women and men of all castes.” He adds, “the knowledge which… women possess is the completion of all study.”

Neither shastras nor smritis suggest that there exists an immutable, universal moral doctrine. Rather, they emphasise that codes of morality must be specific to time, person, and place, and evolve according to changing requirements. For example, Narada states, “custom is powerful and overrides the sacred law.” Manusmriti itself stresses that the business of the ruler is not to impose laws from above but that, “a king… must inquire into the law of castes (jati), of districts (Ganapada), of guilds (Shreni), and of families (kula), and settle the peculiar law of each…Thus have the holy sages, well knowing that law is grounded on immemorial custom, embraced as the root of all piety good usages long established.”

The authority to change or create new customs rests with not just the biradari but also the kula or family. The smritikars repeatedly stress the primacy of custom and practice over textual axioms.



Their influence depended solely on the voluntary internalisation of such value systems by the groups to which they addressed themselves to, and people’s respect for their judgement. Actual enforcement was left in the hands of the local communities. An oft-repeated maxim was that reason and justice are to be accorded more regard than mere texts. Most important of all, a dharmic code, in the rishis’ view, was one that was “agreeable to good conscience.”

Gandhi is one of the few modern social reformers to have understood this principle underlying the shastras. Therefore, he could unhesitatingly declare: “My belief in the Hindu scriptures does not require me to accept every word and every verse as divinely inspired… I decline to be bound by any interpretation, however learned it may be, if it is repugnant to reason or moral sense.”

He goes on to add:

1) I believe in varnashrama of the Vedas which in my opinion is based on absolute equality of status, notwithstanding passages to the contrary in the smritis and elsewhere.

2) Every word of the printed works passing muster as `Shastras’ is not, in my opinion, a revelation.




Gandhi could present himself as a modern day sage calling upon people to overthrow beliefs and practices that did not conform to principles of equality and justice – or went against “good conscience” – because he had inherited a tradition whereby the power to change its own customary law rested with each community.


Thus, the practice of self-governance continues to be a dynamic tradition in India. Each caste, sub-caste and occupational grouping continues to assert its right to regulate the inner affairs of its own community and does not pay much attention to ancient textual authorities. When an individual or a group in India seeks to defend a particular practice, the common statement one hears across the country is, “hamari biradari mein to yeh hi chalta hai” (This is how we do things in our community) – rather than quotations from the shastras.

Those who insist on attributing our social ills to the shastras repeat the mistake of our colonial rulers. Just as a doctor can kill a patient through wrong diagnosis and treatment of the disease – no matter how benign the intention – in the same manner social reformers can wreak havoc on the people if their understanding of social ills is flawed.

Discrimination against women or certain castes is neither inherently ‘Hindu’ nor is it scripturally mandated. This is not to suggest that such practices do not exist. Sadly enough, the discriminatory treatment of certain castes and downgrading of women are among the aspects of contemporary Indian society most in need of urgent reform. But they will not disappear by castigating ancient texts because none of the ‘Hindu’ scriptures have projected themselves as commandment-giving authorities demanding unconditional obedience from all those claiming to be Hindus.


Despite some of the negative and offensive things he might have said (which many scholars hold to be later interpolations), Manu did have the proper sense to pronounce that good karma was more important than biological lineage. He also emphasised that families and societies which demean women and make them lead miserable lives inevitably move towards destruction. He noted that truly prosperous families are only those in which women are honoured and happy.

Manu, like all other smritikars, emphasised that codes of morality are not fixed by some divine authority, but must evolve with respect to the changing requirements of generations and communities.

Hindus are free to rid themselves of any text that debases women or certain castes. Neither Manu nor any other shastrakar is obstructing societal efforts to improve the lot of women or other groups in need of advancement.