Religion In IndiaSri Aurobindo
Early Cultural Writings
(1890 — 1910)
Part Six. The Chandernagore Manuscript
Passing Thoughts [1]
Religion in India is a still more plastic term and may mean anything from the heights of Yoga to strangling your fellow man and relieving him of the worldly goods he may happen to be carrying with him.
It would therefore take too long to enumerate everything that can be included in Indian religion.
Briefly, however, it is dharma or living religiously, the whole life being governed by religion.
But again what is living religiously?
It means, in ordinary practice, living according to authority.
The authority generally accepted is the Shastra; but when one studies the Shastra and Indian life side by side, one finds that the two have very little to do with each1 other; the Indian governs his life not by the Shastra but by custom and the opinion of the nearest Brahmin.
In practice this resolves itself into certain observances and social customs of which he understands neither the spiritual meaning nor the practical utility.
To venerate the Scriptures without knowing them and to obey custom in their place; to reverence all Brahmins whether they are venerable or despicable; to eat nothing cooked by a social inferior; to marry one’s daughter before puberty and one’s son as soon as possible after it; to keep women ignorant and domestically useful; to bathe scrupulously and go through certain fixed ablutions; to eat on the floor and not at a table; to do one’s devotions twice a day without understanding them; to observe a host of meaningless minutiae2 in one’s daily conduct; to keep the Hindu holidays, when an image is set up, worshipped and thrown away, — this in India is the minimum of religion.
This is glorified as Hinduism and the Sanatana Dharma.
If, in addition, a man has emotional or ecstatic piety, he is a Bhakta; if he can talk fluently about the Veda, Upanishads, Darshanas and Puranas, he is a Jnani.
If he puts on a yellow robe and does nothing, he is a tyagi or sannyasin.
The latter is liberated from the ordinary dharma, but only if he does nothing but beg and vegetate.
All work must be according to custom and the Brahmin.
The one superiority of average Indian religion is that it does really reverence the genuine Bhakta or Sannyasin provided he does not come with too strange a garb 
or too revolutionary an aspect.
The European almost invariably sets him down as a charlatan, professional religionist, idle drone or religious maniac.
Earlier edition of this work: Archives and Research: A biannual journal.- Volume 1, No1 (1977, April)
1 A&R 1977-1: the
2 A&R 1977-1: minutae