Pavan K Varma: Dharma and the Indian art of excuse

Pavan K Varma, writing for both Deccan Chronicle and Asian Age on 11 October, argues that the Hindu concept of dharma, while intellectually rich, is being cynically used by the powerful to evade accountability. He traces dharma from its root meaning of duty and righteousness through its nuanced role in the purusharthas and epics like the Mahabharata, where moral ambiguity is central.

Varma warns that the same contextual flexibility that makes dharma courageous also allows wrongdoing to be justified through expedient factors such as 'appadharma' (emergency action) or 'svadharma' (personal conscience). He contends that in public life, high office provides an endless supply of 'compulsions', constitutional, political, administrative, that can turn explanation into exoneration.

The article questions whether India's jurisprudential culture, built on the humane principle that many guilty should escape rather than one innocent be punished, has become so labyrinthine that accountability itself is lost. Varma calls for dharma to demand something more rigorous than relativism, though the piece cuts off before offering a solution.