"Dharma is a better and more substantive name than the geographically connoted Hindu. It is exceptional for a non-Indian to call himself a Hindu, but anyone could be a Dharmin. It is even better than the term Sanâtana Dharma, “eternal Dharma”, which is nowadays used as an indigenous name for Hinduism. Both the Bhagavad Gita and the Buddha have said that ”this Dharma is sanâtana”, so the composite name has ancient credentials. Yet, those authorities didn’t use it as a composite name, they just spoke of Dharma and then qualified it as sanâtana, eternal. So, the simple name of the religion Hindus practise, is Dharma. Literally “sustenance”, it effectively means “performing the role befitting your place within the whole”, “doing the needful to maintain the correct relation between the part and the whole”. It encompasses both observing a correct friendship with the other parts through morality (not merely vis-à-vis human beings) and realizing a proper relation with the sacred through rituals, prayers and festivals."
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Koenraad Elst, On Modi Time : Merits And Flaws of Hindu Activism In Its Day Of Incumbency – 2015 Ch 28
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dharma
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Dharma
or dhamma (/ˈdɑːrmə/; Sanskrit: धर्म; Pali: धम्म) is a key concept with multiple meanings in the Indian religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. The word dharma was already in use in the , and its meaning and conceptual scope has evolved over several millennia. There is no single-word translation for dharma in Western languages.
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