Excerpted from Romila Thapar’s Voices of Dissent: An Essay, published by Seagull Books, 2020.
I WOULD LIKE TO ARGUE that it is because of the absence of emphasising the monolithic and the uniform in religion that dissent took the form that it did and, to some extent, continues to do. Confrontations did occur and some were violent, as they still are. This is not surprising given the sharpness of social distinctions in Indian society. Nevertheless, it is because there is the possibility of juxtaposing the undercurrents of dissent and allowing them space that there is also flexibility in contention. This would require us to view Hinduism—the religion of the largest number—not as a single, continuous, unchanging institution but, rather, as a series of reformulated institutions, of which some get amalgamated with what was there before and many that have a lively continuity as sects are juxtaposed among a plurality of other such. The interface therefore of these sects with various communities and with each other would have patterns that differ from those projected as monolithic religions. Viewing religion in India only from the perspective of monolithic religions, coexisting or in conflict from time to time, as is more frequently done, could be misleading.
The term “sect” refers to those that follow a particular way of thought and whose membership is by choice. The terms generally used in early sources are pashanda and sampradaya. The first seems to have referred to any group that formalised itself as a sect. Ashoka Maurya’s references to them are neutral in terms of disapproval or approval. But in later texts such as the Puranas, the word is used specifically for those regarded as heretics, teaching false doctrines, and on occasion for the Shramana sects too. It ceases to be a neutral term. Sampradaya has a relatively stable meaning and refers to those who join a group that claims an earlier tradition for its teaching—as many sects do—and assumes a continuity into the future.