The Dharma of Justice in the Sanskrit Epics: Debates on Gender, Varna, and Species (Hardbound-2022)

This book shows that many characters in the Sanskrit epics - men and women of all varnas and mixed-varna - discuss and criticize discrimination based on gender, varna, poverty, age, and disability. On the basis of philosophy, logic and devotion, these characters argue that such categories are ever-changing, mixed and ultimately unreal therefore humans should be judged on the basis of their actions, not birth. The book explores the dharmas of singleness, friendship, marriage, parenting, and ruling. Bhakta poets such as Kabir, Tulsidas, Rahim and Raidas drew on ideas and characters from the epics to present a vision of oneness. Justice is indivisible, all bodies are made of the same matter, all beings suffer, and all consciousnesses are akin. This book makes the radical argument that in the epics, kindness to animals, the dharma available to all, is inseparable from all other forms of dharma.

Ruth Vanita taught at Delhi University for 20 years and is now Professor at the University of Montana. She was founding volunteer co-editor of Manushi, India's first nationwide feminist magazine, and an activist in the Indian women's and civil liberties movements from 1978 to 1991. The author of many books, including Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination; A Play of Light: Selected Poems; Love's Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India (new edition 2020), she has published over 70 scholarly articles and translated several works of fiction and poetry from Hindi and Urdu. She co-edited the pioneering Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History. Her first novel, Memory of Light, appeared from Penguin in 2020.