Hindu Law - Dharma and Law

Dharma and Law

Dharma and law are not precisely the same. Dharma refers to a wider range of human activities than law in the usual sense and includes ritual purification, personal hygiene regimens, and modes of dress, in addition to court procedures, contract law, inheritance, and other more familiarly "legal" issues. In this respect, Hindu law reveals closer affinities to other religious legal systems, such as Jewish law. Dharma concerns both religious and legal duties and attempts to separate these two concerns within the Hindu tradition have been widely criticized. According to Rocher, the British implemented a distinction between the religious and legal rules found in Dharmaśāstra and thereby separated dharma into the English categories of law and religion for the purposes of colonial administration. However, a few scholars have argued that distinctions of law and religion, or something similar, are made in the Hindu legal texts themselves.