________________
THE MEMOIRS OF A CAT
than the tyranny of words. Take the Holy Scriptures (of any religion), for example. These collections of words teach man to falsify his feelings, that is, to be hypocritical to himself; to hide his emotions, that is, to turn life into a huge lic; and to abjure the freedom of thought. One cannot think freely for himself, and believe at the same time-in the religious sense. God is substituted by the name of God. The great bulk of the Hindu population devoutly believe in the spiritual efficacy of the habit of exclaiming: "Ram Ram" or "Hari Hari" or "Shiva Shiva". I have heard any number of grown-up people expatiating upon the common cant that dharma is the essence of life. But ask them what is dharma; hardly one in a thousand has any definite notion about what the so freely and frequently used term stands for. It is a word, and millions of people have forfeited the most rudimentary faculty of thought under the tyranny of words. Even when the word dharma is associated with some concrete meaning, it only stands for a body of superstitions, prejudices, social customs and irrational modes of living. These again are not uniform. They vary from place to place, and from sect to sect. But if you ask why these customs are observed or why such and such ceremonies are performed, the answer is that they are prescribed by dharma. So, we come back to the question: What is dharma? The entire
29
