Page 19 - All India Magazine Aug-2025

Sanatan Dharma and the Hindu Religion
This then is what I have to say to you. The name of your society
is "Society for the Protection of Religion". Well, the protection of
the religion, the protection and upraising before the world of the
Hindu religion, that is the work before us. But what is the Hindu
religion? What is this religion which we call Sanatana, eternal? It
is the Hindu religion only because the Hindu nation has kept it,
because in this peninsula it grew up in the seclusion of the sea and
the Himalayas, because in this sacred and ancient land it was given
as a charge to the Aryan race to preserve through the ages. But it
is not circumscribed by the confines of a single country, it does
not belong peculiarly and for ever to a bounded part of the world.
That which we call the Hindu religion is really the eternal religion,
because it is the universal religion which embraces all others. If a
religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a
sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited
time and a limited purpose. This is the one religion that can tri-
umph over materialism by including and anticipating the discover-
ies of science and the speculations of philosophy. It is the one reli-
gion which impresses on mankind the closeness of God to us and
embraces in its compass all the possible means by which man can
approach God. It is the one religion which insists every moment on
the truth which all religions acknowledge, that He is in all men and
all things and that in Him we move and have our being. It is the
one religion which enables us not only to understand and believe
this truth but to realise it with every part of our being. It is the one
religion which shows the world what the world is, that it is the lila
of Vasudeva. It is the one religion which shows us how we can best
play our part in that lila, its subtlest laws and its noblest rules. It is
the one religion which does not separate life in any smallest detail
from religion, which knows what immortality is and has utterly re-
moved from us the reality of death.
CWSA 8: 11-12

All India Magazine, August 2025 19