Page 27 - All India Magazine Aug-2025

Restoration of the Dharma
The outward action of the Avatar is described in the Gita as
the restoration of the Dharma; when from age to age the Dharma
fades, languishes, loses force and its opposite arises, strong and
oppressive, then the Avatar comes and raises it again to power;
and as these things in idea are always represented by things in
action and by human beings who obey their impulsion, his mission
is, in its most human and outward terms, to relieve the seekers
of the Dharma who are oppressed by the reign of the reactionary
darkness and to destroy the wrong-doers who seek to maintain
the denial of the Dharma. But the language used can easily be
given a poor and insufficient connotation which would deprive
Avatarhood of all its spiritual depth of meaning. Dharma is a word
which has an ethical and practical, a natural and philosophical and
a religious and spiritual significance, and it may be used in any of
these senses exclusive of the others, in a purely ethical, a purely
philosophical or a purely religious sense. Ethically it means the
law of righteousness, the moral rule of conduct, or in a still more
outward and practical significance social and political justice, or
even simply the observation of the social law. If used in this sense
we shall have to understand that when unrighteousness, injustice
and oppression prevail, the Avatar descends to deliver the good
and destroy the wicked, to break down injustice and oppression
and restore the ethical balance of mankind.
CWSA 19: 169
The guardian of dharma
The main function of the political sovereign, the king and coun-
cil and the other ruling members of the body politic, was therefore
to serve and assist the maintenance of the sound law of life of the
society: the sovereign was the guardian and administrator of the
Dharma. The function of society itself included the right satisfac-
tion of the vital, economic and other needs of the human being
and of his hedonistic claim to pleasure and enjoyment, but ac-

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