How Does Society Sustain Itself?
Every society must answer a question more fundamental than politics: why do people cooperate at all?
A society cannot survive if every act of cooperation requires a police officer, a court or a written law. Parents cannot be compelled to care for children through law alone. Neighbours cannot be forced to display mutual concern by constant surveillance. A teacher cannot teach merely because of fear of punishment. Even the state itself depends upon millions of people voluntarily performing duties that no authority can monitor every moment.
Yet much of modern Sociology approaches social order through a familiar vocabulary: norms, values, institutions, social control, power and sanctions. Society, in this view, develops mechanisms that regulate behaviour and produce a degree of stability. This is a necessary framework. Émile Durkheim drew attention to the moral forces that bind society; Talcott Parsons explored value consensus and social integration; Max Weber examined authority and legitimacy; Michel Foucault showed how power could become embedded within institutions and practices.
These theories ask important questions. But an Indic sociological drishti raises another one: Can social order also be understood through the idea of responsibility? This is where dharma becomes sociologically significant.
Dharma Is Not Simply a Religious Law
The first problem is translation.
Dharma is frequently translated as religion, law, morality, duty or righteousness. Each captures something, but none is sufficient. For sociological purposes, it may be useful to understand dharma as a way of thinking about conduct in relation to sustaining relationships and order.
But this definition must not reduce dharma entirely to social conformity. Dharma cannot simply mean doing whatever society expects. A social practice may be accepted and still be unjust. A custom may be old and still be open to challenge. This distinction is essential. Otherwise, every existing social arrangement could claim to be dharma merely because it exists.
Dharma therefore introduces a more difficult sociological question: what responsibilities arise from one’s position within a web of relationships, and how should those responsibilities be judged?
A parent, teacher, ruler, merchant, judge and student do not occupy identical social positions. Their responsibilities differ. But difference does not mean immunity from ethical evaluation. The very idea of dharma allows one to ask whether a person is fulfilling the obligations associated with the position from which authority or privilege is derived.
This gives Sociology a language beyond the simple opposition between individual freedom and social control.
Kartavya: The Other Side of Social Rights
Modern political and sociological thought frequently begins with claims: What is my right? What am I entitled to? What may society not do to me? These questions are indispensable. Rights protect individuals against arbitrary power and social oppression. An Indic perspective does not require their rejection.
But social life cannot be sustained through rights alone.
If every individual insists upon rights while no one asks about kartavya—what one owes—who performs the obligations that make those rights meaningful? A child’s right to education requires teachers who treat teaching as more than employment. The right to a clean environment requires restraint from those who profit from pollution. Public welfare requires officials who do not exploit public office. Social trust requires individuals to act honestly even when dishonesty may go undetected.
Here kartavya becomes a sociological category. It directs attention from what can I demand? towards what does my relationship with others require from me? This is not an argument for unlimited duty or unquestioning obedience. Duties can themselves become instruments of hierarchy when imposed selectively upon the powerless. Sociology must therefore ask: Who defines duty? Who is expected to sacrifice? Who is exempt?
A language of duty without justice can become oppressive. But a society of rights without responsibility can become socially thin.
The challenge is balance.
Achara and the Social Transmission of Conduct
How does a society teach responsibility? Not primarily through formal law. Much of human conduct is transmitted through achara—practice, conduct and established ways of behaving. Children learn how to speak to elders, participate in collective events, share resources, perform rituals and respond to guests long before they study Sociology or constitutional law.
Sadhachara, often understood as good or proper conduct, reflects another dimension of social order. It points towards behaviour considered worthy of preservation and imitation. From a sociological perspective, these are mechanisms of socialization.
Society reproduces itself through families, communities, institutions and everyday practices. This is precisely where an Indic perspective can enter conversation with Sociology. What Durkheim calls collective morality, or Parsons describes through internalized values, can be compared with—but should not be collapsed into—the transmission of achara.
The difference is important. Indic concepts emerged within a different intellectual tradition and carry their own assumptions about relationship, conduct and obligation. Decolonizing Sociology does not mean replacing Durkheim with Sanskrit vocabulary. It means allowing concepts such as dharma, kartavya and achara to generate questions rather than forcing them into ready-made Western categories.
Can Social Order Exist Without Coercion?
No society exists entirely without coercion. Laws are necessary. Courts are necessary. Police powers are necessary. A society that depends only on voluntary morality may fail to protect the vulnerable against those who possess wealth, force or social influence.
But the opposite is equally true. A society governed entirely through external enforcement would be unlivable. The state cannot monitor every promise, every act of care, every professional decision and every moment of everyday honesty. Social order depends upon what Sociology calls internalized norms—people doing certain things because they consider them appropriate, meaningful or necessary.
Dharma adds another dimension: the idea that conduct may be understood through responsibility to a larger order of relationships.
A person who does not pollute a river merely because of a possible fine is externally regulated. A person who understands the river as something to which communities owe responsibility operates through a different moral relationship. The practical action may appear similar. The social foundations are different.
This distinction matters because the stability of a society cannot depend indefinitely upon external coercion. Where trust collapses, the costs of governance rise. More surveillance is required. More regulation becomes necessary. Every interaction becomes contractual. The state expands because social responsibility contracts.
Dharma and Reciprocity
The sociological significance of dharma becomes clearer when connected with reciprocity.
Every social relationship contains an expectation, whether explicit or implicit. Parents care for children. Children eventually bear responsibilities toward ageing parents. Communities share resources. Individuals contribute to institutions from which they benefit. A ruler exercises authority but is expected to protect. A teacher possesses knowledge but has responsibility in its transmission. These relationships are not always equal, and they are not always harmonious. Conflict is part of social life.
But a society survives when relationships remain reciprocal enough to retain legitimacy.
This is why dharma can be read as a relational principle. Authority without responsibility becomes exploitation. Freedom without responsibility can weaken trust. Rights without duties become difficult to sustain collectively. Social stability requires not merely obedience but recognition that one’s actions enter a larger network of consequences. This is also where dharma differs from simple social control.
Social control asks: How does society ensure compliance?
Dharma asks a deeper question: What kind of conduct sustains the relationships upon which society depends?
Institutions as Carriers of Responsibility
The transmission of social expectations does not occur in a single institution. Family, samudaya, grama, educational traditions, religious institutions, occupational groups and political authority all contribute to social formation. This produces a distributed understanding of social order.
The state is not the sole creator of norms. Society itself generates, transmits, challenges and modifies expectations. The individual is therefore neither completely autonomous nor merely controlled. One becomes social through relationships.
This does not mean that inherited institutions should escape criticism. Sociology must examine how social norms create belonging but can also produce exclusion. The question of who defines sadachara has historically been contested. Customs change. Social movements challenge existing arrangements. A living society must possess the ability to distinguish between the authority of tradition and the mere persistence of an old practice.
This makes dharma more interesting, not less. If dharma is reduced to unquestioning tradition, it becomes sociologically stagnant. If it is understood as the continual search for conduct appropriate to changing relationships and circumstances, it becomes a framework for studying social responsibility under conditions of change.
Towards a Sociology of Responsibility
Modern Sociology has given us sophisticated languages of power, domination, conflict and resistance. These must remain central because societies are never free from unequal power. But if we study society only through conflict and coercion, another question disappears: why do societies not collapse every day?
People cooperate. They care. They perform duties that no one records. They restrain themselves even when they could exploit others. They inherit practices and transmit them further. They remain connected to relationships that cannot be reduced to contracts.
A sociological drishti rooted in dharma does not deny power. It asks us to study what power alone cannot explain.
How is social order maintained before the law arrives? What makes authority legitimate? Why do people accept responsibility? What happens when institutions continue demanding obedience while abandoning their own obligations?
Perhaps this is the most significant contribution of dharma to Sociology. It shifts the question from merely “Who controls society?” to “Who is responsible for sustaining it?”
A society can survive through fear for a time. It can survive through law. It can survive through power. But for social life to become more than an arrangement for managing conflict, responsibility must circulate through its institutions. And perhaps dharma, understood critically rather than romantically, gives Sociology a language for studying that circulation.
