Dharma Beyond Puja: Why Everyday Kindness Matters, and Why Duty Means More

What does it mean to practise dharma? In a Hindi Instagram reel shared by @inttrovert.in, a speaker offers a sharp answer: believing in dharma is easier than living by it. He contrasts performing puja with the much harder choices of not hurting or troubling people, not holding jealousy towards others and giving food to someone who is hungry. His example is deliberately small: will a person take even ₹20 from their pocket to help?

The contrast matters because it asks whether religious devotion changes conduct towards other people. The speaker is making a moral argument, not giving a complete dictionary definition of dharma. It is a powerful challenge to outward displays of righteousness that do not carry over into everyday behaviour.

What the reel is really asking

The video draws a distinction between maanana (professing or accepting a belief) and nibhaana (fulfilling or putting it into practice). Its examples concern things anyone can recognise: avoiding deliberate harm, setting aside envy, helping someone in need and acting with care even when it is inconvenient.

The accompanying caption takes the point further, describing keeping promises, not deceiving people, listening to someone who is lonely and helping without expecting a reward. Those examples are part of the account’s written interpretation; they should not all be mistaken for words heard in the 30-second clip.

Is kindness part of dharma?

Yes. Hindu understandings of sadharana dharma, or duties and virtues applying generally, include truthfulness, non-injury and generosity. This is consistent with the reel’s emphasis on not causing needless suffering and on helping others. The Encyclopaedia Britannica’s explanation of dharma distinguishes such shared virtues from duties connected to a person’s particular position or situation.

The ethical importance of conduct is also supported by scholarly accounts of Indian philosophy. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains dharma as a moral or ethical aim of human life, alongside material prosperity, pleasure and liberation in the classical Hindu account of life’s goals. In that sense, what a person does is not separate from spiritual reflection.

But dharma is not only kindness, and puja is not necessarily its opposite

Dharma has never had one simple meaning across all Indian traditions. It may refer to moral duty, justice, proper conduct, law, social order, religious obligation or, in Buddhist contexts, the teaching and path. Oxford Bibliographies notes that a single English translation cannot capture all its meanings.

Religious practice and good conduct therefore need not be rivals. Prayer or puja can be meaningful to worshippers, while generosity and honesty remain tests of how they treat others. The clip’s statement that puja is easier than helping is best understood as a criticism of practising rituals without responsibility, not as proof that worship has no place in dharma.

There is another important complication: some historical interpretations of dharma tied duties to caste, social status and stage of life. The Wiley reference account of Hindu dharma explains these changing, context-dependent duties and how later interpretations increasingly stressed universal moral virtues. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy also describes tensions between established social obligations and renunciant traditions. This history means we should not treat every practice justified as someone’s ‘dharma’ as automatically fair. Duties deserve scrutiny when they are used to defend discrimination, coercion or harm.

When belief becomes responsibility

The reel’s strongest insight is not that spending ₹20 proves someone is religious, nor that every good act must have a religious label. It is that an ethical claim becomes meaningful when it affects choices, especially towards someone with little power to repay a favour. A sincere ritual cannot by itself excuse knowingly mistreating another person.

Of course, individual generosity is not a replacement for fair wages, functioning public services or people’s rights. Helping one hungry person is valuable; it does not mean the social conditions behind hunger have been solved. The same standard of non-harm should apply to how communities and institutions treat people, not only to personal charity.

The reel offers a persuasive everyday test of dharma: do our beliefs make us more honest, less cruel and more willing to help? The wider philosophical record adds an essential qualification. Dharma includes other obligations and has been interpreted in competing ways, so no one short clip can exhaust its meaning. But the moral question at the centre of this one is worth taking seriously: a claim of righteousness carries little weight when conduct repeatedly contradicts it.