Sanatan dharma serves politically as a tool of religious assimilation and domination

Evidence

For the conservative Hindus, the Congress party’s natural constituency, Gandhi held aloft the utopia of Ram Rajya and the Bhagvad Gita, his “spiritual dictionary”. (It’s the book most Gandhi statues hold.) He called himself a “Sanatani Hindu”. Sanatan dharma, by virtue of being ‘eternal law’, positions itself as the origin of all things, the ‘container’ of everything. Spiritually, it is a generous and beautiful idea, the very epitome of tolerance and pluralism. Politically, it is used in the opposite way, for the very narrow purpose of assimilation and domination, in which all religions—Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Christianity—are sought to be absorbed. They’re expected to function like small concerns under the umbrella of a larger holding company. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 160

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the double valence of Sanatan dharma as universal spiritual container vs. political assimilation tool.
• SEED: Possible angle: how an ideology of pluralism can be deployed as a corporate-style umbrella for assimilation, comparing religious ‘tolerance’ claims to holding-company structures.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 160
• XREF: connects to: Sanatan dharm denotes an unreformed eternal Hinduism beyond the terms Hindu and Hinduism; Politicizing religion functions as assimilation as well as exclusion; Hindutva reframed Hinduism as a political identity mandating Muslim exclusion from India (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Politicizing religion functions as assimilation as well as exclusion #corroborates (0.75)
• Hindutva reframed Hinduism as a political identity mandating Muslim exclusion from India #exemplifies (0.70)
• Religious minorities become politically suspect when religion ties to national identity #expands (0.60)
• Religion carries no necessary political meaning but is anchored in tendential historical formations #qualifies (0.50)