© 2020 |Published by Scholars Middle East Publisher, Dubai, United Arab Emirates 294 Saudi Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Abbreviated Key Title: Saudi J Humanities Soc Sci ISSN 2415-6256 (Print) | ISSN 2415-6248 (Online) Scholars Middle East Publishers, Dubai, United Arab Emirates Journal homepage: https://saudijournals.com/sjhss Review Article Hinduism: Sanatana Dharma or Brahmanical Religion Dr. Satendra Kumar Mishra 1* , Dr. Satyarth Prakash Tripathi 2 1 Assistant Professor, Amity School of Languages, Amity University, Lucknow Campus, Uttar Pradesh, India 2 Professor, Amity School of Languages, Amity University, Lucknow Campus, Uttar Pradesh, India DOI: 10.36348/sjhss.2020.v05i06.005 | Received: 03.06.2020 | Accepted: 12.06.2020 | Published: 18.06.2020 *Corresponding author: Dr. Satendra Kumar Mishra Abstract Religious debates today are challenging the very peace and fraternity of society just because the people who actually practice religion are often misguided by those who actually don‟t practice any religion. I mean the political parties and politicians. The politics round the globe has hijacked and reinterpreted the basic concepts of religion. The religion was actually established to unite the society and to guide the people to follow a particular series of morals and ideals. Today people have misunderstood Hinduism with „Brahmanical religion‟. Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma prescribes to live a simple dignified life for the service of humanity and nature. It has no definite set of rules. In the later Vedic age, the Varna system became more complex. The Brahmans created many complex set of rituals to be followed to be called a Hindu. They prescribed to follow different ways to get rid of sin and gain virtue. The Sanatana Dharma or Hinduism gradually was dominated by Brahmanical religion. It‟s time to look back to the roots of Hinduism and follow Sanatana dharma. If not, then at least a retrospection must be done to know the difference between Sanatana Dharma and Brahmanical religion. Keywords: Sanatana Dharma, Hinduism, Brahmanical, Humanity. Copyright @ 2020: This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium for non-commercial use (NonCommercial, or CC-BY-NC) provided the original author and source are credited. INTRODUCTION The most prominent religion of India is Hinduism, which is also called 'Sanatana Dharma' due to its antiquity and vastness. Like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism etc. Hinduism is not a religion founded by any prophet or individual, but it is a set of different traditions and beliefs that have been in existence since ancient times [1, 2]. Being a developing religion, new dimensions were added to it during various periods. In fact, Hinduism is a religion with such a vast landscape that it has everything from primitive village deities, ghost-vampires, local deities, chandeliers, tantra-mantras to Tridev and other deities and formless Brahma and extremely esoteric philosophy. All without any prejudices and presumptions are worshiped irrespective to place and person. We have to move thousands of years back to Vedic age to study the traditions of Hinduism. Vedas are the root of the traditions of Hinduism. Vedic religion was nature-worshiping, polytheistic and ritualistic religion [3-6]. Following are the major concepts of Hinduism Brahma - Brahma has been considered omnipresent, the only entity, nirgun and omnipotent. In fact, it is the „Parabrahma‟ of „Ekohum Davito Nasti‟ (ie there is only one, none other) of monotheism, which is Ajar, immortal, eternal and the creator of this world, rearing and welfare [7]. Aatma, Soul- Brahma is considered omnipresent, so its share is also present in the living beings. This non-existent Brahma present in the creatures is called Soul, which does not end despite the death of the creature and takes on a new body. Eventually, after attaining salvation, she merges into Brahma. The concept of rebirth is reinforced by the concept of immortality of the soul. After the death of an organism, its soul assumes a new body, that is, it is reborn. In this way, the body is only the medium of the soul [8]. „Yoni‟ - The organism received by each birth of a soul is called a „Yoni‟. 84 crore „Yonis‟ have been conceived, including insect-moths, animals, birds, trees and humans. The „yoni‟ can be called biotic species in modern scientific language [9]. „Karma Phal‟ - The soul has to suffer in the next life as a result of the actions performed throughout its life. Good deeds result in birth in a good „yoni‟. In