Law and Morality, Ancient Indian concept of Dharma

Lying to a friend about why you missed her birthday is wrong by most people's standards, yet no court will punish you. Driving through a red light at 3 a.m. on an empty road may harm no one, yet it is an offence. Some things are immoral but legal, and some are illegal but hardly immoral. So how are law and morality related? Ancient India had its own answer in the idea of dharma, which never separated the two as sharply as Western jurisprudence later did.

In two minutes

Law and morality overlap but are not identical: law is enforced by the State through organised sanctions, morality by conscience and social opinion; dharma in ancient India combined duty, morality and law in a single idea.

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