Why do you organize society in a certain way? Because it says so in some sacred text? How do you govern society?  For example, you find in India—and also in Europe—divine right monarchy. The word for king in Sanskrit is naradeva, a god among men. Divine right monarchy was the standard political system based on a religious understanding.  Even economic issues like taxation rates and rules of charity, are all dharma. So to call this a religious principle is fine as long as you understand we are not speaking about a modern use of the word religion as a separate activity that human beings engage in—as opposed to or as distinguished from political, social, economic, artistic and philosophical activities. Dharma really means law, it means principle or sacred law.  It means the principles that govern all of life, not merely religion. 

In fact if you read Mahabharata, or Srimad-Bhagavatam, there is no such thing as religion as we now understand, as sort of a private, sectarian corporation or community.  There is no such thing. Read the Bhagavatam. They did not have churches or denominations. There are communities of people with different spiritual persuasions, but in understanding this word dharma, we ca not be anachronistic—in other words, in the wrong time period.  We have to look and see what it really is.

Pagan Europe—the Roman Empire—was very “New Age” until it ended up being governed by an ‘interesting’ Middle-Eastern religion, which had very pejorative views about other religions.  Before that time Pagan Europe was very eclectic. The general view of, especially, educated people and even—often—of the Emperor, was that there is one Divine Reality, Absolute Truth or Power, in the universe, but various different channels to reach that Absolute Truth. So the Roman Emperor would often send a donation to various religious and spiritual communities in the Empire, to have worship done—this also included the Temple of Jerusalem—in the name of the Emperor. The Romans’ idea was that the ultimate collectible is power, and so, if anyone had a viable, divine channel to that power then they were more than happy to, literally, buy into it.  Of course, not everyone was looking for power.  You had this somewhat eclectic, cosmopolitan view.