“Dharma is your compass, not your comfort zone”
In Voices of Udaya, we give a platform to people who put dharma into practice. Honest conversations about responsibility, visibility, and what today’s work demands of us.
This piece reads a little differently. It’s not a portrait of a single leader, but a transcript of a live conversation and the questions it raised. What follows is Babones’s own perspective. We’re sharing it because it brings greater clarity to the conversation, not because we’ve settled the matter.
Dr. Salvatore Babones
Salvatore Babones is a sociologist at the University of Sydney and the author of *Dharma Democracy* (2025), in which he argues that democracy is based on duty rather than rights.
On July 17, Udaya welcomed sociologist Salvatore Babones, author of *Dharma Democracy*, for a live conversation with Monique about what dharma means for leadership today. It was the kind of conversation that begins with a concept and ends with a mirror.
The central idea behind Babones is easy to state but harder to put into practice. Rights only work if enough people already have a sense of duty. You can’t build a fair, functioning community on freedoms alone; someone always has to do the work that makes those freedoms real. He calls that underlying sense of responsibility “dharma,” and in practice, he described it as a sense of sacred duty—something you carry not because you have to, but because you choose to.
“Everyright entails a corresponding duty to exerciseit”
Dharma as a Framework for Leadership.
Babones put it bluntly: a true leader is “a leader for everyone, not just for those who voted for you.” Not tolerance as a minimum standard, but genuine recognition—even of people whose views you don’t share. That’s a high bar to set.
One idea from the conversation is worth dwelling on a little longer. Babones argued that every right we have is quietly upheld by someone else’s duty. The right to education exists only because someone pays the taxes that fund the school. The right to be treated with respect only means anything because enough people choose, every day—and often behind the scenes—to show that respect. In his words: “Every right comes with a corresponding duty to make it a reality.” When phrased as a right, that choice can start to feel like an obligation imposed on you. When phrased as a duty, the same choice becomes something you control yourself—and something you can even take pride in. A small shift in language, a major shift in ownership.
Babones gave a simple example of what that shift looks like in everyday life. Instead of framing something as another person’s right to demand, he suggested framing it as your own duty to give. By doing so, you build up karma, he said—a shift that makes you feel like you’re doing something good rather than being told what to do. It’s subtle, but it shifts the initiative from the person who asks to the person who chooses to act.
Building communities requires more than just tolerance
Babones drew a sharp distinction between tolerating people and truly accepting them—a distinction he traced back to Swami Vivekananda, who argued that acceptance, not tolerance, is what truly binds people together. In that view, tolerance is the bare minimum: putting up with someone. Acceptance goes further, recognizing that people who see the world differently still belong to the same community. According to Babones, that distinction is not optional for leaders. A leader’s duty is to represent everyone he leads, including those who never voted for him, and that requires visible effort, not just the absence of hostility.
Babones also offered a broader, structural insight into what holds a community together in the long term. Referring to the philosopher John Stuart Mill, he described a nation—or any enduring group—as a community of shared memories, a narrative that people want to be part of even when they disagree, and even if someone they did not vote for ultimately leads them. Without that shared sense of connection, he argued, institutions cannot hold a group together. This is a valuable lesson for any organization or community, not just a country: structure and rules matter, but they only work when built upon a genuine, deeply felt sense of shared identity.
Timeless values that transcend time and place.
On a lighter but telling note, Babones observed that sustainable communities are rarely built on crisis alone. According to him, what sustains them is more a matter of routine—showing up consistently, doing the mundane work—long after the initial spark of enthusiasm has faded. This is a theme that will sound familiar to anyone who has ever tried to build a community rather than just a memorable event.
That’s where karma comes into play. If dharma is the compass—the awareness of what is right—then karma is the reminder that every choice we make has ripple effects, in our teams, our families, and our communities. Babones emphasized that language rooted in one culture doesn’t always come across clearly in another. A call to sacred duty that resonates deeply in India is received differently in the Netherlands, and that is precisely why Udaya exists—to translate these timeless principles into a vocabulary that speaks to purpose-driven professionals here and now, without losing what makes them powerful.
Udaya continues...
For Udaya, this conversation was a preview of the questions we continue to ask. What does it look like to lead from dharma, abhyāsa, sevā, and karma in a Dutch context—in a boardroom, within a team, and within a community? Not as an abstract ideal, but as a daily practice, built up through abhyāsa—consistent and unassuming repetition—and expressed through sevā, service that asks for nothing in return.
We will continue this discussion on November 14 at Madurodam in The Hague, during the Udaya Conference 2026, an event entirely dedicated to purpose-driven leadership. Expect keynotes, workshops, and a room full of people who are done separating who they are from how they lead.
Curious to see what dharma looks like in practice, in your work, and in your life? Join us in November.
