Code of Ethics

Truth

We would rather publish a smaller, truer account of a subject than a larger, more impressive one that outruns what can actually be established. This applies as much to a claim that flatters the tradition as to one that criticises it — a publication that only fact-checks the claims it is inclined to doubt is not practising truth, only confirmation.

Accuracy

Every writer and editor is expected to follow our Fact-Check Policy as a matter of professional obligation, not a formality imposed from outside. Getting a date, a verse, or an attribution right is not pedantry — it is the entire basis on which a reader can trust anything else we write.

Fairness

We represent a school of thought, a historical figure, or a practice as its serious adherents would recognise it, before we offer our own assessment of it, if we offer one at all. Disagreement between schools is a normal, healthy feature of this subject; we do not resolve it by quietly writing from inside one school while claiming to speak for the tradition as a whole.

Respect

Sanatana Dharma is a living faith for a great many of our readers, not only a historical or philosophical curiosity. We write about ritual, image worship, caste history, and contested doctrine with the same seriousness we would want applied to our own convictions, and we do not treat mockery, however subtle, as a substitute for argument.

Transparency

Our editorial process, funding, and use of AI are described openly on this site rather than left for a reader to guess at. Where we make an editorial decision a reasonable reader might question — declining a pitch, correcting a published claim, disclosing a contributor’s affiliation — we would rather explain the decision than hope no one asks.

Conflicts of interest

A writer with a personal, institutional, or financial stake in how a subject is portrayed discloses that stake to our editors before the piece is commissioned, and to readers within the piece itself where it is material to how the piece should be read. We decline to run a piece where a conflict cannot be adequately disclosed or managed, rather than publish it with a buried caveat.

Anonymous sources

Because we do not cover breaking news or investigate living individuals in the way a newsroom does, we expect to need anonymous sourcing rarely. Where a contributor does rely on an unnamed source — for instance, a temple functionary speaking about internal practice who cannot be named — the source’s existence and general position is verified by an editor, and the reason for anonymity is explained to the reader rather than left unremarked.

Corrections

Acknowledging an error is not a lapse in editorial authority; it is the exercise of it. Every member of our editorial process is expected to welcome a correction request as seriously as praise, and our full commitments are set out in our Corrections Policy.

Editorial independence

No writer, editor, donor, or partner organisation has a right to determine what we publish beyond the ordinary editorial conversation any contributor has with their editor. Our full independence commitments are set out in our Editorial Policy.

Responsible use of AI

AI is a tool for research and drafting assistance under human editorial responsibility — never a byline, never a claimed source of fact, and never a substitute for a named person’s judgment about what is true and what is fair. We disclose substantial AI assistance rather than let a reader assume unaided human authorship where that is not the case, and we hold this standard to apply to our own past work as we identify where it falls short, not only to work published from this date forward.

Respect for faith traditions

We write about Sanatana Dharma from a position of respect for its plurality — its many sampradayas, its regional variations, and its long internal arguments — and we extend the same baseline respect to other faith traditions when our coverage touches them, including in the rare essay that considers a point of historical contact or comparison between traditions. We do not publish content whose purpose is to demean another faith in order to elevate this one; that is not scholarship, and it is not what this publication exists to do.