Editorial Policy

Our mission

Prajna Insights exists to explain Sanatana Dharma — its scriptures, philosophies, sciences, arts, and living practices — with the same editorial care a serious publication would bring to any other subject of consequence. We assume our reader is intelligent, unfamiliar with Sanskrit, and genuinely curious. We do not assume they already agree with us, because we are not in the business of persuasion. We are in the business of explanation.

Prajna, प्रज्ञा, means discernment — knowledge that has been tested and understood, not merely repeated. We have tried to hold ourselves to that word in naming this publication, which means we owe our readers a higher standard than a website that simply shares content it finds inspiring.

Editorial independence

Prajna Insights is editorially independent of any temple, sampradaya, monastic order, political party, or advocacy organisation. No institution reviews our essays before publication, and no institution is entitled to a right of reply beyond the correction process available to any reader. Financial support for this publication, when we accept it, is disclosed and never extends to control over editorial content — a distinction we treat as absolute, not aspirational.

Individual writers and editors may hold personal religious, and in some cases institutional, affiliations. Where a piece is substantially about, or commissioned by, an organisation a contributor is affiliated with, that affiliation is disclosed to the reader. Undisclosed conflicts of interest are treated as a serious editorial failure, not a technicality.

Scope of coverage

Our coverage is organised around ten categories: scriptures, darshana (philosophy), practice, tradition, culture and heritage, saints and acharyas, temples and sacred places, science and cosmos, history, and the arts. Within these, we range from close readings of individual verses to essays on temple engineering, the history of Indian mathematics, and the anthropology of a living pilgrimage.

We do not cover contemporary politics, electoral matters, or day-to-day current affairs, even where they touch on religion. This is a deliberate boundary, not an oversight. Sanatana Dharma has survived and outgrown a great many political moments; a publication that ties its credibility to the news cycle inherits that cycle’s volatility. We would rather be read in ten years than shared today.

What we publish

We publish, or intend in time to publish, the following:

• Long-form essays on scripture, philosophy, history, science, and the arts, written for readers with no prior specialist knowledge.
• Profiles of acharyas, saints, and scholars, living and historical.
• Documentation of temples and sacred sites — their architecture, history, and continuing ritual life.
• Book reviews, interviews, and considered responses to new scholarship.
• Annotated translations and excerpts from primary texts, credited to the translator and edition used.
• Explanations of living practice — festivals, observances, and disciplines — written from within the tradition rather than about it from a distance.

What we do not publish

We do not publish:

• Polemic directed at other religions, denominations, or schools of thought. Disagreement, where it is substantive and sourced, is welcome; contempt is not.
• Political commentary, electoral coverage, or partisan argument of any kind.
• Claims of miracle, prophecy, or supernatural occurrence presented as verified fact.
• Sweeping claims about “ancient science” or civilisational achievement that outrun what the sources actually support. We would rather understate a genuine achievement than overstate a doubtful one.
• Content that demeans a caste, community, gender, or region.
• Astrology, numerology, or other predictive content presented as advice.

Treatment of the different schools

Sanatana Dharma is not one argument but a long conversation among several — Advaita, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, and the other darshanas, along with the many sampradayas that carry them forward. We treat this plurality as the subject’s essential character, not a problem to be resolved in these pages.

When we explain a given school, we explain it in terms its own exponents would recognise as fair, before noting where rival schools disagree and why. We do not publish under the premise that one school is correct and the others are stepping stones toward it. Where a specific essay does argue a philosophical position — as essays on philosophy sometimes must — it is framed as one reading among serious readings, and we aim, over time, to give each major school its fair turn in these pages rather than favouring the tradition a particular writer happens to practice.

Opinion versus factual reporting

Most of what we publish is exposition: a careful account of what a text says, what a historian has established, or how a practice is actually observed. Where an essay moves from exposition into argument or interpretation — as philosophy and criticism inevitably do — that shift is signalled to the reader in the text itself, not left for them to infer. We do not present contested interpretation as settled fact, and we do not present an individual writer’s devotional conviction as the publication’s institutional position.

Sponsored content

Prajna Insights does not currently accept sponsored or paid editorial content of any kind. If this changes, any paid placement will be clearly labelled as “Sponsored” or “Paid Content” in its own visual treatment, will be written or approved by the same editorial process as unpaid content for factual accuracy, and will never appear inside our essay archive without that label. We will not accept sponsorship from a party whose products or claims we would otherwise decline to cover on editorial merits.

Use of artificial intelligence

We use AI tools, transparently and under editorial supervision, to assist with research synthesis, drafting, and translation support. We do not use AI as a source of fact — see our Fact-Check Policy — and we do not publish AI output unreviewed. A named human editor takes responsibility for every piece before it is published, whatever tools were used to help write it.

Where AI assistance was substantial to a piece’s drafting, we say so. We do not attribute AI-assisted writing to a fabricated personal voice, invented credentials, or a claimed first-hand experience the piece does not actually have. This standard applies retroactively as our own practices mature, and we would rather correct our own past shortfalls against it than quietly exempt ourselves. See our Code of Ethics for the fuller statement of this principle.

Reader trust

We ask readers to extend us the ordinary trust owed to a serious publication, and we try to earn it in return: by citing what we rely on, by correcting what we get wrong, and by saying plainly when we are uncertain rather than smoothing uncertainty into false confidence. Readers who find an error, a missing citation, or a claim they believe is wrong are not an inconvenience to us — see our Corrections Policy for how to reach us, and expect a substantive reply.

Editorial standards

Every essay we publish is expected to name its sources, to distinguish primary evidence from later commentary, and to survive a second reading by someone other than its writer before it goes live. These are the same minimum standards a reader would expect from any publication that intends to be read for longer than a news cycle, and we hold ourselves to them because the subject deserves nothing less.