5 Forgotten Indian Laws That Predicted Today’s Crises

India’s wisdom traditions never saw “law” as only what courts enforce. They saw it as dharma, the laws of life itself, the principles that hold families, communities, nations, and the natural world together. Dharma wasn’t just about morality; it was survival. When dharma was neglected, collapse followed. Today, when we look at the state of our society, rising inequality, restless politics, greed-driven destruction of nature, loneliness despite wealth, it is hard not to feel that the ancients foresaw these very crises. They had given us laws that were meant to protect us, and somewhere along the way, we forgot. Here are five such laws, not written in dusty manuscripts alone, but etched in the lived memory of our civilization, which predicted the very storms we are facing today.


Dharma made one thing clear: a ruler is not king of his palace but guardian of his people. His greatest failure is to let the weak suffer while the strong flourish. When the powerful are sheltered while farmers despair, when policies shield corporations but leave citizens unprotected, when leaders think first of their seat and not their people, this is what happens when rajadharma is forgotten.
A society that protects only the privileged is already writing the script of its own downfall. True power is measured by how the weakest are treated.


The ancients warned that greed (lobha) is like fire, it never stops consuming. The more you feed it, the hungrier it becomes. Look around today: the earth is being stripped bare, rivers poisoned, forests erased, wealth concentrated in fewer hands, families breaking under the strain of endless wanting.
Contentment is not laziness; it is wisdom. Without restraint, even prosperity destroys. We are paying the price of believing there can be growth without limit.


Violence does not only mean war. It also means cruelty in business, exploitation of workers, neglect of the poor, tearing forests apart for profit, treating animals as machines, speaking words that wound deeper than swords. The law of ahimsa was never about passivity, it was about refusing to build our lives on someone else’s suffering.
Every act of cruelty eventually circles back. A world built on harm cannot stand, because life itself will rebel. Nonviolence is not idealism; it is practical wisdom for survival.


The dharmic tradition reminded us that it is not birth, class, or wealth that makes someone noble, but their conduct. A humble worker who serves honestly lives closer to dharma than a privileged person who lives without integrity. Yet modern society has slipped again into worshipping titles, brands, and inherited privilege. We measure worth in bank balances and last names rather than in how a person lives.
If society continues to prize status above virtue, it will collapse under its own hypocrisy. Respect must return to where it belongs: to honesty, courage, humility, and service.


The ancients gave us the four purusharthas, the goals of life: dharma (righteousness), artha (prosperity), kama (desire), and moksha (liberation). But they warned: pursue them in balance. Artha without dharma becomes corruption. Kāma without dharma becomes addiction. Moksha without dharma becomes escapism. Today, we tilt dangerously. We chase money without ethics, pleasure without boundaries, ambition without purpose, while neglecting inner peace and responsibility. And so, anxiety, emptiness, and collapse spread.
Balance is not luxury, it is necessity. The moment one pursuit devours the others, both individual life and collective life begin to unravel.

The ancients were not speaking in riddles. They were not warning us about some faraway cosmic punishment. They were telling us the simple truth: if we abandon these laws of life, crises will not just appear, they are inevitable. Today we call them “climate crisis,” “mental health epidemic,” “inequality,” “political instability.” But they are nothing new. They are simply the predictable result of neglecting dharma.
“Dharma protects those who protect it.” This was their clearest law. If we protect these principles, life protects us. If we forget them, even our brilliance, technology, and wealth cannot save us.