Chapter 2. History
of Political Thought
§ 2.
Hindu political thought
Unlike the Hindu philosophical tradition which is
subtle, rich and complex, the Hindu tradition of political spanning the
centuries between the Vedic period around the second millennium before Christ
and the consolidation of Muslim rule in the fourteenth century AD, is
relatively simple, homogeneous and lacking in diversity. It did, of course, undergo
changes in response to the theoretical and practical problems posed by such
events as the rise of new religious and philosophical movements, new castes,
guilds and corporations, and waves of foreign invasions. Amidst all these
changes, however, its basic categories of thought, questions and manner of
answering them remained substantially the same.
For the Hindu political thinkers the universe is
characterized by Rta, an inviolable
cosmic order brought about by the operation of laws representing divine
intelligence. The laws are not imposed or created by God rather they are God.
They are thus not merely natural but also rational and moral in nature. Order
in the universe is maintained by each entity keeping to its ordained place and
obeying the relevant laws. Human society is an integral part of the universe.
It reproduces the order and 'truth' of the universe when all men keep to their
proper place and discharge their relevant dharma. Dharma means what is right or, broadly, duties. Unlike
natural objects, human beings have a capacity to think and will. They can fall
victim to illusions and temptations, and deviate from dharma. Danda, meaning force and punishment, therefore becomes
necessary to keep them to the path of rectitude.
Dharma and danda are the master concepts of Hindu political thought.
Governing a territorially organized community ultimately consists in using danda to maintain dharma. It thus raises related but
distinct questions about, first, the nature, basis, sources and content of dharma and second, the nature, basis
and organization of danda.
While the earlier Hindu writers discussed both, they later began to concentrate
on one or other set of questions. Some wrote dharmasastras or treatises on dharma whereas others wrote dandaniti or arthasastras.
The term artha means, among
other things, territory and prosperity, and arthasastra refers to the study of the ways of acquiring and
maintaining territory and promoting its prosperity. This is how it is denned by
Kautilya, the greatest Hindu political thinker. Strictly speaking the two
groups of writers are complementary, and this was fully appreciated by them.
The two together constitute the Hindu tradition of political thought. Over
time, however, the complementarity was lost sight of, and the term political
thinker came to be confined to the authors of arthasastras.
Although the Hindu political writers acknowledged
that some duties pertained to men qua
men, they thought that the bulk of them were contextual. Some devolved on men
as members of specific social groups (vamadharma)
and others as occupying specific stages in life (ashramadharmd). For the Hindu writers a society is not a
collection of individuals but a community of communities. It is articulated
into specific castes, each with its appropriate economic functions and place
in the social hierarchy. An individual's dharma
is derived from the caste of his birth. His birth into a particular caste is
not an accident but a result of his actions or karma in previous life. Karma
means both action and fate. For the Hindus every action both reflects and
shapes the agent's character and is interplay of human freedom and fate. In
addition to the caste, an individual also occupies other social positions such
as a father or a son, a husband or a wife, a brother, a neighbour and so on,
and there are specific duties pertaining to each of them.
When each individual does his dharma there is no disorder in
society, and obviously no need for danda
or government. For most Hindu thinkers men were once in such a state. Thanks to
the decline of moral sense, or the emergence of greed, or the appearance of ahamkar, a pregnant Sanskrit term
meaning at once a sense of individuality, self-love and pride, men became
corrupt, and began to ignore their dharma.
This led to vamasankara or
confusion of castes, arajakata
or lawlessness, and matsya-nyaya
or the law of the sea according to which the big fish devour the small. Government
became necessary to put an end to all this.
Although nearly all number of Hindu political
thinkers concentrated on the monarchical form of government, India knew many
other forms as well, including oligarchies and republics. Republics thrived in
many parts of India.
They had popular assemblies and councils of leading citizens, elaborate rules
of public discussion, elections and strong corporate identities. A beautiful
verse in the Rigveda captures
the kind of sentiment that characterized the popular assembly; 'Common be your
intentions, common be your hearts, common be your thoughts, so that there may
be a thorough union among you.' Rather strangely the republics did not throw up
a systematic body of political thought, let alone a thinker of the stature of
Kautilya, the greatest theorist of the Mauryan Empire. Much of what they seem
to have produced is either lost, or survives in fragmentary discussions in the
epics, the Puranas and literary plays.
For the Hindu political thinkers the king's main
function was loksangraha, the
coordination and preservation of people as constituted into a specific community.
It involved not just maintaining internal order and the territorial integrity
of the community, but also promoting the reign of dharma, the spirit of righteousness, trade, commerce,
prosperity, the arts, and so on. In these and other ways the king was to create
an environment in which his subjects could attain the four main goals of human
life, namely dharma, wealth,
satisfaction of desires, and liberation from the cycle of births and deaths.
Since he made a vital contribution to their moral growth, he was described as acharpreraka (the inspirer of moral
conduct) and kalasya karanam
(the primary determinant of the ethos and moral climate of his community). The
behaviour of his subjects was thus a result not only of their own efforts but
also of his. Hence he shared part of the responsibility for their conduct, and
acquired a portion of their moral and religious merit or demerit as the case
might be.
The king's duty to enforce dharma raises the question about the sources of dharma. Most Hindu political writers
regarded the Vedas, the Smritis and Vyavahara
(custom) as its three major sources. The Vedas enunciated abstract moral
principles and contained little concrete discussion of duties. The Smritis were
mainly digests of the prevailing practice. For all theoretical and practical purposes
custom, defined as 'what is in vogue and is of long standing', was therefore
the dominant source of dharma.
Although the Hindus recognized the universality of
some moral principles, they insisted that the operative morality of a social
group was profoundly shaped by time and space. Each social group inhabits a specific geographical
environment, represents a particular stage of moral and cultural development,
its members have a specific 'temperament' and disposition, and so on, and it
develops its own distinctive way of life to which they are deeply attached and
which must be respected. Over the centuries the social structure of India underwent
important changes, and many new castes, foreign settlements, guilds,
corporations, religious organizations and groups of heretics and atheists came
into existence. The Hindu writers extended the traditional theory of dharma to them and recognized their
right to regulate their affairs according to their own customs and usages, the
king having a right to intervene only when these were ambiguous or harmful to
public interest. The king thus ruled over a highly differentiated and
uncentralized social order, and his power and authority were rigidly
circumscribed by the relatively inviolable autonomy of the various fairly
powerful corporate entities. The concept of 'oriental despotism' does not
apply to ancient India.
As for the structure and mode of operation of
government, the Hindu writers displayed little divergence of views. For all of
them the polity TO composed of seven 'organs' or elements, timely the king,
ministers, a territorially settled community, fortification, the treasury, the
army and the allies, the organization of each of which they described in
considerable detail. For all of them there were four ways of maintaining
oneself in power, namely persuasion, bribery, intrigue and force. Nearly all of
them insisted lithe importance of an efficient and professional service and an
extensive network of spies. All Hindu writers freely acknowledged it the king
was fully justified in resorting to violence, cruelty and deception, if
necessary for the preservation of the community, his highest dharma. In Mahabharata even Krishna, the
Lord Himself, resorts to lies and deceptions on a few occasions, thereby
demonstrating that even God cannot cope with the imperatives of political life
without occasional recourse to otherwise immoral deeds.
The Hindu political writers also took substantially
similar views on such questions as political obedience, punishment and
taxation. The king was to be obeyed because he upheld and sustained the social
order and enabled his subjects to live disciplined and moral lives. 'Hindu
writers acknowledged that a king lacked legitimacy unless duly crowned, but
argued that even a usurper acquired authority and deserved obedience if he properly
discharged his royal duties. They were divided about what to do when a king
turned tyrannical. Some advocated continued obedience; some urged that his
subjects should desert his kingdom, whereas others advocated his removal and
even his assassination.
Most Hindu writers advanced a functional theory of
taxation. Taxes were the 'price of protection', which people paid in order to
ensure the security of their person and property. Some pressed the argument to
its logical conclusion and contended that the ruler must reimburse his subjects
for theft and forfeit his right to the taxes for a systematic failure to
protect them.
For the Hindu writers punishment was designed to achieve
five objectives: it restrained the individual concerned; deterred others;
preserved the social order; signified society's collective determination not to
tolerate evil; and purified the criminal by making him suffer the consequences
of his deed, thereby wiping out its effects on his soul. They insisted that the
kind and degree of punishment should vary with the social status of the
individual concerned. The higher castes were to receive lighter punishment and
were exempted from corporal punishment.
Buddhism represented an important stage in the
development of Hindu political thought. It was atheistic, rejected the caste
system, founded monasteries, gave India the first experience of an
organized but non-theological religion, admitted women, and enjoyed the support
of such neglected and socially inferior classes as traders, artisans, merchants
and foreign set-tiers. It accepted the Hindu view that the king's basic duty
was to maintain dharma (the
Buddhist word for dharma), but
rejected its caste-based definition and content. This meant that the king now
had to determine the content of
dharma. For the first time in the history of Indian thought, Buddhism
introduced the idea of legislation, a view that laws can be made, are acts of
will and derive their authority from secular sources. It also advanced a
quasi-contractualist theory of the origin of government and argued that
political authority was derived from the people.
The impact of Buddhism on Hindu political thought
was limited. While its philosophy was revolutionary, its political theory was
not. It accepted such basic Hindu beliefs as that life is full of sorrow,
desires are bad, a man's karma
in his previous life determines his character in this one and the ruler's
supreme duty is to maintain dharma.
It did not extend social and political equality to the poor and the Sudras, and confined political power
to the higher castes. While it challenged the power and authority of the
Brahmans, it upheld that of the Ksatriyas, and only replaced the Ksatriya-Brahman
alliance with that of the Ksatriyas and Vaisyas. It thus amounted to a
reconstitution rather than a rejection of the traditional form of political
domination.
Before concluding this brief summary of the Hindu
tradition of political thought, it would be useful to highlight some of its
central features. First, the Hindu tradition was basically descriptive and
didactic and lacked analytical, theoretical and speculative interests. As a
result it did not generate works in political philosophy comparable to its
brilliant texts in logic, epistemology, moral philosophy and metaphysics.
Second, it was essentially conservative and apologetic and lacked a critical
thrust. With the exception of the Buddhists, no Hindu political thinker
challenged the caste-based social order. Third, it saw man primarily as a
member of different social groups, as a player of roles, and therefore
emphasized duties rather than rights. Fourth, thanks to its epistemology, it
saw truth as inherently plural. While this allowed it not only to tolerate but
also respect and welcome diversity of beliefs and practices, it also prevented
it from developing general principles with which to evaluate and criticize
them. Finally, since custom played a powerful role in Indian life, the Hindu
writers did not find it necessary to develop the idea of legislation and
generally regarded political authority as judicial rather than legislative in
nature. As a result they did not formulate such ideas as sovereignty, will,
political rationality, a single legal system for the country and the government
as an agent of social change, all of which have played such a vital role in the
development of the modem European state.
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