{"id":3240,"date":"2013-07-13T01:46:53","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3240"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:46:53","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:46:53","slug":"25-indian-polity-vol-the-foundations-of-indian-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/02-other-editions\/the-foundations-of-indian-culture\/25-indian-polity-vol-the-foundations-of-indian-culture","title":{"rendered":"-25_Indian Polity.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n
\n
\nCHAPTER XV <\/font><\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nI HAVE<\/font> spoken hitherto of the greatness of Indian civilisation
\nin the things most important to human culture, those activities that raise man to his noblest potentialities as a mental,
\na spiritual, religious, intellectual, ethical, aesthetic being,
\nand in all these matters the cavillings of the critics break down
\nbefore the height and largeness and profundity revealed when
\nwe look at the whole and all its parts in the light of a true
\nunderstanding of the spirit and intention and a close discerning
\nregard on the actual achievement of the culture. There is
\nrevealed not only a great civilisation, but one of the half dozen greatest of which we have a still existing record. But there
\nare many who would admit the greatness of the achievement
\nof India in the things of the mind and the spirit, but would
\nstill point out that she has failed in life, her culture has not
\nresulted in a strong, successful or progressive organisation
\nof life such as Europe shows to us, and that in the end at least
\nthe highest part of her mind turned away from life to asceticism
\nand an inactive and world-shunning pursuit by the individual
\nof his personal spiritual salvation. Or at most she has come
\nonly to a certain point and then there has been an arrest and
\ndecadence. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThis charge weighs with an especial heaviness in the
\nbalance today because the modern man, even the modern
\ncultured man, is or tends to be to a degree quite unprecedented,
\npoliticon zoon, a<\/i> political, economic and social being valuing
\nabove all things the efficiency of the outward existence and
\nthe things of the mind and spirit mainly, when not exclusively, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-368<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nfor their aid to humanity’s vital and mechanical progress :he has not that regard of the ancients which looked up towards
\nthe highest heights and regarded an achievement in the things
\nof the mind and the spirit with an unquestioning admiration
\nor a deep veneration for its own sake as the greatest possible
\ncontribution to human culture and progress. And although
\nthis modern tendency is exaggerated and ugly and degrading
\nin its exaggeration, inimical to humanity’s spiritual evolution,
\nit has this much of truth behind it that while the first value
\nof a culture is its power to raise and enlarge the internal man,
\nthe mind, the soul, the spirit, its soundness is not complete
\nunless it has shaped also his external existence and made of
\nit a rhythm of advance towards high and great ideals. This
\nis the true sense of progress and there must be as part of it a
\nsound political, economic and social life, a power and efficiency enabling a people to survive, to grow and to move
\nsecurely towards a collective perfection, and a vital elasticity
\nand responsiveness that will give room for a constant advance
\nin the outward expression of the mind and the spirit. If a
\nculture does not serve these ends, then there is evidently a
\ndefect somewhere either in its essential conceptions or its
\nwholeness or in its application that will seriously detract
\nfrom its claims to a complete and integral value. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe ideals that governed the spirit and body of Indian
\nsociety were of the highest kind, its social order secured an
\ninexpugnable basic stability, the strong life force that worked
\nm it was creative of an extraordinary energy, richness and
\ninterest, and the life organised remarkable in its opulence,
\nvariety in unity, beauty, productiveness, movement. All the
\nrecords of Indian history, art and literature bear evidence to
\na cultural life of this character and even in decline and dissolution there survives some stamp of it to remind however faintly
\nand distantly of the past greatness. To what then does the
\ncharge brought against Indian culture as an agent of the life
\npower amount and what is its justification ? In its exaggerated  <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-369<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nform it is founded upon the characteristics of the decline and
\ndissolution, the features of the decadence read backward
\ninto the time of greatness, and it amounts to this that India
\nhas always shown an incompetence for any free or sound
\npolitical organisation and has been constantly a divided and
\nfor the most part of her long history a subject nation, that
\nher economic system whatever its bygone merits, if it had any,
\nremained an inelastic and static order that led in modern
\nconditions to poverty and failure and her society an unprogressive hierarchy, caste-ridden, full of semi-barbaric abuses,
\nonly fit to be thrown on the scrap-heap among the broken
\nrubbish of the past -and replaced by the freedom, soundness
\nand perfection or at least the progressive perfectibility of the
\nEuropean social order. It is necessary to re-establish the real
\nfacts and their meaning and afterwards it will be time to pass
\njudgment on the political, the economic and the social, aspects
\nof Indian culture. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe legend of Indian political incompetence has arisen
\nfrom a false view of the historical development and an insufficient knowledge of the ancient past of the country. It
\nhas long been currently supposed that she passed at once
\nfrom the freer type of the primitive Aryan or Vedic social
\nand political organisation to a system socially marked by the
\ndespotism of the Brahmin theocracy and politically by an
\nabsolute monarchy of the oriental, by which is meant the
\nWestern Asiatic, type and has remained fixed in these two
\nthings for ever after. That summary reading of Indian history
\nhas been destroyed by a more careful and enlightened scholarship and the facts are of a quite different nature. It is true
\nthat India never evolved either the scrambling and burdensome industrialism or the parliamentary organisation of freedom and self-styled democracy characteristic of the bourgeois
\nor Vaishya period of the cycle of European progress. But
\nthe time is passing when the uncritical praise of these things
\nas the ideal state and the last word of social and political progress <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-370<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nwas fashionable, their defects are now visible and the
\ngreatness of an oriental civilisation need not be judged by the
\nstandard of these western developments. Indian scholars
\nhave attempted to read the modem ideas and types of democracy and even a parliamentary system into the past of
\nIndia, but this seems to me an ill-judged endeavour. There
\nwas a strong democratic element, if we must use the western
\nterms, in Indian polity and even institutions that present a
\ncertain analogy to the parliamentary form, but in reality these
\nfeatures were of India’s own kind and not at all the same
\nthing as modem parliaments and modern democracy. And
\nso considered they are a much more remarkable evidence of
\nthe political capacity of the Indian people in their living
\nadaptation to the ensemble of the social mind and body of
\nthe nation than when we judge them by the very different
\nstandard of western society and the peculiar needs of its
\ncultural cycle. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Indian system began with a ‘variation of the type
\ngenerally associated with the early history of the Aryan peoples ;but certain features have a more general character and belong
\nto a still earlier stage in the social development of the human
\nrace. It was a clan or tribal system, kula,<\/i> founded upon the
\nequality of all the freemen of the clan or race; this was not
\nat first firmly founded upon the territorial basis, the migratory
\ntendency was still in evidence or recurred under pressure
\nand the land was known by the name of the people who occupied it, the Kuru country or simply the Kurus, the Malava
\ncountry or the Malavas. After the fixed settlement within
\ndetermined boundaries the system of the clan or tribe continued, but found a basic unit or constituent atom in the
\nsettled village community. The meeting of the people,
\nvisah,<\/i> assembling for communal deliberation, for sacrifice
\nand worship or as the host for war, remained for a long time
\nthe power-sign of the mass body and the agent of the active
\ncommon life with the king as the head and representative, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-371<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nbut long depending even after his position became hereditary
\non the assent of the people for his formal election or confirmation. The religious institution of the sacrifice developed in
\ntime a class of priests and inspired singers, men trained in
\nthe ritual or in possession of the mystic knowledge which
\nlay behind the symbols of the sacrifice, the seed of the great
\nBrahminic institution. These were not at first hereditary,
\nbut exercised other professions and belonged in their ordinary
\nlife to the general body of the people. This free and simple
\nnatural constitution of the society seems to have been general
\nat first throughout Aryan India. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe later development out of this primitive form followed
\nup to a certain point the ordinary line of evolution as we see
\nit in other communities, but at the same time threw up certain
\nvery striking peculiarities that owing to the unique mentality
\nof the race fixed themselves, became prominent characteristics
\nand gave a different stamp to the political, economic and
\nsocial factors of Indian civilisation. The hereditary principle
\nemerged at an early stage and increased constantly its power
\nand hold on the society until it became everywhere the basis
\nof the whole organisation of its activities. A hereditary kingship was established, a powerful princely and warrior class
\nappeared, the rest of the people were marked off as the caste
\nof traders, artisans and agriculturalists and a subject or menial
\ncaste was added, perhaps sometimes as the result of conquest
\nbut more probably or more commonly from economic necessity, of servants and labourers. The predominance from
\nearly times of the religious and spiritual tendency in the mind
\nof the Indian people brought about at the top of the social
\nsystem the growth of the Brahmin order, priests, scholars,
\nlegists, repositories of the sacred lore of the Vedas, a development parallelled elsewhere but here given an unequalled
\npermanence and definiteness and supreme importance. In
\nother countries with a less complex mentality this predominance might have resulted in a theocracy : but the Brahmins <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-372<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nin spite of their ever-increasing and finally predominant
\nauthority did not and could not usurp in India the political
\npower. As sacrosanct priests and legists and spiritual preceptors
\nof the monarch and the people they exercised a very considerable influence, but the real or active political power remained
\nwith the king, the Kshatriya aristocracy and the commons. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nA peculiar figure for some time was the Rishi, the man
\nof a higher spiritual experience and knowledge, born in any
\nof the classes, but exercising an authority by his spiritual
\npersonality over all, revered and consulted by the king of
\nwhom he was sometimes the religious preceptor, and In the
\nthen fluid state of social evolution able alone to exercise an
\nimportant role in evolving new basic ideas and effecting direct
\nand immediate changes of the socio-religious ideas and customs of the people. It was a marked feature of the Indian
\nmind that it sought to attach a spiritual meaning and a religious sanction to all, even to the most external social and
\npolitical circumstances of its life, imposing on all classes and
\nfunctions an ideal, not except incidentally of rights and powers,
\nbut of duties, a rule of their action and an ideal way and temperament, character, spirit in the action, a dharma with a
\nspiritual significance. It was the work of the Rishi to put
\nthis stamp enduringly on the national mind, to prolong and
\nperpetuate it, to discover and interpret the ideal law and its
\npractical meaning, to cast the life of the people into the well-shaped ideals and significant forms of a civilisation founded
\non the spiritual and religious sense. And in later ages we
\nfind the Brahminic schools of legists attributing their codes,
\nthough in themselves only formulations of existing rule and
\ncustom, to the ancient Rishis. Whatever the developments
\nof the Indian socio-political body in later days, this original
\ncharacter still exercised its influence, even when all tended
\nat last to become traditionalised and conventionalised instead
\nof moving forward constantly in the steps of a free and living
\npractice. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-373<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nThe political evolution of this early system varied in
\ndifferent parts of India. The ordinary development, as in
\nmost other countries, was in the direction of an increasing
\nemphasis on the control of the king as the centre, head and
\nunifying factor of a more and more complex system of rule
\nand administration and this prevailed eventually and became
\nthe universal type. But for a long time it was combated and
\nheld in check by a contrary tendency that resulted in the
\nappearance and the strong and enduring vitality of city or
\nregional or confederated republics. The king became either
\na hereditary or elected executive head of the republic or an
\narchon administering for a brief and fixed period or else he
\naltogether disappeared from the polity of the state. Tills turn
\nmust have come about in many cases by a natural evolution
\nof the power of the assemblies, but in others it seems to have
\nbeen secured by some kind of revolution and there appear
\nto have been vicissitudes, alternations between periods of
\nmonarchical and periods of republican government. Among
\na certain number of the Indian peoples the republican form
\nfinally asserted its hold and proved itself capable of a strong
\nand settled organisation and a long duration lasting over
\nmany centuries. In some cases they were governed by a
\ndemocratic assembly, in more by an oligarchical senate. It
\nis unfortunate that we know little of the details of the constitution and -nothing of the inner history of these Indian republics,
\nbut the evidence is clear of the high reputation they enjoyed
\nthroughout India for the excellence of their civil and the
\nformidable efficiency of their military organisation. There
\nis an interesting dictum of Buddha that so long as the republican institutions were maintained in their purity and
\nvigour, a small state of this kind would remain invincible
\neven by the arms of the powerful and ambitious Magadhan
\nmonarchy, and this opinion is amply confirmed by the political
\nwriters who consider the alliance of the republics the most
\nsolid and valuable political and military support a king could <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-374<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nhave and advise their reduction not so much by the force of
\narms as that would have a very precarious chance of success,
\nbut by Machiavellian means,\u2014similar, to those actually employed in Greece by Philip of Macedon,\u2014aimed at undermining their internal unity and the efficiency of their constitution. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThese republican states were already long established and in vigorous functioning in the sixth century before Christ,
\ncontemporary therefore with the brilliant but ephemeral and
\ntroubled Greek city commonwealths, but this form of political
\nliberty in India long outlasted the period of Greek republican
\nfreedom. The ancient Indian mind, not less fertile in political invention, must be considered superior to that of the
\nmercurial and restless Mediterranean people in the capacity
\nfor a firm organisation and settled constitutional order. Some
\nof these states appear to have enjoyed a longer and a more
\nsettled history of vigorous freedom than republican Rome,
\nfor they persisted even against the mighty empire of Chandragupta and Asoka and were still in existence in the early centuries of the Christian era. But none of them developed the
\naggressive spirit and the conquering and widely organising
\ncapacity of the Roman republic; they were content to preserve
\ntheir own free inner life and their independence. India especially after the invasion of Alexander felt the need of a movement of unification and the republics were factors of division :strong for themselves, they could do nothing for the organisation of the peninsula, too vast indeed for any system of
\nconfederation of small states to be possible\u2014and indeed in the ancient world that endeavour nowhere succeeded, always it broke down in the effort of expansion beyond certain narrow
\nlimits and could not endure against the movement towards a
\nmore centralised government. In India as elsewhere it was the monarchical state that grew and finally held the field replacing all other forms of political organisation. The republican organisation disappeared from her history and is known <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-375<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nto us only by the evidence of coins, scattered references and
\nthe testimony of Greek observers and of the contemporary
\npolitical writers and theorists who supported and helped to
\nconfirm and develop the monarchical state throughout India. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut Indian monarchy previous to the Mahomedan invasion
\nwas not, in spite of a certain sanctity and great authority conceded to the regal position and the personality of the king as
\nthe representative of the divine Power and the guardian of the
\nDharma, in any way a personal despotism or an absolutist
\nautocracy : it had no resemblance to the ancient Persian monarchy or the monarchies of western and central Asia or the
\nRoman imperial government or later European autocracies :it was of an altogether different type from the system of the
\nPathan or the Moghul emperors. The Indian king exercised
\nsupreme administrative and judicial power, was in possession
\nof all the military forces of the kingdom and with his Council
\nalone responsible for peace and war and he had too a general
\nsupervision and control over the good order and welfare of
\nthe life of the community, but his power was not personal
\nand it was besides hedged in by safeguards against abuse and
\nencroachment and limited by the liberties and powers of other
\npublic authorities and interests who were, so to speak, lesser
\ncopartners with him in the exercise of sovereignty and administrative legislation and control. He was in fact a limited or
\nconstitutional monarch, although the machinery by which the
\nconstitution was maintained and the limitation effected differed
\nfrom the kind familiar in European history; and even the
\ncontinuance of his rule was far more dependent than that of
\nmediaeval European kings on the continued will and assent
\nof the people. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nA greater sovereign than the king was the Dharma, the,
\nreligious, ethical, social, political, juridic and customary law
\norganically governing the life of the people. This impersonal
\nauthority was considered sacred and eternal in its spirit and
\nthe totality of its body, always characteristically the same, the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-376<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nchanges organically and spontaneously brought about in its
\nactual form by the evolution of the society being constantly
\nincorporated in it, regional, family and other customs forming
\na sort of attendant and subordinate body capable of change only
\nfrom within,\u2014and with the Dharma no secular authority
\nhad any right of autocratic interference. The Brahmins themselves were recorders and exponents of the Dharma, not its
\ncreators nor authorised to make at will any changes, although
\nit is evident that by an authoritative expression of opinion they
\ncould and did favour or oppose this or that tendency to change
\nof principle or detail. The king was only the guardian, executor and servant of the Dharma, charged to see to its observance and to prevent offences, serious irregularities and
\nbreaches. He himself was bound the first to obey it and observe the rigorous rule it laid on his personal life and action
\nand on the province, powers and duties of his regal authority
\nand office. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThis subjection of the sovereign power to the Dharma was
\nnot an ideal theory inoperative in practice; for the rule of the
\nsocio-religious law actively conditioned the whole life of the
\npeople and was therefore a living reality, and it had in the
\npolitical field very large practical consequences. It meant
\nfirst that the king had not the power of direct legislation and
\nwas limited to the issue of administrative decrees that had to
\nbe in consonance with the religious, social, political, economic
\nconstitution of the community,\u2014and even here there were other
\npowers than that of the king who shared with him the right of
\npromulgating and seeing to the execution of administrative
\ndecrees independently issued,\u2014neither could he disregard
\nin the general tenor and character and the effective result of
\nhis administration the express or tacit will of the people. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe religious liberties of the commons were assured and
\ncould not normally be infringed by any secular authority; each religious community, each new or long-standing religion
\ncould shape its own way of life and institutions and had its <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-377<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nown authorities or governing bodies exercising in their proper
\nfield an entire independence. There was no exclusive State
\nreligion and the monarch was not the religious head of the
\npeople. Asoka in this respect seems to have attempted an extension of the royal control or influence and similar velleities
\nwere occasionally shown on a minor scale by other powerful
\nsovereigns. But Asoka’s so-called edicts of this kind had a
\nrecommendatory rather than an imperative character, and the
\nsovereign who wished to bring about a change in religious
\nbelief or institutions had always, in accordance with the Indian
\nprinciple of communal freedom and the obligation of a respect
\nfor and a previous consultation of the wishes of those concerned,
\nto secure the assent of the recognised authorities or to refer
\nthe matter to a consultative assembly for deliberation, as was
\ndone in the famous Buddhist councils, or to arrange a discussion between the exponents of the different religions and abide
\nby the issue. The monarch might personally favour a particular sect or creed and his active preference might evidently
\nhave a considerable propagandist influence, but at the same
\ntime he was bound to respect and support in his public office
\nall the recognised religions of the people with a certain measure
\nof impartiality, a rule that explains the support extended by
\nBuddhist and Brahmin emperors to both the rival religions.
\nAt times there were, mainly in the South, instances of petty
\nor violent State persecutions, but these outbreaks were a
\nviolation of the Dharma due to momentary passion at a time
\nof acute religious ferment and were always local and of a brief
\nduration. Normally there was no place in the Indian political
\nsystem for religious oppression and intolerance and a settled
\nState policy of that kind was unthinkable. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe social life of the people was similarly free from autocratic interference. Instances of royal legislation in this province are rare and here too, when it occurred, there had to be a
\nconsultation of the will of those concerned, as in the rearrangement or the reconstitution of the caste system by the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-378<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nSena kings in Bengal after its disorganisation during a long
\nperiod of Buddhist predominance. Change in the society was
\nbrought about not artificially from above but automatically
\nfrom within and principally by the freedom allowed to families
\nor particular communities to develop or alter automatically
\ntheir own rule of life, ācāra.<\/i> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIn the sphere of administration the power of the king was
\nsimilarly hedged in by the standing constitution of the Dharma
\nHis right of taxation was limited in the most important sources
\nof revenue to a fixed percentage as a maximum and in other
\ndirections often by the right of the bodies representing the
\nvarious elements of the community to a voice in the matter
\nand always by the general rule that his right to govern was
\nsubject to the satisfaction and good-will of the people. This
\nas we shall see, was not merely a pious wish or opinion of the
\nBrahmin custodians of the Dharma. The king was in person
\nthe supreme court and the highest control in the execution of
\nthe civil and criminal law, but here too his role was that of the
\nexecutor : he was bound to administer the law faithfully as. it
\nstood through his judges or with the aid of the Brahmin legists
\nlearned in these matters. He had the complete and unfettered
\ncontrol in his Council only of foreign policy, military administration and war and peace and of a great number of directive
\nactivities. He was free to make efficient arrangements for all
\nthat part of the administration that served to secure and promote the welfare of the community, good order, public morals,
\nand all such matters as could best be supervised or regulated
\nby the sovereign authority. He had a right of patronage and
\npunishment consistent with the law and was expected to exercise it with a strict regard to an effect of general beneficence
\nand promotion of the public welfare. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThere could therefore be ordinarily little or no room in
\nthe ancient Indian system for autocratic freak or monarchical
\nviolence and oppression, much less for the savage cruelty and
\ntyranny of so common an occurrence in the history of some <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-379<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nother countries. Nevertheless such happenings were possible
\nby the sovereign’s disregard of the Dharma or by a misuse of
\nhis power of administrative decree; instances occurred of the
\nkind,\u2014though the worst recorded is that of a tyrant belonging to a foreign dynasty; in other cases any prolonged outbreak
\nof autocratic caprice, violence or injustice seems to have led
\nbefore long to an effective protest or revolt on the part of the
\npeople. The legists provided for the possibility of oppression.
\nIn spite of the sanctity and prestige attaching to the sovereign
\nit was laid down that obedience ceased to be binding if the king
\nceased, to be faithful executor of the Dharma. Incompetence
\nand violation of the obligation to rule to the satisfaction of the
\npeople were in theory and effect sufficient causes for his removal. Manu even lays it down that an unjust and oppressive
\nking should be killed by his own subjects like a mad dog, and
\nthis justification by the highest authority of the right or even
\nthe duty of insurrection and regicide in extreme cases is sufficient to show that absolutism or the unconditional divine
\nright of kings was no part of the intention of the Indian political system. As a matter of fact the right was actually exercised as we find both from history and literature. Another
\nmore peaceful and more commonly exercised remedy was
\na threat of secession or exodus which in most cases was sufficient to bring the delinquent ruler to reason. It is interesting
\nto find the threat of secession employed against an unpopular
\nmonarch in the South as late as the seventeenth century, as
\nwell as a declaration by a popular assembly denouncing any
\nassistance given to the king as an act of treason. A more common remedy was deposition by the council of ministers or by
\nthe public assemblies. The kingship thus constituted proved
\nto be in effect moderate, efficient and beneficent, served well
\nthe purposes assigned to it and secured an abiding hold on the
\naffections of the people. The monarchical institution was however only one, an approved and very important, but not, as we
\nsee from the existence of the ancient republics, an indispensable <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-380<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nelement of the Indian socio-political system, and we shall
\nunderstand nothing of the real principle of the system and its
\nworking if we stop short with a view of the regal facade and fail to see what lay behind it. It is there that we shall find the clue
\nto the essential character of the whole construction. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-381<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n
\nCHAPTER XVI <\/font><\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nTHE<\/font> true nature of the Indian polity can only be realised if we
\nlook at it not as a separate thing, a machinery independent of
\nthe rest of the mind and life of the people, but as a part of and
\nin its relation to the organic totality of the social existence. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nA people, a great human collectivity, is in fact an organic
\nliving being with a collective or rather\u2014for the word collective
\nis too mechanical to be true to the inner reality\u2014a common or
\ncommunal soul, mind and body. The life of the society like
\nthe physical life of the individual human being asses through a
\ncycle of birth, growth, youth, ripeness and decline, and if this
\nlast stage goes far enough without any arrest of its course
\ntowards decadence, it may perish,\u2014even so all the older
\npeoples and nations except India and China perished,\u2014as a
\nman dies of old age. But the collective being has too the capacity of renewing itself, of a recovery and a new cycle. For in
\neach people there is a soul idea or life idea at work, less mortal
\nthan its body, and if this idea is itself sufficiently powerful,
\nlarge and force-giving and the people sufficiently strong, vital
\nand plastic in mind and temperament to combine stability with a constant enlargement or new application of the power of the
\nsoul idea or life idea in its being, it may pass through many
\nsuch cycles before it comes to a final exhaustion. Moreover,
\nthe idea is itself only the principle of soul manifestation of the
\ncommunal being and each communal soul again a manifestation and vehicle of the greater eternal spirit that expresses itself
\nin Time and on earth is seeking, as it were, its own fullness
\nin humanity through the vicissitudes of the human cycles. A <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-382<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\npeople then which learns to live consciously not solely in its
\nphysical and outward life, not even only in that and the power
\nof the life idea or soul idea that governs the changes of its
\ndevelopment and is the key to its psychology and temperament,
\nbut in the soul and spirit behind, may not at all exhaust itself,
\nmay not end by disappearance or a dissolution or a fusion into
\nothers or have to give place to a new race and people, but having
\nitself fused into its life many original smaller societies and attained to its maximum natural growth pass without death
\nthrough many renascences. And even if at any time it appears
\nto be on the point of absolute exhaustion and dissolution,
\nit may recover by the force of the spirit and begin another and
\nperhaps a more glorious cycle. The history of India has been
\nthat of the life of such a people. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe master idea that has governed the life, culture, social
\nideals of the Indian people has been the seeking of man for his
\ntrue spiritual self and the use of life\u2014subject to a necessary
\nevolution first of his lower physical, vital and mental nature
\n\u2014as a frame and means for that discovery and for man’s ascent
\nfrom the ignorant natural into the spiritual existence. This
\ndominant idea India has never quite forgotten even under the
\nstress and material exigences and the externalities of political
\nand social construction. But the difficulty of making the social
\nlife an expression of man’s true self and some highest realisation of the spirit within him is immensely greater than that
\nwhich attends a spiritual self-expression through the things of
\nthe mind, religion, thought, art, literature, and while in these
\nIndia reached extraordinary heights and largenesses, she
\ncould not in the outward life go beyond certain very partial
\nrealisations, and very imperfect tentatives,\u2014a general spiritualising symbolism, an infiltration of the greater aspiration,
\na certain cast given to the communal life, the creation of
\ninstitutions favourable to the spiritual idea. Politics, society,
\neconomics are the natural field of the two first and grosser
\nparts of human aim and conduct recognised in the Indian <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-383<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nsystem, interest and hedonistic desire : Dharma,<\/i> the higher
\nlaw, has nowhere been brought more than partially into this
\nouter side of life, and in politics to a very minimum extent; for the effort at governing political action by ethics is usually
\nlittle more than a pretence. The coordination or true union
\nof the collective outward life with moksa,<\/i> the liberated spiritual
\nexistence, has hardly even been conceived or attempted,
\nmuch less anywhere succeeded in the past history of the
\nyet hardly adult human race. Accordingly, we find that the
\ngovernance by the Dharma of India’s social, economic and
\neven, though here the attempt broke down earlier than in
\nother spheres, her political rule of life, system, turn of existence, with the adumbration of a spiritual significance behind,
\n\u2014the full attainment of the spiritual life being left as a supreme
\naim to the effort of the individual,\u2014was as far as her ancient
\nsystem could advance. This much endeavour, however, she
\ndid make with persistence and patience and it gave a peculiar
\ntype to her social polity. It is perhaps for a future India,
\ntaking up and enlarging with a more complete aim, a more
\ncomprehensive experience, a more certain knowledge that
\nshall reconcile life and the spirit, her ancient mission, to
\nfound the status and action of the collective being of man on
\nthe realisation of the deeper spiritual truth, the yet unrealised
\nspiritual potentialities of our existence and so ensoul the life
\nof her people as to make it the Lila of the greater Self in
\nhumanity, a conscious communal soul and body of Virat,
\nthe universal spirit. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAnother point must be noted which creates a difference
\nbetween the ancient polity of India and that of the European
\npeoples and makes the standards of the West as inapplicable
\nhere as in the things of the mind and the inner culture.
\nHuman society has in its growth to pass through three stages
\nof evolution before it can arrive at the completeness of its
\npossibilities. The first is a condition in which the forms and
\nactivities of the communal existence are those of the spontaneous <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-384<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nplay of the powers and principles of its life. All its
\ngrowth, all its formations, customs, institutions are then a
\nnatural organic development,\u2014the motive and constructive
\npower coming mostly from the subconscient principle of the
\nlife within it,\u2014expressing, but without deliberate intention,
\nthe communal psychology, temperament, vital and physical
\nneed, and persisting or altering partly under the pressure of
\nan internal impulse, partly under that of the environment
\nacting on the communal mind and temper. In this stage
\nthe people is not yet intelligently self-conscious in the way
\nof the reason, is not yet a thinking collective being, and it
\ndoes not try to govern its whole communal existence by the
\nreasoning will, but lives according to its vital intuitions or
\ntheir first mental renderings. The early framework of Indian
\nsociety and polity grew up in such a period as in most ancient
\nand mediaeval communities, but also in the later age of a
\ngrowing social self-consciousness they were not rejected but
\nonly farther shaped, developed, systematised so as to be
\nalways, not a construction of politicians, legislators and social
\nand political thinkers, but a strongly stable vital order natural
\nto the mind, instincts and life intuitions of the Indian people. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nA second stage of the society is that in which the communal mind becomes more and more intellectually self-conscious, first in its more cultured minds, then more generally,
\nfirst broadly, then more and more minutely and in all the parts
\nof its life. It learns to review and deal with its own life,
\ncommunal ideas, needs, institutions in the light of the developed intelligence and finally by the power of the critical
\nand constructive reason. This is a stage which is fall of
\ngreat possibilities but attended too by serious characteristic
\ndangers. Its first advantages are those which go always with
\nthe increase of a clear and understanding and finally an exact
\nand scientific knowledge and the culminating stage is the
\nstrict and armoured efficiency which the critical and constructive, the scientific reason used to the fullest degree offers as <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-385<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nits reward and consequence. Another and greater outcome
\nof this stage of social evolution is the emergence of high and
\nluminous ideals which promise to raise man beyond the limits
\nof the vital being, beyond his first social, economic and political
\nneeds and desires and out of their customary moulds and
\ninspire an impulse of bold experiment with the communal
\nlife which opens a field of possibility for the realisation of a
\nmore and more ideal society. This application of the scientific mind to life with the strict, well-finished, armoured efficiency which is its normal highest result, this pursuit of great
\nconsciously proposed social and political ideals and the.
\nprogress which is the index of the ground covered in the
\nendeavour, have been, with whatever limits and drawbacks,
\nthe distinguishing advantages of the political and social effort
\nof Europe. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nOn the other hand the tendency of the reason when it
\npretends to deal with the materials of life as its absolute governor, is to look too far away from the reality of the society
\nas, a living growth and to treat it as a mechanism which can
\nbe manipulated at will and constructed like so much dead
\nwood or iron according to the arbitrary dictates of the intelligence. The sophisticating, labouring, constructing, efficient, mechanising reason loses hold of the simple principles
\nof a people’s vitality; it cuts it away from the secret roots of
\nits life. The result is an exaggerated dependence on system
\nand institution, on legislation and administration and the
\n.deadly tendency to develop, in place of a living people, a
\nmechanical State. An instrument of the communal life tries
\nto take the place of the life itself and there is created a powerful
\nbut mechanical and artificial organisation; but, as the price
\nof this exterior gain, there is lost the truth of life of an
\norganically self-developing communal soul in the body of a
\nfree and living people. It is this error of the scientific reason
\nstifling the work of the vital and the spiritual intuition under
\nthe dead weight of its mechanical method which is the weakness <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-386<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nof Europe and has deceived her aspiration and prevented
\nher from arriving at the true realisation of her own higher
\nideals. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIt is only by reaching a third stage of the evolution of the
\ncollective social as of the individual human being that the
\nideals first seized and cherished by the thought of man can
\ndiscover their own real source and character and their true
\nmeans and conditions of effectuation or the perfect society be
\nanything more than a vision on a shining cloud constantly
\nrun after in a circle and constantly deceiving the hope and
\nescaping the embrace. That will be when man in the collectivity begins to live more deeply and to govern his collective
\nlife neither primarily by the needs, instincts, intuitions welling
\nup out of the vital self, nor secondarily by the constructions
\nof the reasoning mind, but first, foremost and always by the
\npower of unity, sympathy, spontaneous liberty, supple and
\nliving order of his discovered greater self and spirit in which
\nthe individual and the communal existence have their law of
\nfreedom, perfection and oneness. That is a rule that has
\nnot yet anywhere found its right conditions for even beginning its effort, for it can only come when man’s attempt to
\nreach and abide by the law of the spiritual existence is no longer
\nan exceptional aim for individuals or else degraded in its more
\ngeneral aspiration to the form of a popular religion, but is
\nrecognised and followed out as the imperative need of his
\nbeing and its true and right attainment the necessity of the
\nnext step in the evolution of the race. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe small early Indian communities developed like others
\nthrough the first stage of a vigorous and spontaneous vitality,
\nfinding naturally and freely its own norm and line, casting up
\nform of life and social and political institution out of the vital
\nintuition and temperament of the communal being. As they
\nfused with each other into an increasing cultural and social
\nunity and formed larger and larger political bodies, they
\ndeveloped a common spirit and a common basis and general <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-387<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nstructure allowing of a great freedom of variation in minor
\nline and figure. There was no need of a rigid uniformity; the common spirit and life impulse were enough to impose
\non this plasticity a law of general oneness. And even when
\nthere grew up the great kingdoms and empires, still the characteristic institutions of the smaller kingdoms, republics, peoples
\nwere as much as possible incorporated rather than destroyed
\nor thrown aside in the new cast of the socio-political structure.
\nWhatever could not survive in the natural evolution of the
\npeople or was no longer needed, fell away of itself and passed
\ninto desuetude; whatever could last by modifying itself to
\nnew circumstance and environment was allowed to survive; whatever was in intimate consonance with the psychical and
\nthe vital law of being and temperament of the Indian people
\nbecame universalised and took its place in the enduring 
\nfigure of the society and polity. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThis spontaneous principle of life was respected by the
\nage of growing intellectual culture. The Indian thinkers on
\nsociety, economics and politics, Dharma Shastra and Artha
\nShastra, made it their business not to construct ideals and
\nsystems of society and government in the abstract intelligence,
\nbut to understand and regulate by the practical reason the
\ninstitutions and ways of communal living already developed
\nby the communal mind and life and to develop, fix and harmonise without destroying the original elements, and whatever new element or idea was needed was added or introduced
\nas a superstructure or a modifying but not a revolutionary
\nand destructive principle. It was in this way that the transition from the earlier stages to the fully developed monarchical
\npolity v\/as managed; it proceeded by an incorporation of the
\nexisting institutions under the supreme control of the king or
\nthe emperor. The character and status of many of them
\nwas modified by the superimposition of the monarchical or
\nimperial system, but, as far as possible, they did not pass
\nout of existence. As a result we do not find in India the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-388<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nelement of intellectually idealistic political progress or revolutionary experiment which has been so marked a feature of
\nancient and of modern Europe. A profound respect for the
\ncreations of the past as the natural expression of the Indian
\nmind and life, the sound manifestation of its Dharma or right
\nlaw of being, was the strongest element in the mental attitude
\nand this preservative instinct was not disturbed but rather
\nyet more firmly settled and fixed by the great millennium
\nof high intellectual culture. A slow evolution of custom and
\ninstitution conservative of the principle of settled order, of
\nsocial and political precedent, of established framework and
\nstructure was the one way of progress possible or admissible.
\nOn the other hand, Indian polity never arrived at that unwholesome substitution of the mechanical for the natural
\norder of the life of the people which has been the disease of
\nEuropean civilisation now culminating in the monstrous
\nartificial organisation of the bureaucratic and industrial State.
\nThe advantages of the idealising intellect were absent, but
\nso also were the disadvantages of the mechanising rational
\nintelligence. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Indian mind has always been profoundly intuitive
\nin habit even when it was the most occupied with the development of the reasoning intelligence, and its political and
\nsocial thought has therefore been always an attempt to combine the intuitions of life and the intuitions of the spirit with
\nthe light of the reason acting as an intermediary and an
\nordering and regulating factor. It has tried to base itself
\nstrongly on the established and persistent actualities of life
\nand to depend for its idealism not on the intellect but on the
\nilluminations, inspirations, higher experiences of the spirit,
\nand it has used the reason as a critical power testing and
\nassuring the steps and aiding but not replacing the life and
\nthe spirit\u2014always the true and sound constructors. The
\nspiritual mind of India regarded life as a manifestation of
\nthe self: the community was the body of the creator Brahma, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-389<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthe people was a life body of Brahman in the samasti,<\/i> the
\ncollectivity, it was the collective Narayana, as the individual
\nwas Brahman in the vyasti,<\/i> the separate Jiva, the individual
\nNarayana, the king was the living representative of the
\nDivine and the other orders of the community the natural
\npowers of the collective self, prakrtayah.<\/i> The agreed conventions, institutes, customs, constitution of the body social
\nand politic in all its parts had therefore not only a binding
\nauthority but a certain sacrosanct character. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe right order of human life as of the universe is preserved according to the ancient Indian idea by each individual
\nbeing following faithfully his svadharma,<\/i> the true law and
\nnorm of his nature and the nature of his kind and by the
\ngroup being, the organic collective life, doing likewise. The
\nfamily, clan, caste, class, social, religious, industrial or other
\ncommunity, nation, people are all organic group beings that
\nevolve their own dharma and to follow it is the condition of
\ntheir preservation, healthy continuity, sound action. There
\nis also the dharma of the position, the function, the particular
\nrelation with others, as there is too the dharma imposed by
\nthe condition, environment, age, yugadharma,<\/i> the universal
\nreligious or ethical dharma, and all these acting on the natural
\ndharma, the action according to the svabhāva,<\/i> create the body
\nof the Law. The ancient theory supposed that in an entirely
\nright and sound condition of man, individual and collective,
\n\u2014a condition typified by the legendary Golden Age, Satya
\nYuga, Age of Truth,\u2014there is no need of any political government or State or artificial construction of society, because all
\nthen live freely according to the truth of their enlightened
\nself and God-inhabited being and therefore spontaneously
\naccording to the inner divine Dharma. The self-determining
\nindividual and self-determining community living according
\nto the right and free law of his and its being is therefore the
\nideal. But in the actual condition of humanity, its ignorant
\nand devious nature subject to perversions and violations of <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-390<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthe true individual and the true social dharma, there has
\n<\/b>to
\n<\/b>be superimposed on the natural life of society a State,
\na sovereign power, a king or governing body, whose business is
\nnot to interfere unduly with the life of the society, which must
\nbe allowed to function for the most part according to its
\nnatural law and custom and spontaneous development, but
\nto superintend and assist its right process and see that the
\nDharma is observed and in vigour and, negatively, to punish
\nand repress and, as far as may be, prevent offences against
\nthe Dharma. A more advanced stage of corruption of the
\nDharma is marked by the necessity of the appearance of the
\nlegislator and the formal government of the whole of life by
\nexternal or written law and code and rule, but to determine
\nit\u2014apart from external administrative detail\u2014was not the
\nfunction of the political sovereign, who was only its administrator, but of the socio-religious creator, the Rishi, or the
\nBrahminic recorder and interpreter. And the Law itself
\nwritten or unwritten was always not a thing to be new created
\nor fabricated by a political and legislative authority, but a
\nthing already existent and only to be interpreted and stated
\nas it was or as it grew naturally out of pre-existing law and
\nprinciple in the communal life and consciousness. The last
\nand worst state of the society growing out of this increasing
\nartificiality and convention must be a period of anarchy and
\nconflict and dissolution of the Dharma,\u2014Kali Yuga,\u2014which
\nmust precede through a red-grey evening of cataclysm and
\nstruggle a recovery and a new self-expression of the spirit
\nin the human being. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe main function of the political sovereign, the king
\nand council and the other ruling members of the body politic,
\nwas therefore to serve and assist the maintenance of the sound
\nlaw of life of the society : the sovereign was the guardian
\nand administrator of the Dharma. The function of society
\nitself included the right satisfaction of the vital, economic
\nand other needs of the human being and of his hedonistic <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-391<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nclaim to pleasure and enjoyment,
\nbut according to their right law and measure of satisfaction and subject and
\nsubordinated to the ethical and social and religious dharma. Ail the members and
\ngroups of the socio-political body had their Dharma determined for them by their
\nnature, their position, their relation-to the whole body and must be assured and
\nmaintained in the free and right exercise of it, must be left to their own
\nnatural and self-determined functioning within their own bounds, but at the same
\ntime restrained from any transgression, encroachment or deviation from their
\nright working and true limits. That was the office of the supreme political
\nauthority, the sovereign in his Council aided by the public
\nassemblies. It was not the business of the state authority to
\ninterfere with or encroach upon the free functioning of the
\ncaste, religious community, guild, village, township or the
\norganic custom of the region or province or to abrogate their
\nrights, for these were inherent because necessary to the sound
\nexercise of the social Dharma. All that it was called upon to
\ndo was to coordinate, to exercise a general and supreme control, to defend the life of the community against external
\nattack or internal disruption, to repress crime and disorder,
\nto assist, promote and regulate, in its larger lines the economic
\nand industrial welfare, to see to the provision of facilities,
\nand to use for these purposes the powers that passed beyond
\nthe scope of the others. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThus in effect the Indian polity was the system of a
\nvery complex communal freedom and self-determination,
\neach group unit of the community having its own natural
\nexistence and administering its own proper life and business,
\nset off from the rest by a natural demarcation of its field and
\nlimits, but connected with the whole by well-understood relations, each a copartner with the others in the powers and
\nduties of the communal existence, executing its own laws
\nand rules, administering within its own proper limits, joining
\nwith the others  in the discussion and the regulation of matters <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-392<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nof a mutual <\/b> or common interest and represented in some way
\nand to the degree of its importance in the general assemblies
\nof the kingdom or empire. The State, sovereign or supreme
\npolitical authority, was an instrument of coordination and of
\na general control and efficiency and exercised a supreme
\nbut not an absolute authority; for in all its rights and powers
\nit was limited by the Law and by the will of the people and
\nin all its internal functions only a copartner with the other
\nmembers of the socio-political body. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThis was the theory and principle and the actual constitution of the Indian polity, a complex of communal freedom
\nand self-determination with a supreme coordinating authority,
\na sovereign person and body, armed with efficient powers,
\nposition and prestige, but limited to its proper rights and
\nfunctions, at once controlling and controlled by the rest,
\nadmitting them as its active copartners in all branches, sharing
\nthe regulation and administration of the communal existence,
\nand all alike, the sovereign, the people and all its constituent
\ncommunities, bound to the maintenance and restrained by
\nthe yoke of the Dharma. Moreover the economic and political
\naspects of the communal life were only a part of the Dharma
\nand a part not at all separate but inextricably united with
\nall the rest, the religious, the ethical, the higher cultural
\naim of the social existence. The ethical law coloured the
\npolitical and economic and was imposed on every action of
\nthe king and his ministers, the council and assemblies, the
\nindividual, the constituent groups of the society, ethical and
\ncultural considerations counted in the use of the vote and the
\nqualifications for minister, official and councillor; a high
\ncharacter and training was expected from all who held
\nauthority in the affairs of the Aryan people. The religious spirit
\nand the reminders of religion were the head and the background of the whole life of king and people. The life of the
\nsociety was regarded not so much as an aim in itself in spite
\nof the necessary specialisation of parts of its system, but in <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-393<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nall its parts and the whole as a great framework and training
\nground for the education of the human mind and soul and
\nits development through the natural to the spiritual existence. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-394<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nCHAPTER XVII <\/b><\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nTHE<\/font> socio-political evolution of Indian civilisation, as far
\nas one can judge from the available records, passed through
\nfour historical stages, first the simple Aryan community, then a long period of
\ntransition in which the national life was proceeding through a considerable variety of experimental formations in political structure and synthesis, thirdly, the definite
\nformation of the monarchical state coordinating all the complex elements of the communal life of the people into regional
\nand imperial unities, and last the era of decline in which there
\nwas an internal arrest and stagnation and an imposition of new
\ncultures and systems from western Asia and Europe. The distinguishing character of the first three periods is a remarkable
\nsolidity and stability in all the formations and a sound and vital
\nand powerful evolution of the life of the people rendered slow
\nand leisurely by this fundamental conservative stability of the
\nsystem but all the more sure in its building and living and complete in its structure. And even in the decline this solidity
\nopposes a strong resistance to the process of demolition. The
\nstructure breaks up at the top under foreign pressure, but preserves for a long
\ntime its basis, keeps, wherever it can maintain itself against invasion, much of its characteristic system and
\nis even towards the end capable of attempts at revival of its
\nform and its spirit. And now too, though the whole political
\nsystem has disappeared and its last surviving elements have been ground out of
\nexistence, the peculiar social mind and temperament which created it remains even in the present social
\nstagnation, weakness, perversion and disintegration and may
\nyet in spite of immediate tendencies and appearances, once <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-395<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nit is free to work again at its own will and after its own manner,
\nproceed not along the western line of evolution, but to a new
\ncreation out of its own spirit which may perhaps lead at the call
\nof the demand now vaguely beginning to appear in the advanced thought of the race towards the inception of the third
\nstage of communal living and a spiritual basis of human society.
\nIn any case the long stability of its constructions and the
\ngreatness of the life they sheltered is certainly no sign of incapacity, but rather of a remarkable political instinct and capacity
\nin the cultural mind of India. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe one principle permanent at the base of construction
\nthroughout all the building and extension and rebuilding of
\nthe Indian polity was the principle of an organically self-determining communal life,\u2014self-determining not only in the mass
\nand by means of the machinery of the vote and a representative
\nbody erected on the surface, representative only of the political
\nmind of a part of the nation, which is all that the modern
\nsystem has been able to manage, but in every pulse of its life
\nand in each separate member of its existence. A free synthetic
\ncommunal order was its character, and the condition of liberty
\nit aimed at was not so much an individual as a communal freedom. In the beginning the problem was simple enough as only
\ntwo kinds of communal unit had to be considered, the village
\nand the clan, tribe or small regional people. The free organic
\nlife of the first was founded on the system of the self-governing
\nvillage community and it was done with such sufficiency and solidity that it lasted down almost to our own days resisting all the
\nwear and tear of time and the inroad of other systems and was
\nonly recently steam-rollered out of existence by the ruthless
\nand lifeless machinery of the British bureaucratic system.
\nThe whole people living in its villages mostly on agriculture
\nformed in the total a single religious, social, military and political body governing itself in its assembly, samiti,<\/i> under the
\nleadership of the king, as yet without any clear separation of
\nfunctions or class division of labour. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-396<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nIt was the inadequacy of this system for all but the simplest
\nform of agricultural and pastoral life and all but the small people
\nliving within a very limited area that compelled the problem
\nof the evolution of a more complex communal system and a modified and more intricate application of the fundamental Indian
\nprinciple. The agricultural and pastoral life common at first to
\nall the members of the Aryan community, krstayah,<\/i> remained
\nalways the large basis, but it developed an increasingly rich
\nsuperstructure of commerce and industry and numerous arts
\nand crafts and a smaller superstructure of specialised military
\nand political and religious and learned occupations and. functions. The village community remained throughout the stable
\nunit, the firm grain or indestructible atom of the social body,
\nbut there grew up a group life of tens and hundreds of villages,
\neach under its head and needing its administrative organisation, and these, as the clan grew into a large people by conquest
\nor coalition with others, became constituents of a kingdom or a
\nconfederated republican nation, and these again the circles,
\nmandala, of<\/i> larger kingdoms and finally of one or more great
\nempires. The test of the Indian genius for socio-politcal construction lay in the successful application of its principle of a
\ncommunal self-determined freedom and order to suit this
\ngrowing development and new order of circumstances. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe Indian mind evolved, to meet this necessity, the
\nstable socio-religious system of the four orders. Outwardly
\nthis might seem to be only a more rigid form of the familiar
\nsocial system developed naturally in most human peoples at one
\ntime or another, a priesthood, a military and political aristocracy, a class of artisans and free agriculturalists and traders
\nand a proletariate of serfs or labourers. The resemblance
\nhowever is only in the externals and the spirit of the system
\nof Chaturvarna was different in India. In the later Vedic and
\nthe epic times the fourfold order was at once and inextricably
\nthe religious, social, political and economic framework of the
\nsociety and within that framework each order had its natural <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-397<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nportion and in none of the fundamental activities was the share
\nor position of any of them exclusive. This characteristic is
\nvital to an understanding of the ancient system, but has been
\nobscured by false notions formed from a misunderstanding
\nor an exaggeration of later phenomena and of conditions
\nmostly belonging to the decline. The Brahmins, for example,
\nhad not a monopoly either of sacred learning or of the highest
\nspiritual knowledge and opportunities. At first we see a kind
\nof competition between the Brahmins and the Kshatriyas for
\nthe spiritual lead and the latter for a long time held their own
\nagainst the pretensions of the learned and sacerdotal order.
\nThe Brahmins, however, as legists, teachers, priests, men who
\ncould give their whole time and energy to philosophy, scholarship, the study of the sacred writings, prevailed in the end and
\nsecured a settled and imposing predominance. The priestly
\nand learned class became the religious authorities, the custodians
\nof the sacred books and the tradition, the interpreters of the
\nlaw and Shastra, the recognised teachers in all the departments
\nof knowledge, the ordinary religious preceptors or Gurus of the
\nother classes and supplied the bulk, though never the totality
\nof the philosophers, thinkers, literary men, scholars. The study
\nof the Vedas and Upanishads passed mainly into their hands,
\nalthough always open to the three higher orders; it was denied
\nin theory to the Shudras. As a matter of fact, however, a series
\nof religious movements kept up even in the later days the essential element of the old freedom, brought the highest spiritual
\nknowledge and opportunity to all doors and, as in the beginning
\nwe find the Vedic and Vedantic Rishis born from all classes,
\nwe find too up to the end the yogins, saints, spiritual thinkers,
\ninnovators and restorers, religious poets and singers, the fountain-heads of a living spirituality and knowledge as distinguished
\nfrom traditional authority and lore, derived from all the strata of the community down to the lowest Shudras and even the
\ndespised and oppressed outcastes. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe four orders grew into a fixed social hierarchy, but, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-398<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nleaving aside the status of the outcastes, each had attached to it a
\nspiritual life and utility, a certain social dignity, an education,
\na principle of social and ethical honour and a place and duty
\nand right in the communal body. The system served again as
\nan automatic means of securing a fixed division of labour and a
\nsettled economic status, the hereditary principle at first prevailing, although here even the theory was more rigid than the
\npractice, but none was denied the right or opportunity of amassing wealth and making some figure in society, administration
\nand politics by means of influence or status in his own order.
\nFor, finally, the social hierarchy was not at the same time a
\npolitical hierarchy : all the four orders had their part in the
\ncommon political rights of the citizen and in the assemblies and
\nadministrative bodies their place and their share of influence.
\nIt may be noted too that in law and theory at least women in
\nancient India, contrary to the sentiment of other ancient
\npeoples, were not denied civic rights, although in practice
\nthis equality was rendered nugatory for all but a few by their
\nsocial subordination to the male and their domestic preoccupation; instances have yet survived in the existing records of
\nwomen figuring, not only as queens and administrators and even
\nin the battlefield, a common enough incident in Indian history,
\nbut as elected representatives on civic bodies. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe whole Indian system was founded upon a close
\nparticipation of all the orders in the common life, each predominating in its own field, the Brahmin in religion, learning
\nand letters, the Kshatriya in war, king-craft and interstate
\npolitical action, the Vaishya in wealth-getting and productive
\neconomical function, but none, not even the Shudra, excluded
\nfrom his share in the civic life aid an effective place and voice
\nin politics, administration, justice. As a consequence the old
\nIndian polity at no time developed, or at least it did not maintain
\nfor long, those exclusive forms of class rule that have so long
\nand powerfully marked the political history of other countries.
\nA priestly theocracy, like that of Tibet, or the rule of a landed <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-399<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nand military aristocracy that prevailed for centuries in France
\nand England and other European countries or a mercantile
\noligarchy, as in Carthage and Venice, were forms of government
\nforeign to the Indian spirit. A certain political predominance
\nof the great Kshatriya families at a time of general war and strife
\nand mobile expansion, when the clans and tribes were developing into nations and kingdoms and were still striving with
\neach other for hegemony and overlordship, seems to be indicated
\nin the traditions preserved in the Mahabharata and recurred
\nin a cruder form in the return to the clan nation in mediaeval
\nRajputana : but in ancient India this was a passing phase and the predominance
\ndid not exclude the political and civic influence of men of the other orders or
\ninterfere with or exercise any oppressive control over the free life of the
\nvarious communal units. The democratic republics of the intermediate times were
\nin all probability polities which endeavoured to
\npreserve in its fullness the old principle of the active participation of the whole body of the people in the assemblies and not
\ndemocracies of the Greek type, the oligarchical republics were
\nclan governments or were ruled by more limited senates drawn
\nfrom the dignified elements of the society and this afterwards
\ndeveloped into councils or assemblies representing all the
\nfour orders as in the later royal councils and urban bodies.
\nIn any case the system finally evolved was a mixed polity in
\nwhich none of the orders had an undue predominance. Accordingly we do not find in India either that struggle between
\nthe patrician and plebeian elements of the community, the
\noligarchic and the democratic idea, ending in the establishment
\nof an absolute monarchical rule, which characterises the
\ntroubled history of Greece and Rome or that cycle of successive
\nforms evolving by a strife of classes,\u2014first a ruling aristocracy,
\nthen replacing it by encroachment or revolution the dominance
\nof the moneyed and professional classes, the regime of the
\n.bourgeois industrialising the society and governing and exploiting it in the name of the commons or masses and, finally, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-400<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthe present turn towards a rule of the proletariate of Labour,
\n\u2014which we see in later Europe. The Indian mind and temperament less exclusively intellectual and vital, more intuitively
\nsynthetic and flexible than that of the occidental peoples arrived,
\nnot certainly at any ideal system of society and politics, but at
\nleast at a wise and stable synthesis\u2014not a dangerously unstable equilibrium, not a compromise or balance\u2014of all the
\nnatural powers and orders, an organic and vital coordination
\nrespectful of the free functioning of all the organs of the communal body and therefore ensured, although not against the
\ndecadence that overtakes all human systems, at any rate against
\nany organic disturbance or disorder. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe summit of the political structure was occupied by three
\ngoverning bodies, the King in his ministerial Council, the
\nmetropolitan assembly and the general assembly of the kingdom. The members of the Council and the ministers were
\ndrawn from all orders. The Council included a fixed number
\nof Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra representatives.
\nThe Vaishyas had indeed numerically a great preponderance,
\nbut this was a just proportion as it corresponded to their
\nnumerical preponderance in the body of the people : for in
\nthe early Aryan society the Vaishya order comprised not only
\nthe merchants and small traders but the craftsmen and artisans
\nand the agriculturalists and formed therefore the bulk of the
\ncommons, visah,<\/i> and the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Shudras, however considerable the position and influence of the two higher
\norders, were later social growths and were comparatively very
\ninferior in number. It was only after the confusion created by
\nthe Buddhist upheaval and the Brahminic reconstitution of the
\nsociety in the age of cultural decadence that the mass of the cultivators and artisans and small traders sank in the greater part
\nof India to the condition of Shudras with a small Brahmin mass
\nat the top and in between a slight sprinkling of Kshatriyas
\nand of Vaishyas. The Council, representing thus the whole
\ncommunity, was the supreme executive and administrative  <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-401<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nbody and its assent and participation necessary to all the action
\nand decrees of the sovereign in all more important matters of
\ngovernment, finance, policy, throughout the whole range of
\nthe communal interests. It was the King, the ministers and the
\ncouncil who aided by a system of boards of administration
\nsuperintended and controlled all the various departments of
\nthe State action. The power of the king undoubtedly tended
\nto grow with time and he was often tempted to act according
\nto his own independent will and initiative, but still, as long as the
\nsystem was in its vigour, he could not with impunity defy or
\nignore the opinion and will of the ministers and council. Even,
\nit seems, so powerful" and strong-willed a sovereign as the great
\nemperor Asoka was eventually defeated in his conflict with his
\ncouncil and was forced practically to abdicate his power. The
\nministers in council could and did often proceed to the deposition of a recalcitrant or an incompetent monarch and replace
\nhim by another of his family or by a new dynasty and it was
\nin this way that there came about several of the historic changes,
\nas for example the dynastic revolution from the Mauryas to the
\nSungas and again the initiation of the Kanwa line of emperors.
\nAs a matter of constitutional theory and ordinary practice
\nall the action of the king was in reality that of the king in his
\ncouncil with the aid of his ministers and all his personal action
\nwas only valid as depending on their assent and in so far as
\nit was a just and faithful discharge of the functions assigned
\nto him by the Dharma. And as the Council was, as it were, a
\nquintessential power body or action centre taking up into itself
\nin a manageable compass, concentrating and representing
\nin its constitution the four orders, the main elements of the
\nsocial organism, the king too could only be the active head of
\nthis power and not, as in an autocratic regime, himself the
\nState or the owner of the country and the irresponsible personal
\nruler of a nation of obedient subjects. The obedience
\nowed by the people was due to the Law, the Dharma, and
\nto the edicts of the King in council only as an administrative <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-402<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nmeans for the service and maintenance of the Dharma. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAt the same time a small body like the Council subject to
\nthe immediate and constant influence of the sovereign and his
\nministers might, if it had been the sole governing body, have
\ndegenerated into an instrument of autocratic rule. But there
\nwere two other powerful bodies in the State which represented
\non a larger scale the social organism, were a nearer and closer
\nexpression of its mind, life and will independent of the immediate regal influence and exercising large and constant powers
\nof administration and administrative legislation and .capable
\nat all times of acting as a check on the royal power, since in
\ncase of their displeasure they could either get rid of an unpopular or oppressive king or render his administration impossible until he made submission to the will of the people.
\nThese were the great metropolitan and general assemblies sitting
\nseparately for the exercise each of its separate powers and
\ntogether for matters concerning the whole people.1<\/sup> The Paura
\nor metropolitan civic assembly sat constantly in the capital
\ntown of the kingdom or empire\u2014and under the imperial
\nsystem there seem also to have been similar lesser bodies in
\nthe chief towns of the provinces, survivals of the assemblies
\nthat governed them when they were themselves capitals of
\nindependent kingdoms\u2014and was constituted of representatives
\nof the city guilds and the various caste bodies belonging to all
\nthe orders of the society or at least to the three lower orders.
\nThe guilds and caste bodies were themselves organic self-governing constituents of the community both in the country
\nand the city and the supreme assembly of the citizens was not
\nan artificial but an organic representation of the collective totality of the whole organism as it existed within the limits of
\nthe metropolis. It governed all the life of the city, acting directly <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n1<\/sup> The facts about these bodies\u2014I have selected only those that are
\nsignificant for my purpose\u2014are taken from the luminous and scrupulously
\ndocumented contribution of Mr. Jayaswal to the subject. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-403<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nor through subordinate lesser assemblies and administrative
\nboards or committees of five, ten or more members, and,
\nboth by regulations and decrees which the guilds were bound
\nto obey and by direct administration, controlled and supervised the commercial, industrial, financial and municipal
\naffairs of the civic community. But in addition it was a power
\nthat had to be consulted and could take action in the wider
\naffairs of the kingdom, sometimes separately and sometimes
\nin cooperation with the general assembly, and its constant
\npresence and functioning at the capital made it a force that
\nhad always to be reckoned with by the king and his ministers
\nand their council. In a case of conflict with the royal ministers
\nor governors even the distant civic parliaments in the provinces could make their displeasure felt if offended in matters
\nof their position or privileges or discontented with the king’s
\nadministrators and could compel the withdrawal of the
\noffending officer. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe general assembly was similarly an organic representation’ of the mind and will of the whole country outside the
\nmetropolis; for it was composed of the deputies, elective heads
\nor chief men of the townships and villages. A certain plutocratic element seems to have entered into its composition, as
\nit was principally recruited from the wealthier men of the
\nrepresented communities, and it was therefore something
\nof the nature of an assembly of the commons not of an entirely
\ndemocratic type,\u2014although unlike all but the most recent
\nmodem parliaments it included Shudras as well as Kshatriyas
\nand Vaishyas,\u2014but still a sufficiently faithful expression of the
\nlife and mind of the people. It was not however a supreme
\nparliament: for it had ordinarily no fundamental legislative
\npowers, any more than had the king and council or the metropolitan assembly, but only of decree and regulation. Its business
\nwas to serve as a direct instrument of the will of the people in
\nthe coordination of the various activities of the life of the
\nnation, to see to the right direction of these and to the securing <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-404<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nof the general order and welfare of the commerce, industry,
\nagriculture, social and political life of the nation, to pass
\ndecrees and regulations to that purpose and secure privileges
\nand facilities from the king and his council, to give or withhold
\nthe assent of the people to the actions of the sovereign and, if
\nneed be, to oppose him actively and prevent misgovernment
\nor end it by the means open to the people’s representatives.
\nThe joint session of the metropolitan and general assemblies
\nwas consulted in matters of succession, could depose the sovereign, alter the succession at his death, transfer the throne outside the reigning family, act sometimes as a supreme court of
\nlaw in cases having a political tincture, cases of treason or of
\nmiscarriage of justice. The royal resolutions on any matter
\nof State policy were promulgated to these assemblies and their
\nassent had to be taken in all matters involving special taxation,
\nwar, sacrifice, large schemes of irrigation etc., and all questions
\nof vital interest to the country. The two bodies seem to have
\nsat constantly, for matters came up daily from them to the
\nsovereign : their acts were registered by the king and had
\nautomatically the effect of law. It is clear indeed from a total
\nreview of their rights and activities that they were partners in
\nthe sovereignty and its powers were inherent in them and even
\nthose could be exercised by them on extraordinary occasions
\nwhich were not normally within their purview. It is significant
\nthat Asoka in his attempt to alter the Dharma of the community, proceeded not merely by his royal decree but by discussion with the Assembly. The ancient description seeps
\ntherefore to have been thoroughly justified which characterised the two bodies as executors of the kingdom’s activities
\nand at need the instruments of opposition to the king’s
\ngovernment. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIt is not clear when these great institutions went out of
\nexistence, whether before the Mahomedan invasion or as a
\nresult of the foreign conquest. Any collapse of the system at
\nthe top leaving a gulf between the royal government, which <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-405<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nwould grow more autocratic by its isolation and in sole control
\nof the larger national affairs, and the other constituents of the
\nsocio-political body each carrying on its own internal affairs,
\nas was to the end the case with the village communities, but not
\nin any living relation with the higher State matters, would obviously be in an organisation of complex communal freedom
\nwhere coordination of the life was imperatively needed, a great
\ncause of weakness. In any case the invasion from Central Asia,
\nbringing in a tradition of personal and autocratic rule unfamiliar
\nwith these restraints would immediately destroy such bodies,
\nor their remnants or survivals wherever they still existed, and
\nthis happened throughout the whole of Northern India. The
\nIndian political system was still maintained for many centuries
\nin the south, but the public assemblies which went on existing
\nthere do not seem to have been of the same constitution as the
\nancient political bodies, but were rather some of the other communal organisations and assemblies of which these were a
\ncoordination and supreme instrument of control. These
\ninferior assemblies included bodies originally of a political
\ncharacter, once the supreme governing institutions of the
\nclan nation, kula,<\/i> and the republic, gana.<\/i> Under the new
\ndispensation they remained in existence, but lost their supreme
\npowers and could only administer with a subordinate and
\nrestricted authority the affairs of their constituent communities.
\nThe kula<\/i> or clan family persisted, even after it had lost its
\npolitical character, as a socio-religious institution, especially
\namong the Kshatriyas, and preserved the tradition of its social
\nand religious law, kula-dharma,<\/i> and in some cases its communal assembly, kula-sangha.<\/i> The public assemblies that we
\nfind even in quite recent times filling the role of the old general
\nassembly in Southern India, more than one coexisting and
\nacting separately or in unison, appear to have been variations
\non this type of body. In Rajputana also the clan family, kula,
\n<\/i>recovered its political character and action, but in another
\nform and without the ancient institutions and finer cultural <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-406<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ntemper, although they preserved in a high degree the Kshatriya
\ndharma of courage, chivalry, magnanimity and honour. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nA stronger permanent element in the Indian communal
\nsystem, one that grew up in the frame of the four orders\u2014
\nin the end even replacing it\u2014and acquired an extraordinary
\nvitality, persistence and predominant importance was the
\nhistoric and still tenacious though decadent institution of
\ncaste, jāti.<\/i> Originally this rose from subdivisions of the four
\norders that grew up in each order under the stress of various forces. The
\nsubdivision of the Brahmin castes was mainly due to religious, socio-religious
\nand ceremonial causes, but there were also regional and local divisions : the Kshatriyas remained
\nfor the most part one united order, though divided into Kulas.
\nOn the other hand the Vaishya and Shudra orders split up into
\ninnumerable castes under the necessity of a subdivision of
\neconomic functions on the basis of the hereditary principle.
\nApart from the increasingly rigid application of the hereditary
\nprinciple, this settled subdivision of function could well enough
\nhave been secured, as in other countries, by a guild system and
\nin towns we do find a vigorous and efficient guild system in
\nexistence. But the guild system afterwards fell into desuetude
\nand the more general institution of caste became the one basis
\nof economic function everywhere. The caste in town and
\nvillage was a separate communal unit, at once religious, social
\nand economic, and decided its religious, social and other questions, carried on its caste affairs and exercised jurisdiction over
\nits members in a perfect freedom from all outside interference
\nonly on fundamental questions of the Dharma the Brahmins
\nwere referred to for an authoritative interpretation or decision
\nas custodians of the Shastra. As with the kula,<\/i> each caste had
\nits caste law and rule of living and conduct, jāii-dharma,<\/i> and
\nits caste communal assembly, jāti-sangha.<\/i> As the Indian polity
\nin all its institutions was founded on a communal and not on
\nan individual basis, the caste also counted in the political
\nand administrative functioning of the kingdom. The guilds <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-407<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nequally were self-functioning mercantile and industrial communal units, assembled for the discussion and administration
\nof their affairs and had besides their united assemblies which
\nseem at one time to have been the governing urban bodies.
\nThese guild governments, if they may so be called,\u2014for they
\nwere more than municipalities,\u2014disappeared afterwards into
\nthe more general urban body which represented an organic
\nunity of both the guilds and the caste assemblies of all the
\norders. The castes as such were not directly represented in
\nthe general assembly of the kingdom, but they had their
\nplace .m the administration of local affairs. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe village community and the township were the most
\ntangibly stable basis of the whole system; but these, it must be
\nnoted, were not solely territorial units or a convenient mechanism for electoral, administrative or other useful social and
\npolitical purposes, but always true communal unities with an
\norganic life of their own that functioned in its own power
\nand not merely as a subordinate part of the machinery of the
\nState. The village community has been described as a little
\nvillage republic, and the description is hardly an exaggeration :for each village was within its own limits autonomous and self-sufficient, governed by its own elected Panchayats and elected
\nor hereditary officers, satisfying its own needs, providing for
\nits own education, police, tribunals, all its economic necessities
\nand functions, managing itself its own life as an independent
\nand self-governing unit. The villages carried on also their
\naffairs with each other by combinations of various kinds and
\nthere were too groups of villages under elected or hereditary
\nheads and forming therefore, though in a less closely organised
\nfashion, a natural body. But the townships in India were also
\nin a hardly less striking way autonomous and self-governing
\nbodies, ruled by their own assembly and committees with an
\nelective system and the use of the vote, managing their own
\naffairs in their own right and sending like the villages their
\nrepresentative men to the general assembly of the kingdom. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-408<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nThe administration of these urban governments included all
\nworks contributing to the material or other welfare of the
\ncitizens, police, judicial cases, public works and the charge of
\nsacred and public places, registration, the collection of municipal taxes and all matters relating to trade, industry and
\ncommerce. If the village community can be described as a
\nlittle village republic, the constitution of the township can
\nequally be described as a larger urban republic. It is
\nsignificant that the Naigama and Paura assemblies, \u2014 the
\nguild governments and the metropolitan bodies,\u2014had the
\nprivilege of striking coins of<\/i> their own, a power otherwise
\nexercised only by the monarchical head’s of States and the
\nrepublics. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAnother kind of community must be noted, those which
\nhad no political existence, but were yet each in its own kind a
\nself-governing body; for they illustrate the strong tendency
\nof Indian life to throw itself in all its manifestations into a
\nclosely communal form of existence. One example is the joint
\nfamily, prevalent everywhere in India and only now breaking
\ndown under the pressure of modem conditions, of which the
\ntwo fundamental principles were first a communal holding of
\nthe property by the agnates and their families and, as far as
\npossible, an undivided communal life under the management
\nof the head of the family and, secondly, the claim of each male
\nto an equal portion in the share of his father, a portion due to
\nhim in case of separation and division of the estate. This
\ncommunal unity with the persistent separate right of the individual is an example of the synthetic turn of the Indian mind
\nand life, its recognition of fundamental tendencies and its
\nattempt to harmonise them even if they seemed in their norm
\nof practice to be contradictory to each other. It is the same
\nsynthetic turn as that which in all parts of the Indian socio-political system tended to fuse together in different ways the
\ntheocratic, the monarchic and aristocratic, the plutocratic
\nand the democratic tendencies in a whole which bore the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-409<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ncharacteristics of none of them nor was yet an accommodation of them or amalgamation whether by a system of checks
\nand balances or by an intellectually constructed synthesis,
\nbut rather a natural outward form of the inborn tendencies
\nand character of the complex social mind and temperament. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAt the other end, forming the ascetic and purely spiritual
\nextreme of the Indian life-mind, we find the religious community and, again, this too takes a communal shape. The original
\nVedic society had no place for any Church or religious community or ecclesiastical order, for in its system the body of the
\npeople formed a single socio-religious whole with no separation
\ninto religious and secular, layman and cleric, and in spite of later
\ndevelopments the Hindu religion has held, in the whole or at
\nleast as the basis, to this principle. On the other hand an
\nincreasing ascetic tendency that came in time to distinguish
\nthe religious from the mundane life and tended to create the
\nseparate religious community, was confirmed by the rise of the
\ncreeds and disciplines of the Buddhists and the Jains. The
\nBuddhist monastic order was the first development of the
\ncomplete figure of the organised religious community. Here
\nwe find that Buddha simply applied the known principles of
\nthe Indian society and polity to the ascetic life. The order
\nhe created was intended to be a dharma-sangha,<\/i> and each
\nmonastery a religious commune living the life of a united
\ncommunal body which existed as the expression and was based
\nin all the rules, features, structure of its life on the maintenance
\nof the Dharma as it was understood by the Buddhists. This
\nwas, as we can at once see, precisely the principle and theory
\nof the whole Hindu society, but given here the higher intensity
\npossible to the spiritual life and a purely religious body. It
\nmanaged its affairs too like the Indian social and political
\ncommunal unities. An assembly of the order discussed debatable questions of the Dharma and its application and proceeded by vote as in the meeting-halls of the republics, but it
\nwas subject still to a limiting control intended to avoid the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-410<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\npossible evils of a too purely democratic method. The monastic system once thus firmly established was taken over from
\nBuddhism by the orthodox religion, but without its elaborate
\norganisation. These religious communities tended, wherever
\nthey could prevail against the older Brahminic system, as in
\nthe order created by Shankaracharya, to become a sort of
\necclesiastical head to the lay body of the community, but they
\narrogated to themselves no political position and the struggle
\nbetween Church and State is absent from the political history
\nof India. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIt is clear therefore that the whole life of ancient India
\nretained even in the time of the great kingdoms and empires its
\nfirst principle and essential working and its social polity remained fundamentally a complex system of self-determined
\nand self-governing communal bodies. The evolution of an
\norganised State authority supervening on this system was
\nnecessitated in India as elsewhere partly by the demand of
\nthe practical reason for a more stringent and scientifically
\nefficient coordination than was possible except in small areas
\nto the looser natural coordination of life, and more imperatively
\nby the need of a systematised military aggression and defence
\nand international action concentrated in the hands of a single
\ncentral authority. An extension of the free republican State
\nmight have sufficed to meet the former demand, for it had the
\npotentiality and the necessary institutions, but the method
\nof the monarchical State with its more constricted and easily
\ntangible centrality presented a more ready and manageable
\ndevice and a more facile and apparently efficient machinery.
\nAnd for the external task, involving almost from the commencement the supremely difficult age-long problem of the
\npolitical unification of India, then a continent rather than a
\ncountry, the republican system, more suited to strength in
\ndefence than for aggression, proved in spite of its efficient
\nmilitary organisation to be inadequate. It was, therefore, in
\nIndia as elsewhere, the strong form of the monarchical State <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-411<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthat prevailed finally and swallowed up the others. At the
\nsame time the fidelity of the Indian mind to its fundamental
\ninstitutions and ideals preserved the basis of communal self-government natural to the temperament of the people, prevented the monarchical State from developing into an autocracy or exceeding its proper functions and stood successfully
\nin the way of its mechanising the life of the society. It is only
\nin the long decline that we find the free institutions that stood
\nbetween the royal government and the self-determining communal life of the people either tending to disappear or else to
\nlose-much of their ancient power and vigour and the evils of
\npersonal government, of a bureaucracy of scribes and officials
\nand of a too preponderant centralised authority commencing
\nto manifest in some sensible measure. As long as the ancient
\ntraditions of the Indian polity remained and in proportion
\nas they continued to be vital and effective, these evils remained
\neither sporadic and occasional or could not assume any serious
\nproportions. It was the combination of foreign invasion and
\nconquest with the slow decline and final decadence of the ancient Indian culture that brought about the collapse of considerable parts of the old structure and the degradation and
\ndisintegration, with no sufficient means for revival or new
\ncreation, of the socio-political life of the people. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAt the height of its evolution and in the great days of
\nIndian civilisation we find an admirable political system efficient in the highest degree and very perfectly combining communal self-government with stability and order. The State
\ncarried on its work administrative, judicial, financial and protective without destroying or encroaching on the rights and
\nfree activities of the people and its constituent bodies in the
\nsame departments. The royal courts in capital and country
\nwere the supreme judicial authority coordinating the administration of justice throughout the kingdom, but they did not
\nunduly interfere with the judicial powers entrusted to their
\nown courts by the village and urban communes and, even, the <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-412<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nregal system associated with itself the guild, caste and family
\ncourts, working as an ample means of arbitration and only
\ninsisted on its own exclusive control of the more serious
\ncriminal offences. A similar respect was shown to the administrative and financial powers of the village and urban communes. The king’s governors and officials in town and country
\nexisted side by side with the civic governors and officials and
\nthe communal heads and officers appointed by the people and
\nits assemblies. The State did not interfere with the religious
\nliberty or the established economic and social life of the nation it confined itself to the maintenance of social order and the
\nprovision of a needed supervision, support, coordination and
\nfacilities for the rich and powerful functioning of all the national activities. It understood too always and magnificently
\nfulfilled its opportunities as a source of splendid and munificent stimulation to the architecture, art, culture, scholarship,
\nliterature already created by the communal mind of India.
\nIn the person of the monarch it was the dignified and powerful
\nhead and in the system of his administration the supreme instrument\u2014neither an arbitrary autocracy or bureaucracy, nor
\na machine oppressing or replacing life\u2014of a great and stable
\ncivilisation and a free and living people. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-413<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\n
\nCHAPTER XVIII <\/font><\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nA RIGHT<\/font> knowledge of the facts and a right understanding
\nof the character and principle of the Indian socio-political
\nsystem disposes at once of the contention of occidental critics
\nthat the Indian mind, even if remarkable in metaphysics, religion, art and literature was inapt for the organisation of life,
\ninferior in the works of the practical intelligence and, especially,
\nthat it was sterile in political experiment and its record empty
\nof sound political construction, thinking and action. On the
\ncontrary, Indian civilisation evolved an admirable political system, built
\nsolidly and with an enduring soundness, combined with a remarkable skill the monarchical, democratic
\nand other principles and tendencies to which the mind of man
\nhas leaned in its efforts of civic construction and escaped at
\nthe same time the excess of the mechanising turn which is the
\ndefect of the modem European State. I shall consider afterwards the objections that can be made to it from the evolutionary standpoint of the West and its idea of progress. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nBut there is another side of politics on which it may be said that the Indian political mind has registered nothing but
\nfailure. The organisation it developed may have been admirable
\nfor stability and effective administration and the securing of
\ncommunal order and liberties and the well-being of the people
\nunder ancient conditions, but even if its many peoples were each of them
\nseparately self-governed, well governed and prosperous and the country at large assured in the steady functioning of a highly developed civilisation and culture, yet that
\norganisation failed to serve for the national and political unification <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-414<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nof India and failed in the end to secure it against foreign
\ninvasion, the disruption of its institutions and an agelong servitude. The political system of a society has to be judged, no
\ndoubt first and foremost by the stability, prosperity, internal
\nfreedom and order it ensures to the people, but also it must be
\njudged by the security it erects against other States, its unity
\nand power of defence a-ad aggression against external rivals and
\nenemies. It is not perhaps altogether to the credit of humanity
\nthat it should be so and a nation or people that is inferior in this
\nkind of political strength, as were the ancient Greeks and
\nmediaeval Italians, may be spiritually and culturally far-superior to its conquerors and may well have contributed more to a
\ntrue human progress than successful military States, aggressive
\ncommunities, predatory empires. But the life of man is still
\npredominatingly vital and moved therefore by the tendencies
\nof expansion, possession, aggression, mutual struggle for
\nabsorption and dominant survival which are the first law of
\nlife, and a collective mind and consciousness that gives a constant proof of incapacity for aggression and defence and dyes
\nnot organise the centralised and efficient unity necessary to
\nits own safety, is clearly one that in the political field falls far
\nshort of the first order. India has never been nationally and
\npolitically one. India was for close on a thousand years swept
\nby barbaric invasions and for almost another thousand years
\nin servitude to successive foreign masters. It is clear therefore that judgment of political incapacity must be passed
\nagainst the Indian people.  <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nHere again the first necessity is to get rid of exaggerations,
\nto form a clear idea of the actual facts and their significance
\nand understand the tendencies and principles involved in the
\nproblem that admittedly throughout the long history of India
\nescaped a right solution. And first, if the greatness of a people
\nand a civilisation is to be reckoned by its military aggressiveness, its scale of foreign conquest, its success in warfare
\nagainst other nations and the triumph of its organised acquisitive <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-415<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nand predatory instincts, its irresistible push towards annexation
\nand exploitation, it must be confessed that India ranks perhaps
\nthe lowest in the list of the world’s great peoples. At no time
\ndoes India seem to have been moved towards an aggressive
\nmilitary and political expansion beyond her own borders; no
\nepic of world dominion, no great tale of far-borne invasion or
\nexpanding colonial empire has ever been written in the tale
\nof Indian achievement. The sole great endeavour of expansion,
\nof conquest, of invasion she attempted was the expansion of
\nher culture, the invasion and conquest of the eastern world by
\nthe Buddhistic idea and the penetration of her spirituality, art
\nand thought-forces. And this was an invasion of peace and not
\nof war, for to spread a spiritual civilisation by force and physical
\nconquest, the vaunt or the excuse of modern imperialism, would
\nhave been uncongenial to the ancient cast of her mind and
\ntemperament and the idea underlying her Dharma. A series
\nof colonising expeditions carried indeed Indian blood and
\nIndian culture to the islands of the archipelago, but the ships
\nthat set out from both the eastern and western coast were not
\nfleets of invaders missioned to annex those outlying countries
\nto an Indian empire but of exiles or adventures carrying with
\nthem to yet uncultured peoples Indian religion, architecture,
\nart, poetry, thought, life, manners. The idea of empire and
\neven of world-empire was not absent from the Indian mind,
\nbut its world was the Indian world and the object the founding
\nof the imperial unity of its peoples. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n This idea, the sense of this necessity, a constant urge towards its realisation is evident throughout the whole course
\nof Indian history from earlier Vedic times through the heroic
\nperiod represented by the traditions of the Ramayana and
\nMahabharata and the effort of the imperial Mauryas and Guptas
\nup to the Moghul unification and the last ambition of the
\nPeshwas, until there came the final failure and the levelling of
\nall the conflicting forces under a foreign yoke, a uniform
\nsubjection in place of the free unity of a free people. The question <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-416<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nthen is whether the tardiness, the difficulty, the fluctuating
\nmovements of the process and the collapse of the long effort
\nwere due to a fundamental incapacity in the civilisation or in
\nthe political consciousness and ability of the people or to other
\nforces. A great deal has been said and written about the inability of Indians to unite, the want of a common patriotism\u2014
\nnow only being created, it is said, by the influence of Western
\nculture\u2014and the divisions imposed by religion and caste.
\nAdmitting even in their full degree the force of these strictures,
\n\u2014all of them are not altogether true or rightly stated or vitally
\napplicable to the matter,\u2014they are only symptoms and we have
\nstill to seek for the deeper causes. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe reply made for the defence is usually that India is
\npractically a continent almost as large as Europe containing
\na great number of peoples and the difficulties of the problem
\nhave been as great or at least almost as considerable. And if
\nthen it is no proof of the insufficiency of Western civilisation
\nor of the political incapacity of the European peoples that
\nthe idea of European unity should still remain an ineffective
\nphantasm on the ideal plane and to this day impossible to
\nrealise in practice, it is not just to apply a different system of
\nvalues to the much more clear ideal of unity or at least of
\nunification, the persistent attempt at its realisation and the
\nfrequent near approach to success that marked the history
\nof the Indian peoples. There is some force in the contention,
\nbut it is not in the form entirely apposite, for the analogy is
\nfar from perfect and the conditions were not quite of the same
\norder. The peoples of Europe are nations very sharply
\ndivided from each other in their collective personality, and
\ntheir spiritual unity in the Christian religion or even their
\ncultural unity in a common European civilisation, never so
\nreal and complete as the ancient spiritual and cultural unity
\nof India, was also not the very centre of their life, not its basis
\nor firm ground of existence, not its supporting earth but only
\nits general air or circumambient atmosphere. Their base of  <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-417<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nexistence lay in the political and economic life which was
\nstrongly separate in each country, and it was the very strength
\nof the political consciousness in the western mind that kept
\nEurope a mass of divided and constantly warring nations.
\nIt is only the increasing community of political movements
\nand the now total economic interdependence of the whole
\nof Europe that has at last created not any unity, but a nascent
\nand still ineffective League of Nations struggling vainly
\nto apply the mentality born of an agelong separatism to the
\ncommon interests of the European peoples. But in India
\nat a very early time the spiritual and cultural unity was made
\ncomplete and became the very stuff of the life of all this great
\nsurge of humanity between the Himalayas and the two seas.
\nThe peoples of ancient India were never so much distinct
\nnations sharply divided from each other by a separate political
\nand economic life as sub-peoples of a great spiritual and
\ncultural nation itself firmly separated, physically, from other
\ncountries by the seas and the mountains and from other nations
\nby its strong sense of difference, its peculiar common religion
\nand culture. The creation of a political unity, however vast
\nthe area and however many the practical difficulties, ought
\ntherefore to have been effected more easily than could possibly
\nbe the unity of Europe. The cause of the failure must be
\nsought deeper down and we shall find that it lay in a dissidence between the manner in which the problem was or ought
\nto have been envisaged and the actual turn given to the endeavour and in the latter a contradiction of the peculiar
\nmentality of the people. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe whole basis of the Indian mind is its spiritual and
\ninward turn, its propensity to seek the things of the spirit
\nand the inner being first and foremost and to look at all else
\nas secondary, dependent, to be handled and determined m
\nthe light of the higher knowledge and as an expression, a
\npreliminary or field or aid or at least a pendent to the deeper
\nspiritual aim,\u2014a tendency therefore to create whatever it <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-418<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nhad to create first on the inner plane and afterwards in its
\nother aspects. This mentality and this consequent tendency
\nto create from within outwards being given, it was inevitable
\nthat the unity India first created for herself should be the
\nspiritual and cultural oneness. It could not be, to begin with,
\na political unification effected by an external rule centralised,
\nimposed or constructed, as was done in Rome or ancient
\nPersia, by a conquering kingdom or the genius of a military
\nand organising people. It cannot, I think, justly be said that
\nthis was a mistake or a proof of the unpractical turn of the
\nIndian mind and that the single political body should have
\nbeen created first and afterwards the’ spiritual unity could
\nhave securely grown up in the vast body of an Indian national
\nempire. The problem that presented itself at the beginning
\nwas that of a huge area containing more than a hundred kingdoms, clans, peoples, tribes, races, in this respect another
\nGreece, but a Greece on an enormous scale, almost as large
\nas modern Europe. As in Greece a cultural Hellenic unity
\nwas necessary to create a fundamental feeling of oneness,
\nhere too and much more imperatively a conscious spiritual
\nand cultural unity of all these peoples was the first, the indispensable condition without which no enduring unity could
\nbe possible. The instinct of the Indian mind and of its great
\nRishis and founders of its culture was sound in this matter.
\nAnd even if we suppose that an outward imperial unity like
\nthat of the Roman world could have been founded among the
\npeoples of early India by military and political means, .we
\nmust not forget that the Roman unity did not endure, that
\neven the unity of ancient Italy founded by the Roman conquest and organisation did not endure, and it is not likely
\nthat a similar attempt in the vast reaches of India without
\na previous spiritual and cultural basis would have been of
\nan enduring character. It cannot be said either, even if the
\nemphasis on spiritual and cultural unity be pronounced to
\nhave been too engrossing or excessive and the insistence of <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-419<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\npolitical and external unity too feeble, that the effect of this
\nprecedence has been merely disastrous and without any
\nadvantage. It is due to this original peculiarity, to this indelible spiritual stamp, to this underlying oneness amidst all
\ndiversities that if India is not yet a single organised political
\nnation, she still survives and is still India. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAfter all, the spiritual and cultural is the only enduring
\nunity and it is by a persistent mind and spirit much more
\nthan by an enduring physical body and outward organisation
\nthat the soul of a people survives. This is a truth the positive
\nwestern’ mind may be unwilling to understand or concede,
\nand yet its proofs are written across the whole story of the
\nages. The ancient nations, contemporaries of India, and
\nmany younger born than she are dead and only their monuments left behind them. Greece and Egypt exist only on the
\nmap and in name, for it is not the soul of Hellas or the deeper
\nnation-soul that built Memphis which we ‘low find at Athens
\nor at Cairo. Rome imposed a political and a purely outward
\ncultural unity on the Mediterranean peoples, but their living
\nspiritual and cultural oneness she could not create, and therefore the east broke away from the west, Africa kept no impress of the Roman interlude, and even the western nations
\nstill called Latin could offer no living resistance to barbarian
\ninvaders and had to be reborn by the infusion of a foreign
\nvitality to become modern Italy, Spain and France. But
\nIndia still lives and keeps the continuity of her inner mind
\nand soul and spirit with the India of the ages. Invasion and
\nforeign rule, the Greek, the Parthian and the Hun, the robust
\nvigour of Islam, the levelling steam-roller heaviness of the
\nBritish occupation and the British system, the enormous
\npressure of the Occident have not been able to drive or crush
\nthe ancient soul out of the body her Vedic Rishis made for her.
\nAt every step, under every calamity and attack and domination, she has been able to resist and survive either with an
\nactive or a passive resistance, And this she was able to do <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-420<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nin her great days by her spiritual solidarity and power
\n<\/b>of
\n<\/b>assimilation and reaction, expelling all that would not be
\nabsorbed, absorbing all that could not be expelled, and even
\nafter the beginning of the decline she was still able to survive
\nby the same force, abated but not slayable, retreating and
\nmaintaining for a time her ancient political system in the
\nsouth, throwing up under the pressure of Islam, Rajput and
\nSikh and Mahratta to defend her ancient self and its idea,
\npersisting passively where she could not resist actively, condemning to decay each empire that could not answer her
\nriddle or make terms with her, awaiting always the, day of
\nher revival. And even now it is a similar phenomenon that
\nwe see in process before our eyes. And what shall we say
\nthen of the surpassing vitality of the civilisation that could
\naccomplish this miracle and of the wisdom of those who
\nbuilt its foundation not on things external but on the spirit
\nand the inner mind and made a spiritual and cultural oneness
\nthe root and stock of her existence and not solely its fragile
\nflower, the eternal basis and not the perishable superstructure ? But spiritual unity is a large and flexible thing and does
\nnot insist like the political and external on centralisation and
\nuniformity; rather it lives diffused in the system and permits
\nreadily a great diversity and freedom of life. Here we touch
\non the secret of the difficulty in the problem of unifying
\nancient India. It could not be done by the ordinary means
\nof a centralised uniform imperial State crushing out all that
\nmade for free divergence, local autonomies, established communal liberties, and each time that an attempt was made in
\nthis direction, it has failed after however long a term of apparent success, and we might even say that the guardians of
\nIndia’s destiny wisely compelled it to fail that her inner spirit
\nmight not perish and her soul barter for an engine of temporary security the deep sources of its life. The ancient
\nmind of India had the intuition of its need, its idea of empire
\nwas a uniting rule that respected every existing regional and <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-421<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\ncommunal liberty, that unnecessarily crushed out no living
\nautonomy, that effected a synthesis of her life and not a
\nmechanical oneness. Afterwards the conditions under which
\nsuch a solution might securely have evolved and found its
\ntrue means and form and basis, disappeared and there was
\ninstead an attempt to establish a single administrative empire.
\nThat endeavour, dictated by the pressure of an immediate
\nand external necessity, failed to achieve a complete success
\nin spite of its greatness and splendour. It could not do so
\nbecause it followed a trend that was not eventually compatible
\nwith the’ true turn of the Indian spirit. It has been seen that
\nthe underlying principle of the Indian politico-social system
\nwas a synthesis of communal autonomies, the autonomy of
\nthe village, of the town and capital city, of the caste, guild,
\nfamily, kula,<\/i> religious community, regional unit. The state
\nor kingdom or confederated republic was a means of holding
\ntogether and synthetising in a free and living organic system
\nthese autonomies. The imperial problem was to synthetise
\nagain these states, peoples, nations, effecting their unity but
\nrespecting their autonomy, into a larger free and living
\norganism. A system had to be found that would maintain
\npeace and oneness among its members, secure safety against
\nexternal attack and totalise the free play and evolution, in its
\nunity and diversity, in the uncoerced and active life of all its
\nconstituent communal and regional units, of the soul and
\nbody of Indian civilisation and culture, the functioning on a
\ngrand and total scale of the Dharma. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThis was the sense in which the earlier mind of India
\nunderstood the problem. The administrative empire of later
\ntimes accepted it only partially, but its trend was, very slowly
\nand almost subconsciously, what the centralising tendency
\nmust always be, if not actively to destroy, still to wear down
\nand weaken the vigour of the subordinated autonomies. The
\nconsequence was that whenever the central authority was
\nweak, the persistent principle of regional autonomy <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-422<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nessential to the life of India reasserted itself to the detriment
\nof the artificial unity established and not, as it should have
\ndone, for the harmonious intensification and freer but still
\nunited functioning of the total life. The imperial monarchy
\ntended also to wear down the vigour of the free assemblies,
\nand the result was that the communal units instead of being
\nelements of a united strength became isolated and dividing
\nfactors. The village community preserved something of its
\nvigour, but had no living connection with the supreme authority and, losing the larger national sense, was willing to accept
\nany indigenous or foreign rule that respected its own self-sufficient narrow life. The religious communities came to be
\nimbued with the same spirit. The castes, multiplying themselves without any true necessity or true relation to the
\nspiritual or the economic need of the country, became mere
\nsacrosanct conventional divisions, a power for isolation and
\nnot, as they originally were, factors of a harmonious functioning
\nof the total life-synthesis. It is not true that the caste divisions were id ancient India an obstacle to the united life of
\nthe people or that they were even in later times an active
\npower for political strife and disunion,\u2014except indeed at
\nthe end, in the final decline, and especially during the later
\nhistory of the Mahratta confederation; but they did become
\na passive force of social division and of a stagnant compartmentalism obstructive to the reconstitution of a free and
\nactively united life. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe evils that attended the system did not all manifest
\nthemselves with any power before the Mahomedan invasions,
\nbut they must have been already there in their beginning and
\nthey increased rapidly under the conditions created by the Pathan and the Moghul empires. These later imperial systems however brilliant and powerful, suffered still more than
\ntheir predecessors from the evils of centralisation owing to
\ntheir autocratic character and were constantly breaking down
\nfrom the same tendency of the regional life of India to assert <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-423<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nitself against an artificial unitarian regime, while, because
\nthey had no true, living and free relation with the life of the
\npeople, they proved unable to create the common patriotism
\nwhich would have effectively secured them against the foreign
\ninvader. And in the end there has come a mechanical western
\nrule that has crushed out all the still existing communal or
\nregional autonomies and substituted the dead unity of a
\nmachine. But again in the reaction against it we see the same
\nancient tendencies reviving, the tendency towards a reconstitution of the regional life of the Indian peoples, the demand
\nfor a provincial autonomy founded on true subdivisions of
\nrace and language, a .harking back of the Indian mind to the
\nideal of the lost village community as a living unit necessary
\nto the natural life of the national body and, not yet reborn but
\ndimly beginning to dawn on the more advanced minds, a
\ntruer idea of the communal basis proper to Indian life and the
\nrenovation and reconstruction of Indian society and politics
\non a spiritual foundation. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe failure to achieve Indian unity of which the invasions and the final subjection to the foreigner were the consequence, arose therefore at once from the magnitude and
\nfrom the peculiarity of the task, because the easy method of
\na centralised empire could not truly succeed in India, while
\nyet it seemed the only device possible and was attempted
\nagain and again with a partial success that seemed for the
\ntime and a long time to justify it, but always with an eventual
\nfailure. I have suggested that the early mind of India better
\nunderstood the essential character of the problem. The
\nVedic Rishis and their successors made it their chief work to
\nfound a spiritual basis of Indian life and to effect the spiritual
\nand cultural unity of the many races and peoples of the peninsula. But they were not blind to the necessity of a political
\nunification. Observing the constant tendency of the clan life
\nof the Aryan peoples to consolidate under confederacies and
\nhegemonies of varying proportions, vairājya, sāmrājya,<\/i> they <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-424<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nsaw that to follow this line to its full conclusion was the right
\nway and evolved therefore the ideal of the cakravartin,<\/i> a
\nuniting imperial rule, uniting without destroying the autonomy of India’s many kingdoms and peoples, from sea to
\nsea. This ideal they supported, like everything else in Indian
\nlife, with a spiritual and religious sanction, set up as its outward symbol the Aswamedha and Rajasuya sacrifices, and
\nmade it the dharma of a powerful King, his royal and religious
\nduty, to attempt the fulfilment of the ideal. He was not
\nallowed by the Dharma to destroy the liberties of the peoples
\nwho came under his sway nor to dethrone or annihilate their
\nroyal houses or replace their archons by his officials and
\ngovernors. His function was to establish a suzerain power
\npossessed of sufficient military strength to preserve internal
\npeace and to combine at need the full forces of the country.
\nAnd to this elementary function came to be added the ideal
\nof the fulfilment and maintenance under a strong uniting hand
\nof the Indian dharma, the right functioning of the spiritual,
\nreligious, ethical and social culture of India. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe full flowering of the ideal is seen in the great epics.
\nThe Mahabharata is the record of a legendary or, it may be,
\na historic attempt to establish such an empire, a dharmarājya
\n<\/i>or kingdom of the Dharma. There the ideal is pictured as
\nso imperative and widely acknowledged that even the turbulent
\nShishupala is represented as motiving his submission and
\nattendance at the Rajasuya sacrifice on the ground that Yudhisthira was carrying out an action demanded by the Dharma.’"
\nAnd in the Ramayana we have an idealised picture of such a
\nDharmarajya, a settled universal empire. Here too it is not
\nan autocratic despotism but a universal monarchy supported
\nby a free assembly of the city and provinces and of all the
\nclasses that is held up as the ideal, an enlargement of the
\nmonarchical state synthetising the communal autonomies of
\nthe Indian system and maintaining the law and constitution
\nof the Dharma. The ideal of conquest held up is not a destructive <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-425<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nand predatory invasion annihilating the organic
\nfreedom and the political and social institutions and exploiting
\nthe economic resources of the conquered peoples, but a sacrificial progression bringing with it a trial of military strength
\nof which the result was easily accepted because defeat entailed
\nneither humiliation nor servitude and suffering but merely a
\nstrengthening adhesion to a suzerain power concerned only
\nwith establishing the visible unity of the nation and the
\nDharma, The ideal of the ancient Rishis is clear and their
\npolitical utility and necessity of a unification of the divided
\nand warring peoples of the land, but they saw also that it
\nought not to be secured at the expense of the free life of the
\nregional peoples or of the communal liberties and not therefore by a centralised monarchy or a rigidly unitarian imperial State. A hegemony or confederacy under an imperial
\nhead would be the nearest western analogy to the conception
\nthey sought to impose on the minds of the people. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThere is no historical evidence that this ideal was ever
\nsuccessfully carried into execution, although the epic
\ntradition speaks of several such empires preceding the Dharmarajya of Yudhishthira. At the time of Buddha and later
\nwhen Chandragupta and Chanakya were building the first
\nhistoric Indian empire, the country was still covered with free
\nkingdoms and republics and there was no united empire to
\nmeet the great raid of Alexander. It is evident that if any
\nhegemony had previously existed, it had failed to discover a
\nmeans or system of enduring permanence. This might however have evolved if time had been given, but a serious change
\nhad meanwhile taken place which made it urgently necessary
\nto find an immediate solution. The historic weakness of the
\nIndian peninsula has always been until modern times its
\nvulnerability through the north-western passes. This weakness
\ndid not exist so long as ancient India extended northward far
\nbeyond the Indus and the powerful kingdoms of Gandhara
\nand Vahlika presented a firm bulwark against foreign invasion. <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-426<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nBut they had now gone down before the organised Persian
\nempire and from this time forward the trans-Indus countries,
\nceasing to be part of India, ceased also to be its protection and
\nbecame instead the secure base for every successive invader.
\nThe inroad of Alexander brought home the magnitude of
\nthe danger to the political mind of India and from this time
\nwe see poets, writers, political thinkers constantly upholding
\nthe imperial ideal or thinking out the means of its realisation.
\nThe immediate practical result was the rise of the empire
\nfounded with remarkable swiftness by the statesmanship of
\nChanakya and constantly maintained or restored through
\neight or nine centuries, in spite of periods of weakness and
\nincipient disintegration, successively by the Maurya, Sunga,
\nKanwa, Andhra and Gupta dynasties. The history of this
\nempire, its remarkable organisation, administration, public
\nworks, opulence, magnificent culture and the vigour, the
\nbrilliance, the splendid fruitfulness of the life of the peninsula
\nunder its shelter emerges only from scattered insufficient
\nrecords, but even so it ranks among the greatest constructed
\nand maintained by the genius of the earth’s great peoples.
\nIndia has no reason, from this point of view, to be anything
\nbut proud of her ancient achievement in empire-building or
\nto submit to the hasty verdict that denies to her antique
\ncivilisation a strong practical genius or high political virtue. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAt the same time this empire suffered by the inevitable
\nhaste, violence and artificiality of its first construction to
\nmeet a pressing need, because that prevented it from being
\nthe deliberate, natural and steady evolution in the old solid
\nIndian manner of the truth of her deepest ideal. The attempt
\nto establish a centralised imperial monarchy brought with it
\nnot a free synthesis but a breaking down of regional autonomies.
\nAlthough according to the Indian principle their institutes
\nand customs were respected and at first even their political
\ninstitutions not wholly annulled, at any rate in many cases,
\nbut brought within the imperial system, these could not <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-427<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nreally flourish under the shadow of the imperial centralisation.
\nThe free peoples of the ancient Indian world began to disappear, their broken materials serving afterwards to create
\nthe now existing Indian races. And I think it can be concluded on the whole that although for a long time the great
\npopular assemblies continued to remain in vigour, their
\nfunction in the end tended to become more mechanical and
\ntheir vitality to decline and suffer. The urban republics too
\ntended to become more and more mere municipalities of the
\norganised kingdom or empire. The habits of mind created
\nby the imperial centralisation and the weakening or disappearance of the more dignified free popular institutions of
\nthe past created a sort of spiritual gap, on one side of which
\nwere the administered content with any government that
\ngave them security and did not interfere too much with their
\nreligion, life and customs and on the other the imperial administration beneficent and splendid, no doubt, but no longer
\nthat living head of a free and living people contemplated by
\nthe earlier and the true political mind of India. These results
\nbecame prominent and were final only with the decline,
\nbut they were there in seed and rendered almost inevitable
\nby the adoption of a mechanical method of unification. The
\nadvantages gained were those of a stronger and more coherent
\nmilitary action and a more regularised and uniform administration, but these could not compensate in the end for the
\nimpairment of the free organic diversified life which was the
\n,true expression of the mind and temperament of the people. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nA worse result was a certain fall from the high ideal of
\nthe Dharma. In the struggle of kingdom with kingdom for
\nsupremacy, a habit of Machiavellian statecraft replaced the
\nnobler ethical ideals of the past, aggressive ambition was
\nleft without any sufficient spiritual or moral check and there
\nwas a coarsening of the national mind in the ethics of politics
\nand government already evidenced in the draconic penal
\nlegislation of the Maurya times and in Asoka’s sanguinary <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-428<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nconquest of Orissa. The deterioration, held in abeyance by
\na religious spirit and high intelligence, did not come to a
\nhead till more than a thousand years afterwards and we only
\nsee it in its full force m the worst period of the decline when
\nunrestrained mutual aggression, the unbridled egoism of
\nprinces and leaders, a total lack of political principle and
\ncapacity for effective union, the want of a common patriotism
\nand the traditional indifference of the common people to a
\nchange of rulers gave the whole of the vast peninsula into the
\ngrasp of a handful of merchants from across the seas. But
\nhowever tardy the worst results in their coming and however
\nredeemed and held in check at first by the political greatness
\nof the empire and a splendid intellectual and artistic culture
\nand by frequent spiritual revivals, India had already lost by
\nthe time of the later Guptas the chance of a natural and perfect flowering of her true mind and inmost spirit in the political
\nlife of her peoples. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nMeanwhile the empire served well enough, although not
\nperfectly, the end for which it was created, the saving of
\nIndian soil and Indian civilisation from that immense flood
\nof barbarian unrest which threatened all the ancient stabilised
\ncultures and finally proved too strong for the highly developed
\nGraeco-Roman civilisation and the vast and powerful Roman
\nempire. That unrest throwing great masses of Teutons, Slavs, Huns and Scythians
\nto west and east and south battered at the gates of India for many centuries,
\neffected certain inroads, but, when it sank, left the great edifice of Indian
\ncivilisation standing and still firm, great and secure. The irruptions took
\nplace whenever the empire grew weak and this seems to have happened whenever the
\ncountry was left for some time secure. The empire was weakened by the suspension
\nof the need which created it, for then the regional spirit
\nreawoke in separatist movements disintegrating its unity or
\nbreaking down its large extension over all the North. A
\nfresh peril brought about the renewal of its strength under a <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-429<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nnew dynasty, but the phenomenon continued <\/b>to
\nrepeat itself until, the peril ceasing for a considerable time, the empire
\ncalled into existence to meet it passed away not to revive.
\nIt left behind it a certain number of great kingdoms in the
\neast, south and centre and a more confused mass of peoples
\nin the north-west, the weak point at which the Mussulmans
\nbroke in and in a brief period rebuilt in the North, but in
\nanother, a Central Asiatic type, the ancient empire. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThese earlier foreign invasions and their effects have to be
\nseen in their true proportions, which are often disturbed by the
\nexaggerated theories of oriental scholars. The invasion of
\nAlexander was an ‘eastward impulsion of Hellenism that had
\na work to do in western and central Asia, but no future in
\nIndia. Immediately ejected by Chandragupta, it left no traces.
\nThe entrance of the Graeco-Bactrians which took place
\nduring the weakness of the later Mauryas and was annulled by
\nthe reviving strength of the empire, was that of a Hellenised
\npeople already profoundly influenced by Indian culture. The
\nlater Parthian, Hun and Scythian invasions were of a more serious character and for a time seemed dangerous to the integrity
\nof India. In the end however they affected powerfully only the
\nPunjab, although they threw i-heir waves farther south along
\nthe western coast and dynasties of a foreign extraction may
\nhave been established for a time far down towards the south.
\nTo what degree the racial character of these parts was affected,
\nis far from certain. Oriental scholars and ethnologists have
\n. imagined that the Punjab was scythianised, that the Rajputs
\nare of the same stock and that even farther south the race was
\nchanged by the intrusion. These speculations are founded
\nupon scanty or no evidence and are contradicted by other
\ntheories, and it is highly doubtful whether the barbarian invaders could have come in such numbers as to produce so considerable a consequence. It is farther rendered improbable by
\nthe fact that in one or two or three generations the invaders
\nwere entirely Indianised, assumed completely the Indian religion,<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-430<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nmanners, customs, culture and melted into the mass of
\nthe Indian peoples. No such phenomenon took place as in
\nthe countries of the Roman empire, of barbarian tribes imposing
\non a superior civilisation their laws, political system, barbaric
\ncustoms, alien rule. This is the common significant fact of these
\nirruptions and it must have been due to one or all of three
\nfactors. The invaders may have been armies rather than
\npeoples : the occupation was not a continuous external rule
\nwhich had time to stiffen in its foreign character, for each
\nwas followed by a revival of the strength of the Indian empire
\nand its return upon the conquered provinces : and finally the
\npowerfully vital and absorbing character Of Indian culture was
\ntoo strong to allow of any mental resistance to assimilation in
\nthe intruders. At any rate if these irruptions were of a very
\nconsiderable character, Indian civilisatioa must be considered
\nto have proved itself much more sound, more vital and more
\nsolid than the younger Graeco-Roman which went down before
\nthe Teuton and the Arab or survived only underneath and in a
\ndebased form heavily barbarised, broken and unrecognisable.
\nAnd the Indian empire too must be pronounced to have
\nproved after all more efficacious than was the Roman with all
\nits vaunt of solidity and greatness, for it succeeded, even if
\npierced in the west, in preserving the security of the great
\nmass of the peninsula. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nIt is a later downfall, the Mussulman conquest failing in
\nthe hands of the Arabs but successfully reattempted after a long
\ninterval, and all that followed it which serves to justify the doubt
\nthrown on the capacity of the Indian peoples. But first let us
\nput aside certain misconceptions which cloud the real issue.
\nThis conquest took place at a time when the vitality of ancient
\nIndian life and culture after two thousand years of activity and
\ncreation was already exhausted for a time or very near exhaustion and needed a breathing space to rejuvenate itself by transference from the Sanskrit to the popular tongues and the
\nnewly forming regional peoples. The conquest was effected <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-431<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nrapidly enough in the north, although not entirely complete
\nthere for several centuries, but the south long preserved its
\nfreedom as of old against the earlier indigenous empire and there
\nwas not so long a distance of time between the extinction of
\nthe kingdom of Vijayanagara and the rise of the Mahrattas.
\nThe Rajputs maintained their independence until the time of
\nAkbar and his successors and it was in the end partly with the
\naid of Rajput princes acting as their generals and ministers
\nthat the Moghuls completed their sway over the east and the
\nsouth. And this was again possible because\u2014a fact too often forgotten\u2014the Mussulman domination ceased very rapidly to be
\na foreign rule. The vast mass of the Mussulmans in the country
\nwere and are Indians by race, only a very small admixture of
\nPathan, Turkish and Moghul blood took place, and even
\nthe foreign kings and nobles became almost immediately
\nwholly Indian in mind, life and interest. If the race had
\nreally like certain European countries remained for many
\ncenturies passive, acquiescent and impotent under an alien
\nsway, that would indeed have been a proof of a great inherent
\nweakness; but the British is the first really continuous foreign
\nrule that has dominated India. The ancient civilisation underwent indeed an eclipse and decline under the weight of a Central
\nAsiatic religion and culture with which it failed to coalesce, but
\nit survived its pressure, put its impact on it in many directions
\nand remained to our own day alive even in decadence and
\ncapable of recovery, thus giving a proof of strength and soundness rare in the history of human cultures. And in the political
\nfield it never ceased to throw up great rulers, statesmen, soldiers,
\nadministrators. Its political genius was not in the decadence
\nsufficient, not coherent enough or swift in vision and action,
\nto withstand the Pathan, Moghul and European, but it was
\nstrong to survive and await every opportunity of revival, made a
\nbid for empire under Rana Sanga, created the great kingdom
\nof Vijaynagara, held its own for centuries against Islam in the
\nhills of Rajputana, and in its worst days still built and maintained <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-432<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nagainst the whole power of the ablest of the Moghuls
\nthe kingdom of Shivaji, formed the Mahratta confederacy and
\nthe Sikh Khalsa, undermined the great Moghul structure and
\nagain made a last attempt at empire. On the brink of the
\nfinal and almost fatal collapse in the midst of unspeakable darkness, disunion
\nand confusion it could still produce Ranjit
\nSingh and Nana Fadnavis and Madhoji Scindia and oppose the
\ninevitable march of England’s destiny. These facts do not
\ndiminish the weight of the charge that can be made of an
\nincapacity to see and solve the central problem and answer
\nthe one persistent question of Fate, but considered as the phenomena of a decadence they make a sufficiently remarkable
\nrecord not easily parallelled under similar circumstances and
\ncertainly put a different complexion on the total question than
\nthe crude statement that India has been always subject and
\npolitically incapable. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nThe real problem introduced by the Mussulman conquest
\nwas not that of subjection to a foreign rule and the ability to
\nrecover freedom, but the struggle between two civilisations,
\none ancient and indigenous, the other mediaeval and brought
\nin from outside. That which rendered the problem insoluble
\nwas the attachment of each to a powerful religion, the one
\nmilitant and aggressive, the other spiritually tolerant indeed
\nand flexible, but obstinately faithful in its discipline to its own
\nprinciple and standing on the defence behind a barrier of social
\nforms. There were two conceivable solutions, the rise of a
\ngreater spiritual principle and formation which could reconcile.
\nthe two or a political patriotism surmounting the religious
\nstruggle and uniting the two communities. Th2 first was impossible in that age. Akbar attempted it on the Mussulman side,
\nbut his religion was an intellectual and political rather than a
\nspiritual creation and had never any chance of assent from the
\nstrongly religious mind of the two communities. Nanak attempted it from the Hindu side, but his religion, universal
\nin principle, became a sect in practice. Akbar attempted also <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-433<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nto create a common political patriotism, but this endeavour
\n<\/b>too
\n<\/b>was foredoomed to failure. An autocratic empire built on the
\nCentral Asian principle could not create the desired spirit by
\ncalling in the administrative ability of the two communities
\nin the person of great men and princes and nobles to a common
\nservice in the creation of a united imperial India: the living
\nassent of the people was needed and that remained passive for
\nwant of awakening political ideals and institutions. The Moghul
\nempire was a great and magnificient construction and an
\nimmense amount of political genius and talent was employed
\nin its creation and maintenance. It was as splendid, powerful
\nand beneficent and, it may be added, in spite of Aurangzeb’s
\nfanatical zeal, infinitely more liberal and tolerant in religion
\nthan any mediaeval or contemporary European kingdom or
\nempire and India under its rule stood high in military and political strength, economic opulence and the brilliance of its art
\nand culture. But it failed like the empires before it, more
\ndisastrously even, and in the same way, crumbling not by external attack but by internal disintegration. A military and administrative centralised empire could not effect India’s living
\npolitical unity. And although a new life seemed about to rise
\nin the regional peoples, the chance was cut short by the intrusion of the European nations a ad their seizure of the opportunity created by the failure of the Peshwas and the desperate
\nconfusion of the succeeding anarchy and decadence. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nTwo remarkable creations embodied in the period of disintegration the last effort of the Indian political mind to form
\nthe foundations of a new life under the old conditions, but
\nneither proved to be of a kind that could solve the problem.
\nThe Maharatta revival inspired by Ramdas’s conception of the
\nMaharashtra Dharma and cast into shape by Shivaji was an
\nattempt to restore what could still be understood or remembred
\nof the ancient form and spirit, but it failed, as all attempts to
\nrevive the past must fail, in spite of the spiritual impetus
\nand the democratic forces that assisted its inception. <\/b>The <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-434<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n
\nPeshwas for all their genius lacked the vision of the founder
\nand could only establish a military and political confederacy.
\nAnd their endeavour to found an empire could not succeed
\nbecause it was inspired by a regional patriotism that failed
\nto enlarge itself beyond its own limits and awaken to the living
\nideal of a united India. The Sikh Khalsa on the other hand
\nwas an astonishingly original and novel creation and its face
\nwas turned not to the past but the future. Apart and singular
\nin its theocratic head and democratic soul and structure, its
\nprofound spiritual beginning, its first attempt to combine the
\ndeepest elements of Islam and Vedanta, it was a premature drive
\ntowards an entrance into the third or spiritual stage of human
\nsociety, but it could not create between the spirit and the
\nexternal life the transmitting medium of a rich creative thought
\nand culture. And thus hampered and deficient it began and
\nended within narrow local limits, achieved intensity but no
\npower of expansion. The conditions were not then in existence
\nthat could have made possible a successful endeavour. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nAfterwards came the night and a temporary end of all
\npolitical initiative and creation. The lifeless attempt of the last
\ngeneration to imitate and reproduce with a servile fidelity the
\nideals and forms of the West has been no true indication of the
\npolitical mind and genius of the Indian people. But again amid
\nall the mist of confusion there is still the possibility of a new
\ntwilight, not of an evening but a morning yuga-sandhyā.<\/i> India
\nof the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nshe lives and has still something to do for herself and the
\nhuman peoples. And that which must seek now to awake is not
\nan anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and
\ndoomed to repeat the cycle of the Occident’s success and
\nfailure, but still the ancient immemorable Shakti recovering
\nher deepest self, lifting her head higher towards the supreme
\nsource of light and strength and turning to discover the
\ncomplete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma, <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-435<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XV   I HAVE spoken hitherto of the greatness of Indian civilisation in the things most important to human culture, those activities that raise…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-foundations-of-indian-culture","wpcat-66-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}