{"id":927,"date":"2013-07-13T01:31:17","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=927"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:31:17","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:31:17","slug":"21-indian-polity-vol-14-the-foundation-of-indian-culture-volume-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/14-the-foundation-of-indian-culture-volume-14\/21-indian-polity-vol-14-the-foundation-of-indian-culture-volume-14","title":{"rendered":"-21_Indian Polity .htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\n
\nIndian Polity<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n           <\/font>
\n I<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nHAVE<\/span><\/font> spoken hitherto of the greatness of Indian
\ncivilisation in the things most important to human culture, those activities
\nthat raise man to his noblest potentialities as a mental, a spiritual,
\nreligious, intellectual, ethical, aesthetic being, and in all these matters the cavillings of the critics break down before the height and largeness and
\nprofundity revealed when we look at the whole and all its parts in the light of
\na true understanding of the spirit and intention and a close discerning regard
\non the actual achievement of the culture. There is revealed not only a great
\ncivilization, but one of the half dozen greatest of which we have a still
\nexisting record. But there are many who would admit the greatness of the
\nachievement of India in the things of the mind and the spirit, but would still
\npoint out that she has failed in life, her culture has not resulted in a
\nstrong, successful or progressive organisation of life such as Europe shows to
\nus, and that in the end at least the highest part of her mind turned away from
\nlife to asceticism and an inactive and world-shunning pursuit by the individual
\nof his personal spiritual salvation. Or at most she has come only to a certain
\npoint and then there has been an arrest and decadence.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nThis charge weighs with an especial
\nheaviness in the balance today because the modern man, even the modern cultured
\nman, is or tends to be to a degree quite unprecedented, politicon zoon, <\/i>a
\npolitical, economic and social being valuing above all things the efficiency of
\nthe outward existence and the things of the mind and spirit mainly, when not
\nexclusively, for their aid to humanity’s vital and mechanical progress: he has
\nnot that regard of the ancients which looked up towards the highest heights and
\nregarded an achievement in the things of the mind and the spirit with an
\nunquestioning admiration or a deep veneration for its own sake as the greatest
\npossible contribution to human culture and progress. And although this modern
\ntendency is exaggerated and ugly and degrading in its exaggeration, inimical<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nto<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-322<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>humanity’s spiritual evolution, it has this
\nmuch of truth behind it that while the first value of a culture is its power to
\nraise and enlarge the internal man, the mind, the soul, the spirit, its
\nsoundness is not complete unless it has shaped also his external existence and
\nmade of it a rhythm of advance towards high and great ideals. This is the true
\nsense of progress and there must be as part of it a sound political, economic
\nand social life, a power and efficiency enabling a people to survive, to grow
\nand to move securely towards a collective perfection, and a vital elasticity
\nand responsiveness that will give room for a constant advance in the outward
\nexpression of the mind and the spirit. If a culture does not serve these ends,
\nthen there is evidently a defect somewhere either in its essential conceptions
\nor its wholeness or in its application that will seriously detract from its
\nclaims to a complete and integral value.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The ideals that governed the spirit
\nand body of Indian society were of the highest kind, its social order secured
\nan in- expugnable basic stability, the strong life force that worked in it was
\ncreative of an extraordinary energy, richness and interest, and the life
\norganised remarkable in its opulence, variety in unity, beauty, productiveness,
\nmovement. All the records of Indian history, art and literature bear evidence
\nto a cultural life of this character and even in decline and dissolution there
\nsurvives some stamp of it to remind however faintly and distantly of the past
\ngreatness. To what then does the charge brought against Indian culture as an
\nagent of the life power amount and what is its justification? In its
\nexaggerated form it is founded upon the characteristics of the decline and
\ndissolution, the features of the decadence read backward into the time of
\ngreatness, and it amounts to this that India has always shown an incompetence
\nfor any free or sound political organisation and has been constantly a divided
\nand for the most part of her long history a subject nation, that her economic
\nsystem whatever its bygone merits, if it had any, remained an inelastic and
\nstatic order that led in modern conditions to poverty and failure and her
\nsociety an unprogressive hierarchy, caste-ridden, full of semi-barbaric abuses,
\nonly fit to be thrown on the scrap-heap among the broken rubbish of the past
\nand replaced by the freedom, soundness and perfec-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-323<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\ntion or at least the progressive perfectibility
\nof the European social order. It is\u00a0
\n<\/span>ecessary to re-establish the real facts and their meaning and afterwards
\nit will be time to pass judgment on the political, the economic and the social
\naspects of Indian culture. <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nThe legend of Indian political
\nincompetence has arisen from a false view of the historical development and an
\ninsufficient knowledge of the ancient past of the country. It has long been
\ncurrently supposed that she passed at once from the freer type of the primitive
\nAryan or Vedic social and political organisation to a system socially marked by
\nthe despotism of the Brahmin theocracy and politically by an absolute monarchy
\nof the oriental, by which is meant the Western Asiatic type, and has remained<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nfixed in these two things for ever after. That
\nsummary reading of <\/font> <\/span>
\nIndian history has been destroyed by a more careful and enlightened
\nscholarship and the facts are of a quite different nature. It is true that
\nIndia never evolved either the scrambling and burdensome industrialism or the
\nparliamentary organisation of freedom and self-styled democracy characteristic
\nof the bourgeois or Vaishya period, the cycle of European progress. But the
\ntime is passing when the uncritical praise of these things as the ideal state
\nand the last word of social and political progress was fashionable, their defects
\nare now visible and the greatness of an oriental civilisation need not be
\njudged by the standard of these western developments. Indian scholars have
\nattempted to read the modern ideas and types of democracy and even a
\nparliamentary system into the past of India, but this seems to me an illjudged
\nendeavour. There was a strong democratic element, if we must use the western
\nterms, in Indian polity and even institutions that present a certain analogy to
\nthe parliamentary form, but in reality these features were of India’s own kind
\nand not at all the same thing as modern parliaments and modem democracy. And so
\nconsidered they are a much more remarkable evidence of the political capacity
\nof the Indian people in their living adaptation to the ensemble of the social
\nmind and body of the nation than when we judge them by the very different
\nstandard of western society and the peculiar needs of its cultural cycle. <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nThe Indian system began with
\na variation of the type generally associated with the early history of the
\nAryan peoples;<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-324<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>but
\ncertain features have a. more general character and belong to a still earlier
\nstage in the social development of the human race. It was a clan or tribal
\nsystem, kula, <\/i>founded upon the equality of all the freemen of the clan
\nor race; this was not at first firmly founded upon the territorial basis, the
\nmigratory tendency was still in evidence or recurred under pressure and the
\nland was known by the name of the people who occupied it, the Kuru country or
\nsimply the Kurus, the Malava country or the Malavas. After the fixed settlement
\nwithin determined boundaries the system of the clan or tribe continued, but
\nfound a basic unit or constituent atom in the settled village community. The
\nmeeting of the people, visah, <\/i>assembling for communal deliberation, for
\nsacrifice and worship or as the host for war, remained for a long time the
\npowersign of the mass body and the agent of the active common life with the
\nking as the head and representative, but long depending even after his position
\nbecame hereditary on the assent of the people for his formal election or
\nconfirmation. The religious institution of the sacrifice developed in time a
\nclass of priests and inspired singers, men trained in the ritual or in
\npossession of the mystic knowledge which lay behind the symbols of the
\nsacrifice, the seed of the great Brahminic institution. These were not at first
\nhereditary, but exercised other professions and belonged in their ordinary life
\nto the general body of the people. This free and simple natural constitution of
\nthe society seems to have been general at first throughout Aryan India.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nThe later development out of this
\nprimitive form followed up to a certain point the ordinary line of evolution as
\nwe see it in other communities, but at the same time threw up certain very
\nstriking peculiarities that owing to the unique mentality of the race fixed
\nthemselves, became prominent characteristics and gave a different stamp to the
\npolitical, economic and social factors of Indian civilisation. The hereditary
\nprinciple emerged at an early stage and increased constantly its power and hold
\non the society until it became everywhere the basis of the whole organisation
\nof its activities. A hereditary kingship was established, a powerful princely
\nand warrior class appeared, the rest of the people were marked off as the caste
\nof traders, artisans and<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nP<\/font>age-325<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>agriculturalists and a subject or menial caste was
\nadded, perhaps sometimes as the result of conquest but more probably or more
\ncommonly from economic necessity, of servants and labourers. The predominance
\nfrom early times of the religious and spiritual tendency in the mind of the
\nIndian people brought about at the top of the social system the growth of the Brahmin
\norder, priests, scholars, legists, repositories of the sacred labouers of the
\nVedas, a development paralleled elsewhere but here given an unequalled
\npermanence and definiteness and supreme importance. In other countries with a
\nless complex mentality this predominance might have resulted in a theocracy;
\nbut the Brahmins in spite of their ever-increasing and finally predominant
\nauthority did not and could not usurp in India the political power. As
\nsacrosanct priests and legists and spiritual preceptors of the monarch and the
\npeople they exercised a very considerable influence, but the real or active
\npolitical power remained with the king, the Kshatriya aristocracy and the
\ncommons.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

A peculiar figure for some time was the Rishi, the man of
\na higher spiritual experience and knowledge, born in any of the classes, but
\nexercising an authority by his spiritual personality over all, revered and
\nconsulted by the king of whom he was sometimes the religious preceptor, and in
\nthe then fluid state of social evolution able alone to exercise an important
\nrole in evolving new basic ideas and effecting direct and immediate changes of
\nthe socio-religious ideas and customs of the people. It was a marked feature of
\nthe Indian mind that it sought to attach a spiritual meaning and a religious
\nsanction to all, even to the most external social and political circumstances
\nof its life imposing on all classes and functions an ideal, not except
\nincidentally of rights and powers, but of duties, a rule of their action and an
\nideal way and temperament, character, spirit in the action, a Dharma with a
\nspiritual significance. It was the work of the Rishi to put this stamp
\nenduringly on the national mind, to prolong and perpetuate it, to discover and
\ninterpret the ideal law and its practical meaning, to cast the life of the
\npeople into the well-shaped ideals and significant forms of a civilisation
\nfounded on the spiritual and religious sense. And in later ages we find the
\nBrahminic schools of legists a tributing their codes, though in<\/font><\/p>\n

Page-326<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nthemselves only formulations of existing rule
\nand custom, to the ancient Rishis. Whatever the developments of the Indian
\nsocio- political body in later days, this original character still exercised
\nits influence, even when all tended at last to become traditionalised and
\nconventionalised instead of moving forward constantly in the steps of a free
\nand living practice.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>The political
\nevolution of this early system varied in different parts of India. The ordinary
\ndevelopment, as in most other countries, was in the direction of an increasing
\nemphasis on the control of the king as the centre, head and unifying factor of
\na more and more complex system of rule and administration and this prevailed
\neventually and became the universal type. But for a long time it was combated
\nand held in check by a contrary tendency that resulted in the appearance and
\nthe strong and enduring vitality of city or regional or confederated republics.
\nThe king became either a hereditary or elected executive head of the republic
\nor an archon administering for a brief and fixed period or else he altogether
\ndisappeared from the polity of the state. This turn must have come about in
\nmany cases by a natural evolution of the power of the assemblies, but in others
\nit seems to have been secured by some kind of revolution and there appear to
\nhave been vicissitudes, alternations between periods of monarchical and periods
\nof republican government. Among a certain number of the Indian peoples the
\nrepublican form finally asserted its hold and proved itself capable of a strong
\nand settled organisation and a long duration lasting over many centuries. In
\nsome cases they were governed by a democratic assembly, in more by an
\noligarchical senate. It is unfortunate that we know little of the details of
\nthe constitution and nothing of the inner history of these Indian republics,
\nbut the evidence is clear of the high reputation they enjoyed throughout India
\nfor the excellence of their civil and the formidable efficiency of their
\nmilitary organisation. There is an interesting dictum of Buddha that so long as
\nthe republican institutions were maintained in their purity and vigour, a small
\nstate of this kind would remain invincible even by the arms of the powerful and
\nambitious Magadhan monarchy, and this opinion is amply confirmed by the
\npolitical writers who consider the alliance of the republics the most solid and
\nvaluable<\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage-327<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\npolitical and military support a king could
\nhave, and advise their reduction not so much by the force of arms, as that
\nwould have a very precarious chance of success, but by Machiavellian means,
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nsimilar to those actually employed in Greece by Philip
\nof Macedon, – aimed at undermining their internal unity and the efficiency of
\ntheir constitution.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>These republican states were already
\nlong established and in vigorous functioning in the sixth century before
\nChrist, contemporary therefore with the brilliant but ephemeral and troubled
\nGreek city commonwealths, but this form <\/i>of political liberty in India
\nlong outlasted the period of Greek republican freedom. The ancient Indian mind,
\nnot less fertile in political invention, must be considered superior to that of
\nthe mercurial and restless Mediterranean people in the capacity for a firm organisation
\nand settled constitutional order. Some of these states appear to have enjoyed a
\nlonger and a more settled history of vigorous freedom than republican Rome, for
\nthey persisted even against the mighty empire of Chandragupta and Asoka and
\nwere still in existence in the early centuries of the Christian era. But none
\nof them developed the aggressive spirit and the conquering and widely
\norganising capacity of the Roman republic; they were content to preserve their
\nown free inner life and their independence. India especially after the invasion
\nof Alexander felt the need of a movement of unification and the republics were
\nfactors of division: strong for themselves, they could do nothing for the
\norganisation of the peninsula, too vast indeed for any system of confederation
\nof small-states to be possible<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nand
\nindeed in the ancient world that endeavour nowhere succeeded, always it broke
\ndown in the effort of expansion beyond certain narrow limits and could not
\nendure against the movement towards a more centralised government. In India as
\nelsewhere it was the monarchical state that grew and finally held the field
\nreplacing all other forms of political organisation. The republican
\norganisation disappeared from her history and is known to us only by the
\nevidence of coins, scattered references and the testimony of Greek observers
\nand of the contemporary political writers and theorists who supported and
\nhelped to confirm and develop the monarchical state throughout India.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-328<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nBut Indian monarchy previous to the Mahomedan
\ninvasion was not, in spite of a certain sanctity and great authority conceded
\nto the regal position and the personality of the king as the representative of
\nthe divine Power and the guardian of the Dharma, in any way a personal
\ndespotism or an absolutist autocracy: it had no resemblance to the ancient
\nPersian monarchy or the monarchies of western and central Asia or the Roman
\nimperial government or later European autocracies: it was of an altogether
\ndifferent type from the system of the Pathan or the Moghul emperors. The Indian
\nking exercised supreme administrative and judicial power, was in possession of
\nall the military forces of the kingdom and with his Council alone responsible
\nfor peace and war and he had too a general supervision and control over the
\ngood order and welfare of the life of the community, but his power was not
\npersonal and it was besides hedged in by safe- guards against abuse and
\nencroachment and limited by the liberties and powers of other public
\nauthorities and interests who were, so to speak, lesser co-partners with him in
\nthe exercise of sovereignty and administrative legislation and control. He was
\nin fact a limited or constitutional monarch, although the machinery by which
\nthe constitution was maintained and the limitation effected differed from the
\nkind familiar in European history; and even the continuance of his rule was far
\nmore dependent than that of mediaeval European kings on the continued will and
\nassent of the people.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nA greater sovereign
\nthan the king was the Dharma, the religious, ethical, social, political,juridic
\nand customary law organically governing the life of the people. This impersonal
\nauthority was considered sacred and eternal in its spirit and the totality of
\nits body, always characteristically the same, the changes organically and
\nspontaneously brought about in its actual form by the evolution of the society
\nbeing constantly incorporated in it, regional, family and other customs forming
\na sort of attendant and subordinate body capable of change only from within,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>and
\nwith the Dharma no secular authority had any right of autocratic interference.
\nThe Brahmins themselves ,were recorders and exponents of the Dharma, not its
\ncreators nor authorised to make at will any changes, although it is evident
\nthat by an autho-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-329<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nritative expression of opinion they could and
\ndid favour or oppose this or that tendency to change of principle or detail.
\nThe king was only the guardian, executor and servant of the Dharma, charged to
\nsee to its observance and to prevent offences, serious irregularities and
\nbreaches. He himself was bound the first to obey it and observe the rigorous
\nrule it laid on his personal life and action and on the province, powers and
\nduties of his regal authority and office.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nThis
\nsubjection of the sovereign power to the Dharma was not an ideal theory
\ninoperative in practice; for the rule of the socio-religious law actively
\nconditioned the whole life of the people and was therefore a living reality,
\nand it had in the political field very large practical consequences. It meant
\nfirst that the king had not the power of direct legislation and was limited to
\nthe issue of administrative decrees that had to be in consonance with the
\nreligious, social, political, economic constitution of the community, – and
\neven here there were other powers than that of the king who shared with him the
\nright of promulgating and seeing to the execution of administrative decrees
\nindependently issued, – neither could he disregard in the general tenor and
\ncharacter and the effective result of his administration the express or tacit
\nwill of the people.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe religious liberties of the commons were assured and could not
\nnormally be infringed by any secular authority; each religious community, each
\nnew or long-standing religion could shape its own way of life and institutions
\nand had its own authorities or governing bodies exercising in their proper
\nfield an entire independence. There was no exclusive State rellgion and the
\nmonarch was not the religious head of the people. Asoka in this respect seems
\nto have attempted an extension of the royal control or influence and similar
\nvelleities were occasionally shown on a minor scale by other powerful
\nsovereigns. But Asoka’s so-called edicts of this kind had a recommendatory
\nrather than an imperative character, and the sovereign who wished to bring
\nabout a change in religious belief or institutions had always, in accordance
\nwith the Indian principle of communal freedom and the obligation of a respect
\nfor and a previous consultation of the wishes of those concerned, to secure the
\nassent of the recognised<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-330<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nauthorities or to refer the matter to a
\nconsultative assembly for deliberation, as was done in the famous Buddhist
\ncouncils, or to arrange a discussion between the exponents of the different
\nreligions and abide by the issue. The monarch might personally favour a
\nparticular sect or creed and his active preference might evidently have a
\nconsiderable propagandist influence, but at the same time he was bound to
\nrespect and support in his public office all the recognised religions of the
\npeople with a certain measure of impartiality, a rule that explains the support
\nextended by Buddhist and Brahmin emperors to both the rival religions. At times
\nthere were, mainly in the South, instances of petty or violent State
\npersecutions, but these outbreaks were a violation of the Dharma due to
\nmomentary passion at a time of acute religious ferment and were always local
\nand of a brief duration. Normally there was no place in the Indian political
\nsystem for religious oppression and intolerance and a settled State policy of
\nthat kind was unthinkable.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe social life
\nof the people was similarly free from autocratic interference. Instances of
\nroyal legislation in this province are rare and here too, when it occurred,
\nthere had to be a consultation of the will of those concerned, as in the
\nrearrangement or the reconstitution of the caste system by the Sena kings in
\nBengal after its disorganisation during a long period of Buddhist predominance.
\nChange in the society was brought about not artificially from above but
\nautomatically from within and principally by the freedom allowed to families or
\nparticular communities to develop or alter automatically their own rule of life
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>\u00e3<\/font><\/span>c<\/font><\/span><\/i>\u00e3<\/font><\/span>ra.<\/font><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\nIn the sphere of
\nadministration the power of the king was similarly hedged in by the standing
\nconstitution of the Dharma. His right of taxation was limited in the most
\nimportant sources of revenue to a fixed percentage as a maximum and hi other
\ndirections often by the right of the bodies representing the various elements
\nof the community to a voice in the matter and always by the general rule that
\nhis right to govern was subject to the satisfaction and good-will of the
\npeople. This, as we shall see, was not merely a pious wish or opinion of the
\nBrahmin custodians of the Dharma. The king was in person the supreme court and
\nthe<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-331<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nhighest control in the execution of the civil
\nand criminal law, but here too his role was that of the executor: he was bound
\nto ad:’ minister the law faithfully as it stood through his judges or with the
\naid of the Brahmin legists learned in these matters. He had the complete and
\nunfettered control in his Council only of foreign policy, military
\nadministration and war and peace and of a great number of directive activities.
\nHe was free to make efficient arrangements for all that part of the
\nadministration that served to secure and promote the welfare of the community,
\ngood order, public morals, and all such matters as could best be supervised or
\nregulated by the sovereign authority. He had a right of patronage and
\npunishment consistent with the law and was expected to exercise it with a
\nstrict regard to an effect of general beneficence and promotion of the public
\nwelfare.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/font><\/span>There could therefore be
\nordinarily little or no room in the ancient Indian system for autocratic freak
\nor monarchial violence and oppression, much less for the savage cruelty and
\ntyranny of so common an occurrence in the history of some other countries.
\nNevertheless such happenings were possible by the sovereign’s disregard of the
\nDharma or by a misuse of his power of administrative decree; instances occurred
\nof the kind, though the worst recorded is that of a tyrant belonging to a
\nforeign dynasty; in other cases any prolonged outbreak of autocratic caprice,
\nviolence or injustice seems to have led before long to an effective protest or
\nrevolt on the part of the people. The legists provided for the possibility of
\noppression. In spite of the sanctity and prestige attaching to the sovereign it
\nwas laid down that obedience ceased to be binding if the king ceased to be
\nfaithful executor of the Dharma. Incompetence and violation of the obligation
\nto rule to the satisfaction of the people were in theory and effect sufficient
\ncauses 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 this
\njustification by the highest authority of the right or even the duty of
\ninsurrection and regicide in extreme cases is sufficient to show that
\nabsolutism or the unconditional divine right of kings was no part of the
\nintention of the Indian political system. As a matter of fact the right was
\nactually exercised as we find both from history and literature.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-332<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>Another
\nmore peaceful and more commonly exercised remedy was a threat of secession or
\nexodus which in most cases was sufficient to bring the delinquent ruler to
\nreason. It is interesting to find the threat of secession employed against an
\nunpopular monarch in the South as late as the seventeenth century, as well as a
\ndeclaration by a popular assembly denouncing any assistance given to the king
\nas an act of treason. A more common remedy was deposition by the council of
\nministers or by the public assemblies. The kingship thus constituted proved to
\nbe in effect moderate, efficient and beneficent, served well the purposes
\nassigned to it and secured an abiding hold on the affections of the people. The
\nmonarchical institution was however only one, an approved and very important,
\nbut not, as we see from the existence of the ancient republics, an
\nindispensable element of the Indian socio-political system, and we shall
\nunderstand nothing of the real principle of the system and its working if we
\nstop short with a view of the regal facade and fail to see what lay behind it.
\nIt is there that we shall find the clue to the essential character of the whole
\nconstruction.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-333<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>                                                                                                                 <\/font>  
\n2<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n                   
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nT<\/span><\/font>HE true nature of the Indian
\npolity can only be realised if we look at it not as a separate thing, a
\nmachinery independent of the rest of the mind and life of the people, but as a
\npart of and in its relation to the organic totality of the social existence.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>A people, a great human collectivity,
\nis in fact an organic living being with a collective or rather – for the word
\ncollective is too mechanical to be true to the inner reality<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n– a common or <\/font> <\/span>
\ncommunal soul, mind and body.
\nThe life of the society like the physical life of the individual human being
\npasses through a cycle of birth, growth, youth, ripeness and decline, and if
\nthis last stage goes far enough without any arrest of its course towards
\ndecadence, it may perish, – even so all the older peoples and nations except
\nIndia and China perished, – as a man dies of old age. But the collective being
\nhas 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 than its
\nbody, and if this idea is itself sufficiently powerful, large and force-giving
\nand the people sufficiently strong, vital and plastic in mind and temperament
\nto combine stability with a constant enlargement or new application of the
\npower of the soul idea or life idea in its being, it may pass through many such
\ncycles before it comes to a final exhaustion. Moreover, the idea is itself only
\nthe principle of soul manifestation of the communal being and each communal soul
\nagain a manifestation and vehicle of the greater eternal spirit that expresses
\nitself in Time and on earth is seeking, as it were, its own fullness in
\nhumanity through the vicissitudes of the human cycles. A people then which
\nlearns to live consciously not solely in its physical and outward life, not
\neven only in that and the power of the life idea or soul idea that governs the
\nchanges of its development and is the key to its psychology and temperament,
\nbut in the soul and spirit behind, may not at all exhaust itself, may not end
\nby disappearance or a dissolution or a fusion into others or have to give place
\nto a new race and people, but having itself<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-334<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

fused into its life many original smaller societies and
\nattained to its maximum natural growth pass without death through many
\nrenascences. And even if at any time it appears to be on the point of absolute
\nexhaustion and dissolution, it may recover by the force of the spirit and begin
\nanother and perhaps a more glorious cycle. The history of India has been that
\nof the life of such a people.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The master idea that has governed the
\nlife, culture, social ideals of the Indian people has been the seeking of man
\nfor his true spiritual self and the use of life<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nsubject to a necessary evolution first of his lower
\nphysical, vital and mental nature<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n– as
\na <\/font> <\/span>
\nframe
\nand means for that discovery and for man’s ascent from the ignorant natural
\ninto the spiritual existence. This dominant idea India has never quite
\nforgotten even under the stress and material exigencies and the externalities
\nof political and social construction. But the difficulty of making the social
\nlife an expression of man’s true self and some highest realisation of the
\nspirit within him is immensely greater than that which attends a spiritual self-expression
\nthrough the things of the mind, religion, thought, art, literature, and while
\nin these India reached extraordinary heights and largenesses, she could not in
\nthe outward life go beyond certain very partial realisations and very imperfect
\ntentatives,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\na general
\nspiritualising symbolism, an infiltration of the greater aspiration, a certain
\ncast given to the communal life, the creation of institutions favourable to the
\nspiritual idea. Politics, society, economics are the natural field of the two
\nfirst and grosser parts of human aim and conduct recognised in the Indian
\nsystem, interest and hedonistic desire: Dharma, the higher law, has nowhere
\nbeen brought more than partially into this outer side of life, and in politics
\nto a very minimum extent, for the effort at governing political action by
\nethics is usually little more than a pretence. The coordination or true union
\nof the collective outward life with <\/font> <\/span>
\nmoksa
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span><\/i>the
\nliberated spiritual existence, has hardly even been <\/font> <\/span>
\nconceived
\nor attempted, much less anywhere succeeded in the past history of the yet
\nhardly adult human race. Accordingly, we find that the governance by the Dharma
\nof India’s social, economic and even, though here the attempt broke down
\nearlier than in other spheres, her political rule of life, system, turn of
\nexistence, with the adumbration of a spiritual significance behind,<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-335<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n–<\/font><\/span> the full attainment of the
\nspiritual life being left as a supreme <\/font> <\/span>
\naim to the effort of the
\nindividual,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nwas as far as her
\nancient system could advance. This much endeavour, however, she did make with
\npersistence and patience and it gave a peculiar type to her social polity. It
\nis perhaps for a future India, taking up and enlarging with a more complete
\naim, a more comprehensive experience, a more certain knowledge that shall
\nreconcile life and the spirit, her ancient mission, to found the status and
\naction of the collective being of man on the realisation of the deeper
\nspiritual truth, the yet unrealised spiritual potentialities of our existence
\nand so ensoul the life of her people as to make it the Lila of the greater Self
\nin humanity, a conscious communal soul and body of Virat, the universal
\nspirit.<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Another point must be noted which
\ncreates a difference between the ancient polity of India and that of the
\nEuropean peoples and makes the standards of the West as inapplicable here as in
\nthe things of the mind and the inner culture. Human society has in its growth
\nto pass through three stages of evolution before it can arrive at the
\ncompleteness of its possibilities. The first is a condition in which the forms
\nand activities of the communal existence are those of the spontaneous play of
\nthe powers and principles of its life. All its growth, all its formations,
\ncustoms, institutions are then a natural organic development,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>the motive and constructive
\npower coming mostly from the subconscient <\/font> <\/span>
\nprinciple
\nof the life within it,<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nexpressing,
\nbut without deliberate intention, the communal psychology, temperament, vital
\nand physical need, and persisting or altering partly under the pressure of an
\ninternal impulse, partly under that of the environment acting on the communal
\nmind and temper. In this stage the people is not yet intelligently
\nself-conscious in the way of the reason, is not yet a thinking collective
\nbeing, and it does not try to govern its whole communal existence by the
\nreasoning will, but lives according to its vital intuitions or their first
\nmental renderings. The early framework of Indian society and polity grew up in
\nsuch a period as in most ancient and mediaeval communities, but also in the
\nlater age of a growing social self-consciousness they were not rejected but
\nonly farther shaped, developed, systematised so as to be always, not a
\nconstruction of politicians, legislators and<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-336<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nsocial and political thinkers,
\nbut a strongly stable vital order natural to the mind, instincts and life
\nintuitions of the Indian <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\npeople. <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nA second stage of
\nthe society is that in which the communal mind becomes more and more
\nintellectually self-conscious, first in its more cultured minds, then more
\ngenerally, first broadly, then more and more minutely and in all the parts of
\nits life. It learns to review and deal with its own life, communal ideas,
\nneeds, institutions in the light of the developed intelligence and finally by
\nthe power of the critical and constructive reason. This is a stage which is
\nfull of great possibilities but attended too by serious characteristic dangers.
\nIts first advantages are those which go always with the increase of a clear and
\nunderstanding and finally an exact and scientific knowledge and the culminating
\nstage is the strict and armoured efficiency which the critical and
\nconstructive, the scientific reason used to the fullest degree offers as its
\nreward and consequence. Another and greater outcome of this stage of social
\nevolution is the emergence of high and luminous ideals which promise to raise
\nman beyond the limits of the vital being, beyond his first social, economic and
\npolitical needs and desires and out of their customary moulds and inspire an
\nimpulse of bold experiment with the communal life which opens a field of
\npossibility for the realisation of a more and more ideal society. This application
\nof the scientific mind to life with the strict, well-finished, armoured
\nefficiency which is its normal highest result, this pursuit of great
\nconsciously proposed social and political ideals and the progress which is the
\nindex of the ground covered in the endeavour, have been, with whatever limits
\nand drawbacks, the distinguishing advantages of the political and social effort
\nof Europe.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nOn the other hand the tendency of
\nthe reason when it pre- tends to deal with the materials of life as its
\nabsolute governor, is to look too far away from the reality of the society as a
\nliving growth and to treat it as a mechanism which can be manipulated at will
\nand constructed like so much dead wood or iron according to the arbitrary
\ndictates of the intelligence. The sophisticating, labouring, constructing,
\nefficient, mechanising reason loses hold of the simple principles of a people’s
\nvitality; it cuts<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nit away <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-337<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

from the secret roots of its life. The result is an
\nexaggerated dependence on system and institution, on legislation and
\nadministration and the deadly tendency to develop, in place of a living people,
\na mechanical State. An instrument of the communal life tries to take the place
\nof the life itself and there is created a powerful but mechanical and
\nartificial organisation; but, as the price of this exterior gain, there is lost
\nthe truth of life of an organically self-developing communal soul in the body
\nof a free and living people. It is this error of the scientific reason stifling
\nthe work of the vital and the spiritual intuition under the dead weight of its
\nmechanical method which is the weakness of Europe and has deceived her
\naspiration and prevented her from arriving at the true realisation of her own
\nhigher ideals.<\/font><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>It
\nis only by reaching a third stage of the evolution of the collective social as
\nof the individual human being that the ideals first seized and cherished by the
\nthought of man can discover their own real source and character and their true
\nmeans and conditions of effectuation or the perfect society be anything more
\nthan a vision on a shining cloud constantly run after in a circle and
\nconstantly deceiving the hope and escaping the embrace. That will be when man
\nin the collectivity begins to live more deeply and to govern his collective,
\nlife neither primarily by the needs, instincts, intuitions welling up out of
\nthe vital self, nor secondarily by the constructions of the reasoning mind, but
\nfirst, foremost and always by the power of unity, sympathy, spontaneous
\nliberty, supple and living order of his discovered greater self and spirit in
\nwhich the individual and the communal existence have their law of freedom,
\nperfection and oneness. That is a rule that has not yet anywhere found its
\nright conditions for even beginning its effort, for it can only come when man’s
\nattempt to reach and abide by the law of the spiritual existence is no longer
\nan exceptional aim for individuals or else degraded in its more general
\naspiration to the form of a popular religion, but is recognised and followed
\nout as the imperative need of his being and its true and right attainment the
\nnecessity of the next step in the evolution of the race.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nThe small early Indian communities
\ndeveloped like others through the first stage of a vigorous and spontaneous
\nvitality,<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-33<\/span>8<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>finding
\nnaturally and freely its own norm and line, casting up form of life and social
\nand political institution out of the vital intuition and temperament of the
\ncommunal being. As they fused with each other into an increasing cultural and
\nsocial unity and formed larger and larger political bodies, they developed a
\ncommon spirit and a common basis and general structure allowing of a great
\nfreedom of variation in minor line and figure. There was no need of a rigid
\nuniformity; the common spirit and life impulse were enough to impose on this
\nplasticity a law of general oneness. And even when there grew up the great
\nkingdoms and empires, still the characteristic institutions of the smaller
\nkingdoms, republics, peoples were as much as possible incorporated rather than
\ndestroyed or thrown aside in the new cast of the socio-political structure.
\nWhatever could not survive in the natural evolution of the people or was no
\nlonger needed, fell away of itself and passed into desuetude; whatever could
\nlast by modifying itself to new circumstance and environment was allowed to
\nsurvive; whatever was in intimate consonance with the psychical and the vital
\nlaw of being and temperament of the Indian people became universalised and took
\nits place in the enduring figure of the society and polity.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>This spontaneous principle of life was
\nrespected by the age of growing intellectual culture. The Indian thinkers on
\nsociety, economics and politics, Dharma Shastra and Artha Shastra, made it
\ntheir business not to construct ideals and systems of society and government in
\nthe abstract intelligence, but to understand and regulate by the practical
\nreason the institutions and ways of communal living already developed by the
\ncommunal mind and life and to develop, fix and harmonise without destroying the
\noriginal elements, and whatever new element or idea was needed was added or
\nintroduced as a super-structure or a modifying but not a revolutionary and
\ndestructive principle. It was in this way that the transition from the earlier
\nstages to the fully developed monarchical polity was managed; it proceeded by
\nan incorporation of the existing institutions under the supreme control of the
\nking or the emperor. The character and status of many of them was modified by
\nthe super-imposition of the monarchical or imperial system, but, as far as
\npossible, they<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-339<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

did not pass out of existence.
\nAs a result we do not find in India the element of intellectually idealistic
\npolitical progress or revolutionary experiment which has been so marked a
\nfeature of ancient and of modem Europe. A profound respect for the creations of
\nthe past as the natural expression of the Indian mind and life, the sound manifestation
\nof its Dharma or right law of being, was the strongest element in the mental
\nattitude and this preservative instinct was not disturbed but rather yet more
\nfirmly settled and fixed by the great millennium of high intellectual culture.
\nA slow evolution of custom and institution conservative of the principle of
\nsettled order, of social and political precedent, of established framework and
\nstructure was the one way of progress possible or admissible. On the other
\nhand, Indian polity never arrived at that unwholesome substitution of the
\nmechanical for the natural order of the life of the people which has been the
\ndisease of European civilisation now culminating in the monstrous artificial
\norganisation of the bureaucratic and industrial State. The advantages of the
\nidealising intellect were absent, but so also were the disadvantages of the
\nmechanising rational intelligence.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The Indian mind has always been
\nprofoundly intuitive in habit even when it was the most occupied with the
\ndevelopment of the reasoning intelligence, and its political and social thought
\nhas therefore been always an attempt to combine the intuitions of life and the
\nintuitions of the spirit with the light of the reason acting as an intermediary
\nand an ordering and regulating factor. It has tried to base itself strongly on
\nthe established and persistent actualities of life and to depend for its
\nidealism not on the intellect but on the illuminations, inspirations, higher
\nexperiences of the spirit, and it -has used the reason as a critical power
\ntesting and assuring the steps and aiding but not replacing the life and the
\nspirit<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nalways the true and sound constructors. The spiri<\/font><\/span>tual mind of India
\nregarded life as a manifestation of the Self: the community was the body of the
\ncreator Brahma, the people was a life body of Brahman in the samasti, <\/i>the
\ncollectivity, it was the collective Narayana, as the individual was Brahman in
\nthe vyasti, <\/i>the separate Jiva, the individual Narayana; the king was the
\nliving representative of the Divine and the other<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-340<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\norders of the community the natural powers of
\nthe collective self, prakrtayab. <\/i>The agreed conventions, institutes,
\ncustoms, constitution of the body social and politic in all its parts had
\ntherefore not only a binding authority but a certain sacrosanct character.
\n<\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nThe right order of human life as of
\nthe universe is preserved according to the ancient Indian idea by each
\nindividual being following faithfully his svadharma, <\/i>the true law and
\nnorm of his nature and the nature of his kind and by the group being, the
\norganic collective life, doing likewise. The family, clan, caste, class,
\nsocial, religious, industrial or other community, nation, people are all
\norganic group beings that evolve their own Dharma and to follow it is the
\ncondition of their preservation, healthy continuity, sound action. There is
\nalso the Dharma of the position, the function, the particular relation with
\nothers, as there is too the Dharma imposed by the condition, environment, age, yugadharma,
\n<\/i>the universal religious or ethical Dharma, and all these acting on the
\nnatural Dharma, the action according to the <\/font> svabh<\/font><\/i><\/span>\u00e3<\/font><\/span>va, <\/font> <\/span><\/i>
\ncreate the body of
\nthe -Law. The ancient theory supposed that in an entirely right and sound
\ncondition of man, individual and collective, – a condition typified by the
\nlegendary Golden Age, Satya Yuga, Age of Truth,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthere is no need of any political government or State
\nor artificial construction of society, because all then live freely according
\nto the truth of their enlightened self and God-inhabited being and therefore
\nspontaneously according to the inner divine Dharma. The self- determining
\nindividual and self-determining community living according to the right and
\nfree law of his and its being is there- fore the ideal. But in the actual condition
\nof humanity, its ignorant and devious nature subject to perversions and
\nviolations of the true individual and the true social Dharma, there has to be
\nsuper-imposed on the natural life of society a State, a sovereign power, a king
\nor governing body, whose business is not to interfere unduly with the life of
\nthe society, which must be allowed to function for the most part according to
\nits natural law and custom and spontaneous development, but to superintend and
\nassist its right process and see that the Dharma is observed and in vigour and,
\nnegatively, to punish and repress and, as far as may be, prevent offences
\nagainst the Dharma. A more advanced stage<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-341<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nof corruption of the Dharma is marked by the
\nnecessity of the appearance of the legislator and the formal government of the
\nwhole of life by external or written law and code and rule; but to determine it<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>apart from external
\nadministrative detail- was not the function of the political sovereign, who was
\nonly its administrator, but of the socio-religious creator, the Rishi, or the
\nBrahminic recorder and interpreter. And the Law itself written or unwritten was
\nalways not a thing to be new created or fabricated by a political and
\nlegislative authority; but a thing already existent and only to be interpreted
\nand stated as it was or as it grew naturally out of pre-existing law and
\nprinciple in the communal life and consciousness. The last and worst state of
\nthe society growing out of this increasing artificiality and convention must be
\na period of anarchy and conflict and dissolution of the <\/font> <\/span>
\nDharma,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nKali Yuga,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nwhich
\nmust precede through a red<\/font><\/span>grey evening of cataclysm and struggle a recovery and
\na new self- expression of the spirit in the human being.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The main
\nfunction of the political sovereign, the king and council and the other ruling
\nmembers of the body politic, was therefore to serve and assist the maintenance
\nof the sound law of life of the society: the sovereign was the guardian and
\nadministrator of the Dharma. The function of society itself included the right
\nsatisfaction of the vital, economic and other needs of the human being and of
\nhis hedonistic claim to pleasure and enjoyment, but according to their right
\nlaw and measure of satisfaction and subject and subordinated to the ethical and
\nsocial and religious Dharma. All the members and groups of the socio-political
\nbody had their Dharma determined for them by their nature, their position,
\ntheir relation to the whole body and must be assured and maintained in the free
\nand right exercise of it, must be left to their own natural and self-determined
\nfunctioning within their own bounds, but at the same time restrained from any
\ntransgression, encroachment or deviation from their right working and true
\nlimits. That was the office of the supreme political authority, the sovereign
\nin his Council aided by the public assemblies. It was not the business of the
\nstate authority to interfere with or encroach upon the free functioning of the
\ncaste, religious community, guild, village, township or the orga-<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-342<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nnic custom of the region or province or to
\nabrogate their rights, for these were inherent because necessary to the sound
\nexercise of the social Dharma. All that it was called upon to do was to
\nco-ordinate to exercise a general and supreme control, to defend the life of
\nthe community against external attack or internal disruption to repress crime
\nand disorder, to assist promote and regulate in its larger lines the economic
\nand industrial welfare, to see to the provision of facilities, and to use for
\nthese purposes the powers that passed beyond the scope of the others.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Thus in
\neffect the Indian polity was the system of a very complex communal freedom and
\nself-determination each group unit of the community having its own natural
\nexistence and ad- ministering its own proper life and business, set off from
\nthe rest by a natural demarcation of its field and limits, but connected with
\nthe whole by well-understood relations, each a co-partner with the others in
\nthe powers and duties of the communal existence, executing its own laws and
\nrules, administering within its own proper limits, joining with the others in
\nthe discussion and the regulation of matters of a mutual or common interest and
\nrepresented in some way and to the degree of its importance in the general
\nassemblies of the kingdom or empire. The State, sovereign or supreme political
\nauthority, was an instrument of co-ordination and of a general control and
\nefficiency and exercised a supreme but not an absolute authority; for in all its
\nrights and powers it was limited by the Law and by the will of the people and
\nin all its internal functions only a co-partner with the other members of the
\nsocio-political body.<\/p>\n

<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>This was the theory and principle and
\nthe actual constitution of the Indian polity, a complex of communal freedom and
\nself- determination with a supreme co-ordinating authority, a sovereign person
\nand body, armed with efficient powers, position and prestige but limited to its
\nproper rights and functions, at once controlling and controlled by the rest,
\nadmitting them as its active co-partners in all branches sharing the regulation
\nand administration of the communal existence and all alike the sovereign, the
\npeople and all its constituent communities, bound to the maintenance and
\nrestrained by the yoke of the Dharma. Moreover the economic and political
\naspects of the communal<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-343<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

life were only a part of the
\nDharma and a part not at all separate but inextricably united with all the
\nrest, the religious, the ethical, the higher cultural aim of the social
\nexistence. The ethical law coloured the political and economic and was imposed
\non every action of the king and his ministers, the council and assemblies, the
\nindividual, the constituent groups of the society; ethical and cultural
\nconsiderations counted in the use of the vote and the qualifications for
\nminister, official and councillor; a high character and training was expected
\nfrom all who held authority in the affairs of the Aryan people. The religious
\nspirit and the reminders of religion were the head and the background of the
\nwhole life of king and people. The life of the society was regarded not so much
\nas an aim in itself in spite of the necessary specialisation of parts of its
\nsystem, but in all its parts and the whole as a great framework and training
\nground for the education of the human mind and soul and its development through
\nthe natural to the spiritual existence.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-344<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t
\n\t\t3<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>
\nT<\/font><\/span>HE<\/span><\/font> socio-political evolution of Indian civilisation, as
\nfar as one can judge from the available records, passed through four historical
\nstages, first the simple Aryan community, then a long period of transition in
\nwhich the national life was proceeding through a considerable variety of
\nexperimental formations in political structure and synthesis, thirdly, the
\ndefinite formation of the monarchical state co-ordinating all the complex
\nelements of the communal life of the people into regional and imperial unities,
\nand last the era of decline in which there was an internal arrest and stagnation
\nand an imposition of new cultures and systems from western Asia and Europe. The
\ndistinguishing character of the first three periods is a remarkable solidity and
\nstability in all the formations and a sound and vital and powerful evolution of
\nthe life of the people rendered slow and leisurely by this fundamental
\nconservative stability of the system but all the more sure in its building and
\nliving and complete in its structure. And even in the decline this solidity
\nopposes a strong resistance to the process of demolition. The structure breaks
\nup at the top under foreign pressure, but preserves for a long time its basis,
\nkeeps, wherever it can maintain itself against invasion, much of its
\ncharacteristic system and is even towards the end capable of attempts at revival
\nof its form and its spirit. And now too, though the whole political system has
\ndisappeared and its last surviving elements have been ground out of existence,
\nthe peculiar social mind and temperament which created it remains even in the
\npresent social stagnation, weakness, perversion and disintegration and may yet
\nin spite of immediate tendencies and appearances, once it is free to work again
\nat its own will and after its own manner, proceed not along the western line of
\nevolution, but to a new creation out of its own spirit which may perhaps lead at
\nthe call of the demand now vaguely beginning to appear in the advanced thought
\nof the race towards the inception of the third stage of communal living and a
\nspiritual basis of human society. In any case the long stability of its
\nconstructions and the<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-345<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\ngreatness of the life they sheltered is
\ncertainly no, sign of in- capacity, but rather of a remarkable political
\ninstinct and capacity in the cultural mind of India.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/font>
\n<\/span>The one principle permanent at the base of construction throughout all
\nthe building and extension and rebuilding of the Indian polity was the
\nprinciple of an organically self-determining communal life, – self-determining
\nnot only in the mass and by means of the machinery of the vote and a
\nrepresentative body erected on the surface, representative only of the
\npolitical mind of a part of the nation, which is all that the modem system has
\nbeen able to manage, but in every pulse of its life and in each separate member
\nof its existence. A free synthetic communal order was its character, and the
\ncondition of liberty it aimed at was not so much an individual as a communal
\nfreedom. In the beginning the problem was simple enough as only two kinds of
\ncommunal unit had to be considered, the village and the clan, tribe or small
\nregional people. The free organic life of the first was founded on the system of
\nthe self-governing village community and it<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nwas done with such
\nsufficiency and solidity that it lasted down almost to our own days resisting
\nall the wear and tear of time and the inroad of other systems and was only
\nrecently steamrollered out of existence by the ruthless and lifeless machinery
\nof the British bureaucratic system. The whole people living in its villages
\nmostly on agriculture formed in the total a single religious, social, military
\nand political body governing itself in its assembly, samiti, <\/i>under the
\nleadership of the king, as yet without any clear separation of functions or
\nclass division of labour.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>It was the inadequacy of this system for
\nall but the simplest form of agricultural and pastoral life and all but the
\nsmall people living within a very limited area that compelled the problem of
\nthe evolution of a more complex communal system and a modified and more
\nintricate application of the fundamental Indian principle. The agricultural and
\npastoral life common at first to all the members of the Aryan community, krstayah
\n<\/i>remained always the large basis, but it developed an increasingly rich
\nsuperstructure of commerce and industry and numerous arts and crafts and a
\nsmaller superstructure of specialised military and political and religious and
\nlearned occupations and functions.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-346<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nThe village community remained throughout the
\nstable unit, the firm grain or indestructible atom of the social body, but
\nthere grew up a group life of tens and hundreds of villages, each under its
\nhead and needing its administrative organisation, and these, as the clan grew
\ninto a large people by conquest or coalition with others, became constituents
\nof a kingdom or a confederated republican nation, and these again the circles, mandala,
\n<\/i>of larger kingdoms and finally of one or more great empires. The test of
\nthe Indian genius for socio-political construction lay in the successful
\napplication of its principle of a communal self-deter- mined freedom and order
\nto suit this growing development and new order of circumstances.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The Indian mind evolved, to meet this
\nnecessity, the stable socio-religious system of the four orders. Outwardly this
\nmight seem to be only a more rigid form of the familiar social system developed
\nnaturally in most human peoples at one time or an- other, a priesthood, a
\nmilitary and political aristocracy, a class of artisans and free
\nagriculturalists and traders and a proletariate of serfs or labourers. The
\nresemblance however is only in the externals and the spirit of the system of Chaturvama
\nwas different in India. In the later Vedic and the epic times the fourfold
\norder was at once and inextricably the religious, social, political and
\neconomic framework of the society and within that frame- work each order had
\nits natural portion and in none of the fundamental activities was the share or
\nposition of any of them exclussive. This characteristic is vital to an
\nunderstanding of the ancient system, but has been obscured by false notions
\nformed from a misunderstanding or an exaggeration of later phenomena and of
\nconditions mostly belonging to the decline. The Brahmins, for example, had not
\na monopoly either of sacred learning pr of the highest spiritual knowledge and
\nopportunities. At first we see a kind of competition, between the Brahmins and
\nthe Kshatriyas for the spiritual lead and the latter for a long time held their
\nown against the pretensions of the learned and sacerdotal order. The Brahmins,
\nhowever, as legists, teachers, priests, men who could give their whole time and
\nenergy to philosophy, scholarship, the study of the sacred writings, prevailed
\nin the end and secured a settled and imposing predominance. The priestly and
\nlearned<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-347<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nclass became the religious authorities, the
\ncustodians of the sacred books and the tradition, the interpreters of the law
\nand Shastra, the recognised teachers in all the departments of knowledge, the
\nordinary religious preceptors or Gurus of the other classes and supplied the
\nbulk, though never the totality of the philosophers, thinkers, literary men,
\nscholars. The study of the Vedas and Upanishads passed mainly into their hands,
\nalthough always open to the three higher orders; it was denied in theory to the
\nShudras. As a matter of fact, however, a series of religious movements kept up
\neven in the later days the essential element of the old freedom, brought the
\nhighest spiritual knowledge and opportunity to all doors and, as in the
\nbeginning we find the Vedic and Vedantic Rishis born from all classes, we find
\ntoo up to the end the Yogins, saints, spiritual thinkers, innovators and
\nrestorers, religious poets and singers, the fountain-heads of a living
\nspirituality and knowledge as distinguished from traditional authority and
\nlore, derived from all the strata of the community down to the lowest Shudras and
\neven the despised and oppressed outcast.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The four orders grew into a fixed social
\nhierarchy, but, leaving aside the status of the outcastes, each had attached to
\nit a spiritual life and utility, a certain social dignity, an education, a
\nprinciple of social and ethical honour and a place and duty and right in the
\ncommunal body. The system served again an automatic means of securing a fixed
\ndivision of labour and a settled economic status, the hereditary principle at
\nfirst prevailing, al- though here even the theory was more rigid than the
\npractice, but none was denied the right or opportunity of amassing wealth and
\nmaking some figure in society, administration and politics by means of
\ninfluence or status in his own order. For, finally, the social hierarchy was
\nnot at the same time a political hierarchy: all the four orders had their part
\nin the common political rights of the citizen and in the assemblies and
\nadministrative bodies their place and their share of influence. It may be noted
\ntoo that in law and theory at least women in ancient India, contrary to the
\nsentiment of other ancient peoples, were not denied civic rights, although in
\npractice this equality was rendered nugatory for all but a few by their social
\nsubordination to the male<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-348<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nand their domestic preoccupation; instances
\nhave yet survived in the existing records of women figuring, not only as queens
\nand administrators and even in the battlefield, a common enough incident in
\nIndian history, but as elected representatives on civic bodies.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The whole Indian system was founded upon
\na close participation of all the orders in the common life, each predominating
\nin its own field, the Brahmin in religion, learning and letters, the Kshatriya
\nin war, king-craft and interstate political action, the Vaishya in
\nwealth-getting and productive economical function, but none, not even the
\nShudra, excluded from his share in the civic life and an effective place and
\nvoice in politics, administration, justice. As a consequence the old Indian polity
\nat no time developed, or at least it did not maintain for long, those
\nexclussive forms of class rule that have so long and powerfully marked the
\npolitical history of other countries. A priestly theocracy, like that of Tibet,
\nor the rule of a landed and military aristocracy that prevailed for centuries
\nin France and England and other European countries or a mercantile oligarchy,
\nas in Carthage and Venice, were forms of government foreign to the Indian
\nspirit. A certain political predominance of the great Kshatriya families at a
\ntime of general war and strife and mobile expansion, when the clans and tribes
\nwere developing into nations and kingdoms and were still striving with each
\nother for hegemony and overlordship, seems to be indicated in the traditions preserved
\nin the Mahabharata and recurred in a cruder form in the return to the clan,
\nnation in mediaeval Rajputana; but in ancient India this was a passing phase
\nand the predominance did not exclude the political and civic influence of men
\nof the other orders or interfere with or exercise any oppressive control over
\nthe free life of the various communal units. The democratic republics of the
\nintermediate times were in all probability polities which endeavoured to
\npreserve in its fullness the old principle of the active participation of the
\nwhole body of the people in the assemblies and not democracies of the Greek
\ntype; the oligarchical republics were clan governments or were ruled by more
\nlimited senates drawn from the dignified elements of the society and this
\nafterwards developed into councils or assemblies repre-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-349<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nsenting all the four orders as in the later
\nroyal councils and urban bodies. In any case the system finally evolved was a
\nmixed polity in which none of the orders had an undue predominance. Accordingly
\nwe do not find in India either that struggle between the patrician and plebeian
\nelements of the community, the oligarchic and the democratic idea, ending in
\nthe establishment of an absolute monarchical rule, which characterises the troubled
\nhistory of Greece and Rome or that cycle of successive forms evolving by a
\nstrife of classes, – first a ruling aristocracy, then replacing it by
\nencroachment or revolution the dominance of the moneyed and professional
\nclasses, the regime of the bourgeois industrialising the society and governing
\nand exploiting it in the name of the commons or masses and, finally, the
\npresent turn towards a rule of the proletariate of Labour,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>which we see in later Europe.
\nThe Indian mind and temperament less exclusively intellectual and vital, more
\nintuitively synthetic and flexible than that of the occidental peoples arrived,
\nnot certainly at any ideal system of society and politics, but at least at a
\nwise and stable synthesis – not a dangerously unstable equilibrium, not a
\ncompromise or balance<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nof
\nall the natural powers and orders, an organic and vital co-ordination
\nrespectful of the free functioning of all the organs of the communal body and
\ntherefore ensured, although not against the decadence that overtakes all human
\nsystems, at any rate against any organic disturbance or disorder.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The summit of the political structure was
\noccupied by three governing bodies, the King in his ministerial Council, the
\nmetropolitan assembly and the general assembly of the kingdom. The members of
\nthe Council and the ministers were drawn from all orders. The Council included
\na fixed number of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra representatives. The
\nVaishyas had indeed numerically a great preponderance, but this was a just
\nproportion as it corresponded to their numerical preponderance in the body of
\nthe people: for in the early Aryan society the Vaishya order comprised not only
\nthe merchants and small traders but the craftsmen and artisans and the
\nagriculturists and formed therefore the bulk of the commons, visah, <\/i>and
\nthe Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Shudras, however considerable the position and
\ninfluence of the two higher orders, were later social growths and<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-350<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nwere<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\ncomparatively very inferior in number. It was only after,
\n<\/font> <\/span>the confusion
\ncreated by the Buddhist upheaval and the Brahminic reconstitution of the
\nsociety in the age of cultural decadence that the mass of the cultivators and
\nartisans and small traders sank in the greater part of India to the condition
\nof Shudras with a small Brahmin mass at the top and in between a slight
\nsprinkling of Kshatriyas and of Vaishyas. The Council, representing thus the
\nwhole community, was the supreme executive and administrative body and its
\nassent and participation necessary to all the action and decrees of the
\nsovereign in all more important matters of government, finance, policy,
\nthroughout the whole range of the communal interests. It was the King, the
\nministers, and the Council who aided by a system of boards of administration
\nsuperintended and controlled all the various departments of the State action.
\nThe power of the King undoubtedly tended to grow with time and he was often
\ntempted to act according to his own independent will and initiative; but still,
\nas long as the system was in its vigour, he could not’ with impunity defy or
\nignore the opinion and will of the ministers and Council. Even, it seems, so
\npowerful and strong-willed a sovereign as the great emperor Asoka was
\neventually defeated in his conflict with his Council and was forced practically
\nto abdicate his power. The ministers in Council could and did often proceed to
\nthe deposition of a recalcitrant or an incompetent monarch and replace him by
\nanother of his family or by a new dynasty and it was in this way that there
\ncame about several of the historic changes, as for example the dynastic
\nrevolution from the Mauryas to the Sungas and again the initiation of the Kanwa
\nline of emperors. As a matter of constitutional theory and ordinary practice
\nall the action of the king was in reality that of the king in his Council with
\nthe aid of his ministers and all his personal action was only valid as
\ndepending on their assent and in so far as it was a just and faithful discharge
\nof the functions assigned to him by the Dharma. And as the Council was, as it
\nwere, a quintessential power body or action centre taking up into itself in a
\nmanageable compass, concentrating and representing in its constitution the four
\norders, the main elements of the social organism, the king too could only be the
\nactive head of this power and not, as in an auto-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-351<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\ncratic regime, himself the State or the owner
\nof the country and the irresponsible personal ruler of a nation of obedient
\nsubjects. The obedience owed by the people was due to the Law, the Dharma, and
\nto the edicts of the King in Council only as an administrative means for the
\nservice and maintenance of the Dharma.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>At the same time a small body like the
\nCouncil subject to the immediate and constant influence of the sovereign and
\nhis ministers might, if it had been the sole governing body, have degenerated
\ninto an instrument of autocratic rule. But there were two other powerful bodies
\nin the State which represented on a larger scale the social organism, were a
\nnearer and closer expression of its mind, life and will independent of the
\nimmediate regal influence and exercising large and constant powers of
\nadministration and administrative legislation and capable at all times of
\nacting as a check on the royal power, since in case of their displeasure they
\ncould either get rid of an unpopular or oppressive king or render his
\nadministration impossible until he made submission to the will of the people.
\nThese were the great metropolitan and general assemblies sitting separately for
\nthe exercise each of its separate powers and together for matters concerning
\nthe whole people. <\/font> <\/span>
\n(The facts about these bodies – I have selected
\nonly those that are significant for my purpose – are taken from the luminous
\nand scrupulously documented contribution of Mr. Jayaswal to the subject.)<\/font><\/span> The Paura or
\nmetropolitan civic assembly sat constantly in the capital town of the kingdom
\nor empire – and under the imperial system there seem also to have been similar
\nlesser bodies in the chief towns of the provinces, survivals of the assemblies
\nthat governed them when they were themselves capitals of independent kingdoms –
\nand was constituted of representatives of the city guilds and the various caste
\nbodies belonging to all the orders of the society or at least to the three lower
\norders. The guilds and caste bodies were themselves organic self-governing
\nconstituents of the community both in the country and the city and the supreme
\nassembly of the citizens was not an artificial but an organic representation of
\nthe collective totality of the whole organism as it existed within the limits
\nof the metropolis. It governed all the life of the city, acting directly or
\nthrough subordinate<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-352<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nlesser assemblies and administrative boards or
\ncommittees of five, ten or more members, and, both by regulations and decrees
\nwhich the guilds were bound to obey and by direct administration, controlled
\nand supervised the commercial, industrial, financial and municipal affairs of
\nthe civic community. But in addition it was a power that had to be consulted
\nand could take action in the wider affairs of the kingdom, sometimes separately
\nand sometimes in co-operation with the general assembly, and its constant
\npresence and functioning at the capital made it a force that had always to be
\nreckoned with by the King and his ministers and their Council. In a case of
\nconflict with the royal ministers or governors even the distant civic
\nparliaments in the provinces could make their displeasure felt if offended in
\nmatters of their position or privileges or discontented with the King’s
\nadministrators and could compel the withdrawal of the offending officer. <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The general assembly was similarly an
\norganic representation of the mind and will of the whole country outside the
\nmetro- polis; for it was composed of the deputies, elective heads or chief men
\nof the townships and villages. A certain plutocratic element seems to have
\nentered into its composition, as it was principally recruited from the
\nwealthier men of the represented communities, and it was therefore something of
\nthe nature of an assembly <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\nof the commons not of an
\nentirely democratic type,<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nalthough
\nunlike all but the most recent modem parliaments it included Shudras as well as
\nKshatriyas and Vaishyas, – but still a sufficiently faithful expression of the
\nlife and mind of the people. It was not however a supreme parliament: for it
\nhad ordinarily no fundamental legislative powers, any more than had the King
\nand Council or the metropolitan assembly, but only of decree and regulation.
\nIts business was to serve as a direct instrument of the will of the people in
\nthe co-ordination of the various activities of the life of the nation, to see
\nto the right direction of these and to the securing of the general order and
\nwelfare of the commerce, industry, agriculture, social and political life of
\nthe nation, to pass decrees and regulations to that purpose and secure
\nprivileges and facilities from the king and his Council, to give or withhold
\nthe assent of the people to the actions of the sovereign and, if need be, to oppose
\nhim actively and prevent misgovernment<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>or end it by <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-353<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nthe means open to the people’s representatives.
\nThe joint session of the metropolitan and general assemblies was consulted in
\nmatters of succession, could depose the sovereign, alter the succession at his
\ndeath, transfer the throne outside the reigning family, act sometimes as a
\nsupreme court of law in cases having a political tincture, cases of treason or
\nof miscarriage of justice. The royal resolutions on any matter of State policy
\nwere promulgated to these assemblies and their assent had to be taken in all
\nmatters involving special taxation, war, sacrifice, large schemes of irrigation
\netc., and all questions of vital interest to the country. The two bodies seem
\nto have sat constantly, for matters came up daily from them to the sovereign:
\ntheir acts were registered by the king and had automatically the effect of law.
\nIt is clear indeed from a total review of their rights and activities that they
\nwere "partners in the sovereignty and its powers were inherent in"
\nthem and even those could be exercised by them on extraordinary occasions which
\nwere not normally within their purview. It is significant that Asoka in his
\nattempt to alter the Dharma of the community, proceeded not merely by his royal
\ndecree but by discussion with the Assembly. The ancient description seems
\ntherefore to have been thoroughly justified which <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\ncharacterised the two bodies as executors of
\nthe kingdom’s acti<\/font><\/span>vities and at need the instruments of opposition to the King’s government.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>It is
\nnot clear when these great institutions went out of existence, whether before
\nthe Mahomedan invasion or as a result of the foreign conquest. Any collapse of
\nthe system at the top leaving a gu1f between the royal government, which would
\ngrow more autocratic by its isolation and in sole control of the larger
\nnational affairs, and the other constituents of the socio-political body each
\ncarrying on its own internal affairs, as was to the end the case with the village
\ncommunities, but not in any living relation with the higher State matters,
\nwould obviously be, in an organisation of complex communal freedom where
\nco-ordination of the life was imperatively needed, a great cause of weakness.
\nIn any case the invasion from Central Asia, bringing in a tradition of personal
\nand autocratic rule unfamiliar with these restraints would immediately destroy
\nsuch bodies, or their rem-<\/font><\/p>\n


\nPage-354<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nnants or survivals wherever they still existed,
\nand this happened throughout the whole of Northern India. The Indian political
\nsystem was still maintained for many centuries in the South, but the public
\nassemblies which went on existing there do not seem to have been of the same
\nconstitution as the ancient political bodies, but were rather some of the other
\ncommunal organisations and assemblies of which these were a co-ordination and
\nsupreme instrument of control. These inferior assemblies included bodies
\noriginally of a political character, once the supreme governing institutions of
\nthe clan nation, kula, <\/i>and the republic, gana. <\/i>Under the new
\ndispensation they remained in existence, but lost their supreme powers and
\ncould only administer with a subordinate and restricted authority the affairs
\nof their constituent communities. The kula <\/i>or clan family persisted,
\neven after it had lost its political character, as a socio-religious
\ninstitution, especially among the Kshatriyas, and preserved the tradition of
\nits sucial and religious law, kula-dharma, <\/i>and in some cases its
\ncommunal assembly, kula-sangha. <\/i>The public assemblies that we find even
\nin quite recent times filling the role of the old general assembly in Southern
\nIndia, more than one coexisting and acting separately or in unison, appear to
\nhave been variations on this type of body. In Rajputana also the clan family, kula,
\n<\/i>recovered its political character and action, but in another form and
\nwithout the ancient institutions and finer cultural temper, although they
\npreserved in a high degree the Kshatriya Dharma of courage, chivalry, magnanimity
\nand honour.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>A stronger permanent element in the
\nIndian communal system, one that grew up in the frame of the four orders<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> in the end even replacing
\nit <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> and acquired an
\nextraordinary vitality, <\/font> <\/span>
\npersistence and predominant importance was the historic
\nand still tenacious though decadent institution of caste, <\/font>
\nj<\/font><\/i><\/span>\u00e3<\/font><\/span>ati. <\/font> <\/span><\/i>
\nOriginally this
\nrose from subdivisions of the four orders that grew up in each order under the
\nstress of various forces. The subdivision of the Brahmin castes was mainly due
\nto religious, socio-religious and ceremonial causes, but there were also
\nregional and local divisions: the Kshatriyas remained for the most part one
\nunited order, though divided into Kulas. On the other hand the Vaishya and
\nShudra orders split up into innumerable castes under the<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-355<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nnecessity of a subdivision of economic
\nfunctions on the basis of the hereditary principle. Apart from the increasingly
\nrigid application of the hereditary principle, this settled subdivision of
\nfunction could well enough have been secured, as in other countries, by a guild
\nsystem and in towns we do find a vigorous and efficient guild system in
\nexistence. But the guild system afterwards fell into desuetude and the more
\ngeneral institution of caste became the one basis of economic function
\neverywhere. The caste in town and village was a separate communal unit, at once
\nreligious, social and economic, and decided its religious, social and other
\nquestions, carried on its caste affairs’ and exercised jurisdiction over its
\nmembers in a perfect freedom from all outside interference: only on fundamental
\nquestions of the Dharma the Brahmins were referred to for an authoritative
\ninterpretation or decision as custodians of the Shastra. As with the kula, <\/i>each
\ncaste had its caste law and rule of living and conduct, <\/font>
\nj<\/font><\/i><\/span>\u00e3<\/font><\/span>ti-dharma, <\/font> <\/span><\/i>
\nand its caste
\ncommunal assembly, <\/font> j<\/font><\/i><\/span>\u00e3<\/font><\/span>ti-sangha. <\/font> <\/span><\/i>
\nAs the Indian polity in all its institutions was
\nfounded on a communal and not on an individual basis, the caste also counted in
\nthe political and administrative functioning of the kingdom. The guilds equally
\nwere self-functioning mercantile and industrial communal units, assembled for
\nthe discussion and administration of their affairs and had besides their united
\nassemblies which seem at one time to have been the governing urban bodies.
\nThese guild governments, if they may so be called<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n– for they <\/font> <\/span>
\nwere more than municipalities,
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> disappeared afterwards into
\n<\/font> <\/span>the more general
\nurban body which represented an organic unity of both the guilds and the caste
\nassemblies of all the orders. The castes as such were not directly represented
\nin the general assembly of the kingdom, but they had their place in the
\nadministration of local affairs.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nThe village community and the
\ntownship were the most tangibly stable basis of the whole system; but these, it
\nmust be noted, were not solely territorial units or a convenient mechanism for
\nelectoral, administrative or other useful social and political purposes, but
\nalways true communal unities with an organic life of their own that functioned in
\nits own power and not merely as a subordinate part of the machinery of the
\nState. <\/font> <\/span>The
\nvillage<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-356<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\ncommunity has been described as a little
\nvillage republic" and the description is hardly an exaggeration: for each
\nvillage was within its own limits autonomous and self-sufficient, governed by
\nits own elected Panchayats and elected or hereditary officers, satisfying its
\nown needs, providing for its own education, police, tribunals, all its economic
\nnecessities and functions, managing itself its own life as an independent and
\nself-governing unit. The villages carried on also their affairs with each other
\nby combinations of various kinds and there were too groups of villages under
\nelected or hereditary heads and forming therefore, though in a less closely
\norganised fashion, a natural body. But the townships in India were also in a
\nhardly less striking way autonomous and self-governing bodies, ruled by their
\nown assembly and committees with an elective system and the use of the vote,
\nmanaging their own affairs in their own right and sending like the villages
\ntheir representative men to the general assembly of the kingdom. The
\nadministration of these urban governments included all works contributing to
\nthe material or other welfare of the citizens, police, judicial cases, public
\nworks and the charge of sacred and public places, registration, the collection
\nof municipal taxes and all matters relating to trade, industry and commerce. If
\nthe village community can be described as a little village republic, the constitution
\nof the township can equally be described as a larger urban republic. It is
\nsignificant that the Naigama and Paura assemblies,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe guild governments and the metropolitan bodies, –
\nhad the privilege of striking coins of their own, a power otherwise exercised
\nonly by the monarchical heads of States and the republics.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nAnother kind of community must be
\nnoted, those which had no political existence, but were yet each in its own
\nkind a self- governing body; for they illustrate the strong tendency of Indian
\nlife to throw itself in all its manifestations into a closely communal form of
\nexistence. One example is the joint family, prevalent everywhere in India and
\nonly now breaking down under the pressure of modern conditions, of which the two
\nfundamental principles were first a communal holding of the property by the
\nagnates and their families and, as far as possible, an undivided communal life
\nunder the management of the head of the family<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-357<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nand, secondly, the claim of each male to an
\nequal portion in the .share of his father, a portion due to him in case of
\nseparation and division of the estate. This communal unity with the persistent
\nseparate right of the individual is an example of the synthetic turn of the
\nIndian mind and life, its recognition of fundamental tendencies and its attempt
\nto harmonise them even if they seemed in their norm of practice to be
\ncontradictory to each other. It is the same synthetic turn as that which in all
\nparts of the Indian socio-political system tended to fuse together in different
\nways the theocratic, the monarchic and aristocratic, the plutocratic and the
\ndemocratic tendencies in a whole which bore the characteristics of none of them
\nnor was yet an accommodation of them or amalgamation whether by a system of
\nchecks and balances or by an intellectually constructed synthesis, but rather a
\nnatural outward form of the inborn tendencies and character of the complex
\nsocial mind and temperament.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nAt the other end, forming the
\nascetic and purely spiritual extreme of the Indian life-mind, we find the,
\nreligious community and, again, this too takes a communal shape. The original
\nVedic society had no place for any Church or religious community or
\necclesiastical order, for in its system the body of the people formed a single
\nsocio-religious whole with no separation into religious and secular, layman and
\ncleric, and in spite of later developments the Hindu religion has held, in the
\nwhole or at least as the basis, to this principle. On the other hand an increasing
\nascetic tendency that came in time to distinguish the religious from the
\nmundane life and tended to create the separate religious community, was
\nconfirmed by the rise of the creeds and disciplines of the Buddhists and the
\nJains. The Buddhist monastic order was the first development of the complete
\nfigure of the organised religious community. Here we find that Buddha simply
\napplied the known principles of the Indian society and polity to the ascetic
\nlife. The order he created was intended to be a dharma-sangha, <\/i>and each
\nmonastery a religious commune living the life of a united communal body which
\nexisted as the expression and was based in all the rules, features, structure
\nof its life on the maintenance of the Dharma as it was understood by the Buddhists.
\nThis was, as we can at once see, precisely the<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-358<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>principle and theory of the whole Hindu
\nsociety, but given here the higher intensity possible to the spiritual life and
\na purely religious body. It managed its affairs too like the Indian social and
\npolitical communal unities. An assembly of the order discussed debatable
\nquestions of the Dharma and its application and proceeded by vote as in the
\nmeeting-halls of the republics, but it was subject still to a limiting control
\nintended to avoid the possible evils of a too purely democratic method. The
\nmonastic system once thus firmly established was taken over from Buddhism by
\nthe orthodox religion, but without its elaborate organisation. These religious
\ncommunities tended, wherever they could prevail against the older Brahminic
\nsystem, as in the order created by Shankaracharya, to become a sort of
\necclesiastical head to the lay body of the community, but they arrogated to
\nthemselves no political position and the struggle between Church and State is absent
\nfrom the political history of India.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>It is clear therefore that the whole
\nlife of ancient India retained even in the time of the great kingdoms and
\nempires its first principle and essential working and its social polity
\nremained fundamentally a complex system of self-determined and self-governing
\ncommunal bodies. The evolution of an organised State authority supervening on
\nthis system was necessitated in India as elsewhere partly by the demand of the
\npractical reason for a more stringent and scientifically efficient
\nco-ordination than was possible except in small areas to the looser natural co-
\nordination of life, and more imperatively by the need of a systematised
\nmilitary aggression and defence and international action concentrated in the hands
\nof a single central authority. An extension of the free republican State might
\nhave sufficed to meet the former demand, for it had the potentiality and the
\nnecessary institutions, but the method of the monarchical State with its more
\nconstricted and easily tangible centrality presented a more ready and
\nmanageable device and a more facile and apparently efficient machinery. And for
\nthe external task, involving almost from the commencement the supremely
\ndifficult age-long problem of the political unification of India, then a
\ncontinent rather than a <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\ncountry, the republican
\nsystem, more suited to strength in defence <\/font> <\/span>
\nthan for aggression, proved in
\nspite of its efficient military orga-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-359<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nnisation to be inadequate. It was, therefore,
\nin India as elsewhere, the strong form of the monarchical State that prevailed
\nfinally and swallowed up the others. At the same time the fidelity of the
\nIndian mind to its fundamental institutions and ideals preserved the basis of
\ncommunal self-government natural to the temperament of the people, prevented
\nthe monarchical State from developing into an autocracy or exceeding its proper
\nfunctions and stood successfully in the way of its mechanising the life of the
\nsociety. It is only in the long decline that we find the free institutions that
\nstood between the royal government and the self-determining communal life of
\nthe people either tending to disappear or else to lose much of their ancient
\npower and vigour and the evils of personal government, of a bureaucracy of
\nscribes and officials and of a too preponderant centralised authority
\ncommencing to manifest in some sensible measure. As long as the ancient
\ntraditions of <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>the Indian polity
\nremained and in proportion as they continued to be vital and effective, these
\nevils remained either sporadic and occasional or could not assume any serious
\nproportions. It was the combination of foreign invasion and conquest with the
\nslow decline and final decadence of the ancient Indian culture that brought
\nabout the collapse of considerable parts of the old structure and the
\ndegradation and disintegration, with no sufficient means for revival or new
\ncreation, of the socio-political life of the people.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>At the height of its evolution and in
\nthe great days of Indian civilisation we find an admirable political system
\nefficient in the highest degree and very perfectly combining communal self-
\ngovernment with stability and order. The State carried on its work
\nadministrative, judicial, financial and protective without destroying or
\nencroaching on the rights and free activities of the people and its constituent
\nbodies in the same departments. The royal courts in capital and country were
\nthe supreme judicial authority co-ordinating the administration of justice
\nthroughout the kingdom, but they did not unduly interfere with the judicial
\npowers entrusted to their own courts by the village and urban communes and,
\neven, the regal system associated with itself the guild, caste and family
\ncourts, working as an ample means of arbitration and only insisted on its own
\nexclusive control of the<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-360<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>more
\nserious criminal offences. A similar respect was shown to the administrative
\nand financial powers of the village and urban communes. The Icing’s governors
\nand officials in town and country existed side by side with the civic governors
\nand officials and the communal heads and officers appointed by the people and
\nits assemblies. The State did not interfere with the religious liberty or the
\nestablished economic and social life of the nation; it confined itself to the
\nmaintenance of social order and the provision of a needed supervision, support,
\nco-ordination and facilities for the rich and powerful functioning of all the
\nnational activities. It understood too always and magnificently fulfilled its
\nopportunities as a source of splendid and munificent stimulation to the
\narchitecture, art, culture; scholarship, literature already created by the
\ncommunal mind of India. In the person of the monarch it was the dignified and
\npowerful head and in the system of his administration the supreme instrument<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>neither an arbitrary autocracy
\nor bureaucracy, nor a machine oppressing or replacing life<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>of a great and stable
\ncivilisation and a free and living people.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-361<\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n

\n4<\/b><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\n       
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\n                   A<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nRIGHT<\/span><\/font> knowledge of the
\nfacts and a right understanding of the character and principle of the Indian
\nsocio- political system disposes at once of the contention of occidental critics
\nthat the Indian mind, even if remarkable in metaphysics, religion, art and
\nliterature was inapt for the organisation of life, inferior in the works of the
\npractical intelligence and, especially, that it was sterile in political
\nexperiment and its record empty of sound political construction, thinking and
\naction. On the contrary, Indian civilisation evolved an admirable political
\nsystem, built solidly and with an enduring soundness, combined with a remarkable
\nskill the monarchical, democratic and other principles and tendencies to which
\nthe mind of man has leaned in its efforts of civic construction and escaped at
\nthe same time the excess of the mechanising turn which is the defect of the
\nmodem European State. I shall consider afterwards the objections that can be
\nmade to it from the evolutionary standpoint of the West and its idea of
\nprogress.<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nBut there is another side of
\npolitics on which it may be said that the Indian political mind has registered
\nnothing but failure. The organisation it developed may have been admirable for
\nstability and effective administration and the securing of communal order and
\nliberties and the well-being of the people under ancient conditions, but even
\nif its many peoples were each of them separately self-governed, well governed
\nand prosperous and the country at large assured in the steady functioning of a
\nhighly developed civilisation and culture, yet that organisation failed to
\nserve for the national and political unification of India and failed in the end
\nto secure it against foreign invasion, the disruption of its institutions and
\nan age long servitude. The political system of a society has to be judged, no
\ndoubt first and foremost by the stability, prosperity, internal freedom and
\norder it ensures to the people, but also it must be judged by the security it
\nerects against other States, its unity and power of defence and aggression
\nagainst external rivals and enemies. It is not perhaps altogether<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Page-362<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

to the credit of humanity that
\nit should be so and a nation or people that is inferior in this kind of
\npolitical strength, as were the ancient Greeks and mediaeval Italians, may be
\nspiritually and culturally far superior to its conquerors and may well have
\ncontributed more to a true human progress than successful military States,
\naggressive communities, predatory empires. But the life of man is still
\npredominatingly vital and moved therefore by the tendencies of expansion,
\npossession, aggression, mutual struggle for absorption and dominant survival
\nwhich are the first law of life, and a collective mind and consciousness that
\ngives a constant proof of incapacity for aggression and defence and does not
\norganise the centralised and efficient unity necessary to its own safety, is
\nclearly one that in the political field falls far short of the first order.
\nIndia has never been nationally and politically one. India was for-close on a
\nthousand years swept by barbaric invasions and for almost another thousand
\nyears in servitude to successive foreign masters. It is clear therefore that
\njudgment of political incapacity must be passed against the Indian people.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nHere again the first necessity
\nis to get rid of exaggerations, to form a clear idea of the actual facts and
\ntheir significance and understand the tendencies and principles involved in the
\nproblem, that admittedly throughout the long history of India escaped a right
\nsolution. And first, if the greatness of a people and a civilisation is to be
\nreckoned by its military aggressiveness, its scale <\/font> <\/span>
\nof
\nforeign conquest, its success in warfare against other nations<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nand
\nthe triumph of its organised acquisitive and predatory instincts, its
\nirresistible push towards annexation and exploitation, it must be confessed
\nthat India ranks perhaps the lowest in the list of the world’s great peoples.
\nAt no time does India seem to have been moved towards an aggressive military
\nand political expansion beyond her own borders; no epic of world dominion, no
\ngreat tale of far-borne invasion or expanding colonial empire has ever been
\nwritten in the tale of Indian achievement. The sole great endeavour of
\nexpansion, or" <\/i>conquest, of invasion she attempted was the
\nexpansion of her culture, the invasion and conquest of the eastern world by the
\nBuddhistic idea and the penetration of her spirituality, art and
\nthought-forces. And this was an invasion of peace and not of war, for to spread
\na spiritual<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-363<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\ncivilisation by force and physical conquest,
\nthe, vaunt or the excuse of modern imperialism, would have been uncongenial to
\nthe ancient cast of her mind and temperament and the idea under- lying her
\nDharma. A series of colonising expeditions carried indeed Indian blood and
\nIndian culture to the islands of the archipelago, but the ships that set out
\nfrom both the eastern and western coast were not fleets of invaders missioned
\nto annex those outlying countries to an Indian empire but of exiles or
\nadventurers carrying with them to yet uncultured peoples Indian religion,
\narchitecture, art, poetry, thought, life, manners. The idea of empire and even
\nof world-empire was not absent from the Indian mind, but its world was the Indian
\nworld and the object the founding of the imperial unity of its peoples.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>This idea the sense of. this
\nnecessity, a constant urge towards its realisation is evident throughout the
\nwhole course of Indian history from earlier Vedic times through the heroic
\nperiod represented by the traditions of the ,Ramayana and Mahabharata and the
\neffort of the imperial Mauryas and Guptas up to the Moghul unification and the
\nlast ambition of the Peshwas, until there came the final failure and the
\nlevelling of all the conflicting forces under a foreign yoke, a uniform
\nsubjection in place of the free unity of a free people. The question then is
\nwhether the tardiness, the difficulty, the fluctuating movements of the process
\nand the collapse of the long effort were due to a fundamental incapacity in the
\ncivilisation or in the political consciousness and ability of the people or to
\nother forces. A great deal has been said and written about the inability of
\nIndians to unite, the want of a common patriotism – now only being created, it
\nis said, by the influence of Western culture – and the divisions imposed by
\nreligion and caste. Admitting even in their full degree the force of these
\nstrictures, – all of them are not altogether true or rightly stated or vitally
\napplicable to the matter, – they are only symptoms and we have still to seek
\nfor the deeper causes.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The reply made for the defence is
\nusually that India is practically a continent almost as large as Europe
\ncontaining a great number of peoples and the difficulties of the problem have
\nbeen as great or at least almost as considerable. And if then it is no proof of
\nthe insufficiency of Western civilisation or of the poli-<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-364<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\ntical incapacity of the European peoples that
\nthe idea of European unity should still remain an ineffective phantasm on, the
\nideal plane and to this day impossible to realise in practice, it is not just
\nto apply a different system of values to the much more clear ideal of unity or
\nat least of unification, the persistent attempt at its realisation and the
\nfrequent near approach to success that marked the history of the Indian
\npeoples. There is some force in the contention, but it is not in the form
\nentirely apposite, for the analogy is far from perfect and the conditions were
\nnot quite of the same order. The peoples of Europe are nations very sharply
\ndivided from each other in their collective personality, and their spiritual
\nunity in the Christian religion or even their cultural unity in a common
\nEuropean civilisation, never so real and complete as the ancient spiritual and
\ncultural unity of India, was also not the very centre of their life, not its
\nbasis or firm ground of existence, not its supporting earth but only its
\ngeneral air or circumambient atmosphere. Their base of existence lay in the
\npolitical and economic life which was strongly separate in each country, and it
\nwas the very strength of the political conscious- ness in the western mind that
\nkept Europe a mass of divided and constantly warring nations. It is only the
\nincreasing community of political movements and the now total economic
\ninterdependence of the whole of Europe that has at last created not any unity,
\nbut a nascent and still ineffective League of Nations struggling vainly to
\napply the mentality born of an agelong separatism to the common interests of
\nthe European peoples. But in India at a very early time the spiritual and
\ncultural unity was made complete and became the very stuff of the life of all
\nthis great surge of humanity between the Himalayas and the two seas. The
\npeoples of ancient India were never so much distinct nations <\/font> <\/span>
\nsharply divided from each other by a separate political and eco<\/font><\/span>nomic life as
\nsub-peoples of a great spiritual and cultural nation itself, firmly separated,
\nphysically, from other countries by the seas and the mountains and from other
\nnations by its strong sense of difference, its peculiar common religion and
\nculture. The creation of a political unity, however vast the area and however
\nmany the practical difficulties, ought therefore to have been effected more
\neasily than could possibly be the unity of<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-365<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\nEurope. The cause of the failure must be sought
\ndeeper down and we shall find that it lay in a dissidence between the manner in
\nwhich the problem was or ought to have been envisaged and the actual turn given
\nto the endeavour and in the latter a contradiction of the peculiar mentality of
\nthe people.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The whole basis of the Indian mind is its
\nspiritual and inward turn, its propensity to seek the things of the spirit and
\nthe inner being first and foremost and to look at all else as secondary,
\ndependent, to be handled and determined in the light of the higher knowledge
\nand as an expression, a preliminary or field or aid or at least a pendent to
\nthe deeper spiritual aim, – a tendency therefore to create whatever it had to
\ncreate first on the inner plane and afterwards in its other aspects. This
\nmentality and this consequent tendency to create from within outwards being
\ngiven, it was inevitable that the unity India first created for herself should
\nbe the spiritual and cultural oneness. It could not be, to begin with, a
\npolitical unification effected by an external rule centralised, imposed or
\nconstructed, as was done in Rome or ancient Persia, by a conquering kingdom or
\nthe genius of a military and organising people. It cannot, I think, justly be
\nsaid that this was a mistake or a proof of the unpractical turn of the Indian
\nmind and that the single political body should have been created first and
\nafterwards the spiritual unity could have securely grown up in the vast body of
\nan Indian national empire. The problem that presented itself at the beginning
\nwas that of a huge area containing more than a hundred kingdoms, clans,
\npeoples, tribes, races, in this respect another Greece, but a Greece on an
\nenormous scale, almost as large as modem Europe. As in Greece a cultural
\nHellenic unity was necessary to create a fundamental feeling of oneness, here
\ntoo and much more imperatively a conscious spiritual and cultural unity of all
\nthese peoples was the first, the indispensable condition without which no
\nenduring unity could be possible. The instinct of the Indian mind and of its
\ngreat Rishis and founders of its culture was sound in this matter. And even if
\nwe suppose that an outward imperial unity like that of the Roman world could
\nhave been founded among the peoples of early India by military and political
\nmeans, we must not forget that the Roman unity did not endure, that even the<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\nunity of ancient Italy founded by the Roman
\nconquest and organisation did not endure, and it is not likely that a similar
\nattempt in the vast reaches of India without a previous spiritual and cultural
\nbasis would have been of an enduring character. It cannot be said either, even
\nif the emphasis on spiritual and cultural unity be pronounced to have been too
\nengrossing or excessive and the insistence of political and external unity too
\nfeeble, that the effect of this precedence has been merely disastrous and
\nwithout any advantage. It is due to this original peculiarity, to this
\nindelible spiritual stamp, to this underlying oneness amidst all diversities
\nthat if India is not yet a single organised political nation, she still
\nsurvives and is still India.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nAfter all, the spiritual and
\ncultural is the only enduring unity and it is by a persistent mind and spirit
\nmuch more than by an enduring physical body and outward organisation that the
\nsoul of a people survives. This is’ a truth the positive western mind may be
\nunwilling to understand or concede, and yet its proofs are written across the
\nwhole story of the ages. The ancient nations, contemporaries of India, and many
\nyounger born than she are dead and only their monuments left behind them.
\nGreece and Egypt exist only on the map and in name, for it is not the soul of Hellas
\nor the deeper nation-soul that built Memphis which we now find at Athens or at
\nCairo. Rome imposed a political and a purely outward cultural unity on the
\nMediterranean peoples, but their living spiritual and cultural oneness she
\ncould not create, and therefore the East broke away from the West, Africa kept
\nno impress of the Roman interlude, and even the western nations still called
\nLatin could offer no living resistance to barbarian invaders and had to be
\nreborn by the infusion of a foreign vitality to become modem Italy, Spain and
\nFrance. But India still lives and keeps the continuity of her inner mind and
\nsoul and spirit with the India of the ages. Invasion and foreign rule, the
\nGreek, the Parthian and the Hun, the robust vigour of Islam, the levelling
\nsteam-roller heaviness of the British occupation and the British system, the
\nenormous pressure of the Occident have not been able to drive or crush the
\nancient soul out of the body her Vedic Rishis made for her. At every step,
\nunder every calamity and attack and domination, she has been able to resist<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-367<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\nand survive either with an active or a passive
\nresistance. And this she was able to do in her great days by her spiritual
\nsolidarity and power of assimilation and reaction, expelling all that would not
\nbe absorbed, absorbing all that could not be expelled, and even after the
\nbeginning of the decline she was still able to survive by the same force,
\nabated but not slayable, retreating and maintaining for a time her ancient
\npolitical system in the South, throwing up, under the pressure of Islam, Rajput
\nand Sikh and Mahratta to defend her ancient self and its idea, persisting
\npassively where she could not resist actively, condemning to decay each empire
\nthat could not answer her riddle or make terms with her, awaiting always the
\nday of her revival. And even now it is a similar phenomenon that we see in
\nprocess before our eyes. And what shall we say then of the surpassing vitality
\nof the civilisation that could accomplish this miracle and of the wisdom of
\nthose who built its foundation not on things’ external but on the spirit and
\nthe inner mind and made a spiritual and cultural one- ness the root and stock
\nof her existence and not solely its fragile flower, the eternal basis and not
\nthe perishable superstructure?<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>But spiritual unity is a large and
\nflexible thing and does not insist like the political and external on
\ncentralisation and uniformity; rather it lives diffused in the system and
\npermits readily a great diversity and freedom of life. Here we touch on the
\nsecret of the difficulty in the problem of unifying ancient India. It could not
\nbe done by the ordinary means of a centralised uniform imperial State crushing
\nout all that made for free divergence, local autonomies, established communal
\nliberties, and each time that an attempt was made in this direction, it has
\nfailed after however long a term of apparent success, and we might even say
\nthat the guardians of India’s destiny wisely compelled it to fail that her
\ninner spirit might not perish and her soul barter for an engine of temporary
\nsecurity the deep sources of its life. The ancient mind of India had the
\nintuition of its need; its idea of empire was a uniting rule that respected
\nevery existing regional and communal liberty, that unnecessarily crushed out no
\nliving autonomy, that effected a synthesis of her life and not a mechanical
\noneness. Afterwards the conditions under which such a solution might securely
\nhave evolved and found its true means and<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

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\n

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\nform
\nand basis, disappeared and there was instead an attempt to establish a single
\nadministrative empire. That endeavour, dictated by the pressure of an immediate
\nand external necessity, failed to achieve a complete success in spite of its
\ngreat ness and splendour. It could not do so because it followed a trend that
\nwas not eventually compatible with the true turn of the Indian spirit. It has
\nbeen seen that the underlying principle of the Indian politico-social system
\nwas a synthesis of communal autonomies, the autonomy of the village, of the
\ntown and capital city, of the caste, guild, family, kula, <\/i>religious
\ncommunity, regional unit. The state or kingdom or confederated republic was a
\nmeans of holding together and synthetising in a free and living organic system
\nthese autonomies. The imperial problem was to synthetise again these states,
\npeoples, nations, effecting their unity but respecting their autonomy, into a
\nlarger free and living organism. A system had to be found that would maintain
\npeace and oneness among its members, secure safety against external attack and
\ntotalise the free play and evolution, in its unity and diversity, in the
\nuncoerced and active life of all its constituent communal and regional units,
\nof the soul and body of Indian civilisation and culture, the functioning on a
\ngrand and total scale of the Dharma.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nThis was the sense in which the
\nearlier mind of India understood the problem. The administrative empire of
\nlater times accepted it only partially, but its trend was, very slowly and
\nalmost subconsciously, what the centralising tendency must always be, if not
\nactively to destroy, still to wear down and weaken the vigour of the
\nsubordinated autonomies. The consequence was that whenever the central
\nauthority was weak, the persistent principle of regional autonomy essential to
\nthe life of India reasserted itself to the detriment of the artificial unity
\nestablished and not, as it should have done, for the harmonious intensification
\nand freer but still united functioning of the total life. The imperial monarchy
\ntended also to wear down the vigour of the free assemblies, and the result was
\nthat the communal units instead of being elements of a united strength became
\nisolated and dividing factors. The village community preserved something of its
\nvigour, but had no living connection with<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

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

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\n

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\nsupreme authority and, losing the larger
\nnational sense, was willing to accept any indigenous or foreign rule that
\nrespected its own self-sufficient narrow life. The religious communities came
\nto be imbued with the same spirit. The castes, multiplying them- selves without
\nany true necessity or true relation to the spiritual or the economic need of
\nthe country, became mere sacrosanct conventional divisions, a power for
\nisolation and not, as they originally were, factors of a harmonious functioning
\nof the total life-synthesis. It is not true that the caste divisions were in
\nancient India an obstacle to the united life of the people or that they were
\neven in later times an active power for political strife and disunion,<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n–<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>except indeed at the end, in
\nthe final decline, and especially during the later history of the Mahratta
\nconfederation; but they did become a passive force of social division and of a
\nstagnant compartmentalism obstructive to the reconstitution of a free and
\nactively united life.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The evils that attended the system did
\nnot all manifest them- selves with any power before the Mahomedan invasions,
\nbut they must have been already there in their beginning and they increased rapidly
\nunder the conditions created by the Pathan and the Moghul empires. These later
\nimperial systems, however brilliant and powerful, suffered still more than
\ntheir predecessors from the evils of centralisation owing to their autocratic
\ncharacter and were constantly breaking down from the same tendency of the
\nregional life of India to assert itself against an artificial unitarian regime,
\nwhile because they had no true, living and free relation with the life of the
\npeople, they proved unable to create the common patriotism which would have
\neffectively secured them against the foreign invader. And in the end there has
\ncome a mechanical western rule that has crushed out all the still existing
\ncommunal or regional autonomies and substituted the dead unity of a machine.
\nBut again in the reaction against it we see the <\/font> <\/span>
\nsame
\nancient tendencies reviving, the tendency towards a recons<\/font><\/span>titution of the
\nregional life of the Indian peoples, the demand for a provincial autonomy
\nfounded on true subdivisions of race and language, a harking back of the Indian
\nmind to the ideal of the lost village community as a living unit necessary to
\nthe natural life of the national body and not yet reborn but dimly<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

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\n

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\nbeginning to dawn on the more advanced minds, a
\ntruer idea of the communal basis proper to Indian life and the renovation and
\nreconstruction of Indian society and politics on a spiritual foundation.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The failure to achieve Indian unity
\nof which the invasions and the final subjection to the foreigner were the consequence,
\narose therefore at once from the magnitude and from the peculiarity of the
\ntask, because the easy method of a centralised empire could not truly succeed
\nin India, while yet it seemed the only device possible and was attempted again
\nand again with a partial success that seemed for the time and a long time to
\njustify it, but always with an eventual failure. I have suggested that the
\nearly mind of India better understood the essential character of the problem.
\nThe Vedic Rishis and their successors made it their chief work to found a
\nspiritual basis of Indian life and to effect the spiritual and cultural unity
\nof the many races and peoples of the peninsula. But they were not blind to the
\nnecessity of a political unification. Observing the constant tendency of the
\nclan life of the Aryan peoples to consolidate under confederacies and
\nhegemonies of varying proportions, vairajya, samrajya, <\/i>they saw that to
\nfollow this line to its full conclusion was the right way and evolved therefore
\nthe ideal of the cakravartin, <\/i>a uniting imperial rule, uniting without
\ndestroying the autonomy of India’s many kingdoms and peoples, from sea to sea.
\nThis ideal they supported, like everything else in Indian life, with a
\nspiritual and religious sanction, set up as its outward symbol the Aswamedha
\nand Rajasuya sacrifices, and made it the Dharma of a powerful King, his royal
\nand religious duty, to attempt the fulfilment of the ideal. He was not allowed
\nby the Dharma to destroy the liberties of the peoples who came under his sway nor
\nto de- throne or annihilate their royal houses or replace their archons by his
\nofficials and governors. His function was to establish a suzerain power
\npossessed of sufficient military strength to pre- serve internal peace and to
\ncombine at need the full forces of the country. And to this elementary function
\ncame to be added the ideal of the fulfilment and maintenance under a strong
\nuniting hand of the Indian Dharma, the right functioning of the spiritual,
\nreligious, ethical and social culture of India.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n


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

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\n

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\nThe full flowering of the ideal is seen in the
\ngreat epics. The Mahabharata is the record of a legendary or, it may be, a
\nhistoric attempt to establish such an empire, a dharmarajya <\/i>or kingdom
\nof the Dharma. There the ideal is pictured as so imperative and widely
\nacknowledged that even the turbulent Shishupala is represented as motiving his
\nsubmission and attendance at the Rajasuya sacrifice on the ground that
\nYudhishthira was carrying out an action demanded by the Dharma. And in the
\nRamayana we have an idealised picture of such a Dharmarajya, a settled
\nuniversal empire. Here too it is not an autocratic despotism but a universal
\nmonarchy supported by a free assembly of the city and provinces and of all the
\nclasses that is held up as the ideal, an enlargement of the monarchical state
\nsynthetising the communal autonomies of the Indian system and maintaining the
\nlaw and constitution of the Dharma. The ideal of conquest held up is not a
\ndestructive and predatory invasion annihilating the organic freedom and the
\npolitical and social institutions and exploiting the economic resources of the
\nconquered peoples, but a sacrificial progression bringing with it a trial of
\nmilitary strength of which the result was easily accepted because defeat
\nentailed neither humiliation nor servitude and suffering but merely a
\nstrengthening adhesion to a suzerain power concerned only with establishing the
\nvisible unity of the nation and the Dharma. The ideal of the ancient Rishis is
\nclear and their political utility and necessity of a unification of the divided
\nand warring peoples of the land, but they saw also that it ought not to be
\nsecured at the expense of the free life of the regional peoples or of the
\ncommunal liberties and not therefore by a centralised monarchy or a rigidly
\nunitarian imperial State. A hegemony or confederacy under an imperial head
\nwould be the nearest western analogy to the conception they sought to impose on
\nthe minds of the people.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>There is no historical evidence that this
\nideal was ever successfully carried into execution, although the epic tradition
\nspeaks of several such empires preceding the Dharmarajya of Yudhishthira. At
\nthe time of Buddha and later when Chandragupta and Chanakya were building the
\nfirst historic Indian empire, the country was still covered with free kingdoms
\nand republics and there was no united empire to meet the great raid<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>of Alexander. It is evident
\nthat if any hegemony had previously <\/font> <\/span>
\nexisted, it had failed to discover a means or
\nsystem of enduring permanence. This might however have evolved if time had been
\ngiven, but a serious change had meanwhile taken place which made it urgently
\nnecessary to find an immediate solution. The historic weakness of the Indian
\npeninsula has always been until modem times its vulnerability through the
\nnorth-western passes. This weakness did not exist so long as ancient India
\nextended northward far beyond the Indus and the powerful kingdoms of Gandhara
\nand Vahlika presented a firm bulwark against foreign invasion. But they had now
\ngone down before the organised Persian empire and from this time forward the
\ntrans-Indus countries, ceasing to be part of India, ceased also to be its-
\nprotection and became instead the secure base for every successive invader. The
\ninroad of Alexander brought home the magnitude of the danger to the political
\nmind of India and from this time we see poets, writers, political thinkers
\nconstantly upholding the imperial ideal or thinking out the means of its
\nrealisation. The immediate practical result was the rise of the empire founded
\nwith remarkable swiftness by the statesmanship of Chanakya and constantly
\nmaintained or restored through eight or nine centuries, in spite of periods of
\nweakness and incipient disintegration, successively by the Maurya, Sunga,
\nKanwa, Andhra and Gupta dynasties. The history of this empire, its remarkable
\norganisation, administration, public works, opulence, magnificent culture and
\nthe vigour, the brilliance, the splendid fruitfulness of the life of the
\npeninsula under its shelter emerges only from scattered insufficient records,
\nbut even so it ranks among the greatest constructed and maintained by the
\ngenius of the earth’s great peoples. India has no reason, from this point of
\nview, to be anything but proud of her ancient achievement in empire-building or
\nto submit to the hasty verdict that denies to her antique civilisation a strong
\npractical genius or high political virtue.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>At
\nthe same time this empire suffered by the inevitable haste, violence and
\nartificiality of its first construction to meet a pressing need, because that
\nprevented it from being the deliberate, natural and steady evolution in the old
\nsolid Indian manner<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nof the<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\ntruth of her deepest ideal. The attempt to
\nestablish a centralised imperial monarchy brought with it not a free synthesis
\nbut a breaking down of regional autonomies. Although according to the Indian
\nprinciple their institutes and customs were respected and at first even their
\npolitical institutions not wholly annulled, at any rate in many cases, but
\nbrought within the imperial system, these could not really flourish under the
\nshadow of the imperial centralisation. The free peoples of the ancient Indian
\nworld 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
\nthat although for a long time the great popular assemblies continued to remain
\nin vigour, their function in the end tended to become more mechanical and their
\nvitality to decline and suffer. The urban republics too tended to become more
\nand more mere municipalities of the organised kingdom or empire. The habits of
\nmind created by the imperial centralisation and the weakening or disappearance
\nof the more dignified free popular institutions of the past created a sort of
\nspiritual gap, on one side of which were the administered content with any
\ngovernment that gave them security and did not interfere too much with their
\nreligion, life and customs and on the other the imperial administration beneficent
\nand splendid, no doubt, but no longer that living head of a free and living
\npeople contemplated by the earlier and the true political mind of India. These
\nresults became prominent and were final only with the decline, but they were
\nthere in seed and rendered almost inevitable by the adoption of a mechanical
\nmethod of unification. The advantages gained were those of a stronger and more
\ncoherent military action and a more regularised and uniform administration, but
\nthese could not compensate in the end for the impairment of the free organic
\ndiversified life which was the true expression of the mind and temperament of
\nthe people.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>A worse result was a certain fall from
\nthe high ideal of the Dharma. In the struggle of kingdom with kingdom for
\nsupremacy, a habit of Machiavellian statecraft replaced the nobler ethical
\nideals of the past, aggressive ambition was left without any sufficient
\nspiritual or moral check and there was a coarsening of the national mind in the
\nethics of politics and government<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>already
\nevidenced in the draconic penal legislation of the Maurya times and in Asoka’s
\nsanguinary conquest of Orissa. The deterioration, held in abeyance by a
\nreligious spirit and high intelligence, did not come to a head till more than a
\nthousand years afterwards and we only see it in its full force in the worst
\nperiod of the decline when unrestrained mutual aggression, the unbridled egoism
\nof princes and leaders, a total lack of political principle and capacity for
\neffective union, the want of a common patriotism and the traditional
\nindifference of the common people to a change of rulers gave the whole of the
\nvast peninsula into the grasp of a handful of merchants from across the seas.
\nBut however tardy the worst results in their coming and however redeemed and
\nheld in check at first by the political greatness of the empire and a splendid
\nintellectual and artistic culture and by frequent spiritual revivals, India had
\nalready lost by the time of the later Guptas the chance of a natural and
\nperfect flowering of her true mind and inmost spirit in the political life of
\nher peoples. <\/font> <\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Meanwhile the empire served well enough,
\nalthough not perfectly, the end for which it was created, the saving of Indian
\nsoil and Indian civilisation from that immense flood of barbarian unrest which
\nthreatened all the ancient stabilised cultures and finally proved too strong
\nfor the highly developed Graeco-Roman civilisatjon and the vast and powerful
\nRoman empire. That unrest throwing great masses of Teutons, Slavs, Huns and
\nScythians to west and east and south battered at the gates of India for many
\ncenturies, effected certain inroads, but, when it sank, left the great edifice
\nof Indian civilisation standing and still firm, great and secure. The
\nirruptions took place whenever the empire grew weak and this seems to have
\nhappened whenever the country was left for some time secure. The empire was
\nweakened by the suspension of the need which created it, for then the regional
\nspirit re-awoke in separatist movements disintegrating its unity or breaking
\ndown its large extension over all the North. A fresh peril brought about the
\nrenewal of its strength under anew dynasty, but the phenomenon continued to
\nrepeat itself until, the peril ceasing for a considerable time, the empire called
\ninto <\/font> <\/span>
\nexistence to meet it passed<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\naway<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nnot to revive. It left behind it a
\n<\/font> <\/span>certain number of
\ngreat kingdoms in the East, South and Centre<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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\nand\u00a0 <\/span>a
\nmore confused mass of peoples in the north-west, the weak point at which the
\nMussulmans broke in and in a brief period rebuilt in the North, but in another,
\na Central Asiatic type, the ancient empire.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nThese earlier foreign invasions
\nand their effects have to be seen in their true proportions, which are often
\ndisturbed by the exaggerated theories of oriental scholars. The invasion of
\nAlexander was an eastward impulsion of Hellenism that had a work to do in
\nWestern and Central Asia, but no future in India. Immediately ejected by Chandragupta,
\nit left no traces. The entrance of the Graeco- Bactrians which took place
\nduring the weakness of the later Mauryas and was annulled by the reviving
\nstrength of the empire, was that of a Hellenised people already profoundly
\ninfluenced by Indian culture. The later Parthian, Hun and Scythian invasions
\nwere of a more serious character and for a time seemed dangerous to the
\nintegrity of India. In the end however they affected powerfully only the
\nPunjab, although they threw their waves farther south along the western coast
\nand dynasties of a foreign extraction may have been established for a time far
\ndown towards the South. To what degree the racial character of these parts was
\naffected, is far from certain. Oriental scholars and ethnologists have imagined
\nthat the Punjab was Scythianised, that the Rajputs are of the same stock and
\nthat even farther south the race was changed by the intrusion. These
\nspeculations are founded upon scanty or no evidence and are contradicted by
\nother theories, and it is highly doubtful whether the barbarian invaders could
\nhave come in such numbers as to produce so considerable a consequence. It is
\nfarther rendered improbable by the fact that in one or two or three generations
\nthe invaders were entirely Indianised, assumed completely the Indian religion,
\nmanners, customs, culture and melted into the mass of the Indian peoples. No
\nsuch phenomenon took place as<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nin
\nthe countries of the Roman Empire, of barbarian tribes impo<\/font><\/span>sing on a superior
\ncivilisation their laws, political system, barbaric customs, alien rule. This
\nis the common significant.fact of these irruptions and it must have been due to
\none or all of three factors. The invaders may have been armies rather than
\npeoples; the occupation was not a continuous external rule which had time<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nto stiffen in its foreign character, for each
\nwas followed by a revival of the strength of the Indian empire and its return
\nupon the conquered provinces; and finally the powerfully vital and absorbing
\ncharacter of Indian culture was too strong to allow of any mental-resistance to
\nassimilation in the intruders. At any rate if these irruptions were of a very
\nconsiderable character, Indian civilisation must be considered to have proved
\nitself much more sound, more vital and more solid than the younger Graeco-
\nRoman which went down before the Teuton and the Arab or survived only
\nunderneath and in a debased form heavily barbarised, broken and unrecognisable.
\nAnd the Indian empire too must be pronounced to have proved after all more
\nefficacious than was the Roman with all its vaunt of solidity and greatness,
\nfor it succeeded, even if pierced in the West, in preserving the security of
\nthe great mass of the peninsula.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>It is a later downfall, the Mussulman
\nconquest failing in the hands of the Arabs but successfully re-attempted after
\na long interval, and all that followed it which serves to justify the doubt
\nthrown on the capacity of the Indian peoples. But first let us put aside
\ncertain misconceptions which cloud the real issue. This conquest took place at
\na time when the vitality of ancient Indian life and culture after two thousand
\nyears of activity and creation was already exhausted for a time or very near
\nexhaustion and needed a breathing space to rejuvenate itself by transference from
\nthe Sanskrit to the popular tongues and the newly forming regional peoples. The
\nconquest was effected rapidly enough in the North, although not entirely
\ncomplete there for several centuries, but the South long preserved its freedom
\nas of old against the earlier indigenous empire and there was not so long a
\ndistance of time between the extinction of the kingdom of Vijayanagara and the
\nrise of the Mahrattas. The Rajputs maintained their independence until the time
\nof Akbar and his successors and it was in the end partly with the aid of Rajput
\nprinces acting as their generals and ministers that the Moghuls completed their
\nsway over the East and the South. And this was again possible because – a fact
\ntoo often forgotten<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\n
\n–<\/font><\/span> <\/font> <\/span>
\nthe Mussulman
\ndomination ceased very rapidly to be a foreign rule. The vast mass of the
\nMussulmans in the country were and are Indians by race, only<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\na very small admixture of Pathan, Turkish and
\nMoghul blood took place, and even the foreign kings and nobles became almost
\nimmediately wholly Indian in mind, life and interest. If the race had really
\nlike certain European countries remained for many centuries passive,
\nacquiescent and impotent under an alien sway, that would indeed have been a
\nproof of a great inherent weakness; but the British is the first really
\ncontinuous foreign rule that has dominated India. The ancient civilisation
\nunderwent indeed an eclipse and decline under the weight of a Central Asiatic
\nreligion and culture with which it failed to coalesce, but it survived its pressure,
\nput its impact on it in many directions and remained to our own day alive even
\nin decadence and capable of recovery, thus giving a proof of strength and
\nsoundness rare in the history of human cultures. And in the political field it
\nnever ceased to throw up great rulers, statesmen, soldiers, administrators. Its
\npolitical genius was not in the decadence sufficient, not coherent enough or
\nswift in vision and action, to withstand the Pathan, Moghul and European, but
\nit was strong to survive<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font> <\/span>
\nand
\nawait every opportunity of revival, made a bid for empire <\/font> <\/span>
\nunder Rana Sanga,
\ncreated the great kingdom of Vijayanagara, held its own for centuries against
\nIslam in the hills of Rajputana, and in its worst days still built and
\nmaintained against the whole power of the ablest of the Moghuls the kingdom of
\nShivaji, formed the Mahratta confederacy and the Sikh Khalsa, under- mined the
\ngreat Moghul structure and again made a last attempt at empire. On the brink of
\nthe final and almost fatal collapse in the midst of unspeakable darkness,
\ndisunion and confusion it could still produce Ranjit Singh and Nana Fadnavis
\nand Madhoji Scindia and oppose the inevitable march of England’s destiny. These
\nfacts do not diminish the weight of the charge that can be made of an
\nincapacity to see and solve the central problem and answer the one persistent
\nquestion of Fate, but considered as the phenomena of a decadence they make a
\nsufficiently remarkable record not easily paralleled under similar
\ncircumstances and certainly put a different complexion on the total question
\nthan the crude statement that India has been always subject and politically
\nincapable.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>The real problem introduced by the
\nMussulman conquest<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n
\n\u00a0<\/font><\/span>was not
\nthat of subjection to a foreign rule and the ability to recover freedom, but
\nthe struggle between two civilisati9ns, one ancient and indigenous, the other
\nmediaeval and brought in from outside. That which rendered the problem
\ninsoluble was the attachment of each to a powerful religion, the one militant
\nand aggressive, the other spiritually tolerant indeed and flexible, but
\nobstinately faithful in its discipline to its own principle and standing. on
\nthe defence behind a barrier of social forms. There were two conceivable
\nsolutions, the rise of a greater spiritual principle and formation which could
\nreconcile the two or a political patriotism surmounting the religious struggle
\nand uniting the two communities. The first was impossible in that age. Akbar
\nattempted it on the Mussulman side, but his religion was an intellectual and
\npolitical rather than a spiritual creation and had never any chance of assent
\nfrom the strongly religious mind of the two communities. Nanak at tempted it
\nfrom the Hindu side, but his religion, universal in principle, became a sect in
\npractice. Akbar attempted also to create a common political patriotism, but
\nthis endeavour too was foredoomed to failure. An autocratic empire built on the
\nCentral Asian principle could not create the desired spirit by calling in the
\nadministrative ability of the two communities in the person of great men and
\nprinces and nobles to a common service in the creation of a united imperial
\nIndia: the living assent of the people was needed and that remained passive for
\nwant of awakening political ideals and institutions. The Moghul empire was a
\ngreat and magnificent construction and an immense amount of political genius
\nand talent was employed in its creation and maintenance. It was as splendid,
\npowerful and beneficent and, it may be added, in spite of Aurangzeb’s fanaical
\nzeal, infinitely more liberal and tolerant in religion than any mediaeval or
\ncon- temporary European kingdom or empire and India under its rule stood high
\nin military and political strength, economic opulence and the brilliance of its
\nart and culture. But it failed like the empires before it, more disastrously
\neven, and in the same way, crumbling not by external attack but by internal
\ndisintegration. A military and administrative centralised empire could not
\neffect India’s living political unity. And although a new life seemed<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\nabout to rise in the regional peoples, the
\nchance was cut short by the intrusion of the European nations and their seizure
\nof the opportunity created by the failure of the Peshwas and the desperate
\nconfusion of the succeeding anarchy and decadence.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>Two remarkable creations embodied in
\nthe period of disintegration the last effort of the Indian political mind to
\nform the foundations of a new life under the old conditions, but neither proved
\nto be of a kind that could solve the problem. The Mahratta revival inspired by
\nRamdas’ conception of the Maharashtra Dharma and cast into shape by Shivaji was
\nan attempt to restore what could still be understood or remembered of the
\nancient form and spirit, but it failed; as all attempts to revive the past must
\nfail, in spite of the spiritual impetus and the democratic forces that assisted
\nits inception. The Peshwas for all their genius lacked the vision of the founder
\nand could only establish a military and political confederacy. And their
\nendeavour to found an empire could not succeed because it was inspired by a
\nregional patriotism that failed to enlarge itself beyond its own limits and
\nawaken to the living ideal of a united India. The Sikh Khalsa on the other hand
\nwas an astonishingly original and novel creation and its face was turned not to
\nthe past but the future. Apart and singular in its theocratic head and
\ndemocratic soul and structure, its profound spiritual beginning, its first
\nattempt to combine the deepest elements of Islam and Vedanta, it was a
\npremature drive towards an entrance into the third or spiritual stage of human
\nsociety, but it could not create between the spirit and the external life the
\ntransmitting medium of a rich creative thought and culture. And thus hampered
\nand deficient it began and ended within narrow local limits, achieved intensity
\nbut no power of expansion. The conditions were not then in existence that could
\nhave made possible a successful endeavour.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font> <\/span>
\nAfterwards came the night and a
\ntemporary end of all political initiative and creation. The lifeless attempt of
\nthe last generation to imitate and reproduce with a servile fidelity the ideals
\nand forms of the West has been no true indication of the political mind and
\ngenius of the Indian people. But again amid all the mist of confusion there is
\nstill the possibility of a new twilight, not of an evening but a morning <\/font>
\nyuga-sandhy<\/font><\/i><\/span>\u00e3<\/font><\/span>. <\/font> <\/span><\/i>
\nIndia of the ages<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

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

<\/p>\n

\n

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

\n
\ni<\/font><\/span>s not dead nor has
\nshe spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for
\nherself and the human peoples. And that which must seek now to awake is not an
\nanglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the
\ncycle of the occident’s success and failure, but still the ancient immemorable
\nShakti recovering her deepest self, lifting her head higher towards the supreme
\nsource of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and a
\nvaster form of her Dharma.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage-381<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Indian Polity               I HAVE spoken hitherto of the greatness of Indian civilisation in the things most important to human culture, those activities that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-14-the-foundation-of-indian-culture-volume-14","wpcat-18-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927","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=927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}