HERE IS AN ENDURING precept of the researcher and pioneering decoloniser Dharampal: India’s history of the last 250 years has not been studied with the seriousness and detail that it merits. His lament still holds true. In many ways, it is the master key that unlocks almost all secrets to accurately understand Bharatvarsha’s civilisation, culture, society and institutions.
Dharampal’s precept naturally extends to the realm of politics and statecraft predating not just the British but predating even the Gupta Era. The end of the Gupta Era marks the end of Classical India. Thus, to understand and reconstruct the theory and practice of statecraft in ancient India, the primary requisite is to discard the shoddy, lazy and ill-informed habit of viewing it from the perspective of western democracy.
While we can find contemporary terminological equivalents to define and describe various facets of ancient Indian polity, we must first have a vivid picture of its actual practice in our mind. Theory evolves from practice, not the other way around. Grammar evolved from spoken language.
Thankfully, we have a substantial repository of primary sources of knowledge that gives us a rather comprehensive picture of the aforementioned practice of Ancient Indian politics, statecraft and governance. In no particular order, these sources include epigraphs, linguistics, literature, coins, and what are casually dismissed as “oral legends".
We also need to shed another deeply-ingrained colonial habit — of somehow trying to “prove" that democracy existed in ancient India. That is, the sort of democracy that has been in vogue for roughly the last three hundred years in Europe and America. We do find similarities in some institutions, procedures and institutions between the two but these are largely superficial and diverge widely in the underlying philosophy and application. This comparison is the classic case of one in which the parts do not make the whole. It is akin to saying that all creatures that have wings are falcons.
A reasonable definition of ancient Indian polity and statecraft is that it was a Circumscribed Monarchy in which the power of the monarch was constrained by a Council of Ministers. Every scholar of Indian statecraft from Manu and Kautilya onwards held that an ideal administrative setup was one where the King and the Council of Ministers were mutually accountable and in turn, all of them feared public opinion. In fact, all primary texts of Rajyasastra prescribe the grooming of teenagers in what is today known as participative democracy — they were encouraged to speak their mind freely on various issues in town halls (sabhas).
Unlike contemporary democracies, the basic qualification for a ruler in ancient India was military training right from childhood. The king had to be a warrior first and last. Administrative and other abilities came next. Among other things, good administration was defined as the most powerful method of preventing both internal and external war. Effective administrative skill was also the penultimate step that decided victory in case war occurred.
Almost every royal fiat had to be whetted by the Council of Ministers before it was executed. The top ministerial echelons kept a hawk-like vigil on the daily life of the people. They performed a basic, two-fold function. One, they publicly recognised and generously rewarded the good conduct, service and fidelity to tradition shown by ordinary citizens. Two, they punished faults and crimes in a timely fashion. When we mine the annals of this history of India, we clearly notice that it was a fairly just and equitable system contrasted to what we now have.
Although this system eventually disappeared to the point of extinction, its foundational features remained almost intact in the DNA of our people even after India attained a questionable independence. To quote the memorable words of R. Narasimhacharya, the doyen of Indian epigraphy, these features evidenced in our historical records, “bear testimony to the prowess, piety, generosity, patriotism and toleration of our princes and the people."
Another scholar and Theosophist, P.K. Telang gives us an evocative miniature of ancient Indian polity: “The word Rajan (or King) means one who can keep the people contented. Power and authority were implicitly admitted to rest on the sanction and the good-will and consent of the people. The ultimate right of the people to be the sole arbiters as to the kind of government they would have and the persons they would have to govern them, was recognized. This recognition was given concrete form in two restraints on the power of the King…He could not transcend Dharma."
He continues, “What is Dharma? The custom of the people, admitted and sanctified as binding law and imprimatur of those who were the knowers and guardians of the people’s culture. He could not break the word of the Brahmanas. Who were the Brahmanas? Those who having acquired culture and knowledge, gave everything to the service of the country and the service of the people without expecting anything in return. Their watch-words were self-renunciation and self-sacrifice in the service of the nation. You will note how both these checks would lead to the substantiation of the ultimate power of the people."
As glorious and rosy as this sounds, it does not mean that the system was perfect in all respects. No man-made system is perfect. There are numerous historical instances that show conflicts between the King and the Council of Ministers — as also how they were resolved, and the consequences that ensued if they weren’t resolved.
An early example of this conflict occurs in the regime of the powerful Śaka ruler, Rudradamana I of the Western Kshatrapa dynasty. He once placed an ambitious proposal to repair the dam across the Sudarshana Lake at Junagadh, Gujarat. After much deliberation, his Council of Ministers shot down the proposal because it was cost-intensive and would eventually lead to increased taxes resulting in popular discontent. But it was a question of personal prestige for Rudradamana — he had publicly given his word to his people. And so, he repaired the dam using his personal money — or what is known as privy purse.
Ministers were able to wield such extraordinary clout over the monarch owing to the exacting selection process that they had passed through. The most detailed exposition of this process is found in Kautilya’s Arthasastra.
The Dharma Dispatch is now available on Telegram! For original and insightful narratives on Indian Culture and History, subscribe to us on Telegram.
