Introduction

Mahendra Prasad Singh

Methodological Issues and an Overview

After a prolonged debate, Indian political thought has arrived as a field of study in its own right without succumbing to what appeared to be a compulsive instinct to compare it condescendingly with Western political thought. The hold of the orientalist mode of thought even on Indian scholars was such that some maintained that Western political thought was unquestioningly more systematically abstract and universal. It was subtly historically contextual as well. Indian political thinking, on the other hand, was supposedly banally contingent. Some writers tended to the view that Indian thought was religious and metaphysical without being concerned with the political (non-theological) and philosophical (epistemological) questions. Some even raised the false contrast that Indian thought was only monistic or non-dualistic whereas Western thought was dialectical. More recent researches and writings in Indian studies have shown these assertions to be patently orientalist and stereotypical. I mean to say that the Orient of the Western construction is not what the East is in reality; it is what the West says it is. Edward Said (1978), reminiscent of the post-colonial theory and post-structuralist method of deconstruction a la Jacques Derrida and Michael Foucault, asserts that the relationship between the West and the Orient is one of power, domination and varying degrees of control. The other side of the same coin is aggressive nationalism whose examples can be found both in the West and in the East. Taken to the extreme, it takes the form of fundamentalism and terrorism.

I propose in this Introduction to do basically two things. Firstly, I address some methodological problems in the study of Indian political thought. Secondly, I attempt to approach the field of Indian political thought basically as a field in its own right and do its mapping from this perspective of cultural relativism rather than seek to impose any universalist comparative straight-jacket. In doing so, I do not mean to disparage the latter approach. In fact, the two editors of this volume decided to introduce the field from both the aforementioned perspectives. My co-editor takes the comparative route, whereas I look at the field through a non-comparative lens, by and large.

I begin by drawing attention to three methodological problems in the study of Indian political thought. The first problem relates to the periodization of the long evolution of Indian culture and civilization through the ages. The commonly used division in terms of the Hindu, Muslim, and British periods is stereotypical and misleading. An alternative perspective on periodization worked out by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar is empirically more valid and systematically more fruitful. In Dinkar’s vision, Indian culture is a product of four important cultural-revolutionary transformations and transitions:

1. Aryan-Dravidian acculturation
2. Jain and Buddhist protest movements for reforms in the Vedic world view
3. Hindu-Muslim encounter and coexistence and
4. The Western, primarily British, colonial conquest, Indian response and resistance, and the modernization of the Indian tradition (Dinkar, 1962).

A second methodological problem relates to the identification and reading of primary texts and classical secondary commentaries of political purport and relevance. A comprehensive survey of Indian political and social thought must include texts such as Kautilya’s Arathashastra, Manusmriti, Abul Fazl’s Akbarnama that includes the Ain-i-Akbari, tracts and texts of administrative and policy relevance produced during the British Raj, political writings and speeches of the modern Indian political leaders, and political analysts. By the way, the classical Indian logic and theories of knowledge must also be laterally explored by the students of Indian political thought. In this regard the recent researches of the philosopher Bimal Krishna Matilal have amply demonstrated that the assertion that Indian philosophy is only religions, spiritual, and other-worldly is questionable (Matilal, 1990).

A third methodological problem we need to address is how to study the texts in their appropriate historical and cultural contexts. Traditionally, Indologists have primarily focused on internal reading of the texts, whereas historians have examined the political, social, and economic contexts. Students of political thought have primarily been interested in only the political aspects, while historians and Indologists have explored the traditions, past, and history more fully. Besides, historians have also grappled with contradictions evident in a text and its supposed historical context, though not quite satisfactorily. Treating these contradictions as aberrations, the texts are often devalued and denied any autonomy from their contexts. Interestingly, students of political thought per se are not dismayed by such contradictions between the texts and contexts; they are more readily inclined to grant autonomy to the texts and their authors. The classics of political thought enjoy a greater degree of autonomy from history which lends them a universal appeal and abiding relevance.

In his book What Is History? E. H. Carr maintains a sort of liberal view of history, according to which history delves into the past not only to know what it was like; more than that, it looks to the past with contemporary and futuristic concerns and questions. The history of political thought generally deals with three kinds of elements: ideas and concepts in general, thought of individual thinkers, and political ideologies and movements. These concerns are also reflected in the history of political thought in India in various stages of its history. Our exploration of political thought in India is suggestive of two prominent features that have gradually worked themselves out from the ancient through the medieval to the modern times. Firstly, political ideas were initially not only inchoate but also undifferentiated from folklore, religious ideas, metaphysical and philosophical discourses, and the like. Secondly, the history of political thought in India is also a history of the evolution of political orientations of a less differentiated society and culture into a more diverse and complex multicultural political community.

This Introduction presents a synoptic overview of the development of the two features and trends mentioned above. This survey is broadly divisible into ancient, medieval, and modern periods of Indian history for analytical convenience. The ancient phase comprises the Vedic folklores, the vedantic idealistic vision, the Jaina and the Buddhist visions, and the gradual emergence of what A. T. Embree (1992) refers to as the formation of ‘the Hindu way of life’, reflecting the confluence of diverse streams of the Indian civilization until the first Muslim conquests of parts of India. The political ideas and state formation in India in this ancient phase may be illustrated by the different political ideas and structures prevalent in Vedic, post-Vedic, Mauryan, and postMauryan periods of Indian history. Ideas and institutions of kingship, government, and state during this period show a trajectory of evolution from society-centred political formations of multifunctional nature to political structures of more specialized functions centred on the king, government, and the state. This trend is not unilinear or unidirectional or politically centralizing all through the various sub-phases of this period. Rather, it is marked by rise and fall of the importance of social or political institutions respectively and reversal in the trends of political centralization or decentralization, political integration or fragmentation.

Political thought in medieval India predictably reflects rupture with the ancient Indian tradition as well as some elements of continuity. Muslim conquest of India brought an alien tradition of political ideas and institutions developed in West Asia and its transplantation from a dominant political centre that lacked a total social and cultural hegemony. This factor forced the adaptation of alien ideas and institutions to the Indian conditions. This necessarily entailed an evolution of a syncretic political orientation which may be called the Hindustani vision.

Political thought in modern India flowed into various and diverse streams. The last quarter of the nineteenth century witnessed two major political tendencies and trends, namely, renaissance and revivalism. The two tendencies differ in that the former seeks to adapt to the Western colonial modernity in a positive way whereas the latter seeks to revive the Indian tradition in a spirit of reaction and resistance. Both represent attempts to combine modernity and tradition in varying degrees. Renaissance subsequently developed into religious reforms and liberal nationalism while revivalism engendered religious foundationalism and extremist nationalism. The latter tended to stoke the fires of communalism and casteism, which were aggravated by the colonial strategy of ‘divide-and-rule.’ By the beginning of the twentieth century political terrorism or revolutionary nationalism also made their presence felt on the Indian political scene. During the First World War the imperialist stranglehold on India weakened a bit, which allowed some measure of growth of national bourgeoisie that reversed the trend of de-industrialization. By this time liberal nationalism as well as political terrorism were coming to a dead end on account of lack of British colonial concessions, on the one hand, and repression by the colonial state, on the other. This double political failure provided the opening to ‘militant nonviolent nationalism’ of Mohandas K. Gandhi¹ under whose leadership the Indian National Congress was transformed into a widely popular mass movement (Robert R. McLane 1970).

By the beginning of the 1920s and the 1930s respectively, we also witnessed the emergence of Indian communism and socialism. Communists for the greater part remained outside the Indian National Congress, but occasionally (mid-1930s on) collaborated with it. Socialists, on the other hand, formed an organization within the larger framework of the Congress itself and sought to contain the right wing and strengthen the left wing of this centrist political formation. The Communists drifted away from the Congress during the Second World War. The socialists too parted company with the Congress soon after independence and on the eve of the first general election in 1951–52, the leftwing political elements that remained within the Congress or those who joined it under Jawaharlal Nehru became the mainstay of Nehruvian socialism.

The subsequent decades carry the legacy of the past, and elaborate and adapt them to the new conditions and compulsions.

Political Thought in Ancient India

Metaphysical and Philosophical Foundations

The themes of philosophical and/or cultural monism are recurrent not only in classical Brahminism (Vedism and Vedanta) Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism, but also in Indo-Islamic, Indo-British, and postcolonial secularizing versions. Indological and oriental interpretations, with their textual and ‘Orientalist’ (a la Edward Said 1978) biases, pioneered in bringing to light and offering early exploratory comments on Indian literary heritage and ontology. They are replete with cameos, ideas, and speculations about philosophical and/or cultural monism versus pluralism, jnanayoga, karmayoga, and bhaktiyoga. Besides these ideas, rajadharma or statecraft and dharmashastra flow into parallel streams, though the dharmashastra tradition is more prolific than the arthashastra tradition. It may also be added that in the classical Hindu tradition the abstract purana or mythic mode of writing generally prevailed over the positivist or factual itihasa mode of writing (for example, Kalhan’s Rajatarangini). Even Kautilya’s Arthashastra is more of an abstract treatise on statecraft than one specifically contextualized in time and place and dynasty. This style of writing political and historical texts changes in medieval India when philosophical, scientific, cultural, demographic, geographical, and agronomical, accounts are compiled in Indo-Islamic texts like the Akbarnama/Ain-i-Akbari, along with copious records of Mughal conquests in India.

Indo-British and post-colonial administrative accounts, gazetteers, census, and Royal/constitutional commissions take on a comparatively more historical, legal, and secular thrust. They heralded the advent of colonial and postcolonial modernity predicated on democracy and development, science and technology.

Marxist historians of ancient India on the basis of their scanning of Vedic and Buddhist texts sketch, increasingly combined with archeological evidence, the evolutionary transitions from lineage- or tribe-based social and political formations of the early and later Vedic periods to post-Vedic mahajanapadas (‘territorial states’ a la Sharma 2005) and ganasanghas or oligarchic republics (a la Thapar 2002: 146—150). And, the subsequent historical evolution leads to the centralized monarchical-bureaucratic state of the Mauryas and Guptas in Magadha and Harsha in Thanesar and subsequently to feudal monarchies in early and late medieval periods (Sharma 2005, Thapar 2002, Kulke 1995) prior to the onset of the British colonial state. But history again, like Indology/Orientalism, is a branch of knowledge different from political thought. Though they can and do intersect and mutually benefit from each other.

The Vedic Folklores

One sees the faint beginnings of political ideas in the Vedas, Upanishads, and epics, and then their crystallizations in the myths of the creation of the state in several Brahmanical and Buddhist texts. The most full-fledged outlining of the theory of state is found in Kautilya’s Arthashastra. The Rig Veda is replete with the plurality of images of anthropomorphic personifications of natural forces in Indra, Agni, and Varuna. Agni is extolled as ‘the household priest, the divine minister of the sacrifice, the chief priest, the bestower of blessings’ (Rig Veda, 1.1, excerpted in Ainslie T. Embree, 1992, Vol. 1, p. 9). Indra, occasionally referred to as ekadeva, first emerges as a heroic warrior and victor and is subsequently elevated as the ruler of heaven, relatively above the norms that bind the humans. He is the god of thunderstorms and floors the demon of drought and darkness (Vritra) and sets the waters free. His victories produce light, dawn, and the sun. He settled the quaking mountains and plains. He stretches out heaven and earth like a hide; he holds asunder heaven and earth as two wheels, kept apart by an axle; he made the non-existent into the existent in a moment. Sometimes the separation and support of heaven and earth are described as a result of Indra’s victory over a demon who holds them together’ (Arthur A. MacDonell, 1993, pp. 43—44). Varuna emerges as the ruler of the cosmic law (rita, dharma) that regulates the worldly activities. Varuna gets praised for powers and feats much like those of Indra. A verse in the Rig Veda says: ‘Wise are the races [of gods and men] through the greatness of him [Varuna] who propped apart the two wide worlds. He pressed forth the high, lofty vault of heaven and, likewise, the stars. And he spread out the earth [beneath]. In my own person, I speak this together [with him]: ‘When shall I be in [obedience to] Varuna? Might he take pleasure in my oblation, becoming free of anger? When shall I contentedly look upon his mercy? I ask about that trouble, Varuna, desiring to understand; approach those who know to ask [about it]. The knowing say the same thing to me: ‘Varuna is now angry with you’. Was the offence so great, Varuna, that you want to crush your friend and praiser? O you who are impossible to deceive, wholly self-sustaining, you will explain this to me. I would swiftly humble myself before you with reverence to be free of guilt’. (Rig Veda, 5.86, trans. by Joel Brereton, Ainslie T. Embree, 1992, p. 11) We see here the earliest ideas of political obligation in the Indian tradition, in a precursive way.

The foregoing account is only a selective glimpse of the more prominent in the strikingly pluralistic Vedic pantheon. Two metaphors of similar nature are the ‘thousand-headed, thousand-eyed, thousand-footed’ Purusha pervading ‘the earth on all sides’, still beyond it (Rig Veda, 10.90) and hiranyagarbha (golden embryo): ‘who is the life-giver, the strength-giver, whose decree all [even] the gods honour, whose shadow is immortality and death—to what god should we do homage with our oblation?’ (Rig Veda, 10.121, trans. Joel Brereton, Embree, 1992, pp. 19–20). In these visionary poetic and incipient philosophical explorations are seen the Vedic myths of creation and social formation. ‘A golden embryo (hiranygarbha) evolved in the beginning. Born was the Lord of what has come to be, he alone existed. He established the earth and heaven here. To what god should we do homage with oblation?’ (Rig Veda, 10. 121) ‘His [Purusha’s] mouth became the Brahmin; his two arms were made into the Rajanya; his two thighs the Vaishyas; from his two feet the Shudra was born. The moon was born from the mind, from the eye the sun was born; from the mouth Indra and Agni, from the breath [prāna] the wind [vāyu] was born. From the navel was the atmosphere created, from the head the heaven issued forth; from the two feet was born the earth and the quarters (the cardinal directions) from the ear. Thus did they fashion the worlds’ (Rig Veda, 10.90). ‘Political’ angle in these earliest texts are suggestively implied and inferred from cosmological hierarchy.

The Vedantic Idealist Vision

The most significant texts in the culmination of the Vedic literature are the Upanishads that develop the earlier religious ideas, rituals and ideologies into spiritual and philosophical discourses. Much like the Vedas, the Upanishads are not a homogeneous and consistent system of thought. They also continue to lack in the self-consciously political or seek to rise above sociological and political realities of the time. What distinguishes them is ‘their probing for new interpretations of the earlier Vedic concepts to obtain a more coherent view of the universe and man.’ (Embree, 1992, p. 29). They exhibit a method of discovering the truth from the gross to the subtle, and an attempt of ‘identifying partly or by degrees to seemingly dissimilar elements and arriving at a type of equation that, though at first sight irrational, will on further analysis or introspection reveal a unity’ (Embree, 1992, p. 30). The multiplicities are reduced into a duality: the brahman or the pure idea or god and the atman or the self or soul. ‘From this results the most significant equation of the Upanishads: brahman = atman’ (Embree, 1992, p. 30).

Ashvamedha (horse sacrifice) was the most elaborately ancient Brahminical monarchical rite performed by a king desirous of extending his realm by setting free a horse to freely roam around, backed by a select armed band. It was brought back to the capital and sacrificed while symbolically copulating with the chief queen in an august ceremonial congregation. The Briha- daranyaka Upanishad sought to give a cosmological reinterpretation of the ashvamedha and offer its ‘real meaning’ in terms of

‘a realization of the identity of the parts of this sacrifice [the horse] and the universe’ equating the sun with his eye, wind with his breathing, fire with his open mouth, the year with the body (ātman), sky with his back, the atmosphere with his belly, the earth with his [under] belly, the directions with his flanks, the corners with his ribs, seasons with his limbs, the months and fortnights with his joints, days and nights with his feet, clouds with his flesh, sand with the food in his stomach, rivers with his entrails, mountains with his liver and lungs, plants and trees with his hair, the rising sun with his forefront, the setting sun with his hindsight, the lightning with his yawns, thunders with his shaking, his watering with the rains, his neighing with the speech (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 1.1.1, excerpted in Embree, 1992, p. 30–31).

The metaphors symbolically underline the variety of elements and the importance of consensual nature of political conquest and hegemony.

The Jaina and Buddhist Visions

The spirit of critical reinterpretation of the earlier Vedic texts that we find in the Vedanta texts was developed further, leading to a fuller critique and reforms in classical texts of Jainism and Buddhism. This great ferment, especially the Jaina and the Buddhist ones, occurred between the seventh and the fifth centuries BC and flourished most in the areas now forming Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. Urbanization and economic changes had brought a new class of prosperous merchants besides the free peasantry in these areas where Aryan civilization was relatively new and less pervasive. The founders of these heterodox sets were Kshatriyas and the followers mostly Vaishyas. Both these sects did not entirely reject the Brahminical world view and political ideas. They appear, however, more down to earth and relatively less abstract and elitist.

Against Vedantic monistic idealism, Jain philosophy assumed plurality of souls and emphasized experience in the material universe. Hemachandra (born about c. 1089 in Gujarat and patronized by the Chalukya King Jayasimha, 1094–1143, a Hindu) in his poetic composition on the twenty-four tirthankaras and other eminent patriarchs and legendary rulers in Jain mythology portrayed the ideal king in terms of puritanical character, reformist legislation, and given to charity and welfare of the people. Such a ruler ‘will establish his own era upon earth’ (Mahaviracharita, 12. 59–770, excerpted in Embree 1992, pp. 84–85).

Somadeva, a Digambar Jain writer of the tenth century, portrays the characteristics of the ideal king in less puritanical and pompous garbs. In his Nitivākyāmrta (17. 180–84) he says a ‘true lord is he who is righteous, pure in lineage, conduct, and associates, brave and considerate in his behaviour’. For the prosperity of his subjects, the kingdom is the tree and the King the root. His order is ‘a wall that none can climb’. ‘The King is the maker of the times’, and in his kingdom ‘Indra rains in due season and all living things are at peace’.

These political ideas are hardly new when compared to Brahminism. However, in view of the pluralist and nonviolent temper of the Jain philosophy, their theory of kingship would appear to be less ‘idealist’ in terms of political thought and less inclined to what is called ‘realism’ in modern theories of international relations. However, it appears that early Jaina thought was more tolerant of societal autonomies than the two later Jain thinkers whose works are available with us and are briefly outlined above. It is quite possible that the early Jain thought was concerned more with what is now called the civil society than with the state.

Like Jainism, Buddhism too took a reformist stance towards the ritualistic and aristocratic features of early Vedism (though not of the later Vedanta or Upanishadic Vedism). Again, phenomenonalism, metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology of Buddhism, like those of Jainism, need not detain us here. A major Buddhist text, Digha Nikāya, addresses, among others, the question of the origin and evolutionary profile of the state. In statements attributed to the Buddha, it postulates that to get out of the evil and degenerate ways of society the people gathered together and reasoned and resolved: ‘Let us choose one man from among us, to dispense wrath, censure, and banishment when they are right and proper, and give him a share of our rice in return’ (Dīgha Nikāya, 3.80 ff. excerpted in Embree 1992: 127–1041). Thus was the mahasammata ‘approved by the whole people (mahājana)’ as ‘lord of the fields (Khettanam) and hence Khattiya (Skt. Kshatriya) …’ (Ibid.). In the opinion of A. T. Embree (1992, p. 129), ‘this is probably one of the world’s oldest versions of the contractual theory of the state’.

Dīgha Nikāya (3.58 ff.) also goes on to offer a narrative of King Dalhanemi and his sons who anticipated the decline of the righteous state in due course when the dharmachakra (Divine Wheel) ‘sunk or slipped from its place’ and contrived a rescue operation by a would-be Universal Emperor. ‘He uncovered one shoulder, took a pitcher of water in his left hand, and sprinkled the Divine Wheel with his right, saying ‘Roll on, precious Wheel! Go forth and conquer, lordly and precious Wheel!’ (Ibid.). A perfect opening for the Mauryan Ashoka the Great with the archaeological heritage of rock and pillar edicts spread far and wide on the Indian subcontinent! Ashoka’s dhamma (Skt. Dharma) is among the earliest all-inclusive ideology of state and civil society.²

The Hindu Vision

The Amarakosh, a Sanskrit dictionary composed sometime during the early Indian Middle Ages, though with contents that can be traced further back to the ancient period, does not contain the word ‘Hindu’ (though the term Sindhu is there). The connotation of the term Hindu is geographically communitarian, initially used not by Indians to denote themselves but by the Greeks and Persians to refer to the people living around the Indus (Sindhu). A. T. Embree (1992: 203–378) postulates that the centuries between the fourth and the onset of the thirteenth was the time of the formation of ‘the Hindu way of life’ comprising the sprawling branches of the tree of the Indian civilization. Philosophically and spiritually it included the ideas of karma (deeds), dharma (code), avatar (reincarnation), sanatanata (eternity sans beginning and end) of the atma (soul), and bhakti (devotion). Citing Raghavan and Dandekar approvingly, Embree finds an overarching philosophy of life in the classical Hindu concept of Purushartha (valour) that lends unity to the enormously varied streams of Hinduism. The ‘tetrad’ (chaturvarga) of purushartha is dharma (the code), artha (the matter), kama (love), and moksha (liberation). Sociologically, the caste ‘system’ is a uniform feature of the Hindu social structure, each unit of which is marked by ‘social customs that regulated marriage, food habits, occupations, and attitudes towards other groups’, and the society was integrated by ‘complex and interlocking social and economic relationships between groups at all levels’ (Embree, 1992: 205). It was during the early part of Indian Middle Ages that the role of the state shrunk to the maintenance of a stable social order so that various groups in the society could live out their lives in accordance with their dharma (Embree, 1992: 207).

During this phase, India lacked an overarching subcontinental state, divided as it remained by four major regional states of the Guptas and Harshvardhana in the north and Pandyas and Pallavas in the south and numerous smaller kingdoms.

The contemporary and major regional languages of modern India also emerged during this period in their formative phases. The dialectics between ‘dialect’ and ‘language’, and the transformation of the former into the latter need not detain us here. However, it bears pointing out that the dialect of the Delhi-Meerut region (Khari boli) graduated to ‘Hindavi’ (a la Amir Khushro), Hyderabadi ‘rekhta’, Urdu, Hindustani (a la Mahatma Gandhi) and Hindi (in Devanagri script). The last-mentioned version is the official language of the Indian Union along with English under the Constitution of India.

Political Thought in Later Medieval India

The Hindustani Vision

In Islamic political thought, religious and political powers were initially undivided in Prophet Muhammad, who founded the faith around AD 610. On Muhammad’s death, the succession issue caused a schism between those who supported Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, and Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman, who were successively actually accepted by the community. The successful Sunni faction subscribed to the theory of elected Caliphate, which was supposed to be the agent, rather than the chief of the ulama (the authoritative interpreters of Islamic revelation). In the real unfolding of history, Umayyad (AD 661–750) and Abbasid Caliphs (AD 750–1258) turned to be hereditary and created basis of authority that partly diverged from the Sharia.

The most remarkable feature of the Indo-Islamic political thought is its adaptability to the Indian conditions. Muslim rulers in India, in the periods of theSultanates as well as the Mughals, did not pay even a formal obeisance to the Caliphs in Bagdad. Embree (1992: 409) observes:

In the sixteenth century, members of Akbar’s circle, under the influence of Shia doctrines and ideas mediated from Greek philosophy, were inclined to allow the ‘just Imam’ discretion to decide points of Sharia where there was disagreements among the doctors [of Islam]. Still, it is doubtful whether they were going beyond the ambit of the administrative discretion (syasa) already allowed the ruler by some jurists and writers so that he might act in the best interests, though not according to the formal terms of the Sharia.

In practice, the readers of later medieval Indian history cannot miss a more generous political approach, by and large, among the rulers of the Mughal dynasty than among those of the six dynasties of the Delhi Sultanate that preceded it, barring a few exceptions of eccentrics like Muhammad bin Tughluq among the Sultans and Aurangzeb among the Badshahs.

In Indo-Islamic political theory also a gulf is visible between Fakhr-i-Mudir, the author of Shajara at the court of Qutbuddïn Aibak, who ruled between AD 1206 and 1210, and Abul Fazl, the author of the Aīn-i-Akbari at the court of Akbar. The former postulated the ‘god- prophet-sultan’ triad, whereas the latter asserted: ‘It is communicated by God to Kings without the intermediate assistance of any one, and men, in the presence of it, bend the forehead of praise toward the ground of submission’ (Ain-i-Akbari, pp. ii-iv, excerpted in Embree 1992: 425–427 and 439–440).

The political theorists during the Delhi Sultanate were divided between those who believed that the Sultan had a duty to convert Hindus to Islam (Ziauddin Baranī, Fatwa-i-Jahandari, folios 12a, 119a-206 excerpted in Embree 1992) and those who advocated that Hindus were Zimmis or people who should be protected if they perform certain duties such as non-construction of new temples, non-rebellion, and respect and hospitality to Muslims, observance of dress and name codes, etc. (Sheikh Hamadani, Zakhirat ul-Muluk, folios 94a–95a, excerpted in Embree 1992). By the time of Akbar’s reign the Mughal state was acting upon policies like Sulah-i-kul and Abul Fazl’s advocacy of political pluralism towards the subjects, which amounted to an almost liberal toleration.

Moreover, we find something akin to the Hindu varna system in Abul Fazl, who divided the society into four orders comprising the warriors, artisans and merchants, the intelligentsia, and the workers. The corresponding elements of nature reflected in the four respective orders are stipulated to be fire, air, water, and earth. The departures from, and status reversals of, the varna system in the Ain-i-Akbari (pp. iv–v) are significant, though. The order corresponding to the Brahmins is relegated to the third place, that to the Kshatriyas goes to the top, and that to the Vaishyas goes to the second position. The socio-economic changes by the Mughal period may perhaps explain these status reversals and upgradations.

The greater political tolerance in India by the time of the Mughals should not surprise us. For the times had changed. The Mughal state had become more secure and struck deeper roots and established linkages of alliance, patronage, and powers with the Hindu rulers and subjects as compared to the Delhi Sultanate. Also, as later converts than the Turks and Afghans, the Mughals had retained their pre-Islamic tribal and princely cultural baggage and were more tolerant of the Hindus. The failure to conquer the whole subcontinent, particularly the south and the northeast and the fear of adverse effect of forced conversions also compelled them to be more compromising and pragmatic in Hindustan.

Yet, it is difficult not to feel a palpable difference in the Indo-Islamic political thought vis-à-vis inter-community relations as compared to the Arthashastra, Ashoka’s dhamma, and the Manusmriti. The latter are more deeply concerned about intra-Hindu community relations, whereas the Indo- Islamic texts are narrowly focused on the inter-community relations between the Muslims and the Hindus. This communal polarization was to become sharper and deeper in the first half of the twentieth century during the British colonial rule in India that ultimately caused the partition.

Political Thought in Modern India

Modern Indian Vision

The catalytic factors in the emergence of political thought in modern India were the British colonial rule, modernization of the Indian tradition, and the challenges of nation-formation, state-formation, and economic development. The patterns and trends of political thought in ancient and medieval India were too deeply entrenched to be totally unsettled and radically transformed either by the British colonial rulers or the emergent nationalist modernizers. Nevertheless, the colonial and nationalist projects could not get down to a serious engagement with Modernity without unleashing powerful forces of transformation, destruction, and reconstruction. Intended and unintended consequences of colonial modernity engendered new ideologies of liberalism, capitalism, nationalism, and democracy in various measures in the Indian context. The nationalist elites carried these ideologies to more fully fledged forms, adding on to them radical, socialist, and Marxist overtones. The medley of these new ideologies also produced counter-ideological and cultural forces of traditionalism, conservatism, revivalism, and com- munalism of caste, tribe, and religious variety. As India moved towards political independence, Indian political thought also increasingly addressed the problems of foreign policy and global and regional integration.

Kenneth W Jones (1994: ix) observes, a student of modern India requires ‘a new vision of [the] change and a method of differentiating between what was new in the nineteenth century and what was a modification of long-standing cultural patterns.’ This theoretical and methodological puzzle continues to be the central concern of politics and social science research in India today. Religious fundamentalism and revolutionary radicalism have always met their Waterloo in India.

The mainsprings of changes in British India were globally economic, colonially political and phenomenally religious. The rise of British capitalism produced the political effect of the colonial rule in India. The immediately apparent product of the colonial rule was first felt in the socio-cultural realm: ‘Professional missionaries, polemical tracts and new rituals of conversion were only three of the components of religious innovation in South Asia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ (K. W Jones, 1994: 1). None was, in fact, entirely an innovation in India, but the context and scale were certainly new. New forms of organization and technology were employed in religious pursuits. Politicization of religion exacerbated religious communalism out of proportion and competitive communalism vitiated the political process that culminated in the partition of India in 1947.

Political thought in British India—on the nationalist rather than the colonial side—emerged in an incremental and gradual way. For it had to come to terms with Western colonialism that eventuated into British imperialism, first of the East India Company, and, following the 1857 Rebellion or the ‘First War of Indian Independence’, of the British Crown. It also had to transcend the regional and ethnic divisions of the colony, often whetted and exacerbated by the ‘divide-and-rule’ policy of the colonial rulers and the Indian princely states linked in subsidiary alliances under the paramountcy of the British Crown and Pax Britannica.

Between 1757 and 1849, the British were able to subdue their Indian as well as European rivals and establish their political dominance through direct or indirect rule throughout the Indian subcontinent. The educational, economic, and technological consequences of these seafaring conquerors were more decisive and consequential than the earlier foreign conquerors who had migrated into or invaded India through the north-western mountain passes. The Aryans and Central Asian Mongoloid tribes who came to India before the thirteenth century were absorbed into the Hindu varna system. This pattern of assimilation changed into one of integration after the Muslim conquests of Sindh in the eighth century, Punjab in the tenth century, and Delhi down to Deccan between the thirteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries. The post-Mughal Indian states of the Marathas, Sikhs, Jats, Afghans, Rajputs and Nawabs in the interregnum between the Mughals and the British amounted to political changes by and large, without the concomitant economic and social transformation from feudalism to modern bureaucratic and colonial capitalist states in a substantial way. The British in India made a beginning in this direction to not an inconsiderable extent. Smaller zamindars replaced the jagirdar grandees in eastern India; a freer class of peasantry emerged in the rest of the country, and then came a new English educated urban middle class as the standard bearers of, first, colonial and, subsequently, nationalist modernity. With the British being embroiled in the First and Second World Wars, small classes of Indian entrepreneurs and industrial workers also emerged in British India.

The foregoing, in brief, was the historical socio-economic context of the emergence of modern Indian political thought. However, social and religious reforms preceded any direct concern with political reforms. The socio-religious reform movements of this early phase have been classified into two major types by K. W Jones (1994: Chapter 1). These are ‘transitional’ and ‘acculturative.’³

Transitional movements linked the pre-colonial and colonial milieus in the initial period, when the colonial impact was less established and the number of anglicized individuals was limited in a particular movement. Traditional Brahmins and ulama largely led such movements. The examples of such movements are: the Namdharis and Nirankaris among the Sikhs; Sanata- nis, Arya Samaj and Dev Samaj among the Hindus; the Khawarijites and Wahabis among the Muslims of the Punjab and North West. Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah founded by Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi in Rai Bareilly, Dar ul-Ulum Deoband in the United Provinces of Agra and Awadh, Christian Tamil Nadars and Chhattisgarhi Satnamis among the Hindu untouchables, Satya Mihima Dharma among lower castes and tribals of Orissa, etc.

The acculturative socio-religious movements, according to Jones (1994: 3 and 212), were the products of the established colonial milieu. While conscious of their indigenous cultural heritage, they ‘sought an accommodation to the fact of British supremacy’. ‘They could neither ignore the English nor could they join British society and find acceptance within it.’ This category is illustrated by the Brahmo Samaj, and the effect that Ramakrishna and Vivekanand had among the Bengali Hindus, with spill-over effect in other parts of India. This category also included: Sayyid Ahmad Khan and his Aligarh movement with its base in the mid-Ganga Valley; the Radhasoami Satsang and Bharat Dharma Mahamandala among the Hindus of the same region and elsewhere; Singh Sabhas among the Sikhs of Punjab; the North-West Ahmadiyahs among the Muslims of that region; Manav Dharma Sabha, Paramahansa Mandali, Prarthana Samaj among the Hindus of central India and Maharashtra, Rahnumani Mazdayasnan Sabha among Parsis of the same region; Veda Samaj; and the Theosophical Society among the Dravidian Hindus; and Swami Narayana Guru among the untouchable Hindus of Kerala. Generally speaking, the pattern of regional distribution of the foregoing two categories of movements reveals that (a) acculturative movements followed on the heels of transitional movements, and (b) the more pervasive the impact of Western civilization in a region, the greater the likelihood of emergence of acculturative movements.

The advent of the printing press in British India, and with a more advanced technology than when it first arrived in Europe, brought about the phenomenon of what Jones (1994: 213—218) calls ‘Protestantization’, drawing an analogy with the Reformation in Christianity in the wake of the European Renaissance. The replacement of Sanskrit and Persian by the regional vernacular languages paralleled the European shift, when modern European languages replaced classical Latin and weakened the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and its clerics. The printing press made the religious texts more widely available for anyone willing and able to read. Similarly, the authority of Brahmins, Parsi priests, and ulama was undercut by the spread of education, urbanization, and the print media.

My own new analytical framework developed for a comprehensive analysis of modern Indian political thought and action delineates seven major patterns and phases of evolution. These are (a) reactive (for example, the 1857 rebellion); (b) responsive (examples of which were the Brahmo Samaj founded by Raja Rammohan Roy in 1828 in Calcutta, the Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental College of Aligarh founded in 1875 by Delhi-born Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Congress Moderates; (c) revivalist (of which examples were the Arya Samaj founded by Gujarat-born Swami Dayananda Saraswati in 1875, the Deoband School and the Congress Extremists); (d) revolutionary nationalists (best exemplified by Bhagat Singh and his Hindustan Revolutionary Army); (e) militarist (for example, Subhash Chandra Bose and his Indian National Army); (f) transformative (examples of which were Congress Nationalists like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and others; B. R. Ambedkar, the Dalit liberal democrat; Congress Socialists and Socialists like Jayaprakash Narayan, Ram Manohar Lohia and others; and Marxists like M. N. Roy, Rajani Palme Dutt and others); and (g) free enterprisers like Chakravarti Rajagopalachari and the more recent neoliberal capitalists.

Since the literature on modern and contemporary Indian history, and now increasingly on political thought, is prolific, I do not consider it necessary beyond putting together the foregoing classificatory scheme, which is more or less self-explanatory. I should, however, like to make a few critical and constructive comments on (a) the ‘Indian Renaissance’ and (b) the major themes in modern Indian political thought.

It goes without saying that we must compare India with Europe with circumspection. For the fallacy of circumlocution here is even more serious than that of narcissist fixation. It is notable that the American historian of South Asia, K. W Jones (1994), has warily used the term ‘Protestantization’ in the context of his study of socio-religious movements in British India, but has quietly avoided using the term ‘Indian Renaissance’. Is the reason for his cautious silence due to the fact that unlike Europe, India appears to have had not one renaissance and reformation but at least three? These are: (1) the critical spirit of the Vedantic Upanishads, Jainism and Buddhism, and the syncretic tolerant and egalitarian religiosity of the Bhakti and Sufi saints, including Guru Nanak; (2) the mature Mughal tolerance and fascination with philosophical and sociological heritage of India and (3) the renascent and reformative movements in British India of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There may be something more to it.

Aurobindo was perhaps the first Indian who seriously pondered over the phenomenon called the ‘Indian Renaissance’ (reawakening). To his mind, if at all we can talk about Renaissance in India, it involved three major ‘steps’ (1) ‘the reception of the European contact, a reconsideration of many principles of the prominent elements and some revolutionary denial of the very principles of the old culture.’ (2) ‘a reaction of the Indian spirit upon the European influence, sometimes with a total denial of what it offered and a stressing both of the essential and the strict letter of the national past, which yet masked a movement of assimilation’ and (3) ‘process of new creation in which the spiritual power of the Indian mind remains supreme, recovers its truths, accepts whatever it finds sound or true, useful or inevitable of the modern idea and form, but so transmits and Indianizes it, so absorbs and so transforms it entirely into itself that its foreign character disappears and it becomes another harmonious element in the characteristic working of the ancient goddess, the Shakti of India, mastering and taking possession of the modern influence, no longer possessed or overcome by it’ (Aurobindo 1918, 1920).⁴

Synoptically, the major elements in European Renaissance (AD 1350–1650) were

1. the discovery of ancient Greek and Roman classical languages and lore
2. the replacement of these classical languages by the contemporary vernacular languages of European nations
3. the advent of the technology of printing press and mass circulation of religious texts and the new streams of secular knowledge
4. the weakening of the Roman Catholic Church and the rise of independent and powerful states in post-feudal Europe
5. the discovery of the New World in 1492 by Christopher Columbus, and
6. scientific discoveries in astronomy and the Scientific Revolution initiated by Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei.

Renaissance made the Reformation possible and the latter spurred geographical and scientific explorations, the gateways to the European Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.

Prima facie, there appears to be some parallels between Europe and India in the comparisons mentioned above. But are the superficial similarities in the realms of religion, language, politics and science sustained and deep enough to produce identical effects in India that may be attributed to the ‘Indian Renaissance’? Aurobindo starts off with some similarities between the recent Celtic movement in Ireland and the ‘Renaissance’ in India. He goes on to say that

The word [Renaissance] carries the mind back to the turning point of European culture to which it was first applied; that was not so much a reawakening as an overturn and reversal, a seizure of Christianized, Teutonised, feudalized Europe by the old Graeco-Latin spirit and form with all the complex and momentous results which came from it. That is certainly not a type of renaissance that is at all possible in India (Heehs, 2005: 1–2).

The Indian Institute of Science looks upon the Indian scientists as the torchbearers of Indian Renaissance (see endnote 4). Ironically though one may well wonder whether there is an Indian science distinctly different from the Western science or is it only an invocation of Indian patriotism or nationalism? Such a demarcation may be a big question even in the realm of modern history and social science. It may perhaps have some relevance in the realm of culture, though globalization has put even this domain under universalizing pressures, postmodernist fragmentations and fundamentalist reactions notwithstanding.

A comprehensive and integral study of this area of studies would do well to address the following six major themes:

1. Transition from social reforms to political reforms and the concomitant puzzle of bridging the gap between communal fragmentation and national integration in the condition of colonial domination and dependency
2. Nation-formation in a country of unparalleled religious, linguistic, caste and tribal diversities in the world
3. State-formation in a society-centred ancient civilizational context where the task of modernization and political development demanded a strong state in the twentieth century
4. The challenge of economic development in a backward economy riddled with cumulative socio-economic and regional economic disparities
5. The predicament of evolving a national and supranational framework of federal governance in a historical society of radical decentralist tendencies and a contemporary socio-cultural mosaic within the nation and beyond national boundaries in South Asia face to face with simultaneous pressures of decentralization and regional and global integration; and
6. The forging of a concerted strategy of combating the terminal threats of environmental and ecological decay and climate change.

Mahendra Prasad Singh

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