Preface

Political thought as an allied branch of philosophy has a long, continual history in India unlike that of philosophy proper which, as Hegel argued, ceased to develop as an independent branch of knowledge after Buddha. Philosophy became ‘identical with its religion’ in the course of the formation and development of hereditary monarchies. The withering away of the free institutions, which existed due to the ‘connection between political freedom and freedom of thought’, created conditions for the philosophy proper—the absolute universal of self- consciousness—to lose its vitality. The Idea weakened and could not fructify into objective. The external and the objective couldn’t be comprehended as a full-blown form in accordance with the Idea.¹ But the epistemology about the concepts of an ideal polity, civil laws, justice, property, sovereignty and secularism as the six allied branches of philosophy proper blossomed over the centuries. This was because these concepts were necessitated by and required for the existence of state, and for its expansion in different forms in different regions according to the then prevalent social structure. The content and the contours of these themes, however, lacked substantive or sharp formulation when compared to the consistent evolution seen in Greco-Roman political philosophy; but an intensive reading of the available historical material in India leads us to interesting conclusions that are conceptually similar in content to the European formulations while simultaneously being distinct and with a discernible Indian imprint.

The similarities and differences in the political philosophy are, broadly, the results of the similarities and differences in the pre-capitalist social formations of India and of Europe, of their state structures, of Episcopal orders, and of variegated pattern of land holdings. In fact, one of the basic factors of distinction in India was the wide prevalence of land holdings and of property rights among the peasantry in customary forms whose vast numerical existence for centuries created conditions for the emergence of distinctive inputs into the conceptual paradigms of political thought.² It provided an ontological base over which many philosophical discourses emerged as different branches of knowledge and fructified into independent/autonomous/related disciplines.

Let us now discuss the six major concepts of political philosophy in India referred to earlier. One can begin with the notion of secularism actuating amidst the peasants or of application of policy and conduct of state towards religion and towards faiths of people. It may be noted here that historically the Indian states were largely non-theocratic. It had multifarious linkages with different religions and there was separation between the personal faiths and political practices of the rulers. The subjects enjoyed religious freedom. The application of few apparently discriminatory policies by the local or central authorities, or their acts of imposing religious conversions on the subjects were minor trends. The absence of any Episcopal order provided conditions for the emergence of new religions, new gods and new sects. The absence was itself grounded in the existence of a large peasantry with diffused land holdings among different castes which acted as bulwark against theocracy and the emergence of a church type Episcopal order. The land holders required, in their routine existence, substantive degree of autonomy to formulate and actuate their decisions for cultivation and management of their properties, a freedom that was effectively transmitted into freedom of other kinds including their religious attitude. Curtailment of this freedom by imposition of fixed ideology by the state/ruling class on such a large number of land owners would have been a difficult proposition and a non-beneficial act. In fact, it would have created condition for a rebellion and a cause for revenue loss. The scattered and the autarkik village existence of the populace with expanding cultivable land acreage benefited the state in terms of increase in revenue generation and in providing insulation to it from economic crisis. In this mutually beneficial and balance of power relations between the state and the peasantry there was no requirement of a theocracy, neither was it desirable or possible to impose it nor to create an Episcopal order. In fact, there was no social condition for its emergence. The attitude of the state was to support every religion or to adopt policies which were beneficial to it. The economic appropriation of the peasants’ produce and the avoidance of religious coercion was the best option for it. Thus, in a historically evolved social structure, in which there was a numerical preponderance of the peasantry with their local village and family deities, totems and rituals and an in-built requirement of functional autonomy necessary for cultivation and related functions, secular conduct of the state and the idea of limited liberty among the peasantry were imperatives.

In contrast to this, in Europe the states were theocratic in nature for centuries. In tandem with the Episcopal order, they imposed Christianity on their subjects as political ideology. It denied their civil freedom and created a fixed paradigm within which the aspirations for ideal polity or justice was to be sought, thereby intending to regulate the formation of new ideas in public sphere.

Simultaneously, the Episcopal order built up Christ and Christianity as the pre-eminent god and religion respectively and destroyed the plurality of other polymorphous religions. It went to the extent of suppressing the formation of sects within Christianity itself which created intense contention in the public sphere. The emergence of the Episcopal order and of theocratic states, and their power, were premised on and were in proportion to the increasing accumulation of wealth by the lords and churches, who appropriated the bulk of cultivable lands and other properties. This deprived the masses of its ownership and of its derivative necessities for existence. The more the surfage of society and the appropriation of the surplus produce by the lords and churches, the more was the necessity of religion for the masses. It helped in the preservation of the prevalent social structure. It necessitated the emergence and consolidation of a theocratic state and the development of an Episcopal order that was in contradistinction to the idea of equality of religions. Their emergence and consolidation, however, created dual power centres and conflict for dominance over the temporal and mundane domains. The sovereignty of the state became divisible between the pope and the king, representing two factions of the ruling class. It became, therefore, imperative for Austin and Bodin³ to negate the past and to reassert for the new ruling class represented by the state its indivisible, absolute, legal supremacy over the rest; the Episcopal order, declined after the consolidation of the bourgeois regime, was politically relegated into the background.

In India, this duality of power and the resulting conflict for dominance rarely occurred. In the absence of an Episcopal order, the sovereignty remained absolute and indivisible and was located in the monarchy. Any attempt or discourse of usurpation or division of power was immediately neutralized by a coercive and ideological state apparatus as it lacked popular support. The wide prevalence of property rights in customary forms, both individual and communal in nature (segmentary exclusion of the untouchables notwithstanding), in tandem with the deep- rooted idea of equality and plurality of religions, also preempted any pan-Indian usurpative or revolutionary challenge to the state.

The existence of mass property rights provided, even within the matrix of inscriptive precapitalist social formations, a restricted public sphere, a limited civil society and some basic functional civil laws⁴ that were largely absent in medieval Europe except for its segmentary presence among burghers. These involved a large urban and rural populace of different castes/ religion/gender (including the lowest decideratum) who had considerable operational and ideological autonomy as far as their customary rights were concerned. But it must be noted here that these groups were not a political community yet. In contrast, in Europe, the absence of mass property holdings and the presence of the Episcopal order resulted in the social erosion of such freedom. This either brutalized large sections of the populace or propelled them into radical/reformative social transformation with great intensity and increased frequency, leading to constant social change.

The search for justice and ideal polity, however, engaged the masses and the intelligentsia, both in the European and Indian societies. It was reflected both in religious discourses and in academic treatises. Kautilya’s Arthashastra, Zia Barani’s Fatawa-i-Jehandari, Abul Fazl’s Akbarnama were parts of it. Both in the popular and academic discourses, the notion of an ideal dharma/religere, the idea of powerful and benevolent kingship and of its different organs as integral part of the state were posited and were partly incorporated in the administrative and social machinery, which followed legal codification and customary inscriptive laws in the dispensation of justice and in governance. Here it may be noted that both the societies had political communities and citizenship in the ancient world. In Europe, however, the slaves were denied of it; in India, it was destroyed by the emerging hereditary monarchies. The idea of republicanism, nonetheless, persisted, at least in the vernacular literary works of poets. Kabir’s quest for Begumpura,⁵ for example, was part of this urge.

The presence of the past in the modern history of India was sharply contoured and enriched under the impact of colonial capitalism. In the process of fighting back for social and political emancipation, the past was resurrected in new forms⁶ with enriched content for a comparative study with Europe. To demonstrate parity/superiority with Europe, new concepts of political philosophy were added through creative interpretations of the past. Some of them, for example, were nationalism, socialism, democracy and feudalism. It was rarely emphasized that only modern capitalist Europe was better placed than colonial India, that Europe could be said to have had a bigoted past and it was far more intolerant and brutal than India. The pre-capitalist India was a more hospitable place to live in than the pre-capitalist Europe. Only in late history, in and around the 17th and 18th centuries, Europe had marched ahead of India in civilizational progress. A comparison of precapitalist India and of capitalist Europe was illogical and incompatible.

Fortunately, this kind of comparison no longer dominates the frontiers of research in postcolonial India. Currently, two aspects of political philosophy are being focused upon: the first is the exploration of new theories and their analysis, and the second is the ‘discovery’ of new thinkers and new interpretations of their views under different rubric.⁷ In both the cases, a thematic comparison with Europe is used as a method for increasing our understanding. These efforts being made to understand the distinctiveness of philosophy of different societies without getting caught up in the notion of one being inferior or superior to the other is a sign of maturity.

Political philosophy as an academic discipline, different from the genre of political thinkers, is being gradually introduced as a new course in the universities of India. Its widening thematic base and enrichment through inter-disciplinary input is a right step toward holistic understanding of the past and of contemporary society.

In the editing of this book Praveen Dev, the senior commissioning editor, Pearson Education, provided important inputs for the enrichment of its contents. We thank him for it.

Himanshu Roy