Introduction to Indian political thought

When there was renewed interest in and exploration of Indian philosophy and political thought
during and after the Indian Renaissance in British India, the streams of the initial rediscoveries
tended to flow into one of the following channels: (a) Orientalist-Indological (b) nationalist (c)
idealist-philosophical and (d) the pluralist-philosophical

Orientalist-indological: Orientalism or its India-centered vision made pioneering discoveries of texts

and later of forgotten and obscure Eastern/Indological/Indian traditions in the realm of letters and
arts

Nationalist: The nationalists were primarily concerned with bringing to light ancient Indian concerns
with political ideas and institutions, systems of law and living, and transcendent nationalistic
identities beyond tribe, caste, and other forms of ethnicity The nationalist stream, in the present
context, is represented by K. P. Jayaswal’s Hindu Polity, which tried to demonstrate during the
nationalist movement that ancient India had had democratic ideas and institutions.2

Idealist philosophical : idealist-philosophical restatement of the advait or non-dualist metaphysics of

Shankara was Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan. Shankara’s metaphysical monism is the archetype of Indian
idealist philosophy, which rejects the duality of Brahman and atman and considers the material
world illusory.

Plurarist philosophical: philosophical pluralism is propounded by the Sankhya school. The concern
with the pluralist-philosophical system of ancient Indian thought is best represented in Surendra
Nath Dasgupta’s five-volume History of Indian Philosophy.

Indian philosophy and thought were primarily religious and society-centered rather than being
concerned with material life, political life, logic and epistemology.4

5 A similar new window opened when the political theories of origin of state in the Vedic and
Buddhist texts and the treatises of Kautilya, Manu, Kamandaka and others were brought to light by
textual scholars and historians, increasingly in combination with archeology and epigraphy

Introduction to Kautilya text:

Legend has it that Kautilya was a teacher in the famous ancient Indian university at Takshshila. He
helped one of his students Chandragupta in dislodging the Nandas, the ruling dynasty of Magadh,
and establishing the Maurya dynasty. The text of the Arthsashtra is attributed to this teacher, who is
also known as Chanakya and Vishnugupta.

L. N. Rangarajan’s translation follows in the trail of R. Shamasastry’s and R. P. Kangle’s. He goes on to

say that ‘presently available translations suffer from archaic expressions, voluminous footnotes,
incomprehensible literalness, muddling of the text with tedious facts, difficultly in understanding a
topic scattered in different places, divergence of opinion and personal prejudices or predilections’.
The subjects dealt with prominently are: constituent elements of the state, major departments of
the government, taxation system, armed forces and network of spies and the theory of rajamandala
and foreign policy. A series of interpretative inferences can be made here. The first would be about
the structure of the text itself. As the Arthashastra itself candidly admits, the text generally
attributed to Kautilya is not the first in the tradition of the arthashastra, as distinguished from the
tradition of dharmashastra. However, only the Kautilyan text has survived and was discovered early
in the 20th century. Moreover, even in the case of the Kautilyan version, there are two different
points of view as to whether it was ‘created’ or ‘compiled’ as a file by a series of scholars at different
or the same point of time.

THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE SOCIETY

The structure of the society that emerges is one based on the varnashrama system. The varna
system refers to the four orders into which society was ideally divided, and the ashrama system
refers to the four phases of a life-cycle viz. brahamcharya (the celibate learner), grihasthya (the
house-holder), vanaspratha (the anchorite), and sanyasa (the renouncer). The society was divided
into four varnas: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishya, and Sudras. There were two kinds of Brahmins or
the priestly class: srotriya and Brahmins in general. The special function of the Brahmins was the
performance of ceremonial and sacred rituals. They, especially the srotriyas, enjoyed special
privilege in social relations, property ownership, and laws. The srotriyas ranked next only to the
temple establishment, hermits, and heretic ascetics. Purohita, the royal chaplain and adviser,
enjoyed a position secondary to the royal family but exercised a good deal of influence on the king.

Kshatriyas were regarded as the ‘protectors of the land’. Nobility of birth and royal lineage were
considered matters of overriding importance. Only a male heir could succeed a king, though the rule
of primogeniture was not a settled convention. Ksahtriyas were valued as the best recruits to the
army as compared to other varnas.

Vaishyas as a varna are seldom mentioned in the text. But traders and merchants were an important
and mobile segment of the society.

Sudras were agriculturalists, artisans, craftsmen, and actors and entertainers. A Sudra was also an
Aryan and could never be taken as a slave. They, like the Vaishyas, formed a large section of society
and usually lived in uninhabited areas. Both Vaishyas and Sudras were also recruited in large
numbers in the army. However, Kshatriyas were highly regarded as the best soldiers

Women were supposed to be always subject to patriarchal control by father, husband, or son. Non-
Aryans were outside the pale of the four varnas. Their numerical strength is not clear though they
were apparently not immune from slavery.

The Arthashastra also refers to the ‘unsubdued jungle tribes [who] live in their own territory, [and
who] are more numerous, brave, fight in day light and, with their ability to seize and destroy
countries, behave like kings’ (8.1. 41-43). Rangarajan’s surmise is: ‘on the whole, tribal chieftains
seem to have been independent of the kings so long as they did not harass the country and came to
king’s help when called upon to do so’.

Occupations and professions listed in the Arthashastra are numerous and it mentions over 120 of
these. They were mainly from agriculture, fisheries, animal husbandry, manufacturing based on arts
and crafts, food products and vending, forestry, white-collar workers, defence services, textiles,
jewelry, etc

THE ECONOMY OF THE SOCIETY

The structure of the economy as revealed in the text appears to be considerably developed with
regard to terms of ownership of property and division of labour. The institution of private property
existed and so did state-ownership. The state claimed ownership of common resources such as
water and all residual, abandoned or disputed but unsettled private claims to property. Birds, fishes,
vegetables on waterworks, irrespective of whether built by the state or private parties belonged to
the state. The state also appropriated all treasure troves in the excess of l00,000 panas (the unit of
money, from Sanskrit parnas) and 5/6th of smaller troves. However, state monopolies existed in
gold, silver and gems, liquors, gambling. The state and local and foreign merchants were involved in
trade and commerce. Multiple sources of revenue are indicated in the text: from the durgam
(fortified towns), from the rashtram (the countryside), from khani (mines), setu (irrigation work),
from ayamukham (accounting), from warehouses, saving from expenditure, from ayudhiyam (supply
of soldiers in lieu of tax barter, confiscation) and so on. The rates of tariff schedules is also given in
the text.

THE SAPTANG THEORY OF STATE

The pre-Kautilyan theory of state in ancient India closely resembled the early states in great many
tribal or lineage-based societies where the role of the state was proposed to uphold the varnashram
laws, i.e., laws of society given by customs and traditions. Kautilya’s Arthashastra made a significant
break with this tradition by stipulating that the state could make its own laws and that in case of
conflict between the laws of the dharmashastras and the dharmanaya of the state, the latter would
prevail.

As the saptang (seven-organ) theory of state suggests, the state was a corporate entity comprising
(1) swami (king), (2) amatya (ministers and other high officials); (3) janpada/rashtra (territory and
the population inhabiting these), (4) durga (fortified town and cities), (5) kosa (treasury), (6) danda
(forces), and (7) mitra (allies). This is in the order of the seven constituents of the state presented in
the Arthashastra. They are supposed to be organically interdependent and interlinked according to
Kautilya ’ But ‘[lastly,] a calamity which threatens to destroy all other elements shall be considered
as [the most] serious, irrespective of what position the element affected occupies in the list of
priorities’ (Arthashastra, 8.1.63/Rangarajan, 1992:127).1

DEPARTMENTS OF GOVERNMENT
Agriculture appears to be the most important economic activity of the time, and yet other economic
activities were also considerably developed.

The source of the financial strength of the state is the mining [and metallurgical] industry; the state
exercises power because of its treasury. The Kautilyan state demonstrated a considerably high
degree of functional specialization and structural differentiation. It mentions 34 different
departments of government, their respective adhyakshas (heads)

There were at least two grades of ministers and head of the departments, apart from the councilors
who need not have had direct administrative responsibilities. … Kautilya says that one who fails all
four tests (dharma, artha, karma and fear) shall be sent to difficult posts such as forests, mines or
factories. Hence the salary of the head of the department could have been anywhere between 1000
to 12,000 panas per annum, with or without perquisites’

It goes without saying that the monarch himself occupied the apex of ministerial and/or
bureaucratic hierarchy(ies).

Nevertheless, it must be conceded that, besides the huge bureaucratic apparatus, the Kautilyan
blueprint of the state also outlines large armed forces and espionage. development such as from
gopati (owner of livestock) to bhupati (owner of land), from janapada to mahajanapada,
ganasanghas (‘republics’) to the monarchies.21 In the opinion of Burton Stein, ‘these so called
‘republics’ are far better viewed as social ‘communities as states’ ’.22 ‘In some reckonings, they
existed from about 800 CE to the time of Kautilya’s Arthashastra, conventionally ascribed to the
fourth century CE. As clan-based polities, ‘republics’ have been identified from Pali sources to early
Buddhism and from Jaina texts. Other source such as the Mahabharata, the Arthashastra, and
Panini’s ‘Asthtadhyayi, add to this evidence and also shift the ground of investigation from
northwestern to northeastern India during the sixth to fourth centuries CE’.23

THEORY OF RAJMANDALA
Kautilya formulated a detailed theory of foreign policy and inter-state relations based on the maxim
that a friend’s friend is likely to be a friend and an enemy’s friend an enemy. He laid down six basic
principles of foreign policy, viz, 1. pursuit of resources by the vijigsu (the one desirous of conquest)
for campaigns of victory 2. elimination of enemies 3. cultivation of allies and providing help to them
4. prudence rather than foolhardy valour 5. preference of peace to war 6. justice in victory as well as
in defeat

The circle of states keeps expanding to include the ‘middle kingdoms’ of enemies until the distant
states that may turn indifferent (udasina) to goings on in the circle relevant to the victor at the
centre of the rajamandala. We have already noted the novelty of the Arthashastra in treating
statecraft as one that sought. he term purushartha in the ancient Indian texts means the four-fold
purpose of life, society and state comprising dharma (law), artha Kautilya 13 (material well-being),
kama (desire) and moksha (salvation). In the Arthashastra, however, the last element seems not to
be emphasized.