Chapter X. Purpose of the Study of Rājadharma and the Ends of the State
Volume III pp. 235–241
Chapter X. Purpose of the Study of Rājadharma and the Ends of the State
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY OF RĀJADHARMA AND THE ENDS OF THE STATE
In the preceding pages an attempt has been made to present a picture of the theory and practice of Government and state-craft as delineated by ancient and mediæval Indian writers on dharmaśāstra and arthaśāstra. One feature that would strike any reader is the religious colouring with which all theories and ideals are suffuseḍ Another is that the ideal set before rulers and their officers is a highly moral one. Several faults have been found in the theory and practice inculcated by the writerṣ Except for some centuries before and after the Christian era, monarchy has been the only form of government known in India and monarchy alone is generally envisaged by Indian writerṣ The result has been that the king came in practice to be almost synonymous with government and the State, though a very lofty sense of his duties and responsibilities was impressed on the king. Another defect lies in the almost total absence of discussion on the form and working of oligarchical or republican Stateṣ Besides, once the main outlines of the theory of the State were established by the first writers on polity, for about two thousand years succeeding generations of authors were content to follow in the old grooves and hardly ever made any fresh approach to the problems of government or started any rival conceptions or theorieṣ Ancient authors were content to induce the kings and the people to support as far as possible the status quo. They thus provided for a more or less static society and did not encourage any dynamic thoughts or movementṣ There was no strong or assertive middle class nor was there any organized Church. Though the brāhmaṇas were a sacred class, they were not organized as a body and had to depend only on exhortations and texts to exert influence on the monarchṣ It may no doubt be pointed out that similar conditions prevailed almost all the world over. Small States, constant wars and invasions were the commonest phenomena in Europe till the 15th or 16th century and no reproach should be levelled at the Indian writers alone. It cannot, however, be gainsaid that even after experiencing the constant plundering expeditions and religious persecutions of Scythian, Hun and Moslem invaders from the 1st to the 11th and the following centuries the able thinkers, warriors and statesmen of India did not enlarge their limited horizon and find means to consolidate and weld together into a united block the numerous small States that were scattered all over India. They could have put forward a common idea and ideal before all the provinces and peoples of India viz. meeting the onslaught of plundering and fanatical invaders, which, if properly handled, would have acted as a unifying force. It was to some extent only in Vijayānagara and Mahārāṣṭra that in medieval times means were adopted to weaken the power of the invader, to present a solid front and establish powerful Hindu kingdomṣ The old writers spun the same old webs of theories that had been there for centuries, they did not formulate new theories nor did they take steps to infuse into the common people a sense of solidarity and unity as Indians and did not inculcate deep and abiding sentiments of patriotism similar to those we find in Western countries for the last two or three hundred yearṣ In spite of such drawbacks it will have to be conceded that ancient Indian writers made substantial and independent contributions to the theory and practice of Government and that their handiwork can stand comparison with the ancient and medieval thought of most countries of the worlḍ
It may be asked : What in these days is the use of the study of the theory and practice of Government in ancient India? It may be argued that the world is now hoping, as promised by the great leaders of the United Nations, to enjoy several freedoms, that great expectations are created in the minds of millions of down-trodden peoples, and that all peoples including Indians will be faced in the near future with democracy and great problems of reconstruction and that knowledge of the past cannot throw much light on the pressing needs of the present or the serious questions that will confront all in the latter half of the 20th century. It may be conceded that the situation in which we find ourselves now and in which we shall be placed in the near future is unique and much light cannot be thrown by a study of the past on the solution of the problems that will have to be tackled by us But that study has certain useful purposes to serve. Millions of people in India as well as in the world are hardly better than hewers of wood and drawers of water in their own countrieṣ They intensely desire to be masters in their own countries and of their own destinieṣ The iron has entered III ] deep in their souls that for countries as well as individuals freedom of action spells happiness and dependence on the will of others is misery (as Manu laconically puts in IV. 160 ), that men who have no independence are hardly human beings (as the Markandeya 125-29 says ).1 The study of the past will give us hope and convey the assurance that we have in the past conducted governments and administrations of vast empires, that we evolved theories and practices which were not inferior to those of some of the most advanced nations of the world, that, allowed opportunities and scope, we may rise equal to what the circumstances may demand of uṣ On the other hand, such a study will stimulate thought, focus our attention on our mistakes and short-comings, make us be careful to avoid pitfalls and give us indications of the directions in which we must make a new orientation in our ideals and practiceṣ
At the end of this section on rājadharma, a question may be asked: what were the ends or purposes that the State in ancient India placed before itself or the dharmaśāstra and arthaśāstra writers said the State should place before itself ? The end of the State has been differently stated by different philosophers and theorists of the West from ancient times to the present day. To take only a few examples : Plato and Aristotle2 the end of the State was good life for the citizenṣ But it is not very easy to say what is meant by the good life. Bluntschli in ‘Theory of the State’ (Oxford, 1885 ) Book V Chap. IV p. 300 formulates the proper and direct end of the State to be ‘the development of the national capacities, the perfection of the national life and finally its completion’, provided, of course, that the process of moral and political development shall not be opposed to the destiny of humanity. This definition is not easy to grasp. There is no agreement as to what is the destiny of humanity and the concepts of nation and national life are hardly older than a few centuries even in Europe. For ‘nation’ one may substitute the word ‘country’ or 'kingdom'. Then it may be of some application to India. It is impossible to define the end of the State in a single word or in a few wordṣ This question about the end of the State has been partly answered already when speaking of the ideals of kingship. At the risk of some repetition a reply to the above question may be given in the following wordṣ The authors on Dharmaśāstra had a very low estimate of human nature, they believed that ordinarily men were depraved, that it was difficult to find a man pure by nature and that men were kept in the straight path by the fear of punishment (Manu VII 22 = Sānti2 15. 34). Yaj I 361 requires the king to punish and bring to the proper path castes and guilds when they swerve from their dharma. Kāṃ (II. 40 and 42-43) says the same thing and adds that in the absence of daṇḍa the world will revert to the state of mātsya-nyāya (the strong devouring the weak). Śukra I. 23 says the same thing. The ancient writers did not rely on the natural moral impulses of man and on his will to do the right thing. The same ideas are expressed by some Western writers on law and politicṣ 'A herd of wolves is quieter and more at one than so many men, unless they all had one reason in them or have one power over them' says Jeremy Taylor. Salmond (Jurisprudence p 65) states 'man is by nature a fighting animal and force is the ultima ratio not of kings alone but of all mankind'. We must distinguish between immediate or proximate ends and the ultimate enḍ The ultimate end or goal of most of our philosophy was mokṣa (release or liberation from the ever-recurring cycle of births and deaths and from the miseries and suffering of life). The same was the ultimate goal of rājadharma. But the proximate goal of the State in India was to create such conditions and environments as would enable all men to live in peace and happiness, to pursue their avocations, to follow their own customs and usages and their 'svadharma', to enjoy without interference the fruits of their labour and the property acquired by theṃ The king was the divinely provided instrument to create the conditions of peace, order and happinesṣ If the king impartially exercises the power of danda over all, whether his own son or enemy, in proportion to their guilt, he secures this world and the next for himself and the people; the king's scrupulous performance of his own duties leads him and his people to heaven The task of the State (or the king who represent-ed the State) was to repress by the threat and use of force any violation of the rights of personal freedom and property, to enforce the practice of people's own traditional customs and usages and to take serious care of virtues and dharma. These were the sentiments of Kauṭilya himself ( III 1. ).2 At the very threshold of his work he remarks ‘therefore the king should not allow people to swerve from or fail in their duties (dharma); for whoever holds fast by his dharma, observes the rules laid down for āryas and those of castes and āśramas (the stages of life) will be happy in this world and the next. The members of society consisting of four castes and having four āśramas when guarded by the king with danda will abide by their respective paths, being devoted adherents of their respective duties and avocations'.
Both Kāṃ I 13 and Śukra I. 67 state5 that a king following the path of righteousness confers upon himself and his subjects the group of three viz. the three puruṣārthas of dharma, artha and kāma; if he acts otherwise he certainly ruins (himself and the people) The same doctrine is inculcated by other works, such as Śānti 85. 2, Mārkandeya 27. 29-30.6 Therefore what the king was to do was to see that the dharma of varṇa and āśrama were observed by the people and if they swerved from them to bring them back by punishments Śukra IV 4 39 says that each caste was to observe the rules o the caste handed down from generation to generation and that i its members behaved otherwise they were liable to be punished by the king The principal works emphasize that each individual in the State should fulfil his own duties (svadharma) as belong ing to a particular class (varṇa) or a particular stage of lif (āśrama) or his own duties due to the position he occupies and those known as sāmānya dharma such as ahimsā, truthfulness &c (for which see H of Dh vol II pp 10-11) and that the purpose of the State was to enable him to do so and to prevent others from interfering with him All this laid undue emphasis on the preservation of the status quo, on current beliefs and practices as the ideal The writers do not emphasize that each individual must actively pursue the good of the society as a whole As the final goal was mokṣa, undue emphasis was laid on other-worldiness, on individual attainment and on detachment and running away from ordinary worldly affairs The goal of the State was deemed to be to enable men to attain the four puruṣārthas, particularly the first three (as the last viz mokṣa depended only upon individual philosophical insight and mystical experience and was attainable only by a microscopic number) Even the Bārhaspatya-sūtra7 (IL. 43) says that the fruit of polity was the attainment of dharma, artha and kāma Soma- deva begins his Nitivākyāmṛta in a characteristic way when he performs obeisance to rājya (the State) that yields the three fruits of dharma, artha and kāma 8 Kāṃ9 IV. 77 winds up his discussion of the seven elements of rājya with the declara tion that the entire State depends for its highest stability on wealth and the army and that the State when handled by a sagacious minister results in securing the three goals Kauṭilya10 (in I. 7) first advises people not to eschew pleasures altogether, III ] but to enjoy pleasures in such a way as not to conflict with the requirements of dharma and artha, and adds that a man may enjoy in an equal degree the three goals of life that are dependent on each other, since any one of the three if pursued to excess harms not only the other two but also itself. The Dharma- śāstra authors held that Dharma was the supreme power in the State and was above the king, who was only the instrument to realize the goal of dharma. To these authors the State was not an end in itself but only a means to an enḍ Kauṭilya, true to his position as a writer on arthaśāstra, finally states his opinion that artha is the chief among the three goals, as the other two depend upon wealth for their realizatioṇ With this statement of Kauṭilya, one of the most renowned figures of Indian anti- quity, this section on rājadharma may be appropriately brought to a close.