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State and Government in Ancient India c12.s8: Was the Monarchy Limited ?

State and Government in Ancient India c12.s8

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Was the Monarchy Limited ?

c12.s8.1

There is thus no doubt that ancient Indian thinkers regarded him only as the ideal king, whose life was dedicated to service and welfare of his people. Human nature being what it is, the average king, however, was not likely to follow the ideal with a firm will and determination. What steps were devised to protect the people from the whims and caprices of a tyrannical king ? What checks were contemplated upon the royal power, if it tended to become unjust and oppressive ?

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It must be admitted at the outset that no constitutional checks in the modern sense of the word were devised by our ancient thinkers. It is likely that the *samiti* or the Popular Assembly of the Vedic age functioned as a constitutional check upon the king; there is evidence to show that a king could hardly maintain his position, if this Assembly was not in agreement with him. The powers of the Popular Assembly, however, declined as centuries rolled on; it also disappeared from the scene by *c.* 500 B. C.; and its place was not taken by any similar body. The king could punish his subjects for their breach of duty in his own law courts; there was, however, no Popular Assembly or forum in the post-Vedic period, which could effectively control the king if he became oppressive. The ministry in normal times no doubt provided an efficient check; but as ministers held their posts during the king's pleasure they felt powerless if a king was too self-willed and tyrannical to be amenable to the force of public opinion.

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We should not, however, forget that the constitutional checks in the form of non-voting of supplies by Parliaments or Popular Bodies are recent developments, unknown to the ancient times. Courts to try kings for their oppressive acts were unknown in the ancient days not only in India but also elsewhere. Ancient Indians, therefore, naturally did not hit upon these remedies. They, however, devised a number of other checks, which were sufficiently effective in the normal times.

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Religious and spiritual sanctions had the greatest terror in ancient India and our constitutional writers have made full use of them in order to curb the tyrannical tendency. The king, who oppresses his subjects or misappropriates public funds, is guilty of dereliction of duty; Varuṇa, the chastiser of kings, would punish him severely. If a king levied an unjust fine, he was to offer thirty times that amount to Varuṇa as a fine by himself.¹ The threat of hell was also there, and it served as a great deterrent in ancient times.

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¹ अदण्डयदण्डने राज्ञो दण्डस्त्रिशद्गुणोऽम्भसि। वरुणाय प्रदातव्यो ब्राह्मणेभ्यस्ततः परम्। शास्ता हि वरुणो राज्ञां मिथ्या व्याचरतां नृषु। *Artha.* IV, 13. To medieval writers, this notion of a king fining himself appeared as strange; they therefore wrongly thought that it referred to a subordinate king or an officer; *cf.* तस्माद्राज्ञामिति अवान्तरनृपतीनामिति द्रष्टव्यम्। स्वस्य स्वयं दण्डानुपपत्तेः। *Daṇḍaviveka*, p. 55

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The king was no doubt divine, but the established laws and customs were still more so. The king was required to take a vow at his coronation that he would scrupulously respect them. He had no power to change them at his sweet will.

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Kings usually tend to become whimsical or arbitrary by the absence of proper training. Our writers, therefore, have laid particular emphasis on making adequate provision for the proper education and training of princes during their childhood and adolescence. They grow particularly eloquent in describing how a prince ought to be modest and self-controlled, pious and religious, sweet in speech and seemly in behaviour, eager to wait upon the elders and preceptors, careful to keep good company, sensitive to public opinion and criticism, and well-grounded in the military art and the science of public administration. It was hoped that a prince trained on the above lines would hardly ever go astray and become a source of troubles to his peoples.

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It has been already shown above how very high ideals were placed before the king and how he was exhorted to regard himself as a public servant or a trustee of the people. He was to regard his subjects as his children and strive like a loving father, for their welfare. He was to realise that he can himself be happy only when his subjects are contented and prosperous. He could become stern only against the evil doers.

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Our political writers realised that idleness is usually responsible for frivolity and have therefore prescribed a very exacting time table for the king, which hardly left him any leisure. In the king's time table as prescribed in the *Arthaśāstra* hardly six hours are allotted for recreation and sleep (I. 19). The time-table prescribed by Śukra is equally exacting (I. 275-283).

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A king, however, may not receive such training, or his tyrannical disposition may be too strong to be curbed by it. If he is not amenable to the force of public opinion, if he does not listen to the advice of his elders, preceptors and ministers, if the horror of the hell has no deterrent effect upon his oppressive propensities and activities, what are the subjects to do ?

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We have already shown how our writers do not recommend passive obedience to wicked and tyrannical rulers. They want the people to take action, but it must be admitted that they do not give us any systematic exposition of the philosophy of resistance, indicating clearly the limits beyond which the king could not go and defining the circumstances that alone would justify the resistance on the part of the people. It is not unlikely that this may be partly due to an apprehension that an open and frank discussion of the topic may lead to the encouragement of anarchy.

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Our ancient thinkers, however, do not contemplate that the subjects should take oppression lying down. It is recommended that they should threaten the tyrant that they would migrate from the country and go to another, which was better governed;¹ it was probably hoped that the prospective loss of the revenue may bring the king to his senses. If this did not produce any effect, the subjects were to dethrone the king and enthrone a relative of his, who may appear to them as suitable.² This is not all; the *Mahābhārata* expressly recognises subjects' right to tyrannicide, if there was no other remedy left to them.³ Our works on polity carefully record the names of the tyrants who had thus lost their lives. Veṇa was one of them; though he pleaded the inviolability of his person on account of his divinity, the sages, who were exasperated by his wickedness and tyranny, immediately killed him. Nahusha, Sudāsa, Sumukha and Nimi were other tyrants who lost their lives through the fury of their people, and it is interesting to note that this fact is pointedly brought to the notice of the king even by Manu, who subscribed to his divinity. Jātakas also record a number of cases of subjects killing wicked kings as a punishment for their tyranny.¹

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¹ अधर्मशीलो नृपतिर्यदा तं भीषयेज्जनः ।\ धर्मशीलातिबलवद्रिपोराश्रयतः सदा ॥ *Śukra*, IV. 1. 3\ King Kṛshṇadevarāya of Vijayanagar warns his officers that they should not allow subjects to migrate under such circumstances, but should try to remove their grievances.

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² गुणनीतिबलद्वेषी कुलभूतोऽप्यधार्मिकः ।\ नृपो यदि भवेत्तं तु त्यजेद्राष्ट्रविनाशकम् ॥\ तत्पदे तस्य कुलजं गुणयुक्तं पुरोहितः ।\ प्रकृत्यनुमतिं कृत्वा स्थापयेद्राज्यगुप्तये ॥ *Śukra*, II. 274-5

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³ अरक्षितारं हर्तारं विलोप्तारमनायकम् ।\ तं वै राजकलिं हन्युः प्रजाः संनह्य निर्घृणम् ॥ XIII. 86. 35-6

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The recognition of the subjects' right to depose or kill a tyrant no doubt shows that ancient Indians regarded sovereignty as ultimately residing in people. It could, however, be exercised only by a popular uprising and not through any peaceful means. It was thus not a constitutional, but rather an extra-constitutional right. It was a remedy very difficult to adopt. How can the people successfully defy the mighty power of a tyrant who has a trained and paid army to support his throne?

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There is certainly a great force in the above line of argument. A less extreme but more practical remedy should have been devised against the tendency of the king's powers becoming oppressive. We should, howexer, note that in the ancient times it was not so difficult to dethrone or execute a tyrant, as it is in modern days; Jātakas often describe the people doing so with success¹ We should not forget that in olden days, on the one hand regularly paid and trained standing armies did not usually exist, and on the other hand, villages and towns had their own militias under popular control and armed with weapons in no way inferior to those of the king's army. The possibility of a successful rebellion was, therefore, not a remote one. The country was studded with a number of feudatories and sub-feudatories, and it was not difficult for people to find a leader from among them or from among ministers and high officials to put an end to tyranny. The last rulers of the Maurya and the Śuṅga dynasties and king Govinda IV of the Rāshtrakūṭa house, for instance, lost their thrones because their misrule drove people, ministers and feudatories to rebel against them. People's right to rebel and invite a more virtuous ruler to the throne was a much more feasible and practicable right in ancient times than we can think it to be in the modern age, when governments are armed with tanks, aeroplane and atomic bombs and the subjects have to oppose them by fists, knives, and *lathis*.

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¹ See Sachchaṅkira and Padakusalamānava Jātkas, Nos. 73, 432

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The normal checks on king's powers were, of course, not strong enough to compel a tyrant to respect the law, who had no apprehension of hell and no respect for public opinion. In their practicability and suitability, they were inferior to those devised by the modern democracies, where the Cabinet is responsible to Parliament. We should, however, not forget that when the states in ancient India were also small like the city states of ancient Greece, as in the Vedic period, the popular assemblies (*samitis*) did control the king more or less like a modern representative assembly. The greatest calamity for a king envisaged in that dim and distant past, was disagreement between him and his Popular Assembly.¹ When, however, states became larger and larger, a central popular assembly became impracticable owing to long distances and bad roads. We should also not forget that the principle of a representative democracy, where people are represented in a central parliament by their chosen representatives, is hardly more than 300 years old. It was no wonder that it did not exist in ancient India, as in ancient Greece or Rome.

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¹ नास्मै समितिः कल्पते । *A. V.*, V. 19. 15

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It should not, however, be supposed that our ancient Indian constitutional thinkers had left everything to the fear of hell, the force of public opinion or the chances of a successful resurrection. They had advocated and brought about an extensive decentralisation of government functions and powers by investing village councils, town committees and district boroughs with very wide administrative powers and functions, as will be shown in Chap. XI.

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Governments in ancient India could eventually reach the people and discharge their functions mainly through these bodies, and the representatives of the people had a decisive voice in them. Kings may impose any number of taxes; eventually those only could be realised which the village councils could agree to collect. The local bodies were also discharging judicial functions and that removed a powerful engine of oppression from the control of the king. They had also a prescriptive right to a fair percentage of the land tax and other revenues collected in their jurisdiction, which they could utilise according to the wishes of the locality for the local works of public utility. The local executive officers were usually hereditary servants and not members of the central bureaucracy ; they, therefore, generally sided with the local bodies in their tussle with the central government. The village communities and town councils to a great extent resembled small republics, where the voice of the people prevailed. The activities of a tyrannical king, therefore, were not usually very effective much beyond his capital. The extensive decentralisation advocated and brought about in ancient India was thus the most effective and practical check upon the king's powers. The checks of the modern type were absent because the idea of the representative government was unknown both in the East and the West down to the 16th century.

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