State and Government in Ancient India c9.30

c9.30

It will thus be seen that the desire to put an end to anarchy and evolve a better type of society and government are stated to be the chief grounds for people entering into the original contract, that brought government into existence.¹ Western thinkers, however, looked at the problem from a purely secular point of view ; it is well-known how the views of some of them were unconsciously influenced by people's struggle against autocracy that was then in full swing in some countries. They, therefore, are anxious to thrash the idea of contract threadbare, initiate fundamental principles of political association, define the authority of the sovereign and prescribe the conditions under which popular obedience would be expected, and discuss whether the transfer of power by the people to the sovereign is irrevocable or otherwise. Ancient Indian writers did not live in an age of rationalism like Locke and Rousseau ; they looked at the question from a semi-religious and semi-sociological point of view. They have, therefore, neither gone deep into the fundamentals of the problem, nor defined precisely the limits of the powers of the state and the people. They observe, for instance, that people offer obedience and taxation in return for the protection and services they expect from the government. If the king's government fails in its duty, they permit the people to remove the king, and even to kill him. But what precisely will constitute a breach of the contract on the part of government, and what is the secular constitutional machinery by which people can enforce the performance of the terms of the original contract is nowhere clearly described. The permission to remove a tyrant or to kill him no doubt assumes the ultimate soveriegnty of the people and invests them with supreme authority. This remedy, however, is drastic and difficult ; it would have been more useful if our authorities had recommended a less extreme but more practicable remedy in the form of an everyday constitutional check. We should not, however, forget that such a remedy has been perfected even in the West only in the modern age.