The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c13.1

c13.1

It is only natural that national claims and aspirations should look for justification to history. The finality and immutability of the past offers the fixed points of reference for justifying or rejecting the conditions and aspirations of the present. The rediscovery of Kauṭilya's *Arthaśāstra* therefore could hardly avoid making a considerable impression. Here at last the Indian intellectual found full and incontrovertible proof of the superior maturity of Indian political thought. No more grand, misty "spirituality," but hard-headed pragmatism. Of course, this momentous text did not offer a readymade model for the modern state as envisaged by nationalists. But that hardly is the point. Nationalist thinking remained no less wedded to Western political theory. But this alien matter had somehow to be anchored in Indian civilization; it had to be translated and justified in terms congenial to Indian history. It is here, I think, that Kauṭilya's *Arthaśāstra* made its most effective contribution. It offered a point de repère that enabled the political theorist to relate Western concepts and theories to elements of Indian tradition. In other words, what presented itself as alien theory could be shown to be after all not so overwhelmingly alien, and national identity could be vindicated by referring to the hallowed past.