The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c16.4

c16.4

In contradistinction to the strongly personal and particularistic nature of the old regime, the new rule stressed a universally applicable system of rules and regulations. Where the old regime had been intimately involved with overlapping and shifting networks of various right holders, their dependants, and rivals to the point of being submerged in such networks, the new dispensation was calculated to create a distance between government and society.⁵ Standard expressions like "falling upon the neck and importuning" the powerful for help—in spite of the obvious element of criticism—suggest a personal proximity that was unthinkable under the new dispensation. One simply does not "fall upon the neck" of the Rule of Law. Though this change did not alter Indian society, which indeed was very much left to its own devices, it did bring about a fundamentally different view of society; or rather, where no view of society as a separate, objective entity had existed before, there now developed an official view for the purpose of dealing with society from a distance. This official view was an exhaustive grid of narrowly defined categories covering the whole of society and enabling the state to apply its impersonal rules and regulations rationally.