[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985) › c5 # The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c5: 1 India and the Inner Conflict of Tradition The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c5 - **Language:** English ### 1 India and the Inner Conflict of Tradition ### [c5.1](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.1) Ever since English Utilitarians and Evangelicals and Indian reformers set out to modernize India, the problem of misunderstood traditions and miscarrying modernization has been with us. It may, therefore, not be out of place to take a point of view that may enable us to understand the meaning and function of tradition, not in order to oppose it once more to modernity, but rather in order to arrive eventually at an integrated view. ### [c5.2](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.2) To begin with, we may view tradition as the way society formulates and deals with the basic problems of human existence. In other words, it is the way in which society comes to terms with the insoluble problem of life and death, including such life and death matters as food and water in a world of scarcity.¹ In this respect, of course, it is not different from modernity. Since the fundamental problem of life and death is truly insoluble, it has to be attacked, formulated, and dealt with each time anew under a different aspect. Tradition therefore is and has to be bound up with the ever-shifting present. Hence the irritating flexibility and fluidity of tradition. ### [c5.3](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.3) This can be clearly seen in customary law and its procedures, such as the much-vaunted simplicity of village or panchayat justice. The point is not its rustic simplicity—in fact its procedures are often far from clear to the unwary observer—but its basis in the intuitive understanding that the participants in the face-to-face society have of the web of social relations and each other's place in it. This intuitive knowledge makes it possible to do without objective rules, precedent, and case construction and yet arrive at decisions (or stalemates) that are acceptable to the participants. But the results, from case to case, will often be far from lucid to the outsider, let alone easily ### [c5.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.4) This essay first appeared in \*Daedalus\* 102, no. 1 (1973): 97–113. Reprinted, with minor revisions, by permission of \*Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences\*, Cambridge, Massachusetts. ### [c5.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.5) comparable, for customary law and its proceedings are not concerned primarily with the objective truth of the matter but with the subjective truth of the persons involved, which will differ from situation to situation.² Obviously, the worst thing that can happen to customary law is codification. And the same goes for the sometimes hair-raising complications of rights in the soil, the division of its produce, and even of weights and measures,³ complications that hardly seem to bother the local participants but only come out when the revenue administration wants to describe and fix them in an objective and systematic fashion. ### [c5.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.6) However, tradition cannot be only flexible and situational, for its essential mission is still to deal in a structured way with the insoluble life-death problem in all its situational manifestations. It must, therefore, also offer a plan or order independent of and above the actual situation. It is this transcendent order that provides man with the fixed orientation for legitimizing his actions in the middle of the situational flux. In other words, tradition has to be both immanent in the actual situation so as to keep up with shifting reality and transcendent so as to fulfill its orientating and legitimizing function. Thus, we can understand the paradoxical but traditionally common idea that transcendent law is all the time there, suspended as it were in midair, and that it can be "found" by agonistic procedures, verbal or otherwise.⁴ Here also seems to lie the meaning of the urge for consensus. In this way, truth and law are at the same time transcendent and immanent in society. Obviously this is a tour de force, but it can work as long as truth and law are not explicitly codified. ### [c5.7](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.7) This is no different in the case of the Indian concept of \*dharma\*. The well-known difficulty of defining and translating this term is the result of its being caught on the horns of the dilemma outlined above. Dharma is the transcendent lodestar and is thus removed from the pressures of man's daily affairs. Or in Louis Dumont's adaptation of Thiers's phrase about the constitutional monarch, "le dharma règne de haut sans avoir, ce qui lui serait fatal, à gouverner."⁵ It is therefore based on the Veda, the \*śruti\*, even though the connection between Veda and dharma is in reality nonexistent; moreover, dharma has to be relevant for an ordinary man in society who does eat meat, marries his cross-cousin, interacts closely with people exhibiting different degrees of impurity, and generally has to act contrary to the tenets of dharma. In short, dharma has to take custom into account. Indeed \*ācāra\*, "custom," is considered an important source of dharma, and the task of determining what is the right custom falls on the assembly, the \*pariṣad\*. Of course, this pariṣad should be composed of educated and virtuous men, who by definition will be conversant with the Veda, however little relevance the Veda may have for the matter in hand. In theory, the circle is conveniently closed and everything is as it should be.⁶ But the reference to the council or assembly is no less significant, and in the final analysis, the dharma texts cannot but concede that no blame is attached to the man who simply follows the customs of his community even if they are contrary to the dharma.⁷ But neither will such a man arrive at the transcendent solution of the life-death problem, for, even after his death, he will remain bound to his community in following births. ### [c5.8](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.8) Here I think we come upon the hard core of tradition, namely, its inner conflict. Tradition is determined by the particular form in which it expresses the conflict between its immanence in society and its transcendent aspiration to solve the fundamental problem of human existence. Although this view of tradition as a paradox does not look very promising, it may offer us a vantage-point for our understanding of social and cultural phenomena and processes. Instead of having to explain away the obvious rifts and fissures so as to arrive at a harmonious and coherent pattern, we may exploit the essentially fractured picture for a dynamic view of society and culture as organized around an inner conflict. ### [c5.9](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.9) Let me try to illustrate this with reference to Indian civilization. The task has been greatly facilitated by Louis Dumont's fundamental work on caste and hierarchy,⁸ although I shall have to differ from his main thesis on the place of hierarchy. Briefly, then, we find here two diagonally opposed principles of organization, the one based on hierarchical interdependence and the other on separation and independence, represented respectively by the king (or the dominant caste) and the brahmin. A practical illustration of this situation may be found in A. C. Mayer's study of a village in Central India.⁹ The dominant rajputs (literally, "king's sons") of the village who entertain, notwithstanding their royal pretensions, commensal relations with a group of definitely lower "allied" castes—an arrangement that also seems to help them to maintain their dominance through their retinue of "allies"—clearly exhibit a pattern of hierarchical interdependence and reciprocity. On the other hand, there are the vegetarian khatis (farmers) and a few artisan castes that tend to restrict their relations, each to his own caste. These castes can be said to "opt out" of the system of interdependence and to stress their independence. Their "opting out" is equally reflected in the distinct, though far from rare, oddity that whereas some higher castes may accept their food, they themselves refuse to return the compliment, thereby demonstrating their disregard of interdependence. In other words, they follow a brahminic pattern also reflected in a simple, unostentatious life style as against the "royal" style of the rajputs, whose extensive relations require generous hospitality. ### [c5.10](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.10) Yet the typically brahminized khatis and other castes following the same pattern are placed by the consensus of Mayer's informants fairly low on the ranking scale, below the rajputs and their allies. From the point of view of brahminic values as the touchstone of hierarchy, the fact that the meat-eating and generally unbrahminic rajputs and their “allied” servants are credited with a higher rank is distinctly embarrassing. Professor Dumont observes that “here to all appearances the principle of the pure and the impure is in abeyance,” a circumstance which he feels to be fairly unique. He then argues that “this is the point at which . . . power participates in purity, although the latter negates it in theory; or in other words, this is the point at which the solidarity between the first two varnas (of brahmins and kṣatriyas) reveals itself.” The solution, however, does not seem to require this somewhat awkward explanation. The trouble is not so much with the reported facts as with the theory of an all-encompassing ideology of hierarchy, which forces us to underplay the real contradictions. Since Professor Dumont recognizes these contradictions which he analyzes so clearly, one wonders why he did not exploit them for his theoretical work instead of relegating them to a secondary level. For if we start by taking them seriously, it becomes at once apparent that we are confronted—as the villager is—with two opposite and irreconcilable principles of organization, the one stressing interdependence, and the other independence. The relevant point is, then, not the unexplained low rank of the brahminizing caste, but rather that this ranking in fact runs aground on their brahminical separateness and independence, which are reflected in their opting out of the regular system of food and drink exhanges. Professor Mayer, therefore, has to put them in his table of castes in a separate block, not under but next to the rajputs and their allies, while the other castes follow under the rajputs. ### [c5.11](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.11) Lest it be thought that the situation in this village is an exception with regard to the overall system, it may be worthwhile to consider for a moment the strikingly parallel right-left division of castes known from South India. This well-known but so far rather hazy phenomenon has been studied in the field by Brenda F. Beck.¹⁰ The right-hand division appears to be composed of the dominant peasants such as the Gaundar, who “are known in legend, ritual and even by title as the ‘kings of the area,’” and the service castes directly dependent on them. They form a closely knit complex, resembling each other in ritual matters and entertaining an elaborate system of exchanges. The left-hand division is made up of vegetarian, brahmin-emulating castes which exhibit various degrees of independence from the “kings” of the area because of their outside contacts through trade and marketable skills. As against the coherence of the kinglike group and its dependents—constituting, as Miss Beck puts it, the “in” group of “allied” castes¹¹—the left-hand castes are far more diverse and exclusive, not least among themselves. They do not form a coherent bloc but a plurality of separate, mutually independent units. Consequently, the ranking that is fairly simple and clear-cut within the right-hand bloc tends to be vague if not irrelevant with the left-hand castes, for in the left-hand division the higher castes do not mediate power and prestige for the lower ones as is the case in the righthand bloc.¹² So here, too, we find an essentially dichotomous picture held together, not by an integrating hierarchy of values, but by the conflict between the two principles of hierarchical interdependence on the one hand and of separation and independence on the other. This case, moreover, is the more interesting because it points up the systematic nature of the dichotomy. ### [c5.12](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.12) On one hand, hierarchy seems to be based on real relations such as become apparent in the acceptance of food and drink, and these relations are tied up with the distribution of power and focused on rights in the soil, which are managed by the "kings." On the other hand, where the brahminic "way out" is followed, not relations, but isolation becomes the key word and hierarchy consequently breaks down. But it would be wrong to see the two principles simply as two different traditions. For notwithstanding their obvious irreconcilability, the brahminic ideal of separateness and independence is still recognized as the ultimately valid one. Thus Mayer's rajputs, when they maintain close relations with the lower "allied castes," are far from denying the ultimate validity of the brahminic ideal that would require them to keep themselves apart. Their excuse is that they need servants, with whom they have to keep close contacts;¹³ in other words, as mediators of power and prestige they cannot help having to live in a world made up of relations. Equally, the fact that the brahmin is deemed to be above the right-left dichotomy means the recognition of the ideal he stands for as the ultimately valid one. ### [c5.13](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.13) So the brahmin and the total independence he represents cap the dichotomous system, signifying that it is still felt to be one, albeit contradictory, whole. But this does not create a system of hierarchical interdependence, for such a system can only be given reality in actual relations. The brahmin ideal, however, rejects all relations in favor of absolute independence. It can therefore only be an outside reference point for each separate group and cannot relate them to each other, either vertically or horizontally. ### [c5.14](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.14) Nor does this ideal reference point resolve the conflict on the higher level of an all-encompassing ideology. For the brahminical rejection of relations obviously cannot be reconciled with the system of relations that society is based on, nor can it encompass them. The "kingly" order immanent in social relations and the transcendent brahminical order are irreconcilably opposed to each other. This unresolved conflict is the form Indian tradition has developed to express and deal with the insoluble problem with which all tradition is essentially concerned. For, as the oldest ritual texts already make clear, society is felt to be based on the alternation of life and death, and consequently participation in society's web of relations is felt to be tantamount to continual involvement with death. The radical way to escape from this situation was resolutely to turn one's back on society and thereby to overcome death.¹⁴ That this is an impossibility is hardly relevant. The point is that tradition can only deal with the insoluble by being itself an unresolved conflict. ### [c5.15](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.15) We may then recognize the pivot of Indian tradition in the irreconcilability of "brahmin" and "king," who yet are dependent on each other, for the king will need the transcendent legitimation that only the brahmin can give. But the brahmin, however much he may need the king's material support, cannot enter into relations with the king, for this would involve him in the world of interdependence—a situation that would be fatal to the brahmin's transcendence,¹⁵ in the same way that "governing" would be fatal to dharma. ### [c5.16](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.16) What relevance can the foregoing considerations have for modernity? The first thing to note is that there hardly seems to be room for a conflict between tradition and modernity, for whatever room there is has already been taken up by the unresolved conflict of tradition itself. Modernity, then, would seem to find its predestined place within tradition's own essentially broken and contradictory framework. ### [c5.17](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.17) The indubitable fact of the alienness of modernity introduced by a colonial government seems to be greatly overrated as a source of difficulties, for such a view is ultimately based on the romantic belief in the closed and monolithic character of a civilization as an autonomous organism. That this is not only a belief, and as such is beyond proof or disproof, but rank superstition is sufficiently clear—even the most superficial reading on Indian civilization can demonstrate this—and should not detain us here. ### [c5.18](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.18) The essential point is that the alien and the modern offer new ways to deal with the long-standing, unresolved conflict and thus are more often than not eagerly welcomed. For modernity is, if anything, dedicated to the devaluing or even the breaking up of organic or primordial ties, which it wants to replace with suprapersonal, universalistic groupings. As we saw already, this tendency is at the heart of the traditional conflict between "kingly" interdependence and brahminic independence. Thus, for instance, the "joint family" has been idealized out of recognition as a badge of cultural identity coming straight out of hoary tradition. Obviously "jointness" may serve as an adequate device where other means of securing labor on the one hand and subsistence on the other are lacking. Nevertheless, brahminical theory prefers the division of the father's estate by the surviving sons,¹⁶ as it usually favors the individual over the collectivity.¹⁷ It is therefore not surprising that modernization, even when clearly derived from the West, and "brahminization" (or "Sanskritization") are often seen to tie in easily with each other.¹⁸ In this way modernity—in a sense already "transcendent" by the fact of its alienness—falls in line with the transcendent legitimation that brahminic theory possesses. ### [c5.19](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.19) Viewed in this way, modernity would seem to add only a few new possibilities to the old conflict, while the latter remains the same, so that when everything is said and done the overall pattern has not changed. Though this view may be helpful in laying the ghost of the overworked tradition-modernity fight, it is not sufficient, for it comes down to yet another assertion of India's perennial unchangeability grinding all innovation to meaningless dust. On the contrary, it should be asked whether the obvious changes that have been wrought over the last hundred or two hundred years are only of a superficial nature without any significant impact on the overall structure. Or, in other words, whether the inner conflict on which Indian civilization is built changed in form and content. ### [c5.20](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.20) Perhaps the effect of change can nowhere be seen in a clearer way than in the sociopolitical sphere; at least it is best documented there.¹⁹ As a convenient starting point we may take the traditional empire, such as that of the Mughals.²⁰ This, like other traditional empires, was a rambling collection of smaller and bigger local centers enjoying various degrees of power and influence over their surroundings and continually competing with each other for local or regional predominance. For a long time, by far the biggest center was the Mughal power situated in the strategic Delhi-Agra area. But for all its power and prestige, it was in fact no more than one power, albeit a preponderant one, among others. In order to realize its claims, it had continually to ally itself with the local powers, which, of course, expected more than merely immaterial benefits for their cooperation. In other words, the empire lacked the independent power and resources fully to realize its claims, and the price for the necessary cooperation of the local powers further weakened the imperial resources. In order to strengthen its resource base, the empire had to resort to conquest and expansion. But these also required substantial initial investments for obtaining the necessary support, and it has been shown that with the conquest of the Deccan in the second half of the seventeenth century, when the empire reached its greatest expansion, the cost of conquest became so heavy as to be fatal. Conquest meant a cumbersome process of winning over the holders of local influence by distributing imperial resources, including crown lands, before any benefit could be reaped. Thus the empire, though never actually overthrown, naturally and irrevocably shriveled again into a local sphere of influence, or “little kingdom,” at the mercy of the new would-be empire builders such as the Marathas, the Afghans, and eventually the British. ### [c5.21](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.21) In fact the Mughal Empire reflects on an enlarged scale the cycle of the segmentary polity. Such a polity continually alternates between total dispersion of power among the segments that balance each other in an ever-shifting pattern of rivalry and alliance and the effort on the part of particular segments to rise above the mêlée, centralize part of the power available, level down the other segments, and replace them with an administrative apparatus.²¹ In the case of total dispersion, there is a potentially unending concatenation of overlapping centers interconnecting wide areas. Such a situation seems to be reflected in the geographical extension of “a regional network of hypergamy which links dispersed and often socially disparate groups within a generalized marital exchange pattern,” as have been observed for the North Indian rajputs.²² The poor man’s solution to empire, one is tempted to conclude. Its strength is exactly the dispersion of power so that it can in no one place be attached and finally broken, while at the same time, the continual open or latent conflict between the segments is managed through diffusion without the need for any easily overstrained central institution. ### [c5.22](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.22) This situation of dispersed power is, of course, not a static one. Out of the flux of shifting rivalry and cooperation, new centers steadily arise and new power concentrations are attempted. When such centers are successful, they break out of the concatenation of overlapping units. But by the same token, their area of influence will be limited, for the wide-ranging horizontal ties on which the concatenation is based have to be broken. Now, even if such a center or segment manages to reduce the surrounding ones and to replace them with an administrative apparatus, the allegiance of the people who man the apparatus must be secured. In other words, the carefully extracted resources that should be concentrated in the hands of the ruler have to be redistributed. As we saw already in the case of the Mughal Empire, expansion offers no solution, for it only heightens the need for distribution. Since, moreover, resources are for the greatest part tied up with the soil and its agricultural produce, the simplest if not the only way of distribution is to parcel out the rights in the soil itself and the power that goes with them. So the dispersion of power is restored once again, if it has indeed ever stopped being dispersed. ### [c5.23](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.23) Under these circumstances, there can hardly be any form of organization except one that is almost exclusively based on comprehensive personal relations. For, since even the source of power—the rights in the soil and its produce—is diffused throughout, power cannot be broken down in separate, specific functions but is parceled out in total, undifferentiated packages. The participants in the network can only be differentiated as to the greater or lesser amount of power—and this too may be fluctuating—but not as to the kind of power. The ruler is, therefore, no more than a primus inter pares; his functionaries are in fact his cosharers in the realm, and there is practically no room for specific impersonal relations as a basis of the polity. ### [c5.24](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.24) This is strikingly illustrated in the ancient Indian text on statecraft, the \*Arthaśāstra\*, which presents a compelling picture of a centralized bureaucratic state. But on closer inspection, the realities show through the cracks. The numerous government departments are not connected by lines of command, delegation, and communication. They are all separate units on the same level, and any control or coordination, it seems, has to be personally secured by the ruler. Likewise, the officers of state are presented as a corps of ranked functionaries enjoying fixed salaries. At the same time, however, they seem to be cosharers with the king.²³ A similarly ambivalent view is given of the state: on the one hand, one can easily take the text’s description of the state in the sense of a monolithically coherent unit; yet, when considered in the context of the theory of the “circle” of kings—the text’s schematization of the segmentary concatenation of centers—the state comes to look curiously fluid and open-ended. For when in the context of the “circle” the elements or factors of the state are enumerated, they include not only the internal elements but also external ones such as the ally and even the enemy. Segmentation does not stop at the boundaries of the state but permeates it. The state seems to be ready at any moment to dissolve in the “circle.” ### [c5.25](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.25) The interesting point is that this text allows us clearly to discern the realities and their limitations, while at the same time enunciating an ideal state of affairs transcending by far the actual possibilities. But both viewpoints are blended into one whole. It is the same contradictory double point of vision we noticed before as the basis of tradition. On the one hand, the unavoidable reality of the “little kingdom” and the segmentary order had to be accounted for, while on the other, a way out toward an ideal state of affairs transcending the fluidity of the actual situation had to be formulated so as to offer a fixed reference point for legitimation. ### [c5.26](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.26) This double point of vision seems to be connected with the two principles of social organization. Most prominent, of course, is the segmentary organization centered on the distribution of rights in the soil and its produce—in short, the “kingly” model. But an equally important form of organization seems usually to be overlooked in the context of state formation, probably because it operates in the margin of and threatens the “kingly” organization. I am referring to the war band in its different forms, a subject that deserves a separate study.²⁴ Here only a few points can be referred to that are relevant in connection with state formation. The first point, then, is that, in contradistinction to the segmentary "kingly" organization, membership of the war band is not based on ascription but is freely recruited on the basis of individual allegiance to a single successful leader. ### [c5.27](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.27) An old and well-documented illustration of this phenomenon may be found in the ancient indian \*vrātya\* bands described in the ritual texts.²⁵ In that context they form a problem, because they do not fit into the well-ordered and rational system of ritual expounded by these texts. From the point of view of the inner conflict of tradition, their occurrence in this context is not so strange. Two points are of particular interest. In the first place, the \*vrātya\* band is not simply an exceptional feature deviating from the normal system, for it clearly ties in with practical needs. Its activities center around transhuming and raiding expeditions necessitated by the scarcity during the lean season. Thus we are told that such bands set out in autumn after the monsoon harvest in search of food for their men and cattle and return before the next monsoon. The second point is that the \*vrātya\*, for all his "heterodoxy," is still the starting point for the brahminical model of withdrawal and renunciation. In this connection, it does not seem fortuitous that in South India left-hand groups were involved in the clearing and settlement of previously forested areas and that "warriors" were generally members of the left division.²⁶ Here we can observe the connection with the problem of state formation, especially when we take into consideration the transformation of the South Indian polity into a warrior-dominated and warfare-oriented one in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.²⁷ ### [c5.28](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.28) Probably the best studied material regarding this function of the war band is that of the ancient Germanic peoples. Authors of ancient Rome had already noticed the difference between the polycephalous (or acephalous) organizations of the settled tribes and the war band's uniting of individual members from different tribes under a successful leader. It is especially this type of organization, based on the association of different ethnic elements under a single leadership, the conquest of land, and the establishment of overlordships in new areas, that seems to have determined to a great extent the essence of medieval kingship.²⁸ ### [c5.29](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.29) Of course, such developments are only possible when advantage can be taken of adjoining rich areas and their resources, as in Roman Gallia. The Mughal Empire started in the early sixteenth century with exactly such a predatory war band, led by the founder of the dynasty, Babur. On a smaller scale, dacoity seems to play the same role in rajput state formation.²⁹ The critical point in such developments is, however, the moment of success, for by itself the war band does not crate new resources but only causes a reshuffle. It may be of interest to note that in early medieval Europe, as in the Mughal case, the principle of a nonascriptive contractual bond with the ruler that also governed the original war band lived on in the organization of the polity—in Europe as feudalism, in India as the \*jāgīr\* system. But the end result remained the same—segmentary diffusion—for the main part of the resources remains tied up with the soil. This in turn means, as already argued, a reversal to segmentation and the parceling out of total packages of rights and power. Thus the Mughal Empire could only exist as a \*Personalverband\* based on personal relations. ### [c5.30](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.30) Yet such traditional empires are at the same time characterized by an orientation to a suprapersonal and durable unity in which power is regulated by rationally organized bureaucratic agencies on the basis of impersonal principles of justice. In short, it is oriented toward a transcendent legitimation that it tries to translate into reality. ### [c5.31](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.31) The prime example is, perhaps, the third century B.C. Maurya Empire, whose ruler Asoka went to the unusual length of posting the tenets of the transcendent Buddhist-inspired dharma on rocks and pillars throughout his empire so as to galvanize, as it were, his widespread domains into a universalistic, suprapersonal unity. There are, however, no indications that the empire was much more than a segmentary concatenation that perhaps derived some extra strength and resources from its command of important trade routes—the routes along which the famous inscriptions were placed. But the reality of the universal dharma as the foundation of the empire becomes apparent when Asoka claims to have achieved the final victory of the imperial dharma by sending missions propagating the dharma to the courts of all rulers known to him—missions that went completely unnoticed except for their elaborate mention in his own inscriptions. In the same way, we can understand the Mughal Aurangzeb's effort to establish an Islamic polity, as well as the failure to achieve it. ### [c5.32](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.32) The traditional empire, then, fluctuates in the middle space between two diametrically opposed poles: on the one hand, the total dispersion of power throughout a segmentary and fluid concatenation where the political is completely merged into the social order; on the other, the far-out ideal of a universalistic polity where power is made independent from the social order and is administered according to fixed, transcendent rules.³⁰ The latter pole is in the literal sense transcendent in that it is beyond the limitations of actual society and can therefore possess ultimate legitimating force. It can only be imagined in an extrasocietal, never-never world such as Asoka's dharma empire, the \*'umma\*, the universal brotherhood of all believers, as the ideal Islamic polity,³¹ or the \*universitas christiana\*. It certainly has a strong attraction, but its mobilizing potential has to be spent outside or, at best, in the fringe of society which is, in Indian terms, in the sphere of world renunciation. If the pattern of dispersed power may be considered the poor man's solution to empire, the extrasocietal transcendent ideal may be called the poor man's dream of universal dominion. ### [c5.33](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.33) Against the backdrop of the traditional empire, we may now try to understand the change that modernity has brought about in the inner conflict of Indian tradition as it is reflected in the sociopolitical sphere. This change, then, bears on the relationship between reality and the legitimating ideal or, in specifically Indian terms, between the "kingly" and the brahminical, renunciatory order. ### [c5.34](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.34) As argued, the lack of resources blocked the way toward a change in this relationship. The first requirement for modernity to be effective would therefore seem to be a new base of resources free from commitments to the traditional arrangements. In itself, however, this is not sufficient, for nothing prevents these resources from also being absorbed in the traditional way. Thus, for instance, the extra resources obtained by a successful war (or rather, raiding activities) easily melt away in the existing channels of distribution without causing any structural change. Or, as the \*Arthaśāstra\* revealingly puts it, the conqueror should give all his allies their due from the war loot, even if he should lose by it, for in this way he will be agreeable to the "circle of kings."³² What modernity therefore has to be based on, apart from a new resource base, is a new pattern of distribution, a pattern no longer governed by the ramification of personal relations but by an impersonal code of principles and rules. This means that the realm of politics and the stuff it is made of—power and resources—must be set apart and safeguarded against the demands of the traditional order. ### [c5.35](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.35) It would seem that it is precisely this that the first carrier of modernity in India, the British Indian government, achieved to a remarkable, previously unknown degree. It is, of course, the old but traditionally unattainable ideal. What made its success possible was the simple fact that British rule over India was part of an expanding world power that had its center outside India and drew its main strength from its dominant position in the world trade backed up by a growing industry. Though it needed India in different ways, it was not solely dependent on India's agrarian resources. It could therefore afford to stay away from involvement in Indian society. In fact, it could not only afford to do so, it simply had to work hard to establish and maintain this privileged position, for the first decades of the East India Company's rule over Bengal had clearly shown that its resources and power were not safe from the danger of being drained away. Whatever the philosophy behind the code of rules and regulations of 1795, including the "Permanent Settlement" of the land revenue in Bengal, its aim was unmistakably to disengage the government from involvement in the local and regional segmentary order. The government's resources and power, including the use of force, were reserved and administered according to an ever-expanding, rational system of impersonal regulations. ### [c5.36](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.36) Obviously this was no simple matter. The problem before the colonial government was how to strike a balance, from situation to situation and from crisis to crisis, between the need for withdrawal and the pressures for involvement. But the pattern was set. The distributive demands that kept being made on the center in various ways from various quarters were no longer met on their own terms but by the formulation and application of objective rules that bored ever deeper down toward the grass roots level. Though in this way the contacts between the modern and traditional orders grew immensely, there could be no integration, far less an overall impact of modernity on the traditional dispensation. The very modus operandi of modernity precluded such a comprehensive impact. It was devised to deal with specific cases in specific ways according to specific rules, so as not to have to deal with total situations and comprehensive relations. In this perspective, a local magnate was not a comprehensive leader of his men but exclusively a legal landowner. Only as such could he have his interests looked after by the government.³³ But this meant also that the specific impingements of modernity—though often dramatic for the persons involved—were met by the comprehensiveness of the traditional order that diffused the effect, closed the ranks, and ultimately, after the reshuffle, remained the same. ### [c5.37](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.37) This dual dispensation had the great advantage of giving a previously unknown measure of reality to the dream of a universalistic order. But its failure was that it could not come to grips with the comprehensiveness and diffuseness of the traditional order. It could only refuse full access to the center's power so that the traditional order could not gain strength at the expense of the center; the most that the center's reservation of power could achieve with regard to the "little kingdom" was to freeze it and thereby reduce its peculiar efficacy, which lies in its fluidity. But in this way, no fundamental change could be brought about in the traditional order. ### [c5.38](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.38) Of course the division was never watertight, nor could it be. The government could not operate in a vacuum and there had, therefore, to be considerable "leakages." Thus, there were groups that derived a measure of power and influence through their connection with the government and especially through positions in its extensive bureaucracy.³⁴ More important however, the simple fact of India's becoming part of an expanding commercial empire with access to the world market made for the development of another independent resource base—or rather a plurality of small ones—in the hands of groups of landlords, cultivators, and commercial entrepreneurs.³⁵ Such groups easily outgrew the reduced circumstances of the "little kingdom," and even though they were in no position to compete directly with the government, their demands on the center were hard to ignore. The always precarious balance of the dual dispensation became more and more threatened and eventually had to be completely overhauled. ### [c5.39](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.39) Here the traditional inner conflict presented itself in a new form. Briefly, the problem was—and is—that modernity operates on the assumption, or rather the fiction, that society consists of an arbitrary collection of isolated individuals, while the unity of the whole is not realized through immediate relations of hierarchical interdependence but mediated by abstract, impersonal rules and principles. This, as we saw, is not new. What is new is the resource base that makes it possible to give the idea a substantial degree of reality. In order to achieve this degree of reality, modernity requires an impersonal, “horizontal” pattern of distribution, which emancipates the individual from the personal bonds of “vertical,” hierarchic interdependence characterizing the “little kingdom.” ### [c5.40](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.40) Now perfectly “horizontal” distribution, even if all resources would be spent on it, is an impossibility. The very fact of distribution is bound to create inequalities, for even the most perfect set of rules has still to be operated by people who perform the distribution at different stages and levels and are thereby placed in positions of unequal power. In this way, the system would easily slip back into the segmentary “little kingdom” concatenation and modernity would lose its reality content. In the final analysis, the problem is again insoluble, but it can be managed in new ways; the “horizontal” and “vertical” orders must be allowed to interpenetrate. Obviously, a colonial government cannot allow this interpenetration to come about, since it would irredeemably impair its position. When it comes to that point, it can only react by total withdrawal, as indeed happened. The problem can only be managed by a national polity, for only a national polity can take the risks implied by the interpenetration of the “horizontal” and “vertical” orders. Such a polity, prepared slowly over the previous century or so, came into being in the interbellum period in the form of the Indian National Congress. ### [c5.41](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.41) It has been customary to explain the success of the single most important figure in this process, Gandhi, by pointing to his expert wielding of traditional religious symbols and ideas, but this is only half the truth. Gandhi, apart from his use of symbols that had also been used by others, was a renouncer, personifying in his relation to the sociopolitical world the inner conflict of tradition. This also qualified him to deal with the conflict in its modern form, but as a renouncer he played a totally unprecedented role. It has recently been pointed out that “the reason, over and above the use of religion in politics, why Gandhi was able to initiate national movements with such conspicuous success was because he recognized the social pluralism of India and exploited the traditional loyalties of different sections of society to draw them into political agitations.”³⁶ If I am allowed to paraphrase this statement, I would say that he managed to attend to the organization of both the “vertical” demands of the segmentary order and the conflicting need for “horizontal” unity. That the actions aiming at horizontal unity and therefore centered on universal moral issues were far less successful and showed a far lower degree of control than his earlier, locally restricted ones, which focused on material grievances,³⁷ was to be expected. Given that horizontal, no less than vertical, unity must be sustained by distribution and that access to the center’s power and resources was as yet barred, the measure of reality he gave to horizontal, national unity, if only during the short span of a nationwide agitation, was a totally new phenomenon. ### [c5.42](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.42) Equally remarkable and instructive are the limits of horizontal, national unity that became painfully clear at the same time. The unity of the nation is apparently not bounded by ethnic, linguistic, or geographical criteria nor even by the extent of existing or potential channels of distribution. The final criterion would seem to be the recognition of a specific formulation of transcendent authority and legitimation. For the Hindu, this was clearly and unequivocally the renunciatory ideal. It was this ideal that was not only referred to but effectively embodied by Gandhi, who thereby could arbitrate conflict and guarantee ultimate unity. Here, of course, Hindus and Muslims had eventually to part company. As long as horizontal unity was only an idea beyond the reach of reality, it had no direct impact. Once it was given reality, it had to have practical consequences, however painful. ### [c5.43](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.43) This parenthesis on the limits of horizontal, national unity also shows us something of the precarious and explosive situation that arises from the blending of the vertical and horizontal orders into one reality. Everything then depends on the development of an institutional framework for dealing with this situation. Here probably lies Gandhi’s greatest achievement, namely, in the remolding of the Indian National Congress so that it could fulfill this function. For Gandhi did not simply give it moral inspiration, which usually fades once a particular action is over, but he played a dominant role in the different phases of its reorganization during the interbellum period.³⁸ Its remarkable success lay in its capacity to accommodate both the segmentary local and regional demands and the precarious reality of horizontal unity. ### [c5.44](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.44) This means, however, that Congress had to be the arena of the resulting tensions and conflicts to the point of becoming identified with these conflicts and consequently being threatened with breakdown. However, so far no other organization has been able to take over its function. Even though the position of the Congress is increasingly being called into question, it has shown an unexpected resilience—a resilience that paradoxically seems to be based on its conflictive nature—and it is still there as the indispensable arena of pervasive conflict and national unity. Whatever the fate of India’s political system in general and of the Congress in particular—as argued, it is inherently precarious—the main point is that India has been remarkably successful in setting up the institutional framework for dealing with the traditional conflict in its modern reincarnation. ### [c5.45](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5.45) To conclude: successful modernity does not mean the supersession of tradition or the superimposition on it of a different order. It means that the inner conflict of tradition is now fought within the confines of an expanded reality that transcends the limits of the “little kingdom” so as to include ultimate authority and legitimation themselves. Authority and legitimation are no longer transcendent and safe in an ultramundane sphere but part of reality—and therefore constantly called into question. In contradistinction to tradition, modernity must valorize change because the authority of its code of abstract rules and principles no longer transcends reality. Modernity has not solved the inner conflict of tradition, nor can it ever do so. But it has fundamentally changed it by carrying it over into the sphere of a single explosive reality. ## Linked texts (5) - [Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra](https://indike.org/pramana/in.niti.artha.kautilya) — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit - [Ṛgvedaprātiśākhya](https://indike.org/pramana/in.vedanga.siksa.pratisakhya.rg) — Śaunaka, Sanskrit - [Veda](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda) — Sanskrit - [Ācāra](https://indike.org/pramana/in.niti.dharma.acara) - [Brāhmaṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/in.veda.brahmana) — Sanskrit --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.heesterman-1985.c5) · Pramāṇa