Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c20.2

c20.2

§ 117. In aristocratic republics the basis of franchise was the family, *i.e.*, the Hindu family. This is implied by the Mahā-Bhārata when it says that there is equality in the Gaṇa by family (kula) and by birth (jāti).¹ Equality by birth and family made up the constitutional equality inside the Hindu republic. Every free man in a Saṁgha was equal by his birth, and every family was equal, for political purposes. A passage in the Pāli Canon also takes the Kula as the basis of franchise.² The Buddha preaching to the sons of the Lichchhavis says that high careers open to a *Kula-putta* or cadet of a family were these: he might become consecrated to rulership, might become a Rāshṭrika, or Pettanika, or the Generalissimo, or the President of the Township, (*gāmagāmaṇika*), or the President of the Industrial Guild (*pūgagāmaṇika*). It is meant that all these offices were elective and a Kula-putta was eligible to all these in a Gaṇa-state. A sixth career is added and it is with regard to a Kula-state which we have already noticed above: ‘*Supreme rulership* [*over other rulers*] *by turns*.’³ Kātyāyana the law-giver says that *gaṇa* is the assembly of Kulas.¹ Kula or family was thus the basis of political right and power in aristocracies and in aristocratic democracies. But it could not have been the rule in what the Greeks called democracies. There everybody was equal, of course, by birth. Birth alone must have been the basis of franchise in constitutions like that of the Kaṭhas and the Saubhūtas where even the selection of the 'king' depended upon personal qualification and no one attached any regard to the family, and where the culture of the individual himself was the prime consideration of the State. We find in the Śākya Parliament both young and old assembled; in the Vṛishṇi Saṅgha, father, son, and younger brother, (Kṛishṇa, Pradyumna, Gada) all possessing franchise (§ 197).