Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c53: Chapter XXXVIII: Revival of Hindu Polity
Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c53
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Chapter XXXVIII: Revival of Hindu Polity
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§ 369. The period after 700 A. C. is a period of darkness and disruption. Popular institutions decayed and Hindu traditions dwindled. The causes, as observed above, are yet to be investigated.
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§ 370. But when there was a Hindu revival in the time of Śivāji and the Sikhs, the Sikhs as a polity failed. They failed because they could not connect themselves with the Past. They followed a system which prevailed around them and established a polity of one-man's rule; Guru Govinda wanted to remedy it but the attempt brought about 'no man's rule.' It was the "Padshahi," the Moghul form, in success and in defeat, in rise and in fall. But the movement in the Maratha country had a different history. There they looked into past history and drew up a constitution and founded a polity on materials that were easily available to them but the materials which connected them with the Past. They consulted the Mahābhārata and the Śukranīti and found that king should reign but not rule, that government should be vested in a Ministry of eight ministers. And they founded the *Ashṭapradhāna*.¹ They searched out technical terms from political literature of the country and drew up a Rājakośa or Book of State Terms. Yet the system tried was only one portion of Hindu polity, one half of the whole body. They had the *Parishad* but they had not the *Paura-Jānapada*. To their great credit it must however be said that in modern times they were the first to realise that one man's rule was not allowed by the wisdom and experience of their forefathers, that it was foreign to the genius of their *Śāstras*. Their limitations were the limitations of darkness and ignorance about the constitutional history of the country, a darkness which we have not yet fully removed three centuries after.
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¹ * See *ante* (II), p. 124, *n.*
Linked texts (1)
- Mahābhārata — Vyāsa, Sanskrit