Local Government in Ancient India c16.16

c16.16

The luxuriant growth of these local democracies based on every possible principle of formation must modify the opinion of such critics as declare that ‘In ancient India there was nothing of the nature of a political institution between the village and the central government’ (Sir W. W. Hunter quoted in J. Matthai’s *Village Government in British India*, p. 32), or that communal associations based upon caste do not admit of the juxtaposition of both political and social functions, or of their federation for purposes common to different communities and castes. On the other hand, it may be quite reasonably assumed that it is the very growth of these numerous, multi-form, intermediate assemblies between the state and the individual which can most effectively help on the evolution of Indian political life, along the lines of natural growth and least resistance, from the local to the central government, the rural to the national democracy. This pluralism of the group, as an intermediate body between the state and the individual units, has been the most characteristic feature of Indian polity through the ages, and indicates the lines on which Indian political development should proceed. The path of this political development should lie in the direction of ‘incorporating more and more the life of the individual and the general will of the state-personality into the varied forms of social grouping’.¹ It is for statesmanship to consider how it should utilize these traditional and historic advances towards a democratic polity as materials for the political experiments and constructions of the future.¹