Local Government in Ancient India c6.s1.2

c6.s1.2

The subject of Local Self-Government in ancient India has both historical and practical interest. We owe largely to her elaborate system of local government the preservation of the integrity, independence, and individuality of Hindu culture, despite the world-shaking and catastrophic political movements to which that culture was frequently exposed in the course of her history. That provided a sort of Noah’s ark in which were safely protected the vital elements of Hindu civilization against the overwhelming political deluges that swept over the country from time to time. As Sir George Birdwood has truly remarked : ‘ India has undergone more religious and political revolutions than any other country in the world; but the village communities remain in full municipal vigour all over the peninsula. Scythian, Greek, Saracen, Afghan, Mongol, and Marāthā have come down from its mountains, and Portuguese, Dutch, English, French, and Dane up out of its seas, and set up their successive dominations in the land; but the religious trades-union villages have remained as little affected by their coming and going as a rock by the rising and falling of the tide ’.¹ This is indeed an echo of an earlier utterance of Sir Charles Metcalfe : ‘The village communities are little republics, having nearly everything they can want within themselves, and almost independent of any foreign relations. They seem to last where nothing else lasts. Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down; revolution succeeds to revolution; . . . but the village community remains the same. . . This union of the village communities, each one forming a separate little state in itself, has, I conceive, contributed more than any other cause to the preservation of the peoples of India, through all the revolutions and changes which they have suffered, and is in a high degree conducive to their happiness, and to the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and independence'.¹