Theory of Government in Ancient India (Post-Vedic) c15.52

c15.52

The Mahâbhârata has it that the truth, the law, is that which leads to the greatest happiness of creatures.³ It falls to the government to enforce Dharma. It is to promote the true religion, but it is significant that Hindu theory rarely advocates religious persecution. Excepting a few brief interludes, ancient India witnessed a wonderful tolerance of all sects by governments. Aśoka burnt with zeal for Buddhism and utilised all his resources for the propagation of the true faith but he never thought of persecution. Harṣavardhana in the seventh century leaned towards Buddhism but patronised Brâhmaṇas as well. Theory was true to facts and seldom counselled violence towards those who did not profess the faith of the rulers. Religion in the ordinary sense of the term is, however, only one part of Dharma. It has also the sense which Latimer had in mind when he said that "pure religion......... standeth......in righteousness, justice and well-doing." The state must actively promote and rigidly enforce righteousness and morality. Now true morality pertains to the inner life of man and touches the springs of action. No external agency can really enforce it. The thing is a contradiction in terms—a contradiction which Hindu theory in its zeal fails to recognise. But what the state or government can do is to ally itself with the forces of good, to bring about the conditions favourable to morality, and to repress outward immoral conduct. A Hindu government is constantly enjoined to do all it can in these directions. The state thus becomes more than a culture-state, it assumes the position of an all-pervasive moral and spiritual association. Its higher function is ethical. It is to promote the observance of those ethical principles which are supreme, which apply to man in all relations, to life on all sides and which, in a word, are archetectonic. The state itself thus becomes archetectonic. Even writers like Kauṭalya and Somadeva Sûri who set out with the avowed purpose of composing political treatises, give lengthy disquisitions on ideal law or positive morality. Their precise and elaborate rules remind one of the ecclesiastical writers of Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.