The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s1.t39: Arthaśāstra as Document of Planned Economy

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s1.t39

Language: English

Arthaśāstra as Document of Planned Economy

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The postulate which runs through the entire volume and which indeed furnishes the socio-philosophical or economico-political scaffolding for the presentation of the Kauṭalyan data is to be mentioned at the outset. We are told that the objects that Hindu administration seeks to realize are something from which the conceptions of an European appears to be exceedingly different, especially if the latter happens to be entangled in or possessed by the ideas of economic liberalism (*im wirtschaftsliberalen Denken verfangen*).⁸ In the expression "*wirtschaftsliberalen Denken*" of Breloer's is to be understood the doctrine of *laissez faire*, economic freedom, etc., as common in the history of economic thought from Adam Smith and Ricardo to Gustav Cassel and the general trends of thinking represented in the *Société d'Economie Politique* of Paris. It is to be taken as the antipodes of what today is being described as the policy of "*economic planning*", "*planned economy*" etc., so strongly associated, although in diverse forms, with Soviet Russia's "*Gosplan*" (state-planning), Fascist economics, the Hitler regime in Germany, and the Rooseveltian "*New Deal*."⁹ “One who is entangled in or committed to liberal thought”, says Breloer in regard to the interpreters of Hindu politics, “fishes only for those items and judges the whole only according to those viewpoints which correspond to this kind of thinking. The result is a completely incorrect picture which arises from the wrong mental attitude of the interpreter.”¹⁰

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⁸ Vol. III. pp. 3, 302

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⁹ In regard to these anti-liberal economics see the liberalist Cassel's lecture entitled "From Protectionism through Planned Economy to Dictatorship" at the Dunford House (Cobden Memorial Association), London, June 1934 (*International Conciliation*, New York, October, 1934). For anti-liberalist views of economic and political liberalism as well as of its opposite, see in the same journal for January 1935 Mussolini : "The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism" and De Ritis : "Aims and Policies of the Fascist Regime in Italy"; cf. Hitler : Rede vor dem Reichstag, 30 January 1934 (Ein Jahr Nationalsozialismus in Deutschland) and B. K. Sarkar : "The Hitler-State" in the *Insurance and Finance Review* (Calcutta) October and November, 1933.

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¹⁰ Vol. III, p. 2.

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The planned economy, says he, should not at all appear new and unintelligible to the Indian, in so far “as the modern ideas of liberalism do not blind him to the otherwise constituted conditions of the Orient.” Among the many theories of the state the Europeans knew hardly anything, so we are told, of the “conservative welfare state (*Fürsorgestaat*) with planned economic control.” It is the most recent times that according to him have commenced to fill up the gap and “will assure to Europe also an honorable place in discussions bearing on the question.”¹¹

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¹¹ Vol. III, p. 362.

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These passages make it clear, although he disclaims *propagandistische Tendenz* (p. 362), that Breloer is an admirer of the “most recent” political theories of planned economy etc., that he is expecting an “honourable place” for Europe in this respect in the future. It is evident also, as we have previously noted, that his sentiments against “liberalism” are quite pronounced. Finally, he says in so many words that the Hindu (and Oriental) state has anticipated the “most recent” political institutions and theories, namely, those of welfare-state and economic control etc.

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The economic aspect of administration, the *Planwirtschaft* (planned economy) is carried out in the *Arthaśāstra* with unquestionable thoroughness (*mit nicht zu leugnender Gründlichkeit*) without letting the reader feel that the question here is of a pale theory.¹² On the contrary, every measure is established on the foundation of practice. If in regard to this, says Breloer, a strictness of attitude is observable, it is perhaps to be ascribed to the "famines in Chandragupta's time of which the tradition speaks."

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¹² Vol. III. pp. 11, 95, 302.

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In these passages, written as we understand from the preface in December 1933, towards the end of the first year of the national-socialist (*Nazi*) state in Germany, Breloer seems evidently to have the following equations before his mind's eye :

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(1) Economic policy of Kauṭalya = Planned economy of the *Nazi* State.
(2) Famines in Chandragupta's time = Unemployment in Hitler's Germany.
(3) Strictness of economic measures in the *Arthaśāstra* = strictness of the Nationalsocialistic intervention in the private affairs of individuals from marriage to charity.

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Such being the case, a successful general like Chandragupta, as he was known to the Romans, may have commissioned his teacher and statesman Kauṭalya with the preparation of a *Corpus juris*. It is also possible that because of the explicable or natural attempt to establish the unified state (*aus dem erklärlichen Streben nach dem Einheitsstaat heraus*) it was in contemplation to transfer the dominant form and method of administration in Magadha to the whole of the new state, *Kaiserreich* or Empire. In this reference to the *Streben of Chandragupta nach dem Einheitsstaat*¹³ Breloer is not uninfluenced by the epochmaking constitutional (and political) achievement of Hitler in 1933, consisting as it did in the abolition of the states and the final unification of Germany beyond the range of Bismarck's dreams. The following Indo-German equations should appear to have been at work in the atmosphere of Breloer's researches:

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¹³ Vol. III, p. 11.

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(1) Magadha (Chandragupta) = Prussia (Hitler).
(2) Unification of India under the auspices of Magadha = Unification of Germany under the auspices of Prussia.

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Breloer has not mentioned any contemporaries by name. But his sympathies leave no doubt as to what he means. In the hands of Jacobi we got the equation, Kauṭalya = Bismarck. Jacobi's pupil has carried the equation to the next generation of German statesmanship. At this stage we find that Kauṭalya = some German economist or economists who may be regarded as the guide-philosopher-friends of Hitler during 1933-34. It should be remarked that Gottfred Keller, the inspirer of Hitler in the communistic or socialistic aspects of national-socialism in 1921-22, cannot be regarded as one of them, because the Nazi regime in office has gone beyond those theorizings of the years just after the Great War (1914-18).

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That Breloer's interpretation of Kauṭalya has been greatly influenced by contemporary events in Germany is apparent from another interesting reference. We have seen that the author has commenced by saluting Kauṭalya as an "Aryan" and as a kinsman of the heroes of the Teutonic *Nibelungenlied*. Evidently the Aryanism and the race-cult of Hitler's sociopolitical philosophy (1933-34) is to be credited with some impact on this ideology of Breloer's.

Cites (1)

Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit