The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s5: Climate As Alleged Determinant in Hindu Polity

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c11.s5

Language: English

Climate As Alleged Determinant in Hindu Polity

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Economic centralization or planned economy was engendered in India, says he, because of two reasons.²⁵ First, it was necessary to maintain the stores or reserves as provision against famine as well as for the standing army and the civil service. And secondly, the question of irrigation was of fundamental importance to the people and the state. An extensive agricultural policy furnished with central control was, it is said, the bed-rock of state-economics.

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²⁵ Vol. III, pp. 15-18, 73-76.

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These conditions Breloer considers to be peculiar to India occasioned by climate and Nature.

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This discussion of climate and Nature in their bearings on Indian society, economy and state, has played a considerable rôle in Breloer's work. He believes that the *Eigenarten des Klimas*²⁶ (the peculiar features of the climate) has as yet been hardly presented in right lights as "*beherrschender Faktor*" (the ruling factor) in India.

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²⁶ Vol. III. pp. 14-18, 73, 360-361.

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A comparative study of economic and technical conditions from the earliest times carried over the most diverse regions of the world would, however, indicate that anthropologically speaking, neither economic centralization (e.g., financial, statistical etc.) nor administrative control in economic enterprises ought to be regarded as a "function", sociologically considered, of climate and Nature. As Breloer's work is based on these fundamental postulates it has served but to repeat in a new form the fallacies of monistic regionalism or "geographical interpretation" of culture from Hegel to Huntington.²⁷ In reality the kind of planned economy that he has discovered in India can be ascribed to many countries, primitive, ancient and medieval.

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²⁷ Climatological fallacies of this type have been examined at length in B. K. Sarkar: *The Futurism of Young Asia* (Berlin 1922) and *The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus* (Leipzig 1922).

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From top to bottom and cover to cover he has tried to propagate an untenable economic and sociological thesis. Every item of what Breloer believes to be special to Indian economics and finance can be proven to have flourished under other climates and under other "geopolitical" conditions. The almost universal character of *Wirtschaftsführung*, *Wirtschaftsaufsicht*, *Planwirtschaft*, *Vorkehrungspolitik*, and so forth is the most outstanding feature of ancient and medieval history.

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It is strange that Breloer should consider interest in agriculture, irrigation, agricultural statistics and finance etc. on the part of the state and attempts of the state to control the agricultural policy in a systematic and centralized manner as something *ausschliesslich* (p. 77) or exclusive, i.e., special to India's climate and Nature. He believes that extra-Indian parallels are hardly available (p. 16). Nothing could be more unhistorical and untrue to facts of world-economy.

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The comprehensive and centralized land, irrigation, water supply, sanitation, roads and agricultural buildings legislation of Italy embodies itself in the *bonifica integrale* movement. Mussolini's *battaglia del grano* (wheat campaign) is but an item in the same complex. His *riscattarre la terra, con la terra gli uomini e con gli uomini la razza* (redeem the land, with the land the men and with the men the race) has become the agrar-demographic war-cry of Fascist Italy. The *bonifica* movement is as old as the unification of Italy.

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In France the agricultural interests of the state comprise among other items the financial legislation bearing on the *Credit Agricole* and its relations with the *Banque de France*. This *Agrarpolitik* was initiated by Méline in the nineteenth century. The British people which is known to be relatively less agricultural has for two generations been pushing forward the enactment of Small Holdings Acts in diverse forms. The reagrarization movement has got a tremendous fillip in England in post-war years and took definite shape in the 'Agricultural Tribunal of Investigation.

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The all-embracing agricultural legislation, finance and statistics of Germany have become classical. The *Innenkolonisationspolitik* (internal colonisation policy), the *Rentengutsgesetzgebung* (rent-land legislation), the *Anerbenrecht* (law of succession by a "chosen" heir) and so forth constitute a magnificent complex of agricultural economy under state auspices.

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Hitler's emphasis on the *Bauernstand* (the farmer class) as the fundamental basis of German *Kultur* and the *Nazi* legislation of 1933 protecting and promoting the cultivator's interests point but to the continuation of the traditional German policy since Stein, nay, since Frederick the Great.

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These are examples from modern races and epochs. It is not necessary for the time being to refer to the older instances of the state's solicitude for agriculture under other than Indian climates and geographical conditions. In this extensive *Agrarpolitik* (p. 76) of Kauṭalya there is nothing of *Eigenart* (p. 16), i.e., pecularity, exceptional character or speciality to be seen in India, as suspected by Breloer.

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Breloer would perhaps like to furnish new hints to the geographical sociologists who are travelling in the wake of Ratzel, Le Play, Matteuzzi, Barth and others. In recent years there have been scholars who have attempted to out-Buckle Buckle in the "climatological interpretation" of history. But as a result of intensive investigations, e.g., of Durkheim, Brunhes, Thurnwald, Lowie, Vallaux and others it is impossible to demonstrate a regular or substantial "correlation" between climate, nature and geographical conditions, on the one hand, and economic structure, religion, family life, social organization and polity on the other.²⁸

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²⁸ See the examination of the geographical monist Huntington's theories in Sorokin: *Contemporary Sociological Theories* (New York 1928) pp. 123, 137-158, 186-193.

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*Planned Economy Old and New*

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Breloer is careful to point out that one should not read modern viewpoints into the concept of Hindu *Planwirtschaft* (planned economy). But all the same, he would not like that this special feature of Indian economy should be ignored.²⁹ It does not escape him that the "ideology of modern socialistic origin in the interpretation of ancient conditions is a disturbing guest." The difficulties of comparison are not ignored. But he does not object to the use of expressions which enables a certain world of ideas that lies near to us in point of time to be brought into the neighbourhood of equalization or similarity. This sort of tentative efforts at establishing what may be called rough equations between the nearest approximations (or approaches to similarity) is certainly the only course open in a scientific investigation of values.

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²⁹ Vol. III, pp. 73, 360.

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In spite of his formal warning Breloer has given reasons to understand that in connection with the Kauṭalyan polity he is using “planned economy” in the contemporary “anti-liberal” sense and that his sentiments lean towards anti-liberalism. His work is therefore bound to be the butt of much criticism from the standpoint of modern economics. One cannot help feeling that this huge tome of some 600 pages is essentially a study in contemporary planned economy. Indeed, this is apparent in the very title. Only the illustrations have been drawn from Kauṭalya. In other words, Kauṭalya has been presented virtually as an anticipator of economic planning. This is a serious proposition and eminently open to challenge.

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Economic planning is indeed in one sense such a simple, elementary and human category that almost every individual even of the most primitive times may be said to be an economic planner in so far as he makes provisions for the future. Similarly every state that makes a yearly budget is also used to planning out the future ahead.

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In a more limited sense, economic planning implies the intervention of the state in the private economy of its citizens. This also is almost an eternal as well as a universal fact of history from the earliest times. The regulation of prices, wages and interest, the prescriptions as to the kind of food grains to grow, the control of commerce by tolls, excise and customs, the redistribution of national wealth and income by taxation and currency manipulations, and of course the promotion of public health, *vidyās*, *kalās*, arts and sciences etc. have been the regular features of state activities in the East and the West.

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One can say, therefore, that man as a political animal has been practising planned economy all through history without knowing it or using the word. Thus considered, even the alleged "liberal" states have not been less used to it than the "conservative" states. *Planwirtschaft* cannot by any means be regarded as the exclusive or special achievement of Hindu or Oriental genius. Nor did the West have to wait until the "*neueste Zeit*" (most recent times) to commence the A. B. C. of this *Fürsorgestaat* philosophy. Breloer is extremely out of the mark in this discussion.

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It is too well known that the *ager publicus* (public domain) was the mainstay of public finance at Rome even under the Empire. The place of "state-property" and "state monopolies" in French finance was very high, as one learns from Brissaud's *Histoire du Droit Public Français* and Leroy-Beaulieu's *Traité de la Science des Finances*. The system of public granaries (Breloer's *Reservepolitik*, *Magasinpolitik*) was established by Augustus in order to mitigate the evils of a famine. On the occasion of a famine in Marcus Aurelius's time the Roman Empire organized a seven year supply of provisions. The institution was championed by Thomas Mun in *England's Treasure by Forraign Trade* and Jean Bodin in *Les six Livres de la République*. The idea of a war-chest was popular with the Hohenzollerns from Frederick the Great to Wilhelm II.

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Students of anthropology and economic history will admit that Europe does not have to get admitted into a Freshman class, as Breloer seems to suggest, for elementary lessons in economic planning as understood in primitive, ancient, medieval or even pre-war modern times. But economic planning is, after all, not an old category. It is a post-war phenomenon and must not be confounded with what looked like it in previous epochs. Historically, it is not older than 1928 when it was set in motion in Soviet Russia under the name of *Gosplan* (state-planning). Since then it has been formally adopted in Italy, Germany and the U. S. A. and to a certain extent in Japan and informally in Great Britain.

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Economic planning as thus circumscribed, i.e., in its latest phase, is a socio-financial complex comprising the following items:

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1. A definite goal of economic or social welfare.
2. A definite period of time within which the goal is to be realized.
3. A definite portion of the state budget earmarked for the realization of the goal.
4. Intervention of the state in private affairs in order to carry out the programme indicated in the first three points.

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These four items taken together should be regarded as the irreducible minimum of planned economy that has become a common place of public life today. It is so extraordinarily new that nowhere has anybody dared introduce it for more than a fixed number of years. And even during the course of these short periods every statesman's position has been shaking.

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Besides, state intervention in the ordinary sense of suggestion, advice or general legislation is not the item in question, because this belongs to every state as a matter of course. It is not even public ownership, or state management and control, because all this "socialism" belongs virtually to every state. The novelty of the present situation is to be found in a peculiar "dictatorship" limited for certain defined purposes to fixed periods.

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This intervention is an ideological cognate or agnate of the war-communism (1914-18) or dictatorship of the state, of which it is indeed virtually an immediate successor. Some amount of "dictatorship" is by all means associated with this category. But it is not the dictatorship of Imperial despots, "enlightened" as they were, like the Mauryas, the Roman Emperors, the Bourbons, Frederick, Peter and Joseph. In the present instances the dictatorship is that of a party which covers if not the entire nation, at any rate, a very large section of the population, and which happens to have taken possession of the state (e.g., Russia, Italy, and Germany). Or, as in the U.S.A., Japan and England the Parliaments have by constitutional and legal methods virtually conferred dictatorial privileges on the party in power.

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The fact that an individual like the *Duce*, the *Führer*, the leader, is always lording it over in some of the "planned economy"-regions does not eclipse the great reality that today we are dealing not with individuals, but with the huge masses of men and women, the folk, who as Party are enjoying the dictatorship.

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Economic planning, as defined by Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler and Roosevelt as well as the Seiyukai Party and British National Administration of today was not and could not be understood by Kauṭalya as it was not and could not be understood by the past masters of centralization, administrative unification as well as promoters of welfare in Roman and Elizabethan times, in the *ancien regime* as well as in the Hohenzollern epoch. It is in the interest of economics, politics and sociology as well as of indology that we should save ourselves from the tendency to use ultra-modern categories in connection with old Hindu institutions and theories.

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In his economic and social policies Hitler the national-socialist is not identical with Bismarck the nationalist, and is of course at poles asunder from Frederick the Great. There cannot be any equation between the economic planning of the Nazi state and that of the "enlightened despots." Exactly in the same manner is it impossible to establish any equation between the *de facto* "planned economy" measures of the British Cabinet today and the Elizabethan *Fürsorgestaat* or state intervention in private economy. Kauṭalyan economy does not contain anything more than what is to be found in Diocletian, Elizabeth, Colbert and so forth. When all these considerations are taken into account the category *Planwirtschaft* should not be employed in connection with the economic measures of the *Kauṭalīya Arthaśāstra*.

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The economic planning of today is a very complicated affair. In spite of the differences in methods and tactics between Bolshevism, Fascism, Nationalsocialism, Anglo-American liberalism and Japanese "paternalism" the capitalists and employers in each and every region have come under the sway of one or other brand of socialism or communism embodied as it is in trade unions and other labour institutions. The world is witnessing everywhere a peculiarly new socio-economic *Gestalt*, configuration, or form-totality in which capitalism happens to be multiplied or modified and moderated by socialism. The systems of today may be described as belonging to neo-capitalism. On the other hand, the technocratic revolutions and rationalizations have served to initiate and promote centralization and administrative unification of the highest order. It is this "neo-capitalistic" centralization that furnishes the fundamental logic of planned economy in the post-war world. To attempt to think of or even insinuate such a technique while in the atmosphere of Kauṭalya would be as unhistorical and unscientific as to do so in the perspective of Diocletian or Louis XIV.

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One is at liberty to have own's own views in regard to the methods and problems of contemporary societal remaking. Economic planning happens to be a phase, the most recent phase of applied economics, sociology and politics in Eur-America, nay, in Asia too. One can understand its origins and necessities as one can appreciate also the origins and necessities of *laisser faire*, economic freedom, democracy and "liberalism." The one system is as relative to world-conditions as the other. But in order to justify a measure that one considers to be very necessary for today it should be as utterly unwarrantable to father it upon an ancinet Hindu statesman as upon an ancient European.

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Had Breloer only cared to make a passing remark just by way of "suggestive" reference in order to point out what he considers to be an "approximate parallel" the situation would not have been so damaging. But he has seriously set himself to establish a thesis on what may be called the Kauṭalyan anticipation of planned economy. The effort is regrettable in view of the fact that his intensive analysis of the financial data as available in the *Arthaśāstra* is marked generally by sound judgment and critical scholarship. He uses a commonplace category, "economic planning", without distinguishing its old and new contents and has led the readers to suspect that the latest contents of this category are to be discovered in the ancient Hindu statesman of the Hellenistic period. This attempt should not appear to be more reasonable than that of discovering a modern British Cabinet in the royal councils of the *Rāmāyaṇa* or a modern League of Nations in some of the inter-tribal assemblies of the *Mahābhārata*.

Linked texts (3)

Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra — Kauṭilya, Sanskrit
Mahābhārata — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
Vālmīkirāmāyaṇa — Vālmīki, Sanskrit