Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s9.t10: The Niti Tradition in Rāmachandrapant

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s9.t10

Language
English

The Niti Tradition in Rāmachandrapant

c14.s9.t10.1

Rāmachandrapant never uses the category, *saptāmga* or the seven-limbed organism. But he virtually describes all the seven categories of the *nītiśāstras* in his own way. The author deals with the *svāmi* (king) and the *amātya* (minister) at some length. The topics of *koṣa* (treasure) and *rāṣtra* (territory) are discussed in connection with the commercial interests of the state. This subject has not however, been discussed, it should be observed, in an adequate manner. Public finance has virtually been neglected. The slight references to income and expenditure, salaries and gifts (pp. 19-20), *vrittis* or grants etc. and *inams* or estates (pp. 35-38) do not enable us to feel that the importance of the financial considerations has been grasped by the author.

c14.s9.t10.2

"Finance is the life of the state," says he in the manner of the writers of *nītiśāstras*. The practical aspect of this consideration in times of war is noticed by him. He advises that the state treasury should be filled and well looked after but does not go much farther in analysis or prescriptions.

c14.s9.t10.3

The problem of *suhrit* (ally), one of the seven categories, should seem to be touched upon incidentally at almost every place where the problem of foreign invasion has been discussed (pp. 6-7). The topic may be said to have been rather carefully dealt with in the section on the treatment of *watandars*, i.e., hereditary officials, e.g. heads of villages, districts, provinces etc. They are no doubt small but independent chiefs of territories, says he. When a foreign invasion comes they are known to make peace with the invader and can become harmful to the kingdom. These "feudal" chiefs are therefore to be controlled in a careful manner so that they may be made to remain friendly to the king (pp. 33-35). In this discussion there are important considerations preparatory to an active foreign policy. But the formal treatment of friends and foes such as one is familiar with in the doctrine of *maṇḍala* has been avoided. The ideas of *sāma*, *dāna*, *bheda* and *daṇḍa* are accessible here although not in so many words. Rāmachandrapant has dealt with the actual circumstances of the Maratha political *milieu* and the method of adding to the strength of the *Svarājya* that he has to serve. All the same, his analysis has not considered it necessary to use the terminology or methodology of the “sphere of states” while detailing the manner in which the *Svarājya* is to become thornless and expand in all directions.

c14.s9.t10.4

What little Rāmachandrapant has to say about dealings with other princes or feudatory chiefs shows that the realism of Spinoza (1634-77) is in his grain. Passages from the *Tractatus Politicus*⁹ (I. 5) of Spinoza like the following would be congenial to Rāmachandrapant’s spirit: “Men are of necessity liable to passions and so constituted as to pity those who are ill and envy those who are well off and to be prone to vengeance more than to mercy;” “And so it comes to pass that, as all are equally eager to be first, they fall to strife, and do their utmost mutually to oppress one another.” Rāmachandrapant would, therefore, like Spinoza spurn a rosy view of interstatal relations. The Spinozistic statement that such persons as persuade themselves that the multitude of men distracted by politics can ever be induced to live according to the bare dictates of reason must be dreaming of the poetic golden age or of a stage-play can also be taken as Rāmachandrapant’s.

c14.s9.t10.5

⁹ *Works*, Vol. I. (New York 1883), p. 289, G. Engelmann: *Political Philosophy from Plato to Jeremy Bentham* (New York 1927), chapter on Spinoza; cf. in this connection the character-analysis of the “upper strata,” the “aristocracy,” “leaders,” “builders” etc. in P. Sorokin: *Social Mobility* (New York 1927), pp. 308-311.

c14.s9.t10.6

In external politics, therefore, it is *das Imperativ der Staatsnotwendigkeit* (the imperative of state-necessity) that compels Rāmachandrapant like Frederick the Great to discover his *Staatsräson* (reasons or interests of the state) in the philosophy of *Macht* or power.¹⁰

c14.s9.t10.7

¹⁰ F. Meinecke: *Die Idee der Staatsräson* (Munich 1925) pp. 356-358, 360-361. See also the analysis of the state in L. von Wiese’s *System der Allgemeinen Soziologie* (Munich 1933), pp. 549, 554-555 for another analogue of Hindu conceptions.

c14.s9.t10.8

The words of Frederick the Great himself in his *Considerations sur l’état present du corps politique de l’Europe* (Considerations on the present condition of the body politic of Europe, 1737) would be congenial to the Maratha *Amātya*. “The politics of the great monarchies was always the same,” says the Prussian monarch; “Their fundamental principle consisted in seizing everything in order to expand oneself ceaselessly, and their wisdom in anticipating the tricks of their enemies and to play the finest play.”

c14.s9.t10.9

It is virtually the analysis of neighbours as presented by the Maratha *Rājanīti* of the early eighteenth century that we find in the modern theorist Stier-Somlo when he says in *Politik* (1926) that the states of our environment are bound to find themselves in eternal competition, rivalry, struggle, and at any rate, in the midst of conflicts or clashes of interests. The considerations of high “ethical culture” are according to him out of place in such a world. This circumstance compels the *Staatsmoral* (state or political morality) to be entirely different from the individual morality (p. 122).

c14.s9.t10.10

Rāmachandrapant would therefore be prepared to admit with Vierkandt that every state has two faces, one towards the internal affairs, and the other towards the external. From one standpoint, of course, it is the *Rechtsstaat* (law-state), or *lo stato etico* (the ethical i.e. moral state) of Ugo Redanò (1927). But the essential characteristic of the state in its external relations¹¹ is its character as *Macht*, organized force, culminating in what von Wiese calls *Ich-Einzig-Wahn* (I-Alone-Mania).

c14.s9.t10.11

¹¹ A. Vierkandt: *Staat und Gesellschaft in der Gegenwart* (Leipzig 1921) p. 10.

c14.s9.t10.12

Leaving aside the category *suhrit* (ally) we notice that the two categories *durga* (forts) and *vala* (army) have been dealt with in a somewhat detailed and practical manner. Rāmachandrapant's observations on forts do not betray the influence of academicians. Indeed he talks like a contractor, engineer and manager. In regard to the treatment of the king and the ministers he is quite prepared to indulge in academic generalities and ethical first postulates or political principles. But in regard to forts he makes short of them. Indeed he virtually avoids those theoretical considerations. He is chiefly interested in their actual construction and administration (pp. 39-48).

c14.s9.t10.13

In his judgment the forts and strongholds "alone mean the kingdom." They mean "more than the treasury." They mean the "strength of the army." They "mean likewise the prosperity of the kingdom," "our places of residence," "our places of peaceful sleep," nay, "our very protection of life" (p. 39). All this apotheosis of forts, so to say, might be easily ascribed to the political and military conditions to which Maratha writers are used. But we ought to remember our old Kauṭalya (Book VIII) also, where the relative importance of each of the seven limbs is discussed in succession. The importance of forts as *a* or *the* supreme factor in the political organism is fathered upon Parāśara in that discussion. But otherwise, as usual in the pluralistic and "heinotheistic" philosophy of Hindu thought, each one is found in Kauṭalyan analysis to be something very fundamental. We may take it that by thus dwelling on the importance of forts Rāmachandrapant is perhaps philosophizing not simply as a Maratha scholar but to a certain extent also as a traditional Hindu author.

c14.s9.t10.14

The questions of *vala* or the army have been dealt with in connection with the troops and their organization (pp. 20-22). The five-fold force of cavalry (*laskar*), infantry (*hasham*), light-armed men (*adal*), musketeers (*banduki*), archers (*tirandāji*) and artillery men (*karol*) is substantially different from the elephant-corps, cavalry, chariot and infantry divisions of the *nīti* tradition. The navy plays a considerable part in Rāmachandrapant's treatment. It is an independent limb of the state, says he. Excluding the *Arthaśāstra* of Kauṭalya the *nītiśāstras* hardly appear to know anything of the navy and naval organization. Rāmachandrapant's observations constitute new items in Hindu political philosophy (pp. 48-52).

c14.s9.t10.15

Altogether, we are inclined to treat Rāmachandrapant's work as in the main an adaptation in Marathi of Sanskrit *nītiśāstras*. The treatise has been so well and nicely adjusted to the achievements as well as problems of the Marathas that the author's attempts at paraphrasing the Sanskrit texts are hardly palpable. It has some special merits, however. First, it has served to expand the scope of *nītiśāstra* by introducing new items. In the second place, the author has enriched the discussions of old topics with observations from Maratha experience. And it is in this regard that this Marathi treatise should appear to be intensely valuable to us. Many of the words and phrases used by "old masters" such as might appear rather vague or unintelligible, nay, perhaps platitudinous generalities have acquired in this treatment living flesh and blood. We are thereby enabled to grasp the real import of the contents of the *arthaśāstras* and *nītiśāstras*. It may be regarded as such a fine commentary, so to say, of the well-known texts of Hindu political theory that every body may be recommended to commence his first studies in Kauṭalya, Manu and Śukra along with Rāmachandrapant's Marathi work.

c14.s9.t10.16

Sanskrit poetical works like the *Śiva-Bhārata* or the Marathi Edict like this *Ādnāpatra* or *Rājanīti* are not to be consulted solely for dates, names and the succession of events. Poetry and philosophy ought to be approached as poetry and philosophy. The archaeological historian will perhaps find here very little of interest to him in regard to the details of Maratha political history. But it is just in this kind of writings, idealistic and yet somewhat realistic as they are, that the student of political theory, moral ideas and cultural ideals would get the most varied data. Nothing can be more helpful in reconstructing the mentality of Śivāji and the Marathas than the texts in which mainly the dreams, fine frenzies, pious wishes and memories are enshrined.

c14.s9.t10.17

*Śiva-Bhārata* and *Ādnāpatra* are, of course, not all made of dreams and pious wishes. But even in so far as they are dreams and pious wishes they have furnished the Hindus of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries with the most energetic *élan de la vie*. It is as powerful agencies in "social metabolism" that such Sanskrit and Marathi documents of the Marathas are to be appraised by the students of political philosophy, sociology and culture-history.

Cites (2)