The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s9.t7.65

c14.s9.t7.65

While assuming this position we do not by any means overlook the consideration that the eternal Hindu doctrine of *saptāmga* (the seven-limbed organism) includes *rāṣṭra* or territory as a limb. The territorial concept is organically bound up with the most traditional theory of Hindu politics. But even in this theory we are to see nothing but a statical analysis of a societal complex, the state. The doctrine which exhibits the interdependence of the seven limbs on one another has certainly a value of its own. In the doctrine of *mahārāṣṭradharma*, however, the territorial unit, the region or the *rāṣṭra* is posed in its solitary greatness and is enabled to tower above every other factor of societal organization into an extraordinary prominence. This isolation of the regional or territorial unit in the political consciousness must be considered to be something unique in Hindu political theory. By contributing the doctrine of territorial nationalism as a war-cry Rāmdās has carved out for himself a position of paramount significance in the world of political speculation. In mankind's history of nationalist philosophy Rāmdās, as the creator of these two epoch-making categories, should be treated as a forerunner of Herder (1744-1803) and Fichte (1762-1814), the prophets of nationalism in Europe.¹⁶