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The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s1.t4: 4. The Extent of Centralization

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s1.t4

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4. The Extent of Centralization

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There is a further distinction to be noted by students of constitutional history. In spite of the manifold privileges of self-determination, the rural communes of India since Maurya times must be sharply distinguished in political status from the "direct democracies" or patriarchal commonwealths of Vedic India and the smaller village or town republics of later times. For the *panchâyats* and the like associations were no longer the full-fledged "sovereign" bodies of old, but institutions of "local government" enjoying rights and immunities only within the bounds of royal or imperial will, viz. according to the grants of charters.

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The extraordinary authority which the village assemblies of Chola India possessed in regard to the distribution of rural lands was clearly defined by orders issued from the central government. Râja-râja¹ legislated from Tanjore that the land of those landholders who had not paid the taxes for three years "shall become the property of the villages and be liable to be sold by the inhabitants of those villages to the exclusion of the defaulting landholders". Now, if it was the royal will that conferred the right on the rural communes, it was also the royal officers, the *adhikârins*, superintendents or intendants that looked after the proper use of the right.

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¹ Aiyangar, 161, 162. *Vide Infra*, p. 102.

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And, as a corollary, the *imperium* or autonomy of the *panchâyats*, was legally subject to the control exercised by the imperial civil service. Not few and far between was the intervention of the supreme authorities in local politics, and hence the curtailment of village liberties. In 1230 the lands belonging to certain *drohins* (enemies of the state) in a South Indian village were sold by public auction. The initiative however was taken not by the village assembly but by the king who had sent eight officers to fix the price and conduct the affair.² In another village a new headman was appointed by the supreme government for the specific purpose of dealing with certain persons who were *râja-drohin* (traitors to the king).³ Sedition and treason appear thus to have been beyond the competency of the rural communes to handle. Even in far simpler matters the *panchâyats* had to feel the limits of their jurisdiction as but the lowest rungs in an administrative hierarchy. It appears that on one occasion some money ear-marked for a temple was misappropriated by the village assembly. The temple authorities appealed to the king for redress. Both parties had to appear at the capital. The king’s court found the assemblymen guilty and fined them. The money was eventually restored to the temple.⁴ Besides, the inspection and auditing of *panchâyat* accounts were normal functions of the Chola bureaucracy.⁵

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² *Mad. Ep.* 1910—11, p. 75.

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³ *Ibid*, 1912—13, p. 110.

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⁴ *Ibid*, 1906—07, p. 71.

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⁵ *Infrâ*, pp. 98—99, 112. *South Ind. Ins.* Vol. III, Pt. 1, no. 57.

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These instances give us an insight into the amount of centralization and administrative unification achieved in Hindu India under efficient and masterful rulers. More comprehensive and far-reaching had certainly been the nationalizing consolidation brought about by the Maurya emperors, if we can depend on the financial and land measures described in the *Artha-śâstra*.¹ Nay, it is difficult to believe that the *gopa* (village officer), the lowest grade member of the imperial civil service under Chandra-gupta or Asoka, left any important executive work to be administered by the rural *sabhâ* through any of its committees. Too thorough and exacting were the supervision and control imposed on the *panchâyats* by the Supreme Government. The village *sva-râjes*, those primary units of self-rule, must then have been reduced, generally speaking, to an atrophied state, the moribund condition, say, of the French rural communes under the *ancien régime* of Richelieu.² To cite a modern analogue, the *de facto* initiative and responsibility of the Maurya rural assemblies were not more real than is the sham "local self-government" enjoyed by the municipalities and district boards of British India at the beck and call of the District Magistrate.³ It is surprising and significant, at any rate, that Kautilya does not mention even by name these local nuclei of public life, although of course his silence does not argue their total annihilation.⁴

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¹ *Ind. Ant.*, 1905, pp. 7, 8. *Infra*, pp. 105, 121.

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² Brissaud, pp. 255—257; Goodnow's *Comparative Administrative Law*, Vol. I, 162—165.

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³ *Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms* (Montagu-Chelmsford, 1918), pp. 11, 12, 103, 104, 154, 155, 157—161.

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⁴ Majumdar's reference (pp. 59, 63) to Kautilya (Book III, Ch. X) hardly indicates the existence of the assembly and proves the exact opposite of what he intends to demonstrate. The Kautilyan village-headman as a limb of the imperial civil service was eminently calculated, as Tocqueville would have remarked, to destroy village democracy and not conserve it. From the standpoint taken in the present treatise Mookerji's characterization of Indian rural institutions as *sui generis* (cf. *Local* pp. 5—10, 23—25) is questionable. See Gomme's *Principles of Local Government*, pp. 35—109. Indologists who are never tired of quoting Metcalfe should note Gomme's remark that in England also the "localities" have "survived all shocks, all revolutions, all changes, and their position on the map of England is as indestructible as the country itself" (pp. 39—40). The notion as to the distinctiveness of Hindu development is due to generalizations not sufficiently founded on Occidental data down to the industrial revolution. An intimate familiarity with Greek, Roman and mediaeval Europe will bring out the fact that East and West were replicas of each other. See the comparative study of "private law" in Gibelin's *Etudes*. cf. Asokawa's *Early Inst. Life of Japan*, pp. 2—3.

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