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The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s1.t5: 5. Empire vs. Village in World-Evolution

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s1.t5

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English

5. Empire vs. Village in World-Evolution

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Since the publication in 1832 of the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons⁵ it has become almost a piece of sanctified idealism with foreign as well as Indian writers to wail over the disappearance of the "little republics" that are alleged to have been governing the so-called village-communities of India even as late as the period of the declining Maratha and Moghul Empires. In the light, however, of actual history based on epigraphy, as we have seen, the real self-sufficiency and genuine autonomy of rural *sva-râjes* must have been prominent by their absence during the ascendency of *sârva-bhaumas* like Chandra-gupta Maurya and Kulottûnga the Chola-Châlukya (1070—1118).

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⁵ Metcalfe, 1832, Vol. III, App., 84, p. 331; Romesh Chunder Dutt's *Economic History of India*, Vol. I, pp. 118, 119, 141, 206, 346—348, 359, 386—388; Mann's *Land and Labor in a Deccan Village*, pp. 150, 151; Maine's *Village Communities*, pp. 122—126; Coomaraswamy's *Mediaeval*, pp. 28—29; Birdwood's *Industrial*, 135—137; J. N. Sarkar's *Moghul Administration*, pp. 22—24, 78—80.

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Local self-government and national imperialism militate against each other, be it in southern Asia or in western Europe, be it under Marathas or under Bourbons. In so far, therefore, as the self-containedness and freedom of the village assemblies were facts of *Realpolitik* in the East or in the West, they are to be regarded as marks not so much of democratic independence or sovietic sovereignty of the people as of decay in imperial-militaristic pretensions and in centripetal activity on the part of the powers that be. The prevalence of rural liberties, whenever it may have obtained in ancient India, has to be explained more often by the temporary or occasional absence of the Hindu Louis XIV’s than by the conscious application of *laissez faire* and decentralization in local politics as the well-reasoned statecraft of successful nation-makers and empire-builders. Or, perhaps, in certain cases the idyllic picture of autonomous village *panchâyats* as a feature of old Hindu polity should have to be taken as depicting a “survival” in mediæval times of the more primitive folk-institutions of Vedic and republican India, untouched by the Samudra-guptan careers of the numerous *vijigîṣus*, Siegfrieds, or aspirants to world-dominion, and practically shunted off, like benighted Arcadias, from the main tracks of enlightenment and culture.¹ The precise amount of popular initiative and self-direction remains, however, to be worked up for the different epochs of Hindu polity. It is not safe as yet to generalize about all periods of Indian constitutional history in regard to the relations between national control and local democracy.²

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¹ Traces of old rural democracy can still be detected in the administration of certain socio-religious institutions like the gilds of *gambhîrâ* singers and playwrights in Bengal. *Vide* B. K. Sarkar’s *Folk-Element in Hindu Culture* (references to *panchâyat*, *mandala* etc.), pp. 20—22, 66—68. The socio-economic study of the village in Radhakamal Mukerjee’s *Foundations of Indian Economics* (pp. 441—445) is not quite correct in the references to western economic history. And it might have appeared a little bit too romantic were it not for the fact that the possibilities of the village as a political unit even under conditions of the twentieth century science and mechanics are being demonstrated in and through the Russian *Mirs*. *Cf.* Asakawa’s “Contributions of Feudal Japan to New Japan” in the *Journal of Race Development*, July 1912, Gomme’s *Primitive Folkmoots*, pp. 20—69, *Folklore*, 353—364 and *Village Community* 290—295, Seebohm’s *English Village Community*, 437—441, and Ashley’s *Surveys Historic and Economic*, 92—156, Carlyle’s *Med. Pol. Theory*, Vol. III, pp. 28—29, 75. *Vide* Lewinski’s *Origin of Property*.

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² Majumdar’s Ch. II (esp. pp. 55—85), full as it is of long extracts from epigraphic volumes which evidently have not been exhausted, is in need of a thorough revision and a more critical handling from the angle of constitutional development. Altogether, the view of rural institutions set forth by the present author is fundamentally different from the conventional attitude represented by all recent writers. The prevailing fallacy arises from an incomplete comprehension of the stages of constitutional evolution in western Europe and an inadequate analysis of the relations between the local and central governments during the different periods. The attempt at interpreting ancient and mediaeval Hindu polity in terms of recent growths in Eur-America is equally unwarrantable. A scientific interpretation of the mass of facts such as are exhibited by Majumdar and Mookerji will require a special monograph which it is not sought in this volume to undertake.

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All the same, the hypothesis can reasonably be advanced at the present stage of inquiry that India's story would but corroborate the trend of world-evolution exhibited by ancient and mediaeval Europe.

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Municipal Government.

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We need not wait to catch a glimpse of the epic capitals like Ayodhyâ, almost an "ideal" city under Daśaratha as described in the *Râmâyaṇa*,¹ or Indraprastha (near modern Delhi) and Dvârakâ, the seaport on the Gujarat coast, of the *Mahâbhârata*² fame. For, information is available in regard to actual life in the cities of northern and southern India from more genuinely historical sources.

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¹ *Vâla-kânda*, Ch. V.

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² *Jour. of the Am. Or. Soc.*, 1889, 174—179.

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