The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c10.s1.t5.3

c10.s1.t5.3

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