The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c12.s2.18

c12.s2.18

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the Americans and the French had thus no precedent, ancient or mediaeval, to go by in the constitution of their republics. They were the first to break the ice. Not in a worse or more helpless condition is Asia placed today. Like the occidentals, Asians also cannot get any help from their own past tradition. Naturally, therefore, it is the examples of the United States and of France that have inspired Asia in the nineteenth century, as they have done the Latin Americans, in new political experiments. The constitutional monarchy of Japan, the limited Shahnate of Persia, the parliamentary regime of the "Union and Progress" party of the Young Turk, Chinese republicanism, and the nationalist movements from Calcutta to Cairo, are thus so many links in the chain of thousand and one influences that the East has been imbibing from the West in modern times. This spiritual conquest of Asia by Eur-America from Washington and Adam Smith to Karl Marx and Lenin indicates, therefore, the absolute limit¹ of the extreme claims that may be advanced on behalf of ancient Hindu achievements in politics.