The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c12.s2.5

c12.s2.5

First, it need be observed that in monarchical India there was no *organic* connetion between the people and the council of ministers, and the council itself had its tenure under royal pleasure. The Oriental Richelieus and Bismarcks were, *in law*, no better than the "king's men" as had been the ministers of England previous to the introduction of the Cabinet system, e. g. in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Hindu ministers may sometimes have been king-makers and often virtually the rulers of the country; altogether, the monarchy may thus have been tempered by the counsels of the wise, the "virtuous" "guardians" of Plato's *Republic*. But the good government enjoyed by the people in a benevolent "aristocracy" or the enlightened despotism, say, of a Kautilyan *râjarṣi* must not be compared with the rights of individuals as modern constitutional law understands them. Despotism was no doubt modified by the councils, but they could not place "legal" restraints on the exercise of royal power.