The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c12.s2.8

c12.s2.8

The development of *śreṇîs*, *gaṇas*, folk-moots, ministerial councils and the like should not therefore be seriously adduced as evidence of qualification to meet the problems of the republican polity with which Young Asia has to grapple today. Even in Greece the people have chosen to subvert the *gaṇa* and restore Constantine to the throne (1921). Asia's past political experience is of no greater value for present purposes than Greek, Roman and feudal attainments can possibly be to the modern Latins, Slavs or Teutons.¹ For, the modern republic, not to speak of its recent sovietic phase, was utterly unknown to the Occident until very late times. It is an essentially new phenomenon in world politics comparable to the steam engine, the parent of the "Great Society". To take an extreme instance, the novitiate through which the Orient has been passing in China since 1912 is not qualitatively different from that through which France had to pass.