The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c15.36

c15.36

Such doctrines of the *nîti-śâstras* have important bearing on the problems of political philosophy in regard to the limits of state control or the sphere of governmental activity. The new type of 100 per cent socialist state in Bolshevik Russia is undoubtedly bound to have a deep influence on the theory of the proper functions of the state. But it is questionable if Sidgwick’s “individualistic minimum” of state interference may not still be regarded as the last word, academically speaking, on rival claims between the two extremes that may be urged for the state and the individual. So far as pure theory is concerned, the issues between *laissez faire* and intervention may indeed be taken to have been finally settled in Mill’s *Liberty*. Now, the Hindu thought on the subject is quite elastic. It is not a minimum-functioned state that Kautilya and Śukra have before their imagination. Hindu theorists are no doctrinaire individualists. As champions of *dharma* they have extended the functions of the state so wide as to include whatever should be deemed expedient according to social needs, as readers of the *Sabhâ-parva* (Canto on “Council”) of the *Mahâbhârata* are aware.