The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c15.s2.21

c15.s2.21

It is thus not the Gregorian doctrine of non-resistance championed by Hobbes in the *Leviathan* or by his junior French contemporary Bossuet in the *Politique* that could have found an echo in Hindu political thought. The Stuarts of England and *le grand monarque* would have been thoroughly disappointed with the *nîti* theory in regard to the status of the king. The right of resistance to the King’s “demonical”, i. e. autocratic and arbitrary (or “Satanic”, to employ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s expression in 1921) rule is taken for granted, and the doctrine of expulsion of the tyrant one of the A. B. C.’s in Hindu political *Weltanschauung*. The student of the *nîti-śâstras* is thus constantly reminded of Languet’s (1518—1581) queries in the *Vindicae contra Tyrannos*⁴ as to whether it is “lawful to resist a prince who violates the laws of God and lays waste his church” and “whether one might resist a prince who oppresses and ruins the state and how far”.⁵ And the conclusion that is advanced by the European advocate of tyrannicide is identical with that of the protagonists of *dharma*.