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The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c15.s4: Section 8. Militarism and Machtpolitik (Śakti-Yoga)

The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c15.s4

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Section 8. Militarism and Machtpolitik (Śakti-Yoga)

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"A joy is it to be killed in war," says the *Mahâbhârata*,⁶ "painless is the soldier's death, and heaven is his goal." The poets of the Great Epic were but continuing the tradition of the Vedas pervaded as they had been by *śakti-yoga*, the spirit of *pouvoir* or *Machtpolitik*. For, nothing short of a world-conquest was the ideal of Young India of the Vedic period. "Mighty am I," as the earliest Hindu political philosophers set the creed of life for man, “Superior by name, upon the earth, conquering am I, all-conquering, completely conquering every region.”¹ Thus began the conception of war as a “categorical imperative” in Hindu thought, which found its most complete expression in the doctrine of *niskâma karma* preached by Kriṣṇa in the *Gîtâ*.² And naturally the militaristic philosophy of the *Gîtâ* was further popularized by works like the *Agni Purâṇa*³ for mediaeval India, when we find that the *Gîtâ* is virile enough to be cited even in 1911 by an English general in the introduction to Clausewitz’s German classic on War.

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⁶ va, XCIII, 55—59.

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¹ *Atharva Veda* (Bloomfield’s version), XII, i, 54.

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² Section II (Telang’s transl. in the *S. B. E.*), pp. 46, 47, 48.

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³ Ch. CCXXXII, 52—56, CCXLIV, 8.

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Manu also is a champion of this Kṣatriyaism (militarism) of the Hindus. But probably modern war-lords would recognize in the Indian Śukra their own kin. “Even Brâhmaṇas (the most intellectual order of people),” says he, “should fight if there have been aggressions on women and on priests or if there has been a killing of cows (which are held inviolable by Hindu religion).”⁴ According to the *Śukra-nîti*, the death of Kṣatriyas (warriors) in the bed is a sin. “The man who gets death with an unhurt body by excreting cough and biles and crying aloud is not a Kṣatriya.”⁵ The military morality is categorically stated thus: “Death in the home except in the fight is not laudable. Cowardice is a miserable sin.”⁶ And “the Kṣatriya who retreats with a bleeding body after sustaining defeat in battles and is encircled by members of the family deserves death.” Further, what is there to regret in the death of the brave man who is killed at the front? It is a blessing in disguise. For, “the man is purged and delivered of all sins and attains heaven.”⁷ Nay, who would not invite such a death? For, “the fairies of the other world vie with one other in reaching the warrior who is killed in action in the hope that he be their husband.”⁸ Nothing indeed could be more tempting in view of the notion that “the rascal who flies from a fight to save his life is really dead though alive, and endures the sins of the whole people.”⁹

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⁴ IV, vii, 599.

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⁵ IV vii, 608—609.

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⁶ IV vii, 612—613, 614—615.

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⁷ IV vii, 620—621.

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⁸ IV vii, 622—623.

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⁹ IV vii, 656—657.

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The “sanction” inculcated here would be called *Bushido* in Japan. This seems to be a chip from the Lycurgan creed followed in the public barracks of Sparta. Or, is it a spark from the *Politics* of Heinrich von Treitschke, or from the British militarist Maude, according to whom "war is an indispensable necessity of human progress," and in whose psychology, the slogan, "first in peace" carries with it as a necessary corollary, the motto "first in war"?

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Let us now look to the other side of the shield. The international jurists of the world and peace-propagandists of America had for some time previous to the World-War (1914—1918) been devising ways and means to render warfare more humane and less barbarous. On several occasions before the outbreak of the War resolutions were passed by the "Concert of Europe" at the Hague Conferences regarding the kind of arms and ammunitions to be avoided out of consideration for human suffering. But the Hindu thinkers of Manu's school have handed down a tradition of chivalrous "ideals" probably as old as the sixth century B. C. The *Manu Samhitâ's* resolution reads thus in verse:¹

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¹ Griffith's rendering; Manu, VII, 90—93 cf. also Śukra, IV, vii, lines 716—721.

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"Let the soldier, good in battle, never guilefully conceal,
(Wherewithal to smite the unwary) in his staff the treacherous
steel;
Let him scorn to barb his javelin — let the valiant never anoint
With fell poison-juice his arrows, never put fire upon the point.
In his car or on his war-horse, should he chance his foe to meet,
Let him smite not if he find him lighted down upon his feet.
Let him spare one standing suppliant, with his closed hands raised
on high,
Spare him whom his long hair loosen'd blinds and hinders from to fly,
Spare him if he sink exhausted; spare him if he for life crave:
Spare him crying out for mercy, 'Take me for I am thy slave'.
Still remembering his duty, never let the soldier smite
One unarm'd, defenceless, mourning for one fallen in the flight;
Never strike the sadly wounded — never let the brave attack
One by sudden terror smitten, turning in base flight his back."

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These sentiments and pious wishes may be useful even today. We notice once more that the mentality of Hindu political thinkers is quite of the same stuff as that of the modern Eur-American phrase-makers. For the Orientals also knew how to lecture on making the world safe for "civilization and humanity."

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