The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c16.s2.t1.2

c16.s2.t1.2

"Great misery", says Śukra, "comes of dependence on others, there is no greater happiness than that from self-rule". This is one of the maxims of the *Śukra-nîti*³ bearing on the freedom of the *râṣtra*, or the land and the people in a state. Kautilya also in his remarks on "foreign rule" expresses the same idea in a negative manner. Under it, we are told in his *Artha-śâstra*,¹ the country is not treated as one's own land, it is impoverished, its wealth carried off, or it is treated "as a commercial article". The description is suggestive of John Stuart Mill's metaphor of the "cattle farm" applied to the "government of one people by another."