The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c7.s1.21

c7.s1.21

Europe has continued to be what Dante described “slavish Italy” to be, the continent of warring nationalities and conflicting ambitions. The scheme of a unified Europe (really, western Europe) managed by a universal empire, of which the chief was to be both pope and caesar, was indeed elaborated by him in *De Monarchia*. He also prophesied very often in the *Inferno*, the *Purgatorio*, and the *Paradiso*, the advent of such a Caesar-Pope, poetically called the *Veltro* (the Greyhound), the Messiah or *Yugâvatâra*, the redeemer of Europe, who would restore the ancient glory of Rome. But this Ghibelline dream of Dante’s, fused no doubt with the “Italian” nationalism of the Guelphs, remained a pious wish. Besides, the ostensible continuity of that “Austrian imposture”, known in history as the Holy Roman Empire, until its overthrow by Napoleon should not mislead anybody as to the existence of centripetal forces in European polity, since it is too well known that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire as one should understand it. Such pious wishes and such legal fictions of empires have their “doubles” or replicas in the *nîti-śâstras* of the Hindus and in the Moghul-Maratha achievements of medieval India.