�Governance,� the great theme of today, was also a
preoccupation of Indian thinkers two to three
millenniums earlier. The views that evolved during the
first millennium B.C. of the duties of kings and of the
nature of the State are another curicial difference
between Brahmanism and Buddhism, one that has as
tremendous significance today as the issue of caste. In
the Brahmanical literature, the State is viewed as
divinely created. The king is brought into being by the
Gods to maintain law and order, and he is charged in
particular with protecting varnasharma dharma.
This theme runs through all the sastras and puranas. In
Manu, we have at the beginning of his chapter on kings
an injunction to remember the divinity of kings, �Even a
boy king should not be treated with disrespect, with the
thought, �He is just a human being; for this is a great
deity standing there in the form of a man. Fire burns
just one man who approaches is wrongly, but the fire of
a king burns the whole family, with its livestock and
its heap of possessions.�
He goes on to stress punishment, the danda, as the main
feature of kingship; �The rod is the king and the man,
he is the inflicter and he is the chastiser,
traditionally regarded as the guarantor for the duty of
the four stages of life. The Rod alone chastises all the
subjects, the Rod protects them, the Rod stays awake
while they sleep; wise men know that justice is the Rod.
The whole world is mastered by punishment, for an
unpolluted man is hard to find. Through fear of
punishment, everything that moves allows itself to be
used.
The king was created as the protector of the classes and
the stages of life, that are appointed each to its own
particular duty, in proper order� (Penguin edition,
128-130). The more �liberal� Arthasbastra also is
preoccupied with the maintenance of power, with family
members, neighbouring rulers, the collectively
functioning oligarchies or gana sanghas, and the tribals
are seen as threats. And everywhere in Brahmanical
literature, the role of an ideal king included the duty
of protecting the varna system, so that Rama was forced
to kill the shudra Shambuk for attempting tapascharaya,
and even the great Shivaji had to be depicted by Ramdas
as particularly the �protector of cows and Brahmans.�
For Buddhism, in contrast, the king as a chakravartis
ruler, is the social paralled to the Buddha himself. The
king himself has to be moral-in the Tamil epic,
Sliappadikaram, written under the influence of Buddhism
and Jainism, the city of Madurai is destroyed by fire
and the king himself commits suicide for the sin of
injustice. Failure to be moral can justify popular
rebellion; in a Jataka story, �The Goblin�s Gift,� a
king and his priest steal and hide the state treasury to
deceive the Bodhisattva, and when this is revealed, the
people kill him and place the Bodhisattva on the throne.
In a Buddhist origin story recounted in the Anganna Suta
the king also comes into existence to prevent the crimes
due to the rise of private property and to maintain law
and order, but the story has no hint of gods or divine
action in it. Rather the king is chosen by the people
themselves and so is called the �maha-sammata� or �great
agreement.�
Further, it is always stressed that order in society is
maintained through popular welfare. As the Kutadanata
Sutta has it, �Now there is one method to adopt to put a
through end to this disorder. Whosoever there be in the
king�s realm who devote themselves to keeping cattle and
the farm, to them, to them let his majesty the king give
food and seed-corn. Whosoever there be in the king�s
realm who devote themselves to trade, to them let his
majesty the king give capital.
Whosoever there be in the king�s realm who devote
themselves to government service, to them let his
majesty the king give wages and food. Then those men,
following each his own business, will no longer harass
the realm; the king�s revenue will go up; the country
will be quiet and at peace; and the populace, pleased
with one another and happy, dancing their children in
their arms, will dwell with open doors� (I, 176). Not
punishment, but the provision of capital, the provision
of fair wages, supplying seeds for the farmers-the
prerequisites for a productive economy-were stressed.
Further, in another sutra recited by Ambedkar in his
last essay, �The Buddha and Karl Marx,� the failure of a
ruler to provide wealth to the destitute is what leads
to the downfall of the kingdom. The effort, after this,
to prevent theft by punishment leads only to more and
more violence, and to the final degradation of society.
The story grapples with the dilemmas of welfare, but the
clear message is that the prevention of poverty is a
major duty of a State that wants to maintain order.
The model of relationship between the State and the
economy contrasts also with the Brahmanical one, at
least with that presented in the Arthshastra. This has
no concern with welfare or the problems of the relief of
poverty, but Kautilya presents us with an activist
State, running factories, mines, and brothels; faxing
prices; and maintaining a huge bureaucracy engaged in
economic intervention and management. Almost a precursor
of the �Brahmanic Socialism� of the post-Independence
period! With this traders are seen as inherently wicked
and thievish themselves, needing supervision. The image
of the �dirty bania� begins here. In contrast, the
Buddhist literature treats merchants and farmers,
property holders and producers of all sizes, with great
respect. The State does not attempt to replace their
activities by engaging in production itself, but to set
the conditions for production by providing capital,
protection, and removal of poverty. Almost a precursor,
again, of an Amartya Sen-type social liberalism!
Ironically, the Buddhist model of kingship probably
worked against itself in the long run. After Ashoka, few
rulers were fervent Buddhists; most, for a long time,
patronised Buddhism, but were usually personally
attached to Brahmanic rituals and beliefs. This is not
too surprising, since Brahmanism asked much less of them
than the moral rectitude and provision of popular
welfare required of a chakravartine ruler, and treated
them as semi-divine, ready to ratify their ksatriya
status as long as they upheld the varnashrama dharma.
Ashoka was a ruler who genuinely tried to follow the
Buddhist model and treat popular welfare as his
responsibility; it is his insignia that independent
India has adopted as its own.
Unfortunately, the reality seems to be otherwise, and if
kings and priests-or politicians and bureaucrats-treat
the State treasury as their own and conspire to hide it,
there is too little sign of popular resistance. India
needs to return to the Buddhist ideal of governance, to
recreate a sens of public order and community. This
article was published in Indian Reporter in 2001.
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