Some thoughts on republicanism in ancient India:
“Perhaps the most useful Greek account of India is Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander, which describes the Macedonian conqueror’s campaigns in great detail.
The Anabasis, which is derived from the eyewitness accounts of Alexander’s companions, 18 portrays him as meeting “free and independent” Indian communities at every turn. What “free and independent” meant is illustrated from the case of Nysa, a city on the border of modern Afghanistan and Pakistan that was ruled by a president named Aculphis and a council of 300.
After surrendering to Alexander, Aculphis used the city’s supposed connection with the god Dionysus to seek lenient terms from the king:
“The Nysaeans beseech thee, O king out of respect for Dionysus, to allow them to remain free and independent; for when Dionysus had subjugated the nation of the Indians…he founded this city from the soldiers who had become unfit for military service …From that time we inhabit Nysa, a free city, and we ourselves are independent, conducting our government with constitutional order.” 19
Nysa was in Greek terms an oligarchy, as further discussion between Alexander and Aculphis reveals, and a single-city state. There were other Indian states that were both larger in area and wider in franchise. It is clear from Arrian that the Mallian republic consisted of a number of cities.20
Curtius Rufus and Diodorus Siculus in their histories of Alexander mention a people called the Sabarcae or Sambastai among whom “the form of government was democratic and not regal.” 21 The Sabarcae/Sambastai, like the Mallians, had a large state. Their army consisted of 60,000 foot, 6000 cavalry, and 500 chariots.22 Thus Indian republics of the late fourth century could be much larger than the contemporaneous Greek polis . And it seems that in the northwestern part of India, republicanism was the norm. Alexander’s historians mention a large number of republics, some named, some not, but only a handful of kings.23
The prevalence of republicanism and its democratic form is explicitly stated by Diodorus Siculus. After describing the mythical monarchs who succeeded the god Dionysus as rulers of India, he says:
At last, however, after many years had gone, most of the cities adopted the democratic form of government, though some retained the kingly until the invasion of the country by Alexander.24
What makes this statement particularly interesting is that it seems to derive from a first-hand description of India by a Greek traveler named Megasthenes.
Around 300 B.C., about two decades after Alexander’s invasion, Megasthenes served as ambassador of the Greek king Seleucus Nicator to the Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya, and in the course of his duties crossed northern India to the eastern city of Patna, where he lived for a while.25 If this statement is drawn from Megasthenes, then the picture of a northwestern India dominated by republics must be extended to the entire northern half of the subcontinent.26If we turn to the Indian sources, we find that there is nothing far-fetched about this idea. The most useful sources for mapping north India are three: The Pali Canon, which shows us northeastern India between the Himalayas and the Ganges in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.; the grammar of Panini, which discusses all of North India, with a focus on the northwest, during the fifth century; and Kautilya’s Arthasastra, which is a product of the fourth century, roughly contemporaneous with Megasthenes. All three sources enable us to identify numerous sanghas and ganas, some very minor, others large and powerful.27
What were these republican polities like? According to Panini, all the states and regions (janapadas ) of northern India during his time were based on the settlement or conquest of a given area by an identifiable warrior people who still dominated the political life of that area.
Some of these peoples (in Panini’s terms janapadins ) were subject to a king, who was at least in theory of their own blood and was perhaps dependent on their special support.28 Elsewhere, the janapadins ran their affairs in a republican manner. Thus in both kinds of state, the government was dominated by people classified as ksatriyas, or, as later ages would put it, members of the warrior caste.
But in many states, perhaps most, political participation was restricted to a subset of all the ksatriyas . One needed to be not just a warrior, but a member of a specific royal clan, the rajanya.29 Evidence from a number of sources shows that the enfranchised members of many republics, including the Buddha’s own Sakyas and the Licchavis with whom he was very familiar, considered themselves to be of royal descent, even brother-kings. The term raja, which in a monarchy certainly meant king, in a state with gana or sangha constitution could designate someone who held a share in sovereignty. In such places, it seems likely that political power was restricted to the heads of a restricted number of “royal families” (rajakulas) among the ruling clans. The heads of these families were consecrated as kings, and thereafter took part in deliberations of state.
Our Indian republics are beginning to sound extremely undemocratic by our modern standards, with real power concentrated in the hands of a few patriarchs representing the leading lineages of one privileged section of the warrior caste. A reader who has formed this impression is not entirely mistaken. No doubt the rulers of most republics thought of their gana as a closed club — as did the citizens of Athens, who also defined themselves as a hereditarily privileged group. But, as in ancient Athens, there are other factors which modify the picture, and make it an interesting one for students of democracy.
First, the closed nature of the ruling class is easy to exaggerate. Republics where only descendants of certain families held power were common; but there was another type in which power was shared by all ksatriya families.31
This may not sound like much of a difference, since the restriction to the warrior caste seems to remain. But this is an anachronistic view of the social conditions of the time. The varnas of pre-Christian-era India were not the castes of later periods, with their prohibitions on intermarriage and commensality with other groups.32 Rather, they were the constructs of theorists, much like the division of three orders (priests, warriors and workers) beloved by European writers of the Early Middle Ages.33 Such a classification was useful for debating purposes, but was not a fact of daily existence. Those republics that threw open the political process to all ksatriyas were not extending the franchise from one clearly defined group to another, albeit a larger one, but to all those who could claim, and justify the claim, to be capable of ruling and fighting…
From “Democracy in Ancient India,” Steve Muhlberger
Hi Ms. Rajiva, I began to post up the following on your previous Mind-Body Politic Blog, when you’d been discussing British atrocities in India and other regions and mentioned your work on the Little Black Book on British Imperialism (which we’re all eagerly awaiting). Then I realized that was your old Blog… anyway, just reposting it here. Sorry as I’m not sure where else to post it.
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Dear Ms. Rajiva: I’m Irish, but I wanted to join in with these voices to express my support for you in your much-needed book on the (still poorly discussed) issue of British atrocities and genocides– your Little Black Book of British Imperialism (or whatever the working title has become). You have a lot of people standing behind you in your efforts, and we’ll support you fully when your book is published.
I’m just writing to bring up a fascinating historical point which others have been discussing recently, and might be relevant for your own historical work as well: The British genocides in so many parts of their empire, seem to have taken place coincident with repeated British military disasters in the battlefield. This suggests “motive”– genocide was a political tool where British military efforts were thwarted.
As you know, a British Holocaust was perpetrated in Ireland many times over, just as it was in India and among the South Pacific peoples in Oceania, among many other places (including Africa and North America). The British genocide in Ireland began well before the British officials began shipping out scarce Irish food during the Potato Famine, however. The first English Holocaust in Ireland took place all the way back in the 16th Century, when Elizabethan soldiers, being repeatedly defeated by Irish soldiers in battle (Battles of the Ford of the Biscuits and Yellow Ford among multiple other examples), instead used genocide in a (still failed) attempt to subdue the Irish population.
The English were being thoroughly defeated by Spain in a naval war in 1595 when the Irish War got started, and had lost all their French ports by then. The toughness of the Irish soldiers drained away the English financial resources, and in frustration, the English resorted to genocide. They burned away close to half the cropland in Ireland, targeted women and children and killed 1/3 of the Irish people, and this first English genocide raises an interesting historical point:
Again, the British committed genocide on so many occasions for a very basic, political reason: The British struggled militarily against their many opponents, and so they used genocide as a policy tool against the populations they were unable to defeat in battle. It’s an interesting historical perspective that might be valuable for your book.
The most obvious examples are the Irish of course, and the commonly cited case of the Boers in the Anglo-Boer War, when the British concentration camps killed many tens of thousands of Zulu children and Boers (with most dying as a result of starvation or disease, in worse condition than even the WWII concentration camp survivors). The reason, of course, is that the British were defeated in the First Boer War– they couldn’t beat their enemies on the battlefield, so they resorted to atrocities and genocide instead. But it goes far beyond this one example.
I’m re-posting here a fascinating historical recitation that was apparently posted up originally by an Indian blogger, but which has been making the rounds on Irish historical Blogs and other sites that seek to detail the true nature and background of British history itself. The post details the tremendous struggles that the British endured in the numerous British military failures since the 18th century (around the start of the British Empire), when the British were defeated by Haitians, Afghans, Egyptian/Albanians, Spanish Creoles, Irish and countless other enemies– without even considering the wars before then (many British defeats– or English defeats, more accurately– against Spaniards and Dutch). The British were in fact, militarily speaking, the worst of the Western European imperial powers– and so they, disproportionately, used genocide to supplement their deficiencies on the battlefield.
Here’s an excerpt of that posting for your information, which is full of valuable background (not to mention a treasure trove of references) that may be of use to your own efforts.
It goes into detail in British military history (showing how British military victories were far outstripped by British military defeats esp. during the Imperial period), showing why the British felt driven to implement genocide as a political tool against the enemies they were unable to beat militarily. (It’s interesting that in the late 1800’s, when India lost tens of millions of people to British genocides, all the suffering and mass murder took place in the British-ruled regions such as Chennai and the Bengali locations– the Indian-ruled portions of India, about half the country, were largely unaffected and are the best in India today.) Here’s the reposting.
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One can glimpse a fascinating British insecurity and anxiety about their own military record by witnessing how upset neo-Imperialists get over mentioning the sheer number and scale of British defeats in the past 2 centuries– even more upset than discussions about British genocidal operations. Contrast the reactions of the British about their own military history and the– to put it charitably, lack of British martial prowess– with all the nasty and documented details about the many British genocides: in Australia and Tasmania as well as New Zealand with the subsidies paid to Brit soldiers gunning down the natives in large numbers, in North America with the Pequots, in India following the mass murders of villagers after the 1857 war for Indian independence and the 30-50 million killed in Tamil Nadu/Bihar/Bengal by the famines after the British burned or seized the fields in the 1870’s (not to mention practically razing Pondicherry to the ground before the French began administering it), in South Africa with those British concentration camps (which were indeed death camps, African tribals and Boer kids tossed in there without food and spreading typhus, constitutes a death camp just like Auschwitz or Buchenwald), in Sri Lanka where 1-2% of the civilian population died in British reprisals against uprisings, in Ireland since, well, when weren’t the Brits committing genocide in Ireland? The Nazis and Stalin were amateurs in comparison.
All that British genocidal nastiness is well-documented too, despite attempts to suppress it whenever the topic is raised. I just didn’t realize quite how well-documented until I studied the topic myself. There are the well-known names like Amartya Sen and William Dalrymple but also David Hardiman, Romesh Dutt, David Hall-Matthews, B.M. Bhatia, Tim Dyson, Ira Klein, Tirthankar Roy and a lot of others. Seriously mainstream history, it just seems like the movie studios and most of the popular historians haven’t put it on their reading lists just yet.
The British Empire was in fact, not the world’s largest, not even close– Kubilai’s Mongols, post-1946 Soviets, the Spanish in population and extent, the Caliphate Empires (as all of the Sunni’ah sect were loyal to the Caliph– a land and population expanse almost as large as the Mongols themselves, though that’s outside my expertise), but most notably the Manchus and our very own Desi Mauryas in % population and GDP, plus a few other empires were a good deal larger than the British Empire, let alone more long-term influential. But the British were indeed the most genocidal of all the imperialists.
The British never even ruled the part of India that’s now the wealthiest and most innovative (such as Karnataka, which was among the independent Indian states)– most of their empire was Canadian or Australian wasteland (and the “ruled” parts in eastern India which the British turned into wastelands)– and yet Brits always like to claim they “modernized” India, when it was the independent portion under native Indian leadership that’s been the economic bellwether. India “owes” Britain nothing for the development that we, ourselves, have undertaken since independence, in spite of the damage the British did to us and our industries.
The Brits hold the record for Arrogant Western Power Losing to Asian and African Opponents– Custer and his like don’t even hold a candle to the Brits in this category. I’ll just paste in the British military record list here:
Recent British military history, losses to colonial adversaries:
1. Losing to L’Ouverture [Haiti], 1790’s. [Yellow fever was a factor, but disease always was in the battles of those days and in fact, L’Ouverture beat the British and other European invaders precisely because his tactics stretched out their supply lines and made it difficult for them to obtain fresh, potable water
2 and 3. Whitelocke and Beresford losing to South American peasants [mixed Creole, indigenous, African soldiers] in the early 1800’s, in two separate invasions [a French general with the seriously cool name of Liniers, under contract with the Spanish army, led the forces that defeated the British in the two wars– even more impressive since Whitelocke and Beresford were capable officers in their own right rather than the dolts the British usually fielded].
4. Fraser losing to Egypt around the same time.[It was actually a force comprised of Albanian officers and some Egyptian foot soldiers– a mixed force but plenty of Brown soldiers in the mix, so it’s all good.]
5. 6. 7. British losing crushingly in Afghanistan in 1840’s, 1870’s, right after WWI. When the British lose, they lose big– Afghan victory over the British was the most crushing suffered by any imperial power [against a colonial adversary, within the last 3 centuries at least].
8. Losing to Irish after WWI (War of Irish Independence).
9. Smashed by a coalition of Americans, French, Dutch and Spaniards who banded together and defeated the British in the 1770’s (the American Revolution).
10. Losing to Egypt again in 1956 with the Suez Canal invasion [with the help of American pressure that demolished the value of the pound- wars always happen in the context of broader political movements at any rate]
11. Expelled from Iraq by 1930.
12. Defeated in the First Boer War, 1880.
13. Defeated and kicked out in humiliation in Aden, late 1960’s.
14. Defeated against Russia in the Baltic War– Bolshevik Russian forces defeated the British in 1919-1921, even achieving naval superiority in the Baltic and despite prior Russian losses.
15. Defeated in Vietnam– Douglas Gracey sent in troops in 1945 to defeat the VietMinh insurgency and put Vietnam back under colonial control, but the effort failed, with the Vietnamese forces subsequently defeating French, Americans, Australians and New Zealanders who went in.
The above, of course, is merely a sample.
The Afghanistan War (I think official title is 1st Anglo-Afghan War of 1839) began to get more attention in 2001 due to the Fourth Anglo-Afghan War which began then, and it was a humiliating defeat– just one British army doc and a few prisoners out of an 18,000 strong British army made it out of Kabul. (The British forces also consisted of many Indians that the British had recruited as cannon fodder– as the saying goes, “the British will fight to the last Indian and will fight to the last Australian,” which they did in Afghanistan. Gallipoli and the Australians also come to mind.)
One can only wonder why these wars don’t get more coverage in our history books today, perhaps a residue of old-fashioned British propaganda to portray themselves as enlightened imperialists with overpowering martial prowess (when in reality, once the record comes out, they were atrocity-prone, corrupt, incompetent fools who were militarily mediocre, not just against European opponents but also against their supposedly inferior- based on the propaganda of the time- and usually Brown or Black colonial opponents).
But it is quite apparent that British genocidal policies in Asia, Africa and Ireland rose in direct proportion with British military failures on the battlefield. This does seem to finally be garnering more due attention.
Leary, that’s a very interesting post. You could have added The Pacific War to the litany of British defeats since their naval and air forces were thoroughly whipped by the Japanese Combined Fleet at sea and by the Imperial Army at Singapore and in Burma.
Hey Lila, do you have much information regarding contacts and coordination between Gandhi and the Japanese government? I know Japan was an active supporter of Indian Independence and built a railroad through Burma to supply an invasion designed to capture british airfields from which Britain and the US were supplying Nationalist China by air, as well as to link up and support anti-british Indian militias. Seems to me this would be a good subject for a book or an article…
I’m fascinated by this stuff, as you know, because some of it is not taught at all, even in India.
I’ve read Mike Davis’ work, which also was pretty revelatory to me.
The book I’m working on – temporizing on, I should say – has to be on hold for a while, for various reasons, but I still have this project in mind.
Thank you for reminding me of it.
Why do people not hear about it?
Well, because it would call into question the rationale for both World Wars, which were propagandized as being about saving the world for democracy. Which in the circumstance is pure chutzpah.
That in turn would call into question the US involvement in them.
Which in turn would lend credibility to the Old Right position of non-interventionism. It would no longer be “isolationism” and “nativism” but good American common sense and republican virtue to stay unentangled in the alliances of imperial Europe.
That might be a conclusion with somewhat revolutionary import in some circles.
Jeff –
This is all very well chronicled and a number of well-known Indian journalists (and others) have written about it.
Subhash Chandra Bose was the Indian nationalist who made the contacts with Japan and Germany.
To a number of Indians, the war was an intra-imperialist war and the Germans and Japanese were seen (rightly or wrongly) as late-comers and not nearly as culpable….
The Hindu right had fascist connections…but you know, a lot of people did in those days ( meaning interwar years).
I mean D. H. Lawrence, Yeats, a whole bunch of humanists of various sorts were quite fascinated with everything fascist. Gentile (hero of Michael Ledeen, as well) – a theorist of Italian fascism – was an object of interest to a number of intellectuals – no less because of his impact on propaganda as for his educational theories.
Great post. I loved it so very much. Thanks a lot, Lila.
Thanks, Dionysia.
I think if people realize that imperialism and western, or oriental and despotism, don’t really have to go together..and these are just bad turns in our respective histories, then we can imagine other endings to our current crisis, besides more government.
I would like to do the British imperialism book, but I’d like the next one to be more related to the mechanics of mass control…taking the next step…
As you know, my interest is in mind control, for want of a better word.
Lila
mb4, I’m not sure that fascism as an ideology is important to the pacific war. Imperial Japan was ruled by an oligarchy over which the military (army) played an increasing role as the tempest of war approached, but there was never consensus within it, nor any individual leader that was clearly in charge as the frequent changes at prime minister show.
Nationalist China under Chiang was absolutely fascist but I’m not sure most americans understood this at the time (including FDR). Rather he was misconstrued as a noble leader under siege and there was popular support for his regime because of the large american missionary network that operated. The chinese adeptly manipulated the US media (Chiang was Time’s Man of the Year in (I think) 1937, plus the US media completely swallowed Nationalist propaganda regarding the “so-called” Rape of Nanking.
Yes, that was Henry Luce’s influence, among many others…
Yes, I know what you mean. And you should go ahead with your projects.
Dionysus is about losing control, it’s the god who liberates women from the slavery imposed on them by men. His cult is all-feminine, a fellowship of sisters. I’m sure you’ve read The Bacchae by Euripides, in which the power of Dionysus is shown. The thing men fear the most is to lose control, above all over women, therefore they feared Dionysus as hell and rightly so.
I don’t know if I have the Bacchae in me..
I have a streak of Cassandra though..
So do I. That’s why we both like wolves. Now put a Menade on it, and the wolves will dance with you.
Dionysia said:
“The thing men fear the most is to lose control, above all over women.”
One can’t fear what one has never had, LOL!
In truth, the locus of all my efforts at control have been over my ideas, which in my profession puts me at odds with mostly other men, although “control” is an imprecise term for it. I also like to believe that I’m the first to admit when proven wrong; some would probably disagree.
Dinoysia –
women who dance with wolves? I didn’t know that about cassandra…
thanks…
Jeff –
Seriously, ROTFL
Women have more power than they think and less control…and the men, maybe, vice-versa.
Menades, the priestesses of Dionysus, do ecstatic dancing with snakes, and wild animals are attracted to them and under their control, mostly wolves. They are possesssed by the power of the god, that’s why they can do that and much more.I’m talking religion and mythology here. The real problems men had with the cult were its secrecy and femininess and the fact that women left their homes and went to the woods. So, they could not control them. Euripides explains it all.
Cassandra was howling like a wolf, poor girl, and no one paid attention to her, right? If she were a Menade, maybe the outcome of the Trojan war would have been different.
I agree pefectly with you in the matter of power/control female/male.
JC –
you’ve got a point there. I’ll rephrase it:
“The thing men fear the most is to lose the control they think they’ve got, above all over women.”
LOL
Hi again, Lila
The download of your blog has been extremely slow since yesterday. To send the comments it’s even worse. I wonder if someone is trying to keep you “under control” again – LOL
No one is safe online these days, that’s why we Menades, quite a few around the world, keep prints of all concerning each other, just in case some hacker destroys our computers, blogs, e-mail, etc., or something even worse than that. One who messes with us, messes with the god. You can be sure that no man would want to see a Menade in fury (I refer to THE BACCHAE again).
Of course, this only applies to men who don’t respect our decisions. We love those who do.Cheers!
Greetings Lila, thank you so much for your kind response. I also agree with you, as do my fellow Irish posters– the reason this history is so often neglected, is for purely propaganda reasons, since it would blow the lid off the collection of British lies from the 20th century and show that they, in fact, were the worst of the imperialist mass-murderers, not “fighting for freedom” as they so often try to claim.
FYI, one of the Irish bloggers suggested that I just send that list of disasters in British military history– the “recent British military defeats 1-15” in the post above– with the links to the background Websites included. That way, they’ll serve as a valuable historical resource to Indians and other doing research on this topic, just as we Irish have been doing on our own fora lately. (And again, this is valuable IMHO since above all, this history seems to suggest *motive* behind the outrageously genocidal nature of British imperialism from the late 18th century onward– use of genocide as a policy, an attempt to suppress fierce native resistance that repeatedly defeated the British in battle.) Also, of course, if you’re able to resume work on The Little Black Book of British Imperialism (and we’re all crossing our fingers for you), these links can provide an additional resource for interested readers to find your excellent work!
Anyway, here’s that list again, with the links included.
Recent British military history, losses to colonial adversaries:
1. Losing to L’Ouverture [Haiti], 1790’s. [Yellow fever was a factor, but disease always was in the battles of those days and in fact, L’Ouverture beat the British and other European invaders precisely because his tactics stretched out their supply lines and made it difficult for them to obtain fresh, potable water
http://haiti.wikia.com/wiki/Toussaint_L%27Ouverture
2 and 3. Whitelocke and Beresford losing to South American peasants [mixed Creole, indigenous, African soldiers] in the early 1800’s, in two separate invasions [a French general with the seriously cool name of Liniers, under contract with the Spanish army, led the forces that defeated the British in the two wars– even more impressive since Whitelocke and Beresford were capable officers in their own right rather than the dolts the British usually fielded].
http://www.san.beck.org/16-1-LatinAmerica1744-1808.html#2
4. Fraser losing to Egypt around the same time.[A mix of Albanian officers and some Egyptian foot soldiers.]
http://www.btinternet.com/~the35thfootproject/egypt.html
5. 6. 7. British losing crushingly in Afghanistan in 1840’s, 1870’s, right after WWI. When the British lose, they lose big– Afghan victory over the British was the most crushing suffered by any imperial power [against a colonial adversary, within the last 3 centuries at least].
. http://jeffersonswall.blog-city.com/the_ride_back.htm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20070225/ai_n18634382/pg_1
http://flagspot.net/flags/af1929j.html
8. Losing to Irish after WWI (War of Irish Independence).
9. Smashed by a coalition of Americans, French, Dutch and Spaniards who banded together and defeated the British in the 1770’s (the American Revolution).
10. Losing to Egypt again in 1956 with the Suez Canal invasion [with the help of American pressure that demolished the value of the pound- wars always happen in the context of broader political movements at any rate]
11. Expelled from Iraq by 1930.
12. Defeated in the First Boer War, 1880.
13. Defeated and kicked out in humiliation in Aden, late 1960’s.
http://www.intersites.co.uk/91124/
14. Defeated against Russia in the Baltic War– Bolshevik Russian forces defeated the British in 1919-1921, even achieving naval superiority in the Baltic and despite prior Russian losses. (Mawdsley’s Russian Civil War book)
15. Defeated in Vietnam– Douglas Gracey sent in troops in 1945 to defeat the VietMinh insurgency and put Vietnam back under colonial control, but the effort failed, with the Vietnamese forces subsequently defeating French, Americans, Australians and New Zealanders who went in.
http://chss2.montclair.edu/furrg/_vwac99/00000077.htm
http://www.siglo21info.com/1945-1989/conflictos/conflictos-asia/indochina-1945.html
I want to point to a book I found very interesting in regards to the British and genocide. “Imperial Reckoning,” by Caroline Elkins. It is a well researched examination into the atrocities visited by the British upon those tribes living in the land known as Kenya.
from the review:
– NonE
Hi NonE
I know Elkins book…
yes, very good work
I’d love to do it..but I think the present situation deserves more of my attention.
You have to undermine the british empire to undermine neocon ideology.
maybe I am not the right one to do it though
Lila
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