Kautilya s Arthashastra: An Intellectual Portrait

Transcription

1 Moderne Südasienstudien Gesellschaft, Politik, Wirtschaft 5 Modern South Asian Studies Society, Politics, Economy Subrata K. Mitra Michael Liebig Kautilya s Arthashastra: An Intellectual Portrait The Classical Roots of Modern Politics in India Nomos

2 Schriftenreihe Moderne Südasienstudien Gesellschaft, Politik, Wirtschaft The series Modern South Asian Studies Society, Politics, Economy herausgegeben von Edited by Prof. Subrata K. Mitra, Ph.D. (Rochester, N.Y.), Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg Prof. Dr. Dietmar Rothermund, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg Band / Volume 5

3 Subrata K. Mitra Michael Liebig Kautilya s Arthashastra: An Intellectual Portrait The Classical Roots of Modern Politics in India Nomos

4 The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at ISBN (Print) (epdf) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN (Print) (epdf) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mitra, Subrata K. / Liebig, Michael Kautilya s Arthashastra: An Intellectual Portrait The Classical Roots of Modern Politics in India Subrata K. Mitra / Michael Liebig 468 p. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN (Print) (epdf) 1. Edition 2016 Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden, Germany Printed and bound in Germany. This work is subject to copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Under 54 of the German Copyright Law where copies are made for other than private use a fee is payable to Verwertungs gesellschaft Wort, Munich. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Nomos or the authors.

5 Preface: A note on reading Kautilya s Arthashastra 17 Introduction 22 A An interpretive exposition of Kautilya s Arthashastra 30 1 The work and its author 30 2 The Arthashastra s oral and written transmission 35 3 A methodological approach to Kautilya s Arthashastra 38 4 Kautilya s Arthashastra in the context of comparative political theory Max Weber s political sociology: key categories Weber s concept of the patrimonial state in India Socio-religious foundations of the patrimonial state in ancient India Weber on the Machiavellianism of the patrimonial state in ancient India 57 5 The key features of Kautilya s Arthashastra 60 6 Paraphrase of Book I of the Arthashastra: the ideal ruler 66 7 The concept cluster saptanga: the seven state factors (prakriti) State factor swamin: the ruler State factor amatya: the minister (government/state bureaucracy) State factor janapada: the people of the land State factor durga: the fortress (capital city) State factor kosa: the Treasury State factor danda: coercive power of the state (armed forces, secret service and police) State factor mitra: the ally in foreign policy The seven prakriti constitute state power 111 9

6 9 The concept cluster shadgunya: the six methods of foreign policy The correlation of forces The strategic goals of Kautilyan foreign policy The mandala scheme and some misconceptions thereof The Kautilyan idea of raison d état Kautilyan raison d état as optimization of the state factors Kautilyan raison d état: the normative dimension The concept cluster upayas: the four basic methods of politics Kautilya s political anthropology Kautilya s assumption about politics and the theory of Political Realism 149 B Kautilya and modern India: a complex resonance Kautilya and modern India: methodological and theoretical approaches 156 The Kautilyan legacy embedded in longue durée cultural continuity Culture and longue durée history Cultural continuity in India Diversity: the basic premise of Indian culture The plural paradigm of Indian culture Cohesiveness within plurality: the value ideas of the epics India as geo-cultural space Cultural space and political space: the Maurya Empire as precedent External influences on Indian culture 182 Kautilya s Arthashastra as an endogenous politico-cultural resource The term endogenous politico-cultural resources Kautilya in the spectrum of India s politico-cultural resources

7 3.3 Why Kautilya s Arthashastra is viewed as an endogenous politico-cultural resource Kautilya s holistic understanding of political theory and statecraft The normative dimension of Kautilya s Arthashastra Kautilya s secularism and his relativization of caste status Kautilya s political economy Kautilya and the political classics of other cultural spaces Nehru and Kautilya Nehru's intellectual engagement with Kautilya Kautilya and the Arthashastra in Nehru s Discovery of India Kautilya s significance for Nehru as Prime Minister Nehru s relation to Kautilyan thought in the perspective of the expert interviews How profound was Nehru s study of Kautilya s Arthashastra? Nehru: a political realist in the Kautilyan tradition Nehru as political idealist Nehruvianism as synthesis of realism and idealism The Kautilyan triumvirate of modern India: Gandhi, Nehru and Sardar Patel The manifest presence of Kautilyan thought in modern India Kautilya s non-discursive presence in the contemporary Indian life-world A survey in a phenomenological perspective Kautilya s presence in symbolic and media objectifications The Kautilya metaphor Kautilya s discursive presence in contemporary India: reuse of the past The re-use of Kautilyan thought in political discourse The latent presence of Kautilyan thought in modern India The puzzle of Kautilya s latent ideational presence Pierre Bourdieu s sociological concept of habitus

8 6.3 The habitus as repository of latent idea-contents The latent pre-understanding of Kautilyan thought via the Indian literary classics Kautilyan thought as latent ideational ingredient of the habitus of the Indian strategic community The latent presence of Kautilyan thought-figures in the strategic document NonAlignment Grand strategy and hard realism Strategic autonomy The state and state capacity Economic development and national security The importance of internal security Contemporary Kautilyan echoes: epiphenomenon sans conceptual depth? Latent Kautilyan thought-figures in the field of popular politicizing Kautilya and the strategic culture of India The concept of strategic culture Indian strategic culture The role of Kautilya in the academic discourse on Indian strategic culture Kautilya and Indian strategic culture in the political discourse A distant relationship: Kautilya and the social and political sciences in India Kautilya s absence in Indian academia The Anglo-American influence in Indian universities Sanskrit: atrophy of language skills Social science schools and the marginalization of Kautilyan thought The positivist approach Marxism and Indian social sciences Kautilya and International Relations theory in India Social constructivism Postcolonial theory

9 9 Trend reversal: a comeback of Kautilya? A program of recovery for endogenous politico-cultural resources Kautilya at the University of Delhi Kautilya s Arthashastra finds its way into the Political Science curricula Postmodernism meets Kautilya The Kautilya discourse at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) The IDSA Kautilya discourse in The IDSA Kautilya discourse in The IDSA Kautilya discourse in C Kautilya redux? Re-use of the past and the making of the modern politics of India 1 Hybridity and the postcolonial state Core features of the Kautilyan state The quintessence of the modern state and the Kautilyan idea of raison d état The Kautilyan state and the people The political economy of the Kautilyan state The Kautilyan state: centralization and autonomous spaces The Kautilyan state and its legal system Social hierarchy and rational bureaucracy The Kautilyan capital city Kautilyan thought, re-use of the past and political habitus The postcolonial condition: the hybridity of the modern state in transitional societies 5 Hybridization as a political strategy of dominance and resistance Satyagraha: the Gandhian conflation of modernity and tradition The hybrid postcolonial state as both structure and agency Ontology of the state: individualist and communitarian The Congress system : bridging colonial rule and competitive politics

10 8 7.3 The economy modern, traditional, liberal, socialist and Gandhian, all at the same time Self-rule and shared rule: combining cultural diversity and the federal structure Indian Personal Law: conflating the secular state and sacred beliefs The modern state and cultural diversity: the three language formula Social hierarchy and rational bureaucracy Public buildings and images of the hybrid state 405 A dialectic of the pure and the hybrid : implications of the Indian case for a general theory of state formation in transitional societies 407 D 1 2 Kautilya, India and global political theory: democratic aspirations and institutional evolution in the non-western world Culture, structure or political capital? Some general lessons of India s counterfactual democracy The impact of path dependence on transition to democracy and its consolidation 3 Making democracy work: India s political capital Electoral mobilization and appropriate public policy Institutional arrangement and countervailing forces Asymmetric but cooperative federalism: balancing unity and diversity Democracy in general and in the non-western context

11 E The Kautilyan moment, the power-knowledge matrix and the genealogy of global political theory 429 Glossary of Sanskrit/Hindi Terms 438 Bibliography 441 Index of Persons 461 Index of Subjects