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
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
Subrata K. Mitra Michael Liebig Kautilya s Arthashastra: An Intellectual Portrait The Classical Roots of Modern Politics in India Nomos
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de ISBN 978-3-8487-2764-3 (Print) 978-3-8452-7234-4 (epdf) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-3-8487-2764-3 (Print) 978-3-8452-7234-4 (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 978-3-8487-2764-3 (Print) 978-3-8452-7234-4 (epdf) 1. Edition 2016 Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden, Germany 2016. 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.
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 47 4.1 Max Weber s political sociology: key categories 49 4.2 Weber s concept of the patrimonial state in India 51 4.3 Socio-religious foundations of the patrimonial state in ancient India 54 4.4 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) 91 7.1 State factor swamin: the ruler 93 7.2 State factor amatya: the minister (government/state bureaucracy) 96 7.3 State factor janapada: the people of the land 100 7.4 State factor durga: the fortress (capital city) 102 7.5 State factor kosa: the Treasury 104 7.6 State factor danda: coercive power of the state (armed forces, secret service and police) 106 7.7 State factor mitra: the ally in foreign policy 109 8 The seven prakriti constitute state power 111 9
9 The concept cluster shadgunya: the six methods of foreign policy 116 9.1 The correlation of forces 118 9.2 The strategic goals of Kautilyan foreign policy 122 9.3 The mandala scheme and some misconceptions thereof 125 10 The Kautilyan idea of raison d état 127 10.1 Kautilyan raison d état as optimization of the state factors 127 10.2 Kautilyan raison d état: the normative dimension 132 11 The concept cluster upayas: the four basic methods of politics 136 12 Kautilya s political anthropology 141 13 Kautilya s assumption about politics and the theory of Political Realism 149 B Kautilya and modern India: a complex resonance 156 1 2 3 Kautilya and modern India: methodological and theoretical approaches 156 The Kautilyan legacy embedded in longue durée cultural continuity 160 2.1 Culture and longue durée history 160 2.2 Cultural continuity in India 164 2.3 Diversity: the basic premise of Indian culture 168 2.4 The plural paradigm of Indian culture 170 2.5 Cohesiveness within plurality: the value ideas of the epics 172 2.6 India as geo-cultural space 175 2.7 Cultural space and political space: the Maurya Empire as precedent 180 2.8 External influences on Indian culture 182 Kautilya s Arthashastra as an endogenous politico-cultural resource 185 3.1 The term endogenous politico-cultural resources 185 3.2 Kautilya in the spectrum of India s politico-cultural resources 186 10
3.3 Why Kautilya s Arthashastra is viewed as an endogenous politico-cultural resource 187 3.3.1 Kautilya s holistic understanding of political theory and statecraft 188 3.3.2 The normative dimension of Kautilya s Arthashastra 189 3.3.3 Kautilya s secularism and his relativization of caste status 193 3.3.4 Kautilya s political economy 196 3.3.5 Kautilya and the political classics of other cultural spaces 197 4 Nehru and Kautilya 199 4.1 Nehru's intellectual engagement with Kautilya 1930-1944 200 4.2 Kautilya and the Arthashastra in Nehru s Discovery of India 202 4.3 Kautilya s significance for Nehru as Prime Minister 208 4.4 Nehru s relation to Kautilyan thought in the perspective of the expert interviews 212 4.4.1 How profound was Nehru s study of Kautilya s Arthashastra? 212 4.4.2 Nehru: a political realist in the Kautilyan tradition 216 4.4.3 Nehru as political idealist 226 4.4.4 Nehruvianism as synthesis of realism and idealism 229 4.4.5 The Kautilyan triumvirate of modern India: Gandhi, Nehru and Sardar Patel 231 5 The manifest presence of Kautilyan thought in modern India 235 5.1 Kautilya s non-discursive presence in the contemporary Indian life-world 236 5.1.1 A survey in a phenomenological perspective 236 5.1.2 Kautilya s presence in symbolic and media objectifications 240 5.1.3 The Kautilya metaphor 241 5.2 Kautilya s discursive presence in contemporary India: reuse of the past 244 5.3 The re-use of Kautilyan thought in political discourse 248 6 The latent presence of Kautilyan thought in modern India 250 6.1 The puzzle of Kautilya s latent ideational presence 250 6.2 Pierre Bourdieu s sociological concept of habitus 252 11
6.3 The habitus as repository of latent idea-contents 255 6.4 The latent pre-understanding of Kautilyan thought via the Indian literary classics 259 6.5 Kautilyan thought as latent ideational ingredient of the habitus of the Indian strategic community 266 6.6 The latent presence of Kautilyan thought-figures in the strategic document NonAlignment 2.0 271 6.6.1 Grand strategy and hard realism 272 6.6.2 Strategic autonomy 275 6.6.3 The state and state capacity 276 6.6.4 Economic development and national security 278 6.6.5 The importance of internal security 279 6.6.6 Contemporary Kautilyan echoes: epiphenomenon sans conceptual depth? 281 6.7 Latent Kautilyan thought-figures in the field of popular politicizing 282 7 Kautilya and the strategic culture of India 288 7.1 The concept of strategic culture 288 7.2 Indian strategic culture 295 7.3 The role of Kautilya in the academic discourse on Indian strategic culture 299 7.4 Kautilya and Indian strategic culture in the political discourse 312 8 A distant relationship: Kautilya and the social and political sciences in India 317 8.1 Kautilya s absence in Indian academia 317 8.2 The Anglo-American influence in Indian universities 319 8.3 Sanskrit: atrophy of language skills 323 8.4 Social science schools and the marginalization of Kautilyan thought 325 8.4.1 The positivist approach 325 8.4.2 Marxism and Indian social sciences 326 8.4.3 Kautilya and International Relations theory in India 329 8.4.4 Social constructivism 332 8.4.5 Postcolonial theory 339 12
9 Trend reversal: a comeback of Kautilya? 345 9.1 A program of recovery for endogenous politico-cultural resources 345 9.2 Kautilya at the University of Delhi 350 9.2.1 Kautilya s Arthashastra finds its way into the Political Science curricula 350 9.2.2 Postmodernism meets Kautilya 353 9.3 The Kautilya discourse at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) 356 9.3.1 The IDSA Kautilya discourse in 2012 358 9.3.2 The IDSA Kautilya discourse in 2013 362 9.3.3 The IDSA Kautilya discourse in 2014 368 C Kautilya redux? Re-use of the past and the making of the modern politics of India 1 Hybridity and the postcolonial state 373 2 Core features of the Kautilyan state 376 2.1 The quintessence of the modern state and the Kautilyan idea of raison d état 377 2.2 The Kautilyan state and the people 378 2.3 The political economy of the Kautilyan state 379 2.4 The Kautilyan state: centralization and autonomous spaces 380 2.5 The Kautilyan state and its legal system 381 2.6 Social hierarchy and rational bureaucracy 382 2.7 The Kautilyan capital city 382 3 Kautilyan thought, re-use of the past and political habitus 383 4 The postcolonial condition: the hybridity of the modern state in transitional societies 5 Hybridization as a political strategy of dominance and resistance 391 6 Satyagraha: the Gandhian conflation of modernity and tradition 394 7 The hybrid postcolonial state as both structure and agency 396 7.1 Ontology of the state: individualist and communitarian 397 7.2 The Congress system : bridging colonial rule and competitive politics 398 371 386 13
8 7.3 The economy modern, traditional, liberal, socialist and Gandhian, all at the same time 400 7.4 Self-rule and shared rule: combining cultural diversity and the federal structure 401 7.5 Indian Personal Law: conflating the secular state and sacred beliefs 402 7.6 The modern state and cultural diversity: the three language formula 403 7.7 Social hierarchy and rational bureaucracy 404 7.8 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 420 3.1 Electoral mobilization and appropriate public policy 421 3.2 Institutional arrangement and countervailing forces 422 3.3 Asymmetric but cooperative federalism: balancing unity and diversity 423 4 Democracy in general and in the non-western context 425 414 417 418 14
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 465 15