Write a note on the Buddhist tradition in Indian political thought. (2012, 20 Marks)
Buddhism sought release from the world and left no treatise of statecraft. Yet the Pali suttas, the Jatakas, the monastic code (Vinaya), Ashvaghosha’s Buddhacharita and Ashoka‘s edicts yield a distinct political ethic. Its hallmark is authority grounded in agreement and function rather than birth or divine appointment. Uma Chakravarti reads it against the rise of Magadhan monarchy, towns and a householder class.
Philosophical Foundations
- Anatta (no permanent self) denies the fixed essences that birth-ranked hierarchy needs.
- Anicca (impermanence) makes dynasties and social orders transient.
- Paticca-samuppada (dependent origination) treats poverty and crime as effects of causes that policy can remove.
- The Kalama Sutta asks that claims be tested in experience, not accepted on tradition or a teacher’s word.
The result is dhamma as a universal ethic binding monk, king and labourer alike. Brahmanical dharma is station-specific (varnadharma); a universal standard can judge the social order instead of presupposing it.
The Origin of the State
The Agganna Sutta (Digha Nikaya 27) narrates a fall from a luminous, undivided condition through greed into hoarding, fenced fields, theft, lying and violence. The people then choose the most capable one to censure and banish wrongdoers, paying him a share of rice. Three titles follow: Mahasammata (chosen by all), khattiya (lord of the fields) and raja (one who pleases others by dhamma). Here are a social contract, elective and conditional kingship, and taxation as wages for service; varna appears only later, as occupational differentiation. Richard Gombrich reads the text as satire on Brahmin origin-claims and Steven Collins stresses its monastic allusions, so it narrates rather than argues a contract.
Kingship, Welfare and War
- The Jataka list of dasa-raja-dhamma (liberality, morality, self-sacrifice, integrity, gentleness, austerity, non-anger, non-violence, patience, non-obstruction of the people) is wholly about character; the king stays inside ordinary morality.
- The chakravartin rules by the wheel of dhamma. In the Cakkavatti Sihanada Sutta a king’s neglect of the destitute triggers theft, then weapons and killing; the Kutadanta Sutta ends banditry by giving seed to farmers, capital to traders and wages to servants. Welfare, not danda, secures order.
- Ashoka renounced conquest after Kalinga (Rock Edict XIII) for dhammavijaya, appointed dhamma-mahamattas, and in Rock Edict XII asked sects to honour one another. Romila Thapar reads his dhamma as a civic ethic integrating a plural empire; the Greek version at Kandahar renders it eusebeia, piety.
The Sangha as a Political Model
The Vinaya prescribes motions, quorum, repeated putting of the question and voting, with seniority by ordination, not birth. The Buddha advised the Vajji confederacy to meet often and decide in concord. K. P. Jayaswal‘s Hindu Polity (1924) read these gana-sanghas as republics, but they were clan oligarchies, and the Sangha had no territory or coercion.
Limits
The conditions on rulers are stated but unenforceable: no right of resistance, no removal procedure, only public opinion. Upinder Singh (Political Violence in Ancient India, 2017) shows the texts also accommodate armies and punishment, and caste outlived Buddhism’s decline in India.
Modern Afterlife
B. R. Ambedkar (Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar) embraced Buddhism at Nagpur on 14 October 1956 and traced liberty, equality and fraternity to the Buddha. The Republic took its State Emblem from the Sarnath lion capital and set the Ashoka Chakra in the flag. Official recognition of Pali as a classical language (3 October 2024) marks the tradition’s standing in public culture.
Conclusion
The Buddhist tradition is best read as an ethical theory of legitimate authority rather than a science of government. It separated rule from birth and sanctity, made welfare the ground of order and war a moral failure, yet built no institution to enforce these limits. Ambedkar made it a living resource of Indian democratic argument.