Introduction
Scholars interested in understanding, comparing, or challenging positions across cultures and geographic regions confront not only the dangers of conceptual distortion but also methodological issues stemming from colonialist, orientalist, and Eurocentric emphases on texts as opposed to alternative epistemologies and modes of inquiry.Footnote 1 These interpretive challenges, however, also entail a few glaring issues that have not garnered the attention they deserve: the general lack in understanding of influential “premodern” traditions in various regions of the world, these traditions’ potential connections to contemporary issues and dilemmas, and finally, the problematic ways in which scholars and political actors have interpreted and made use of the past.Footnote 2 This essay argues that substantial progress can be made in addressing these issues through more sustained engagement with premodern traditions outside “the West.”Footnote 3 Because the study of Indian political theory exemplifies many of these difficulties that face cross-cultural political theory more generally, I will examine a particularly important premodern Indian tradition as an example of challenges facing this field of study and one way in which they can be overcome.
Importantly, this project has broader implications for a timely issue in political theory. Addressing debates surrounding the future of democracy under conditions of globalization, Melissa Williams and Mark Warren have recently explained how comparative political theory can help enhance the social conditions for critical reflection and reasoning across cultural boundaries.Footnote 4 In so doing, they clarify how contextual studies of non-Western traditions help lay the groundwork for greater intelligibility and deliberation among “communities of shared fate” that exceed the boundaries of territorial states.Footnote 5 On this account, a central aim of comparative political theory is to identify and investigate historical pathways and conceptual frameworks extending from the ancient past to the present in various political traditions around the globe. Following Williams and Warren, I agree that strengthening grounds for mutual intelligibility—especially across historical distance—can play a significant role in enhancing political theorists' capacity for critical reflexivity and practical reasoning.Footnote 6 The project outlined by Williams and Warren can be further advanced through sustained engagement with premodern traditions because such efforts create more space for historical and conceptual co-reflexivity within and across cultures. In turn, this historical approach opens new doors for innovative forms of questioning and problem solving that may flow critically in both directions, thereby expanding the categorical and conceptual scope of political theory as a field of study. As I will explain, this further requires dismantling unhelpful anachronisms and preventing the interpretive capture of the past for dubious political projects.
In taking a historical approach to Indian political theory, this essay also draws upon recent theoretical and methodological observations in postcolonial and cross-cultural political theory. First, I challenge manifestations of what Rajeev Bhargava calls “epistemic injustice,” and Michael McGhee denotes as “unconscious heteronomy,” in Indian political thought.Footnote 7 I argue that resisting problematic epistemic frames entails questioning the application of familiar Western idioms as interpretive categories, and alternatively employing indigenous categories such as “rajanical thought.”Footnote 8 Here, the term “rajanical” invokes the Sanskrit verb rāj- (to rule) and will refer to a particular Indian understanding of rule that involves a unique cosmological dimension, sense of stewardship, and broad application across a human-nonhuman spectrum. Second, I develop the project of “deconceptualization” that Aakash Singh describes, which entails “retrieving and uncovering the indigenous conceptualizations, terms and categories of Indian political thought, to find and follow its own logic(s), and eventually to apply it normatively to theorizations of contemporary India's political realities.”Footnote 9 While scholars must remain aware of the major challenges to cross-cultural theorizing, they should not refrain from interrogating the past to better locate potential connections to contemporary political dilemmas, further aiming to cultivate greater attentiveness to indigenous conceptual frames for imagining alternative futures.
To advance my argument, the essay proceeds in the following manner. The first section provides a critique of arguments for democratic and liberal political ideas in premodern Indian political thought, starting with a clarification of the historical and political context for situating the stakes of interpreting Vedic texts. The subsequent textual critique operates at two analytic levels. On the first level, I examine particular interpretations of the primary texts, and on the second I question the methodological approaches and method of reasoning that scholars use to undertake their analysis. My central claim at this second level is that predominant approaches both reflect and reinforce problematic interpretive sensibilities and conceptual frames, even when unintentional. Building on this critical analysis, the next section clarifies an alternative category for interpreting Vedic thought and considers this category's relevance for contemporary ecological issues and our understanding of swaraj (self-rule) in India. Here I argue that the rajanical as opposed to the political is more appropriate for designating a particular tradition extending from the Vedic to the contemporary period, as the term better captures some of this tradition's core concerns: the meaning of rule, its relation to the concepts of sacrifice and ritual, and the questions of with and for whom rulers rule within both human and nonhuman contexts. The last section explains how contemporary Indian political theory and practice have drawn upon and can continue to develop insights from this rajanical tradition without necessarily reverting to familiar Western idioms, including insights for debates about democratic citizenship and its connection to environmental issues. I conclude by commenting on both the promise and limitations associated with the analytic approach taken and arguments put forth in the essay.
The Intersection of Past and Present: Questions of Cultural Essentialism, Ancient Democracy, and Liberalism
To clarify a historical and textual landscape for my analysis, the Vedic Saṃhitās (ca. 1500–800 BCE) and Brāhmaṇas (ca. 900–650 BCE) constitute an ancient stratum of early South Asian texts that can be dated to the early Vedic period (ca. 1500–650 BCE), which predates the late Vedic (650–200 BCE) and early historical periods (ca. 200 BCE–500 CE). The Saṃhitās are collections of verses, chants, sacrificial formulae, and charms or incantations, while the Brāhmaṇas are sacrificial manuals attached to the Vedic Saṃhitās that describe the Vedic fire sacrifices (yajñas) and provide rules for the performance of each ceremony, including explanations of the purpose and meaning of the sacrificial acts and mantras (verses). These Vedic texts are incredibly significant from a historical perspective because they express the earliest tradition of political thought on the Indian subcontinent and precede the following, more well-known texts: philosophical Upaniṣads (ca. 800–200 BCE); epic Mahābhārata (ca. 400 BCE–400 CE) and Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki (ca. 400 BCE–400 CE); ritual and legal codes such as the Dharma-Sūtras (ca. 6th–1st centuries BCE) and Dharma-Śāstras (ca. 1st–4th centuries CE); and most importantly, Kauṭilya's Arthaśāstra (ca. 4th cent. BCE–4th cent. CE) and Kāmandaki's Nītisāra (5th cent. CE), both of which represent a more systematic tradition of political theory that began as early as the Mauryan period (ca. 320–200 BCE).
Given the archaic nature of the Vedas, one might plausibly ask why scholars should even bother examining such an ancient tradition of political thought. Undoubtedly, such engagements are fraught with challenges. For the purposes of my argument in this essay, it is helpful to clarify three predominant types of positions on the question of how to approach and make use of ancient Indian political thought, especially early Vedic texts. The first position could be seen as a “skeptical-rejectionist” one that rejects the Vedas as overly archaic, irrelevant, or deleterious, often presuming that a focus on such ancient texts reflects problematic Orientalist or nationalist impulses.Footnote 10 Consequently, this type of position takes a skeptical stance towards the Vedas and tends to suggest that political theorists focus their attention on more modern or contemporary thinkers, events, and movements. A second position, which one could call “modern-romanticist,” seeks to justify engagements with the ancient past by romantically projecting secular, liberal, or democratic ideas onto premodern texts. This is the type of position that I will focus on in the present essay. Finally, a third position views the past as important because it provides grounds for an essentialist Hindu culture and potential basis for a pan-Indian, nationalist identity. Such “Hindu-revivalist” positions exhibit a number of dubious political motivations and dangers. For example, beginning in the nineteenth and extending throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the Vedas and brahmanical political thought have been at the center of major political debates concerning neo-Hindu nationalism, the caste system, suppression of Dalits (Untouchables), and conservative Hindu religious attitudes directed towards non-Hindus.Footnote 11
Pressing questions emerge when considering these alternative positions. Is it possible to defend the value of this early tradition against skeptical-rejectionism, which understandably raises questions about potential neo-Orientalism and neocolonialist motivations? If so, could one simultaneously resist ceding early Vedic and Hindu traditions to both neo-Hindu nationalists and those who would problematically impose secular, democratic, or liberal interpretations?
One reason political theorists have consistently neglected early Vedic and brahmanical texts as worthwhile objects of study, especially in the American academy, pertains to the difficulties one faces in responding to such issues. This essay provides an affirmative response to these questions by outlining an alternative position that could be called “critical-revivalist.” This approach suggests there are good reasons to hold some of these Vedic ideas in high regard and draw upon them to revive—or perhaps more specifically, creatively rearticulate or reappropriate—analogous views and practices better suited to contemporary dilemmas.Footnote 12 At a scholarly level, this position entails the careful, contextualized analysis of a tradition yet resists the claim to revive anything that is monolithically or culturally “essential.” Rejecting both secular and Hindu-essentialist interpretations, my approach seeks to prevent scholarly neglect and the capture of Vedic thought by Hindu Right groups such as the RSS, who might otherwise monopolize Vedic interpretation for harmful political purposes.Footnote 13 Importantly, a critical-revivalist approach helps establish greater middle ground and conceptual space in understanding the past for those who might otherwise occupy a more moderate political stance, further helping to prevent gravitation towards the Hindu Right and its interpretation of the past.Footnote 14 Such efforts may also help defuse political polarization within various Hindu communities by maintaining an open stance towards the past as a potential dialogic partner for deliberative reasoning about important contemporary issues. Because political theories and their interpretations of texts often serve specific political projects, ideologies, needs, or interests, one should not discount this political dimension and assume that the only or most important thing at stake is a purely academic, theoretical, or philosophical debate. While my critique will focus on various issues of interpretation, I do not want to discount the concrete political issues and interests at play in critically reviving past traditions such as the Vedic one.
Moreover, in response to skeptical-rejectionist challenges, locating and developing an indigenous Indian tradition of political thought requires overcoming particular anxieties that have prevented systematic engagement with premodern traditions. Invoking Bhikhu Parekh's criticism over two decades ago that post-independence India had failed to develop its own tradition of political theory, it is crucial to point out that locutions such as “Indian political theory” and “Indian political thought” tend to obscure the fact that most scholars' temporal referent is actually quite circumscribed.Footnote 15 In defending the existence of a tradition of Indian political theory scholars have focused predominantly on modern and contemporary Indian ideas, thinkers, and movements.Footnote 16 This is not a coincidence, as systematic inattention to and discomfort with premodern texts, thinkers, or concepts partly result from additional postcolonial anxieties about political modernization.Footnote 17 Presumably, reengaging the past would be largely irrelevant for contemporary concerns about democratic development and the adoption of things such as equal political rights. Even worse, premodern ideas may be thought to restrict democratization and liberalization unless—problematically on my account—it is possible to find democratic or liberal ideas in the tradition itself. Such uneasiness has spurred significant misinterpretations of particular premodern traditions, thereby placing constraints on historical and cultural intelligibility as well as contemporary efforts to draw upon unique aspects of Indian political thought for purposes of cross-cultural deliberation and theory building.Footnote 18
For example, one of the central debates in ancient Indian political thought concerns the degree to which democratic or liberal political ideas can be found in the Vedic Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas. Theorists have debated whether or not there were popular, deliberative assemblies with ruling and judicial functions that were socially inclusive; as N. N. Law suggests, “it appears that the council of the Vedic period was more or less of a democratic character.”Footnote 19 Another debate concerns whether or not kings (or rulers) were “elected” either by the people (viś) or other kings.Footnote 20 The central problem with such questions is that they presume misleading or inaccurate cross-cultural similarities to Western traditions, categories, and concepts. Such cross-cultural comparisons are often premature, requiring greater reflection and systematic effort in attending to Indian categories, concepts, terminology, and beliefs. While anachronism can be valuable on occasion,Footnote 21 in the Vedic case it restricts our ability to locate the sorts of differences that help enhance conceptual range for political thinking, and thus our ability for critical reflexivity.
In the remainder of this section, I parse my analysis into three topical areas—secularism, cosmology, and democratic assemblies and elections—to clarify the most problematic interpretive moves I find in the literature. The first and second sections will be somewhat brief as they merely clear the basic conceptual ground for the third section, which is the main focus of my critical analysis. Exposing the weakness of democratic and liberal readings of Vedic thought then establishes grounds, first, for identifying central rajanical ideas expressed in this early Indian tradition, and second, considering how they have been applied and developed in contemporary Indian discourse and politics.
A. Secularism
The first theoretical underpinning of democratic readings I seek to challenge concerns misguided arguments for secularism in the Vedic context. Theoretically, some sort of secular stance would mark out a space for an autonomous political sphere, which could then sustain political deliberations that were not determined by a religious viewpoint.Footnote 22 If we look carefully at one of the most influential cosmogonies in early brahmanical thought—the Puruṣa-Sūkta (Ṛg-Veda Saṃhitā [ṚV] 10.90), in which we see the first mention of four major social groups (varṇas) in a cosmogonic narrative—we begin to see how secularist readings face serious problems.Footnote 23 Not only does the ruling group (rājanya, later kṣatriya) emerge after the priestly (brahmin) group in the temporal sequence, but the brahmin is also hierarchically situated above the rājanya in the body imagery: Puruṣa's (the cosmic person's) mouth, associated with brahmin, stands over his arms (rājanya). The Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas suggest that the mouth, which offers up sacred hymns that please the gods and communicates seers' (ṛṣis) cognitions of reality, is superior to any physical might associated with the arms. In turn, brahmanical thought claims Puruṣa's cosmic body is the source of, and thus parallels, a sociopolitical body composed of four social groups (brahmin, kṣatriya, vaiśya, and śūdra), which remain fundamentally and hierarchically interconnected. Anything akin to an autonomous political sphere, therefore, would not make sense because the ruling function is linked to the other major social functions—brahmin-cognitive, vaiśya-productive, and śūdra-service—in an interdependent manner.
Another problem with secular readings can be gleaned from Louis Dumont's seminal work on Vedic thought, Homo Hierarchicus. This work advances a secularist reading by interpreting kingship as a political institution that is fundamentally separated from the brahmins' otherworldly, spiritual realm. Accordingly, Dumont explains that the rājanya/k ṣatriya is a purely political or temporal power, categorically separate from the priestly, sacerdotal power. He thus claims, “the king in India has been secularized. It is from this point that a differentiation occurred, the separation within the religious universe of a sphere or realm opposed to the religious, and roughly corresponding to what we call the political.”Footnote 24 While I believe Dumont is correct to highlight a distinction between earlier religious forms of kingship or rulershipFootnote 25 and the Vedic model, he pushes this distinction too far. In an attempt to explain how ancient Vedic rule is different from earlier “magico-religious” forms, he overstates similarities between Vedic kingship and later political developments by relying on a modern, Western notion of secularism. As the above quote displays, he admits that whatever this “political” sphere entailed, it remained “within the religious universe.” Therefore, it is misleading when he argues that “in India the king has lost his religious prerogatives,”Footnote 26 because it is precisely the “religious” (brahmanical) perspective mapped out in the Vedic Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas that establishes the cosmic necessity of kingly rule and contextualizes the meaning of rule.Footnote 27 In order for such an argument to work, Dumont would need to explain how a distinctly secular form of kingship could exist within a religious point of view that posited various truth claims accessible only by oral scripture and directed kingship toward nonsecular ends. While secular dichotomies may function as helpful distinctions within various Western traditions they can be quite problematic when applied to South Asian and Hindu traditions, especially notions of kingship.Footnote 28 This point raises a related question about the relationship between the priest and the ruler—a relationship that privileges brahmins and highlights a thoroughgoing cosmological orientation to rule.Footnote 29
B. Cosmology
Failing to interpret ruling relations between the priest and the king as thoroughly interdependent underemphasizes a deeply cosmological understanding of rule. That is, the early and middle Vedic conception of rule does not parse a humanistic-political dimension from an a-human, cosmological one. Rather, these dimensions are fundamentally intertwined. Theodore Proferes, in contrast, offers a reading of political sovereignty and freedom in early Vedic works based on the idea that rulers are more or less independent. He suggests that the king/ruler stands at the center of the sociopolitical structure, claiming a type of clan-based federalism existed insofar as “sovereignty was invested in a king according to the free choice of the clans … [and] [a]t the same time, sovereignty could be passed back to the clans.”Footnote 30 According to Proferes, ritual symbols and tools such as fire and water were used for purposes of political consolidation and legitimacy.Footnote 31 When referring to the concept of political legitimacy, however, one should clarify if and how an idea of rights underpins the concept,Footnote 32 considering whether concepts such as sovereignty and legitimacy make sense within the ideational framework of the texts themselves. Such considerations expose what I take to be a broader analytic-methodological issue in literature on ancient Indian political thought, beginning with potentially problematic assumptions about basic cross-cultural equivalences.
While Proferes's argument that Vedic symbolism reflects ideas of political sovereignty is enlightening in numerous respects, it hinges on privileging a secularized political world behind Vedic texts. This approach portrays Vedic thought as following a two-world picture when the texts actually present a multidimensional, interwoven cosmological vision. In this regard, Proferes's argument reflects a basic premise that I want to challenge: the idea that an anthropological approach is the proper way to examine and interpret Vedic political thought. Those such as Proferes approach the text with the presumption that symbols and cosmology are merely reflections of a priori human motivations to consolidate power and make collective decisions about how to organize their communities. Interpreting ritual uses of fire and water primarily as symbols for attempts at political unification exhibits a reductionist move that assumes political scenarios are, at the end of the day, anthropocentric. On the one hand, Proferes maintains that Vedic ideas of sovereignty were cosmologically holistic in orientation, but on the other, his analytic approach boils this holism down to human interests in such a way that nonhuman elements and their role in Vedic conceptions of rule do not receive enough attention, or simply become anthropocentrically instrumental. Importantly, these nonhuman entities include not only the gods (devas) but also a wide array of other beings such as plants and animals, as well as natural phenomena and elements such as the seasons, sacrificial fires, wind, and the sun.Footnote 33 As he explains about a particularly important ritual fire, the agni pāñcajanya: “[the fire] expresses more than just political unity. It is identified with the totality of the cosmos. … Cosmic and political themes are integrated here beyond distinction.”Footnote 34 As this statement suggests, the texts do not express a fundamental distinction between cosmology, natural elements, and rule, so interpreting ritual implements such as fire as metaphors or symbols does not fit Vedic beliefs. These things were not metaphors for something else, such as human-centric political motivations or a power-driven world behind the sacrifice. Rather, they were deep expressions of a belief in the interconnected nature of reality and well-being extending across various species and phenomena.
I thus question the claim that Vedic poets “use the metaphor of the intensification of light to express the consolidation of power,”Footnote 35 because such things were not metaphors for the Vedic seers and ritualists. While Proferes's interpretive approach helps elucidate cross-cultural similarities at a level of anthropological generality and exposes important poetic themes, it does not necessarily provide evidence for a belief in ideas such as rights or political sovereignty predicated on free choice.Footnote 36 Beginning with analytic approaches that assume basic similarities across cultural divides does not allow us to glean important differences, which is necessary to gain the critical leverage for understanding how potentially unique aspects of one tradition can be developed and make novel contributions to a particular political question or issue.
C. Democratic Assemblies and Elections
As I shift attention to arguments about democratic assemblies and elections, it is important to note that most scholars have focused on the Atharva-Veda Saṃhitā as the central locale for democratic and liberal ideas. Generally considered to be the latest layer of the early Vedic corpus, the Atharva-Veda is somewhat unique insofar as it consists neither of original mantras or verses (Saṃhitās), nor sacrificial ritual formulae intended to make sense of the mantras (Brāhmaṇas). Rather, these works consist of charms, incantations, and imprecations (atharvāṅgirases or atharvans) that can be invoked by the brahman priest, if necessary, during the sacrificial rituals. These charms and imprecations are not the cosmos-ordering yajñas (sacrificial rituals) that one finds in earlier Vedic works but rather minor charms that aim to achieve more limited personal goals, such as guarding a pregnant woman from demons, appeasing jealousy, or strengthening a man's virility. In this regard the Atharva-Veda exhibits a somewhat unique ritual world, and it is likely that these atharvans either arose from, or were heavily influenced by, popular nonbrahmanical sources. Nevertheless, the cosmological, metaphysical, and ontological context in this collection of hymns is generally commensurate with those in the liturgical Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas. Most importantly, a somewhat unique set of claims arises in the Atharva-Veda that appears to support arguments for the existence of ancient Indian democratic ideas, including political deliberation and the election of kings.
Following secularist premises, scholars have highlighted terms that seemingly indicate democratic, deliberative forms of rule. Debates on this topic tend to revolve around two important terms. The first term, sabhā, is an assembly, assembly hall, or communal meeting place. Macdonell and Keith point out that the sabhā was a multipurpose assembly where dicing and gambling took place, along with conversation regarding general communal affairs.Footnote 37 Ghosal concurs with this interpretation, explaining, “The gambler's addiction to the sabhā (ṚV 10.34.6) makes its sense and purpose clear.”Footnote 38 Importantly, this Sanskrit term has given rise to the modern Indian term sabhā, which denotes both local and national assemblies. The second term is samiti, an assembly or place where members of the community gather. Here, the central question is: in these assemblies, did a type of political deliberation take place, and were communal ruling decisions made according to such deliberation by a relatively free and equal community of individuals? It is likely that scholars will not be able to answer such questions in any definitive manner, partly because they have been asked from an empirical-historical standpoint. While scholars argue about what did in fact happen in these assemblies, they do not have reliable historical documents for this time period, thus weakening their capacity to make precise historical claims. Unfortunately, we cannot know the exact nature of these sabhās and samitis because the requisite historical evidence simply does not exist. Attempting to reconstruct an accurate history from these texts is a tenuous exercise, and most arguments regarding these terms are veiled, if not explicit, empirical arguments.Footnote 39
In a modern and contemporary political context, one motivation for such “empirical” approaches, or sincere belief in the type of claims they produce, could be located in Hindu revivalist and nationalist concerns. The Arya Samajist ideology outlined and defended by Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1824–1883) and Swami Shradananda (1857–1926), as well as the Hindutva ideology propounded by political activist and nationalist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966), all drew upon the Vedas as historical texts. Claiming that the Vedas described a pure Aryan-Vedic culture, these political figures glorified and used them to support a sense of nationalist ethnic pride.Footnote 40 Treating the Vedas as historical texts, however, has not only led to problematic political claims. For example, the current Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and an outspoken Hindu nationalist, has endorsed educational policies based on the highly controvertible idea that the Vedas display numerous mathematical discoveries and advanced scientific knowledge.
Looking past these historical issues for the moment, there is not sufficient textual evidence to provide a clear view of these assemblies' character and purpose within the works themselves. Ian Mabbett also highlights problems with viewing these sabhās and samitis as democratic assemblies, wherein participants supposedly exercised popular sovereignty.Footnote 41 For either or both of these assemblies to possess a significant ruling character or role, scholars must be able to marshal enough evidence to show that people in these assemblies ruled over the community, or at least participated in making ruling decisions. Previous scholars have not been able to make this argument without tremendous speculation and interpretive liberties, and the historical and textual evidence currently available likely precludes scholars from doing so.Footnote 42
When advancing these interpretations scholars generally neglect the context in which claims about rājans (rulers, chiefs, kings) and their supposed accountability to the viś (common people) in the assembly are in fact made. Ritual chants and imprecations surrounding rājans always focus on or include deities (devas). One is hard-pressed to find any hymn in the Atharva-Veda that, in mentioning rājans and their relationship to the people, does not invoke devas or a particular deva. For example, a charm uttered at the consecration of a ruler states:
Let kingly domain [rāṣṭra] come to you with its brilliant power: Ascend forth! Rule the people as the lord and sole ruler. O king [rājan], let all four quarters call you; become one who is revered and deserving of homage. Let the people and these regions, as five goddesses, accept you for kingship [rājya]. … Let the kinsmen invoking you, go to you; the agile Agni shall accompany them as messenger. … First, the Aśvins, both Mitra and Varuṇa, all the gods, and the Maruts—let them invoke you. (AV 3.4.1–4)Footnote 43
This particular atharvan invokes a variety of devas, and this is not uncommon. Ruling claims involving sabhās, samitis, kings or rulers, and people (viś) never appear without the concomitant belief that human beings, at the most fundamental level, do not rule in any human-centric or selfishly individualistic sort of way. In this sense, ruling on the human plane takes place within a larger cosmological “flow,” and human beings are not the meaning-giving center of the cosmos, especially with respect to rule (rāj-). Rather, human beings are understood as ontologically open to and receiving meaning from within a broader network of entities and relationships. Because rule is built into the metaphysical structure of the cosmos, human beings take part in macro-ruling processes yet they do not “freely” control its structure or meaning in any independent manner. In undertaking narrowly focused analyses of particular verses (or parts of verses) and hymns that mention assemblies and kings, scholars tend to neglect the broader contexts in which ruling claims make sense. When examining Vedic works, scholars should not begin with the supposition that politics is a purely human activity predicated on concerns about power within the human community, and subsequently analyze claims about various nonhuman beings and phenomena merely as reflections of, and tools for, consolidating power or sovereignty. In contrast, I propose that we begin by taking Vedic claims on their own terms, with full consideration of their native conceptual context and beliefs.
In the liturgical Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas, a ruler's royal consecration ceremony, or rājasūya, exhibits additional problems with the democratic reading.Footnote 44 A term frequently analyzed in relation with the rājasūya is ratnin, a dignitary or member of the royal household.Footnote 45 Because ratnins are translated as “givers” (pradātṛ) and “takers” (apādātṛ) of a kingdom,Footnote 46 some find this as evidence implying a representative, deliberative assembly and perhaps even political principles of accountability, election, or popular control over rulership.Footnote 47 Unfortunately, much of this work devolves into historical speculation that is difficult to support with textual evidence. J. C. Heesterman explains that the ratnins are simply individuals who possess ratnas, which are ritual functions held by royal dignitaries and royal household members.Footnote 48 Accordingly, it is preferable to interpret ratnins as extensions and necessary parts of kingly rule and strength, and not as individuals who somehow control or “have a say” in ruling. These ratnins also do not appear in the context of the Atharva-Veda Saṃhitā, where their presence in sabhās or samitis might help support a political principle of accountability. Shifting attention to another significant term in the Atharva-Veda, I can further explain how the sacrificial ritual context of early Vedic thought makes democratic readings less plausible.
Interpretations of sabhās and samitis as popular assemblies are sometimes based on a problematic interpretation of the term vidatha, variously meaning divine worship, household, or sacrificial establishment.Footnote 49 Both Jayaswal and Sharma locate the earliest form of the sabhā and samiti in this frequently used Ṛg-Vedic term.Footnote 50 Because the vidatha is often glossed as a public gathering of sorts, some scholars prematurely deduce that it must have possessed popular, deliberative characteristics. However, Bloomfield astutely explains how the vidatha did not entail a public cult or religious sacrifice with a public assemblage, but was rather a private affair.Footnote 51 Bloomfield argues that while the term sabhā can generally be associated with communal matters, vidhatha is associated with domestic affairs.Footnote 52 Linking Bloomfield's interpretation to Macdonell's translation of vidatha as “divine worship” helps clarify the important sacrificial connotations of the term.Footnote 53 As Bloomfield explains, insofar as the sacrifice is a private event, the vidatha understood as a domestic sphere helps make sense of its connection to yajña, which refers generally to sacrificial ritual, and more specifically to the material oblation or offering given to the gods. The fact that the term vidatha is mostly used in the locative case while yajña appears in other cases indicates that the sacrifice took place in the vidatha, and should thus be interpreted as a sacrificial establishment that would have been the home, given the context.Footnote 54 Bloomfield also contends that vidatha's meaning sometimes “advances from the meaning ‘(sacrificial) establishment,’ until it reaches the meaning ‘sacrifice’ … [which] may preferably be assumed for some of the passages relating to Agni.”Footnote 55 Bloomfield's translation of vidatha as “sacrifice” is then close to Macdonell's translation as “divine worship.” Given these meanings and qualifications, attempts to establish textual and historical connections between vidatha and sabhā/samiti should be tempered. The primary interpretive mistake has been the move to find historical continuities between such terms (presupposing they represent would-be political institutions) in order to claim that India possessed one of the earliest forms of deliberative, and perhaps democratic, assembly.Footnote 56 These motivations must be set aside so that more attention can be given to the broader terminological and conceptual context.
Problematically, scholars draw additional connections between the vidatha, sabhā, and samiti, arguing that they represent popular assemblies in the Atharva-Veda.Footnote 57 One of the most notable proponents of this interpretation is Jayaswal, who argues: “The Samiti and Sabhā were not the only popular institutions of the Vedic times … the ‘Vidatha’ … seems to have been the parent folk-assembly from which the Sabhā, Samiti differentiated … associated with civil, military and religious functions.”Footnote 58 One problem with this claim is that Jayaswal makes a firm interpretive distinction between civil, military, and religious functions when it is not clear that such distinctions make sense in the text itself.Footnote 59 Regarding the samiti, Jayaswal claims that it “was the national assembly of the whole people or Vi ṣah … [who were] electing and re-electing the Rājan or ‘King.’ The whole people were supposed to be present in the assembly.”Footnote 60 In my translation, the passages he cites as evidence are as follows: “Let the people accept you for kingship, as well as these five divine regions (of the sky)” (AV 3.4.2); “Let all the people desire you: do not let the kingdom fall away from you” (AV 6.87.1); “Let all the cardinal directions be unanimous, pursuing the same goal: here let the samiti accommodate itself to you, the steadfast one” (AV 6.88.3). If one pays close attention to Jayaswal's language and the context of these passages, the problems with his position become clear.
First, he draws upon the language of “national assembly” and “election” to interpret the samiti. He chooses to interpret the Sanskrit word jana as “nation,” failing to adequately qualify his usage of this term, which gives the word an overly modern interpretive connotation. A translation carrying less modern and contemporary baggage, such as “tribe” (which Jayaswal also mentions as a possible translation in a footnote), is more appropriate within this context. Second, the language and interpretation of human “election” is not convincingly substantiated in the passage he cites. In the first (AV 3.4.2) and third (AV 6.88.3) passages, if the people are interpreted as electing the king, then the divine regions of the sky and cardinal directions must also be considered electors. However, it is difficult to imagine how the cardinal directions can behave like people with a voice and a vote.Footnote 61 The context is deeply cosmological, and Jayaswal's attempt to bracket this context in order to privilege some sort of human-based election of a king is quite problematic. Rather confusingly, he also cites a particular Atharva-Veda passage (5.19.15) as evidence for the people (viś) electing the rājan. This passage states, “The rain, belonging to Mitra and Varuṇa, does not fall upon the person who oppresses the brahmin; the samiti is not fit for him, and he subjects no friend to his will.”Footnote 62 No terminology for “election” in any modern sense exists in these Atharva-Vedic passages. Jayaswal chooses this terminology because he believes the people possess the sovereign ruling power, which he contends is channeled by, and exhibited in, the samiti.Footnote 63 However, there is no clear textual evidence supporting this claim. Altekar also helpfully points out how the term rājakṛt (literally, kingmaker) can misleadingly be interpreted as an elector.Footnote 64 These rājakṛts were not kingmakers in any modern electoral sense, with some underlying belief in political rights and free choice, but rather conductors of the necessary coronation rituals that were required for a king to become a king. Rājakṛts may help make a king or ruler by serving as part of the ceremony, but they do not elect him in any modern sense of the word.
The concept of election, in the sense that Jayaswal employs it, would be more appropriate if he could find evidence of the following: a belief in some sort of equality between members of the community (or at least a subset thereof), and a belief that this equality makes the freedom of choice possible within clearly expressed decision-making and ruling practices. However, no clear claims about equality, freedom of choice, or institutionalized ruling procedures can be found in the passages of the Atharva-Veda he cites.Footnote 65 Jayaswal believes he can identify such beliefs in statements such as “tvām viśo v ṛṇatām rājyāya” (AV 3.4.2). This phrase should be translated, “let the people accept you for rulership.” Jayaswal's problematic interpretation is based on a translation of the verb root vṛ, which he prefers to read as “choose” and subsequently interprets as “elect.” However, in this context I agree with Macdonell and Keith that it makes more sense to translate this verb as “accept.”Footnote 66 To translate it as “choose” in this context, and on this basis interpret free choice and an elective procedure, is both overly speculative and anachronistic. Jayaswal must be able to provide sufficient textual evidence that expresses a belief in something like free elections to make this interpretation work. I do not believe he provides this evidence, nor do I think it can be provided based on the available material. The Atharva-Veda and other Vedic works are not intended to be exclusive political treatises and thus should not be stripped from their cosmological, metaphysical, and ontological framework when examining rule. Taking a secularist approach to these passages, Jayaswal offers misleading, decontextualized interpretations that neglect a broader web of beliefs as well as central Vedic categories, concepts, and terminology.Footnote 67 Although Jayaswal appears to reject an Orientalist interpretation of Vedic thought as primitive, undeveloped, and “mystical” in nature, his approach results in an equally problematic interpretation. Perhaps motivated to overcome Orientalist approaches and skeptical-rejectionist positions, he moves too far in the opposite direction and unreasonably adopts a modern-romanticist stance. It is also important to note that finding democratic practices in the Vedas would be attractive to Hindu nationalists because it would provide a potential source for ethnic and religious pride in a Vedic past.
While others are more restrained in their claims about popular forms of participation, representation, and sovereignty in these Vedic assemblies, their interpretations also present problems. Sharma, one of the most notable defenders of deliberative assemblies in the Vedic period, argues that the vidatha was the earliest “folk assembly,” which included women and performed deliberative, distributive, military, and religious functions.Footnote 68 His position in these debates is useful for pointing out the types of interpretive problems that consistently arise in the existing scholarship. For example, Sharma interprets a deliberative function in the following passage: “He who is the giver of life, the giver of strength, whose command all beings and the gods obey; he who rules over this two-footed and four-footed world” (AV 13.3.24). Extrapolating from this passage, he claims, “we learn that people aspired for talking big there.”Footnote 69
Three comments are in order here. First, this Atharva-Veda passage is taken directly from a creation hymn in the Ṛg-Veda (10.121.2–3). Therefore, this passage's proper context is a cosmogonic narrative and has nothing to do with a vidatha, assemblies, or deliberation. Second, the passage does not actually contain the term vidatha. Finally, one could ask how “aspiring to talk big” has any relevance for ruling concerns and the meaning of kingly rule. Does bold talk necessarily indicate deliberation about who should rule, why, or what it means to rule? Kings are assumed to be the proper rulers in Vedic works, and references to the sabhā in the Atharva-Veda do not contradict this claim. One problem with interpreting the sabhā as relevant for ruling concerns is that statements made about it neither prove nor disprove anything distinctly relevant about kingly rule. That is, this assembly assumes an institutionalized king, and none of its functions overlap with or contradict the king's apparent varṇa duties. In one example, Sharma cites a passage (AV 7.12.1–3) as evidence that the king considered the advice of the sabhā as “supremely important” on “hotly discussed proposals.”Footnote 70 These verses, however, emphasize agreement and harmony in the sabhā and not the type of disagreement or agonism that one observes, for example, in ancient Greek assemblies. Sharma translates one of these verses as stating, “We know thy name, oh, sabhā, thy name is interchange of talk; let all the company who join the sabhā agree with me” (AV 7.12.2). As Sharma himself suggests, this verse indicates that agreement, not disagreement, is valued.Footnote 71 In addition, he admits that the subject of deliberations in the sabhā “can be known only vaguely.”Footnote 72 This admission is one reason that treating vidathas and sabhās as ruling bodies is of limited use for understanding the nature of rule. In sum, not enough supplementary evidence exists to warrant an interpretation of vidatha as a term of political significance for our understanding of rule in the Atharva-Veda.
Sharma also argues that the sabhā carried out judicial functions, which included “influential men” being accountable to their peers.Footnote 73 He tellingly explains how “it seems that the richest men had to submit to the decisions of their peers,”Footnote 74 thus indicating the speculation involved when one attempts to make historical claims about whether or not “judicial functions” were carried out in this body. Additionally, Sharma speculates that the samiti was an assemblage of individuals who “transacted tribal business” and that busied itself with “religious ceremonies and prayers.”Footnote 75 His tentative discussion of the samiti indicates the uncertainty surrounding the samiti's functions as well, much of which must simply be guessed at. In the end, scholars cannot know precisely who—that is, which var ṇas (social groups) and those perhaps outside the varṇa system—constituted these assemblies or how they operated because the texts do not clarify such things. Owing to the lack of clear textual evidence showing that either of these assemblies shared ruling responsibilities with the king, I believe these scholars have generally overstated assemblies' importance for understanding political ideas in the Atharva-Veda.
Drawing upon this critique, I want to summarize the most important qualifications and conclusions regarding these assemblies' potential ruling functions. First, these gatherings or assemblies should not be interpreted as secular or purely “political” in nature. Insufficient evidence exists from which to argue that individuals in these assemblies made ruling decisions themselves or assisted the king/ruler in making particular ruling decisions. Second, this qualification should temper empirical-historical claims about these assemblies. Just as these texts are not intended to be overt political treatises, they are also not composed to present accurate historical accounts. Third, Jayaswal's analysis displays the common yet problematic practice of employing modern (particularly Western) political terminology to interpret ancient brahmanical ideas about rule. In sum, the language of state, election, national assembly, popular representation, and accountability do not make sense within this ancient brahmanical belief system. A more conceptually sensitive approach helps expose the misleading, and often anachronistic, interpretations that frequently arise in the secondary literature.
Contra democratic readings, which emphasize ideas such as political equality and elections, as well as liberal ideas concerning rights and free choice, the Atharva-Veda expresses a monarchical political picture. In the Atharva-Veda kingly rule is assumed to be the only proper form of rule, which further exemplifies a trajectory towards increasingly hierarchical conceptions of rule in the liturgical Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas. For example, N. C. Bandyopadhyaya aptly explains that Atharvan coronation hymns display how kingly rule was becoming consolidated and hierarchical.Footnote 76 In the Atharva-Veda hierarchical kingly rule was increasingly understood as the proper ruling structure, as coronation hymns express a more thoroughgoing set of ruling privileges and duties for human kings than are found in earlier works such as the Ṛg-Veda. Bandyopadhyaya highlights a passage in the fourth book where the human king is described as the “sole lord and friend of Indra who subsists on the people” (AV 4.22). This passage expresses the belief that the people must support the ruler, and that a ruler rightfully subsists (or “feeds”) on the people in a hierarchical manner. One also observes the association with Indra, an incredibly important divine rājan in Vedic cosmology who is partly responsible for maintaining the interconnected well-being of the human and nonhuman world.
In sum, textual evidence indicates belief in an established hierarchical form of kingly rule, not a democratic system. No systematic counterevidence arises in the Atharva-Veda challenging the idea that kings, as members of a specific social group (k ṣatriya) with its attendant duties, are the rightful rulers in a community. Important passages for explicating kingly rule in this layer concern the king's consecration and ruling attributes,Footnote 77 including a general desire for harmony between the king and people.Footnote 78 A good example of this desire for harmony and agreement with brahmanical speech in social gatherings can be found in book 7:
Let the sabhā and samiti, the two daughters of Prajāpati, who together know, assist me. Whomever I shall meet, may he be helpful to me. (Let my) words be esteemed in the gatherings, O Fathers. We know your name, O Sabhā: indeed, your name is “playfulness” [nariṣṭā]. And let all those who are sitting in the sabhā employ similar speech to my own. I have won splendor and knowledge from those seated together here. O Indra, make me prosperous among this entire group seated together. Whether your mind [i.e., those sitting in the sabhā] has gone elsewhere, or whether it is caught up here or there, we bring this, your mind, back: let your mind come to rest on me. (AV 7.12.1–4)
In this passage the sabhā and samiti are invoked as the two daughters of Prajāpati (the cosmic “lord of creatures”) and the speaker makes no claims about ruling matters, although the king is presumably present in the gathering. Rather, the brahmin speaker emphasizes something more general, which is indicative of most passages involving gatherings or assemblies: desire for agreement and wish that those assembled delight in what the brahmin says. From this passage one also gleans the following points.
First, the assembly does not appear to be a place where argument and reason giving are highly valued, nor is it agonistic in familiar Western senses.Footnote 79 Second, the above invocation highlights the fact that Vedic texts express a distinctly brahmanical viewpoint. Here it is important to note that brahmins perceive themselves as crucial for maintaining both social and cosmic order, and because of this privilege, many Atharva-Vedic charms are aimed at preserving and protecting the interests of brahmins.Footnote 80 This inclusive belief in the need to protect brahmins invokes a concept of stewardship because the ruler is responsible for protecting the power of various sacrificial rituals, some of which possess important cosmo-genetic effects.Footnote 81 In turn, such rituals are believed to integrate and maintain the interconnected well-being of an extensive human-nonhuman community. Owing to the increased centrality of sacrificial ritual in the liturgical Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas, rule by kṣatriyas becomes a tertiary activity: a means (protection and promotion) to a means (sacrificial ritual) to an end (maintenance and construction of the cosmos, reality, and interconnected well-being). The idea of stewardship, I suggest, captures this indirect or tertiary aspect and duty of kingly rule. Through knowledge of the Vedas and sacrificial rituals maintained by brahmins, a king is then able to protect his kingdom: “Through study of the Veda [brahmacarya: studenthood, disciplehood] and fervent practice, the king [rājan] protects the kingdom” (AV 11.5.17). While the trajectory of ruling ideas points toward hierarchical kingship in earlier layers of Vedic works, it appears more fully instantiated by the time of the Atharva-Veda.
The Rajanical Tradition: Cases of Eco-Cosmology and Swaraj
Building on this critique, I propose alternative grounds for contemporary engagement with Vedic thought by defending the category of “rajanical” thought as an alternative to more familiar Western idioms and interpretive frameworks. To start, rajanical is a more appropriate designation than political (which hearkens the Greek term polis) because it better captures a core set of concerns that extend back to the early Vedic tradition: the meaning of rule, its relation to cosmological beliefs involving sacrifice and ritual, and questions of with and for whom rulers rule within both human and human-nonhuman contexts. In contrast to those such as Proferes, I argue that we need not suppose ancient Indian thought revolved around the anthrōpos and more species-specific concerns about political sovereignty and unification. That is, scholars should not necessarily assume the same basic beliefs about rule can be found in ancient India as in any other time and place, or that rule means roughly the same thing across varying historical and cultural contexts. Different webs of belief create different perceptions of phenomena and human concerns, and identifying these differences can provide leverage for critical, creative thinking about important political dilemmas. For example, ruling in the Vedic context should not be understood as anthropocentric in nature but rather deeply cosmological, and to appreciate this one must attend closely to this tradition's own conceptual apparatus. In turn, Vedic rajanical thought displays an inherently sacrificial and ritualistic modality involving both human relations and meaningful, interdependent connections to the nonhuman world. The uniqueness of this understanding of rule lies in the idea that proper rule entails sacrifice and ritual(s) that embed and bind human beings to a deeply interconnected world, within which a human community's well-being cannot be parsed or bracketed from nonhuman well-being. As one aspect of a longer rajanical tradition, this conception suggests how the idea of stewardship could be critically revived and applied to ecological issues and debates about contemporary swaraj (self-rule).Footnote 82
Before I explain this point, two caveats are in order. First, as an initial inroad to greater intercultural understanding of the history of Indian political thought, we can begin by using the term “politics” or phrase “political thought” in a colloquial sense. But when delving more carefully into premodern Indian thought (especially orthodox brahmanical and a variety of heterodox traditions), an important concept and vocabulary we should employ is that of rule and the rajanical, including any nonbrahmanical terms or concepts that capture indigenous conceptions of rule. Contra predominant Western conceptions of rule, Vedic rajanical thought maintains that ruling decisions are made in and for a cosmologically situated, human-nonhuman community extending beyond polis or state boundaries, and therefore, not merely polis-centric. This alternative conception also suggests that sacrifice and ritual play a pivotal role in ruling beliefs and practices. That is, various sacrificial and ritual practices connect individual citizens to one another at city, state, national, and ecological levels, holding the potential to enhance flourishing at each level. Second, in adopting alternative categories and concepts one should also note their discursive contestability within a diversity of historical, religious, and philosophical contexts. After all, many vernacular categories and native traditions are not rooted in the early rajanical-brahmanic tradition or remain completely unrelated. Rajanical thought should therefore be understood as an open and contestable category.
So, what do we gain by also shifting from categories such as liberalism and democracy to a rajanical register in contemporary Indian political theory and practice, and what concrete issues might this tradition help evaluate and address? Shifting to the category of rajanical not only enhances historical and conceptual intelligibility but also provides evaluative purchase in contemporary Indian politics. In particular, this category provides a different perspective and thus novel understanding of what swaraj (self-rule) might mean and entail in Indian politics. It does so by explaining how various human-nonhuman relations—often viewed as less political or even apolitical within a liberal or democratic framework—in rajanical thought can alternatively be viewed as exposing primordial relations of rule within a broader eco-cosmology. Since numerous Indian activists and thinkers during the past century have advanced critical-revivalist sorts of arguments and participated in causes that exhibit and extend a rajanical strand of thought, I will first explain how some of their ideas fit within a broader rajanical tradition, and then comment on particular ways in which these ideas can be productively linked to conversations about swaraj. My argument thus contains both a descriptive and normative component: descriptively, I contend that aspects of the Vedic conception of rule are identifiable in the thought and practice of various thinkers and activists; normatively, I suggest that locating creative translations and applications of Vedic ideas in contemporary politics—which often face serious challenges when confronting modern liberal and democratic ideas within a postcolonial context—helps us better understand ways in which these ideas can and should be employed.Footnote 83
Along these lines, Ranchor Prime's Vedic Ecology revives and draws upon a wide variety of Vedic ideas and Hindu traditions to defend a native Indian approach to pressing ecological issues.Footnote 84 He explains how a number of these ideas and traditions exhibit valuable principles such as reverence, compassion, and devotion extended towards the nonhuman world and how various Vedic concepts cultivate greater awareness of human connectedness with the natural world, including animals such as cows, forest communities of trees and plants, and rivers such as the Yamuna and Ganges. Prime lucidly describes how numerous figures exhibit positions that critically revive what one might call “eco-cosmological” principles of stewardship: Mahatma Gandhi, whose notion of swaraj entails greater simplicity in living, increased reliance on village-level economics, nonviolence towards animals, personal self-restraint, and potential sacrifices such as fasting;Footnote 85 Satish Kumar, who explains how Vedic-Hindu traditions conceive yajña (sacrifice) as an ecological principle for inspiring reduced needs and consumptive habits;Footnote 86 Balbir Mathur, who is compassionately devoted to trees and believes they possess a fundamental dignity akin to that possessed by humans;Footnote 87 and Sunderlal Bahugana, who draws upon Vedic and Hindu ideas in addressing deforestation in the Himalayas and remains a dedicated spokesperson for the Chipko Andolan “tree-hugging” movement.Footnote 88 Finally, Prime interviews environmental activist Vandana Shiva, who explains her well-known seed-saving projects as drawing upon what she understands as a central Vedic principle of seeing divinity in all creation, including something as small as a seed. Accordingly, Shiva articulates what she takes to be three Vedic principles that can serve as a guide for a healthier ecological ethic: first, viewing the entire earth as our family, inspired by the refrain “sarve bhavantu sukhinah,” which means “Let all beings be happy”; second, not consuming more than is needed in our personal lives, which entails mitigating drastic socioeconomic inequality and not “stealing” from nonhuman beings by neglecting their needs; third, encouraging people to engage in self-reflective discipline, becoming one's own teacher and leader, and not relying on external forms of coercion as sources of changing one's behavior.Footnote 89
Now I can turn to the implications of these ideas and movements within the context of a broader rajanical tradition and for the concept of swaraj. My critique in the previous part of the essay and corresponding clarification of a distinct tradition of rajanical stewardship help demonstrate how aspects of this tradition inspire and have been inventively applied by thinkers, activists, and common citizens in contemporary Indian society. The examples above exhibit how various figures have been creatively reappropriating and developing this rajanical tradition in various practical ways. In turn, this shows how developing a native tradition of Indian political theory (or perhaps more accurately, a native tradition of Indian rajanical theory), pace Parekh, is not only a theoretical or scholarly exercise but also one grounded in praxis and attention to particular issues and circumstances. These ecological principles extend back to questions concerning the meaning of rule (rāj-) within a broader rajanical tradition of stewardship, which provides conceptual and cultural grounds for shifting our perspective and interpreting swaraj within the context of this broader tradition.
This move invokes a claim made at the outset of the essay regarding this tradition's concern with the questions of with and for whom rulers rule within both human and nonhuman contexts. The answer found in both Vedic texts and the examples above is that human beings rule with and for a wide variety of nonhuman beings and phenomena such as gods, animals, trees, and rivers. Each of these entities possesses a distinct identity and plays a significant role within a broader cosmological context, and is therefore granted dignity, looked upon with compassion, and treated with reverence. Personal sacrifices and daily rituals are central to many of the projects mentioned above—for example, Gandhi's self-restraint and fasting, Kumar's reduced consumption, and Shiva's ritualistic seed collection. In light of these examples, we gain a unique reading of swaraj. To start, the first part of the term, swa- (self, one's own), should not be understood as strongly individualistic or human-centric. Within both the conceptual framework of Vedic-rajanical stewardship and the contemporary examples provided above, ruling implicates deeply intertwined, human-nonhuman communities of interest. Because of this interconnectedness, swaraj would entail public officials and common citizens playing a central role as stewards of various communities' well-being, extending from the individual and village level outwards to the state and natural environment. This would also mean that swaraj is split along two distinct yet overlapping tracks—a human and nonhuman one. Along the human track, swaraj would entail more decentralized or localized notions of collective well-being and decision making. This conception lines up nicely with both Gandhi's understanding of swaraj as a village-centered activity and recent arguments for more localized governance by politician-activists such as Arvind Kejriwal.Footnote 90 Along the nonhuman track, as the analysis above suggests, swaraj would include a sense of embeddedness within and devoted commitment to maintaining the well-being of an interconnected community of nonhuman beings, with and for whom rule is properly exercised. Swaraj, as one potential understanding of what it means to rule, would therefore not be understood within an individualistic or human-centric vacuum.
Conclusion
In the introduction I suggested that premodern traditions are important sites for mutual intelligibility across cultures and potential resources for cross-cultural deliberation and theory building. As this essay has argued, a number of interpretive pitfalls hinder our understanding of premodern Indian thought, partly due to postcolonial anxieties and the idealization of democratic and liberal ideas. Consequently, one of the most significant issues in the literature is a faulty identification of democratic and liberal ideas in Vedic thought, which often romanticize the past to suit particular modern and contemporary sensibilities. A broader methodological problem is then exposed in approaches that presume South Asia's past should somehow contain cross-cultural equivalents to early Western political ideas. Whether conscious of this issue or not, scholars have applied particular Western cultural and historical frameworks they should set aside if they are to outline distinct South Asian or Indian traditions of political thought. Portraying South Asia as having some of the earliest democratic ideas and practices in the global history of political thought betrays an implicit arms race to find premodern democratic ideas in regions outside Greece. Presumably, this would temper claims about Western exceptionalism and help dispel concerns about the contemporary relevance of South Asia's premodern traditions. What this conceals, however, is the problematic assumption that Western traditions should somehow be the standard when identifying theoretical or practical insights in premodern traditions.
This critique is not meant to suggest that plausible cross-cultural comparisons can never or rarely ever be made. While the initial engagement with unfamiliar traditions and ideas often motivates the impulse to compare them with what is more familiar in order to get a conceptual or argumentative foothold, comparativists should pump the breaks and pay very close attention when locating and justifying appropriate hinges for cross-cultural analysis and comparison. Furthermore, this means scholars must be willing to admit when such hinges may not exist, or may be a bit “wobbly.” For such critical-revivalist projects to remain as rigorous as possible, they may need to move forward on a case-by-case basis because grounds for productive comparison often cannot be determined a priori. Cross-cultural and comparative political theory may be well-served to adopt an experimental ethos, whereby scholars begin with particular ideas or hypotheses about a productive connection or comparison and then rigorously examine whether, and to what extent, the comparison yields interesting or fruitful results.
In this essay, taking such an approach has exposed a rajanical tradition of stewardship, aspects of which have been critically revived and creatively developed in both thought and practice within India during the past century. Explicitly drawing upon aspects of this tradition, especially as they have been carried on or developed in various Hindu traditions and texts, thinkers and activists have constructed innovative approaches to contemporary environmental issues through appeals to indigenous categorical and conceptual frameworks. In turn, these developments and historical linkages can, as Williams and Warren explain, “provide some of the architecture of translation that enables self-constituting publics to form across boundaries of linguistic and cultural difference.”Footnote 91 While clarifying premodern traditions and historical pathways in regions such as South Asia increases historical understanding and cross-cultural intelligibility, my analysis also builds on Williams and Warren's argument by identifying points of engagement—sites or topics of communication—for action-oriented responses to ecological dilemmas shared across cultural boundaries. The implications for critical reflexivity, practical reasoning, and political change are thus local as well as global.
The local implications for the meaning of swaraj may entail a move toward more decentralized rule through institutions such as gram sabhas (local village councils). Importantly, this move blurs traditional hierarchical boundaries between rulers and ruled, thus exhibiting a distinct leveling trend in India's rajanical tradition(s) over time. This idea undoubtedly transgresses role-based aspects of what Sudipta Kaviraj locates in a premodern Indian tradition of rāja-dharma, especially a “para-royal” attitude adopted by rulers and voluntary abjection on the part of citizens falling under their authority.Footnote 92 In fact, many of these more traditional, paternalistic aspects of rule have been justifiably challenged by a host of contemporary grassroots movements seeking more responsive, decentralized ruling practices.Footnote 93 These contemporary developments transgress many orthodox brahmanical ideas about sociopolitical hierarchy, thus showing how broader traditions need not be understood as monolithic entities as they develop over long periods of time in response to a variety of changing historical circumstances. Such transgressive interpretations and deployments of brahmanical and early Hindu political thought also exemplify ways of resisting the sorts of essentialist claims that neo-Hindu nationalists make when they draw upon the same traditions.
Likewise, scholarly activities of concept formation and theory building should remain creative, flexible, and attentive not only to the historical past but also pressing contemporary issues. One example of this flexible approach to the historical past is exhibited in what one might call a “narrative” understanding of history. That is, many Vedic and Hindu traditions view history in a narrative fashion in which figures such as Kṛṣṇa are always “live” figures, and various hymns and stories are understood as depicting transhistorical realities stretching from past to present that can always be drawn upon for present concerns. The past is not over and done but always alive and kicking in the present, and historical narratives often serve as central sources of hope for change in current behavior and practices. As Vandana Shiva suggests, enhancing local control over community resources and viewing life in a more cyclical fashion may help increase the sense of responsibility one feels to act as a steward for the (human-nonhuman) community's well-being.Footnote 94 Such critical-revivalist approaches to the past should aim to counteract fundamentalist impulses and political attitudes that might otherwise draw upon the Vedic tradition for dubious political purposes, such as the suppression of religious diversity and defense of a false cultural unity that neglects caste hierarchy and discrimination.
To conclude, it is important to note that scholars of Indian political thought need not automatically revert to the language of rights, sovereignty, legitimacy, or even democracy when addressing current dilemmas. Understanding swaraj within a trajectory of a larger rajanical tradition highlights ways in which Indian political theory might draw upon its own traditions to address present issues. In turn, this may push us to modify Parekh's call and further develop an Indian tradition of rajanical theory. More specifically, reverting to a democratic idiom downplays an idea to which the category “rajanical” draws greater attention: swaraj is not centered merely on questions of who rules (e.g., the dēmos or people), but on questions of with and for whom elected representatives, bureaucrats, and common citizens rule. Moreover, ruling as a form of stewardship entails the ability to consider—within and across diverse local and global communities of interest—what constitutes the well-being of interconnected, “shared communities of fate.” Appealing to a long-standing rajanical tradition to interpret swaraj and the contemporary environmental efforts mentioned above, one can glean that the quality of rule in India may be enhanced by further developing a leveled conception of swaraj that cultivates the stewardship capacities of average citizens, which, for example, would include a greater degree of equality between high caste Hindus and Dalits. This move would then help clarify a conceptual frame for viewing Indian citizens as corulers who possess the ability to address a variety of contemporary rajanical, social, and economic dilemmas. In sum, a rajanical politics would be crucially concerned with ecological issues and with cultivating widespread socioeconomic equality as grounds for exercising a greater degree of local governance and rajanical stewardship. Enhancing cross-cultural intelligibility and shifting categories not only helps scholars of Indian political thought address various postcolonial anxieties, neo-Hindu nationalism, and their problematic interpretive manifestations, but also provides a better understanding of how India's own traditions may have unique resources for imagining alternative political—or rajanical—futures.
