The Training, Qualifications, Character and Powers of Ministers in Ancient India: A Study in Harmony - Sandeep Balakrishna

A KEY LINK TO UNDERSTAND both the theoretical and practical functioning of politics and statecraft in ancient India up to the destruction of the Classical Era is not to view it from the prism of what is known as democracy. While we can find contemporary terminological equivalents to adequately describe and analyze various aspects of Hindu polity, we must have a vivid picture of its practice. The chief sources that enable us to get this picture include epigraphs, language, literature, writers on Rajyasastra and Dharmasastra, numismatics and what are derisively dismissed as “oral legends.”

It is also incorrect to somehow “prove” that democracy existed in ancient India—i.e., the sort of democracy that has been in vogue for roughly the last three hundred years. At best, it can be said that some practices and elements familiar to us today did exist back then. But in this case, the parts do not make the whole. It is akin to saying that all creatures that have wings are eagles.

A reasonable definition of ancient Indian polity and statecraft is that it was a Circumscribed Monarchy where the power of the king was constrained by a Council of Ministers. Every writer on Indian polity from Manu onwards held that a good administration was one where the King and the Council of Ministers were mutually afraid of each other, and in turn, all of them were afraid of public opinion. For more details on public opinion in ancient India, see the essay series linked below.

Unlike contemporary democracies, the ruler had to compulsorily be a warrior first and an administrator next. Among other things, good administration was defined as a powerful method of preventing war and winning it if it occurred despite solid administration. Almost every royal fiat had to be whetted by the Council of Ministers before execution. In turn, these top echelons kept a hawk-like vigil on the daily life of the people, generously rewarding their good conduct, service, fidelity to tradition, and punishing faults and crimes in a timely fashion. Although this system eventually thawed and was vandalized to the point of extinction, its foundational features remained intact in the DNA of our people even after India attained a questionable independence. To quote the memorable words of the stalwart of epigraphy R. Narasimhacharya, these features contained in our historical records “bear testimony to the prowess, piety, generosity, patriotism and toleration of our princes and the people.”

P.K. Telang also describes this system beautifully:

The word Rajan (or King) means one who can keep the people contented. Power and authority were implicitly admitted to rest on the sanction and the good-will and consent of the people. The ultimate right of the people to be the sole arbiters as to the kind of government they would have and the persons they would have to govern them, was recognized. This recognition was given concrete form in two restraints on the power of the King…He could not transcend Dharma. What is Dharma? The custom of the people, admitted and sanctified as binding law and imprimatur of those who were the knowers and guardians of the people’s culture. He could not break the word of the Brahmanas. Who were the Brahmanas? Those who having acquired culture and knowledge, gave everything to the service of the country and the service of the people without expecting anything in return. Their watch-words were self-renunciation and self-sacrifice in the service of the nation. You will note how both these checks would lead to the substantiation of the ultimate power of the people.

But this does not mean that the system was perfect in all respects. There are numerous instances that show conflicts between the King and the Council of Ministers.

An early instance of this conflict occurs during the rule of the daring and indomitable Śaka ruler, Rudradamana I of the Western Kshatrapa dynasty. He placed an ambitious proposal to repair the dam of the Sudarshana Lake at Junagadh. After much deliberation, his Council of Ministers shot it down because it was cost-intensive. But Rudradamana had given his word to the people. And so, he rebuilt the dam using his personal money or privy purse.

Ministers were able to wield such extraordinary clout owing to their selection process, detailed for example, in Kautilya’s Arthasastra. Before being appointed, they were subject to rigorous tests which were above and beyond their scholarship, talent, skill or experience. These tests had everything to do with their personal character, foremost of which was absolute integrity and absolute loyalty to their land. This is the fabled fourfold Kautilyan test:

1. Religious allurement

2. Financial enticement

3. Sexual temptation

4. Inducing physical threat

Depending on which tests the aspirant passed or failed in, portfolios would be allocated. For example, if a candidate failed in all tests but passed the test of sexual temptation, he would be placed in charge of “pleasure grounds” or brothels. The candidate who passed all the tests would be appointed as the Prime Minister.

It is precisely this element that is missing in our IAS, IPS, IFS and other high-level recruitment processes. Thus, it is unsurprising that a barely-disguised, one-man breaking-India force like Harsh Mander still roams around scot-free.

These tests apart, appointments to ministerial offices entailed these qualifications:

• A solid training in the arts including music, drama, poetry, etc.

• A thorough mastery over grammar

• Impeccable and exquisite handwriting

• A cultivation of vision and foresight

• Strong memory

• Eloquence

• Health, vigour and enthusiasm

• Basic or advanced military training

• A demeanor that exuded dignity, poise, composure, charm, and wit

• Round-the-clock availability to everyone including the lowest classes of people

• A genuine attitude of affection and warmth towards all classes of the society

• Ruthlessness sans personal hatred when dealing with criminals

• Purity of life by not missing the key elements of Achara and Vyavahara such as performing the prescribed Dharmic rituals, festivals, Vratas and doing regular Daana.

• The Mahabharata has a beautiful set of verses that gives perhaps the profoundest list of qualifications and qualities a minister must be endowed with.

  Oh Rajan! Take care that your ministers should be men well-versed in the Sastra of politics and the application of the six gunas: noble birth, devout, bereft of faults, good politicians, clever lawyers, and learned in history. They must be skilled to read the unwritten signs and intentions (Ingitajnana) like an open book. They must fully know what should be done and when. They must be heroic and strong. They must well-born and well-bred, keen witted, and must succeed in all works that they undertake. They must be experts in the art of warfare and in the strengthening of forts in order to make them impregnable. They must be deeply learned in the Dharmasastras, they must be broadminded and show mercy in situations that elicit it. They must be wise, endowed with foresight and must command the wisdom to circumvent all future dangers and must have the inner strength to face and subdue the present threats. They must keenly anticipate the motives of their foes and friends alike. More vitally, they must learn how to deal with indifferent and lazy kings who act purposelessly and must guard their secrets, standing firm like rocks.

• O King! These ministers must be strictly Dharmic, generous and immune to all temptations. In a word, such ministers are strong and fit, like patient cows, to bear the burden of the state upon their backs.

  The history and culture of the Indian people and their civilization is an inspiring, sublime, and exalted kaleidoscope pieced with lovely patterns of the lives and legacies of such ministers. From the immortal Kautilya to the true, contemporary Ratna of Bharatavarsha, Sir M. Visvesvarayya. If one Kautilya, one Darbhapani, one Vidyaranya Swami, one Thimmarasu and one Visvesvarayya could sculpt the fortunes of and bring light, prosperity, and joy to an entire Rajya, imagine what an entire cabinet of such light-givers can do.

• Small wonder that Kautilya and other Hindu writers and lawgivers recommended that the King should follow the Prime Minister as “a student follows his preceptor, and a son his father.” In a superb feat of creativity, the Kannada blockbuster movie, Sri Krishnadevaraya brings this feature vividly alive in the scene where Prime Minister Thimmarasu slaps the newly-coronated emperor Sri Krishnadevaraya several times in a row. The Raya’s response: “I understand that there is an intrinsic message of virtue and warning in your slaps. It only shows the depth of your affection towards me.”

  We believe further commentary on this point is superfluous.

• Courtesy: https://www.dharmadispatch.in/history/the-training-qualifications-character-and-powers-of-ministers-in-ancient-india-a-study-in-harmony

Life in an Indian Village: The Story of Kelambakam - Sandeep Balakrishna

Preface

Mohandas Gandhi’s oft-quoted remark that the real India lives in her villages has been quoted so often that it has become sick cliché: sick because our attitude towards our own villages swings between two extremes: our internalized colonial contempt for them or a dreamy romanticization of village life that has no basis in reality.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Madras Presidency had a total population of 31 million, ninety percent of which lived in its 55,000 villages. Writing about this in 1891, a British joint collector Mr. B. Knight made this eminent observation:

"It is in the villages of southern India that we must go to see Hindu life at its best, unaffected as it is by Mahommedan conquest or by the influence of Western civilisation."

Located in the Chingleput (Chengalpattu) district between Kanchipuram and Mahabalipuram, Kelambakam was one such village. 

Fed up with the constant barrage of disparaging Western press coverage of India as a land of barbarians, a certain T. Ramakrishna decided to hit back. The result was a book innocuously titled Life in an Indian Village in which he gives a pen portrait of the selfsame Kelambakam village. As if to stamp his book with the finality of the British colonial authority, Ramakrishna got a forward written by Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff, who was spending a cushy retired life in England.

Kelambakkam in 1891

The life in Kelambakam described in this book is both a reminder of the invaluable civilizational traits and cultural values that we have permanently lost, and an evocative kaleidoscope of what Hindu society really looks like when lived in this manner.

This is how Kelambakam looked like:

A cluster of trees, consisting of the tamarind, mango, cocoanut, plantain, and other useful Indian trees, a group of dwellings, some thatched and some tiled, a small temple in the centre. These were surrounded on all sides by about five hundred acres of green fields, and a large tank capable of watering those five hundred acres for six months. This is the village of Kelambakam. It comprises some fifty or sixty houses, and has a population of about 300. 

It is incredible when we note the fact that Kelambakam was sandwiched between two of the greatest spiritual and historical centres of Hindu civilisation: Kanchipuram and Mahabalipuram. It is said that Kelambakam came into existence in the 11th Century.

Social Organisation of Kelambakam

The village headman or Munsiff, is a man of respectable ancestry, in whom the whole management of the village is vested. He has the power of deciding petty cases, both civil and criminal, of collecting revenues from the farmers, and generally assists the authorities in their official duties.

The Karnam or village accountant, comes next. He knows by-heart, the extent, name, rent, etc., of every field in the village. He also settles monetary disputes among the villagers.

The Taliyari is the Policeman, who has to watch the village at night, patrol the fields when crops are ripe, and see that no thefts occur.

The Purohita (Brahmin) is the friend, guide, and philosopher of the village. He knows some Sanskrit, and has read many books on astrology. He can recite by heart all the four thousand stanzas of the Divya Prabhandham. He is "a person steeped in religion." No activity in the daily, family and social life of the village takes place without seeking his advice and following it. Two other Brahmins also perform the Puja of the temple by turns.

The Vadyar or schoolmaster is a very important element in the village. He is honoured and respected by the people. They regard him as friend and counsellor. His duties multifarious and quite incredible.

He is expected to look after the children of the villagers, and to take an interest in their welfare not only in the school but in their homes. If it is reported that a boy is ill, and that he refuses to take medicine, the master will go to his house and see that the medicine is administered. If a boy does not eat his meals properly, or if he becomes troublesome after school hours, his parents instantly invoke the assistance of the schoolmaster who goes to the house of the erring youth and see that such things do not repeat.

The Vadyar makes it a special part of his duty to give instruction in Dharma. The work of the school begins and closes every day with a prayer to Saraswati and Vighneswara.

The Vythian or physician is supremely important. His practice is founded on the Vagadam, a Tamil work on medicine written in verse. In describing a disease, in prescribing medicines, and even in the matter of diet, he always quotes- from Vagadam. However, he does not believe in the effectiveness of medicine alone. He always emphasises upon the family and relatives of his patients the necessity of performing some religious ceremony to appease the anger of the gods.

The work of the carpenter, the blacksmith, the shepherd, the washerman, the potter, the barber, and others all have their place of respect and honour in Kelambakam and are treated with fairness, courtesy, dignity and respect. Sometimes, the barber doubles up as a physician. He has his own unique set of potions and medicines.

Like every village in South India, Kelambakam too, has a Grama Devata or village Goddess. She guards it from diseases and pestilence. Her Puja is performed by a Pujari who is also the oracle or soothsayer of the village. In this capacity, he is empowered to levy all sorts of contributions on the simple villagers.

Some Anecdotes

From one perspective, Life in an Indian Village is nothing without its charming and sometimes, moving anecdotes. Here are some of them.

The Village School

Nalla Pillai is the schoolmaster of Kelambakam. He is supposed to be a great-grandson of the celebrated Nalla Pillai, author of the Tamil Mahabharata. His school is attended by twenty or thirty boys. Even boys from the neighbouring villages come here to be instructed. The boys are seated in two rows on a raised basement in the outer part of the house, and the master is seated at one end of the pial.

Three or four youngsters, between five and seven years of age, are seated in a row, learning the letters of the alphabet by uttering them aloud and writing them on sand strewn on the floor. One or two are writing the letters on cadjan leaves. One boy is reading in a loud voice words from a cadjan book, while another reads short sentences. A third is working sums in arithmetic. A fourth is reciting poetical stanzas in a drawling tone, and a fifth is reading verses from Nalia Pillai's Mahabharata.

A boy is said to have completed his education if he is able to read and write accurately anything on a cadjan leaf and know the simple and compound rules of arithmetic and simple interest. This proficiency may be attained after four or five years' study in the village school.

The boys go to school before six in the morning, return home for breakfast at nine, go back at ten, and remain there till two, when they are allowed to go for their midday meal. They then return to school at three, and remain there till it gets dark.

During holidays, the youths are also made to learn by-heart some poetical stanzas containing moral maxims on cadjan leaves, at the top of which there always appears some religious symbol or saying such as the following: Victory be to Rama! Siva is everywhere! The boys are always taught to fear God, to be honest and truthful, to venerate their parents and superiors.

The Ambattan or Barber

Kailasam is the Ambattan or village barber and the village hair-dresser. He is also the musician of his village. Without music, no festival can be celebrated in the temple, no marriage or any other ceremony can take place in an Indian household.

On those occasions, Kailasam and his people are required to play on the flute, beat drums, etc.

Kailasam is also the surgeon of the village. They are considered to be the fittest persons to treat surgical cases, probably because, as barbers, they handle the knife. Thoyamma, the wife of Kailasam, is the midwife of the village. Her attendance is also required every day, morning and evening, to look after newly-born infants, to bathe them, to administer to them proper medicines, etc.

Women in Kelambakam

In India, women are said to hold a subordinate position. It is said that they are simply child-bearing machines. Such views are thrust upon us by certain writers who pretend to intimately know the manners and customs of the Hindus. But they know next to nothing about the Hindu life.

But the keen observer of the inner life of Hindu society will have no difficulty in discovering that the poorest Indian villager loves his wife as tenderly and as affectionately as the most refined mortal on earth. In his obscure cottage,

Unseen by man’s disturbing eye, love shines
Curtained from the sight
Of the gross world, illumining
One only mansion with her light.

The women of Kelambakam freely enter into conversation, in which intelligence and wit are combined, which will convince even the most superficial observer that they are not so stupid as they are sometimes represented to be.

Overall Picture

Kelambakam is a little world in itself, having a government of its own and preserving intact the traditions of the past in spite of the influences of a foreign government and a foreign civilization.

Every member of the little state of Kelambakam regularly performs the duties allotted to him, and everything works like a machine. Those that render service for the upkeep of the village constitution are either paid in grain or have some lands allotted to them to be cultivated and enjoyed free of rent.

The doings of those who govern them and things political are nothing to them. It is enough for them if Providence blesses them with periodical rains, if their lands bring forth plenty to sustain them and their children and to preserve unruffled the quiet, even tenor of their lives.

This policy of non-interference and indifference to what passes outside his own sphere has been the main characteristic and, in fact, the guiding principle of the Indian villager from time immemorial.

Closing Notes

Life in an Indian Village is truly delightful book. But it is also a book of loss. An unfortunate attitude and approach that Hindus blindly copied from the colonial British was to theorise their own practical life. Over the last 150 years, the attitude has become an ingrained habit with Hindus. The amount and scale of damage that this has done is incalculable. The British had an imperial reason to do this: to study the Hindu society to the last atom in order to break it, in order to retain their hold on India. What excuse did Hindus have to continue the same vile habit even after “independence?”

Grant Duff makes an extremely pertinent observation in his foreword to the book:

The reader will see that no good can be effected for these people, but only much harm, by introducing European methods of Government, foreign to their characters and conditions. What we can do is to enable these myriad little worlds to live in peace, instead of being perpetually liable to be harried and destroyed by every robber or petty tyrant who could pay a handful of scoundrels to follow him.

To their credit, the British largely left our villages alone. The Nehruvian machinery with its handful of Congress and Communist scoundrels pulverised our villages by first corrupting the Sanatana value system that underscored the lifestyle sketched in this book.

If the mandarins manning our education policy perchance have some free time, they would do a great national service by scouring our vast and valuable archives for such books and prescribing excerpts and summaries as lessons for our schoolchildren.

Postscript

I searched the Internet for information on Kelambakam and found a Wikipedia entry on it. This is how it reads:

Kelambakkam is a suburban and residential neighbourhood of Chennai, India. It is located in the south-eastern portion of the city along the Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR), and is about 5 km from Siruseri IT park and 12 km from Sholinganallur junction… Kelambakkam is considered as the southern gateway to Chennai city on OMR Road. Kelambakkam comes under Thiruporur Taluk of Chengalpattu district.

In other words, Kelambakkam is today a completely unrecognisable, foreign land created in less than 130 years.

Courtesy: https://www.dharmadispatch.in/culture/life-in-an-indian-village-the-story-of-kelambakam