At Each Stage in Our Long History, A Doctrine of Governance Can be Discerned Vice President

The Vice President of India Shri M. Hamid Ansari has said that Epistemic Injustice in historical terms necessitates some epistemic archaeology about the concepts of governance and justice in different ages of our own history since it is a truism that intellectual history is located at the intersection of social and cultural history and cannot be fully understood when divorced from the economic and political. Addressing after inaugurating a Project by CSDS on ‘Parekh Institute of Indian Thought’ at a function here last evening, he said that in regard to ideas themselves, there is enough textual evidence available to shed light on the practice of governance and the principles underlying them. Apart from Manusmriti andArthashastra, we have Asoka’s Edicts and accounts of travellers to give us a fair idea of political structures and values that may initially have been republican but eventually became monarchic.

He said that here, a word of caution would be relevant. Writing about political concepts of ancient India in 1927, Narayan Chandra Bandyopadhyaya of Calcutta University referred to the difficulty of terminological equivalence and the ideas connoted by them. He cautioned against reading “Western ideas into our history”. The same holds for the medieval period of Indian history. The 14th century historian Ziauddin Barani analysed the working of the institutions of Delhi Sultanate and enunciated a theory of monarchy emanating from them. One passage sums up the rationale for legitimacy:

“Only that ruler can in truth be called and deemed a King in whose territory no man goes to sleep naked and hungry, and who makes laws and frames measures owing to which no subject of his has to face any material distress from which there is a danger to his life”.

The Vice President said some of these ideas, according to the encyclopaedic Abul Fazl, were incorporated by Sher Shah Suri in his statecraft. Akbar amplified them in good measure and added perceptions that promoted tolerance and social harmony. Above all, and away from statecraft, social values were preached and practiced across the length and breadth of the land. The emphasis was on accommodation, not on rejection.

He said that at each stage in our long history, a doctrine of governance can be discerned. The colonial hegemony and its rationale for social engineering to create a perception of self by the ‘natives’ certainly complicated matters. The challenge now is to go into the interstices of earlier thought patterns to ascertain the nature of contents and their underlying values.

The Vice President opined that more recently and in the pre-independence period, many of our thinkers sought to bring about a renaissance but often faltered on what Tagore called the “social inadequacy” of our creed of nationalism. Three questions do need to be raised about earlier ages. Was there a concept of justice? Did it have partial or universal validity? Was it notional or practical?

The Vice President said that Lord Bhiku Parekh is a political thinker of great eminence and this initiative of setting up an Institute of Indian Thought is certainly timely. In years to come, inquisitive minds would thank him and the CSDS for closing this gap in our institutional framework for intellectual pursuits.