Before we take up the report of the Secretary for India and the Viceroy we intend to clear the ground by briefly meeting the almost universal impression that prevails in educated circles in the West, that democratic institutions are foreign to the genius of the Asiatic peoples and have never been known in India before. The latest statement to this effect was made by Mr. Reginald Coupland of the Round Table Quarterly, in an article he contributed to the New Republic (September 7, 1918) on “Responsible Government in India.” We have neither the time nor the desire to go into the question as it relates to other Asiatic countries, though we might state, in general terms, that an impartial study of Asiatic history will disclose that in the centuries preceding the Reformation in Europe, Asia was as democratic or undemocratic as Europe. Since then democracy has developed on modern lines in Europe. While Asia has gradually disintegrated and fallen under foreign domination, Europe has progressed towards democracy. As regards India, however, we intend to refer briefly to what historical evidence is available.

Firstly, we wish to make clear what we understand by “democracy.” There is no desire to enter into an academic discussion of the subject nor to burden this book with quotations from eminent thinkers and writers. In our judgment, the best definition of democracy so far has been furnished by Abraham Lincoln, viz., “the government of the people, by the people and for the people,” regardless of the process or processes by which that government is constituted. One must, however, be clear minded as to what is meant by “the people.” Does the expression include all the people that inhabit the particular territory to which the expression applies, regardless of sex, creed, color and race, or does it not? If it does, we are afraid there is little democracy even in Europe and America today. Until recently half of the population was denied all political power in the State by virtue of sex. Of the other half a substantial part was denied that right by virtue of economic status or, to be more accurate, by lack of economic status considered necessary for the exercise of political power. Even now the Southern States of the United States, Amendment XV to the American Constitution notwithstanding, effectively bar the colored people from the exercise of the franchise supposed to have been accorded to them by the amendment. In Europe, religious and social bars still exist in the constitutions of the different states. As Great Britain is supposed to be the most democratic country in Europe, we cannot do better than take the history of the growth of public franchise in that country as the best illustration of the growth of democracy in the terms of President Lincoln’s formula.

Travelling backwards, the earliest democratic institutions known to Europe were those of Greece and Rome. In applying the term “democratic” to the city republics of Greece and Rome it is ignored that these “republics” were in no sense democratic. “Liberty,” says Putnam Weale, “as it was understood in those two celebrated republics of Athens and Sparta meant abject slavery to the vast mass of the population, slavery every whit as cruel as any in the Southern States of the American Union before the war of Liberation.... In neither of these two republics did the freemen ever exceed twenty thousand, whilst the slaves ran into hundreds of thousands, and were used just as the slaves of Asiatics were used.[1] Thus the Greek republics were simply cities in which a certain portion of the inhabitants, little qualified to exercise them, had acquired exclusive privileges, while they kept the great body of their brethren in a state of abject slavery.”[2] Discussing the nature of Roman citizenship Putnam Weale remarks (p. 25) that “in spite of the polite fiction of citizenship, the destinies of scores of millions were effectively disposed of by a few thousands.” This was true not only with regard to the outlying parts of the Empire but even as to Italy itself. “Roman liberty,” continues Putnam Weale, “though an improvement on Greek conceptions, was like all liberty of antiquity confined really to those who, being present in the capital, could take an active part in the public deliberations. It was the liberty of city and not of a land. It was therefore exactly similar in practise, if not in theory, to the kind of liberty, which has always been understood in advanced Asiatic states—the system of Government by equipoise and nothing else. The idea of giving those who lived at a distance from the capital any means of representing themselves was never considered at all; and so, it was the populace of the capital (or only a part of it), aided by such force as might be introduced by the contesting generals or leaders, which held all the actual political power. Representative Government—the only effective guarantee of liberty of any sort—had therefore not yet been dreamt of.” [The italics are ours.]

Alison in his History of Europe, Vol. I, says: “The states of Florence, Genoa, Venice and Pisa were not in reality free; they were communities in which a few individuals had usurped the rights, and disposed of the fortunes, of the great bulk of their fellow citizens, whom they governed as subjects or indeed as slaves. During the most flourishing period of their history, the citizens of all Italian republics did not amount to 20,000, and these privileged classes held as many million in subjection. The citizens of Venice were 2500 and those of Genoa 4500, those of Pisa, Siena, Lucca and Florence taken together, not above 6000.” [Italics ours.] Coming to more modern times we find it stated by Morse Stephens in his History of Revolutionary Europe that “the period which preceded the French Revolution and the era of war from the troubles of which Modern Europe was to be born may be characterised as that of the benevolent despots. The State was everything, the nation nothing.” Speaking of the eighteenth-century conditions in Europe, Stephens remarks that “the great majority of the peasants of Europe were throughout that century absolute serfs”; also that “the mass of the population of Central and Eastern Europe was purely agricultural and in its poverty expected naught but the bare necessaries of existence. The cities and consequently the middle classes formed but an insignificant factor in the population.” These quotations reveal the real character of the European democracy in ancient and mediÆval and even in early modern Europe up to the end of the eighteenth century, or, to be more accurate, to the time of the French Revolution. Compare this with the following facts about the political institutions of India, during the ancient and mediÆval times:

(1) First we have the testimony of ancient Brahmanic and Buddhistic literature, preserved in their sacred books, about the right of the people to elect their rulers; the duty of the rulers to obey the law and their obligation to consult their ministers as well as the representatives of the public in all important affairs of State.

The Vedic literature contains references to non-monarchial forms of Government,[3] makes mention of elected rulers and of assemblies of people, though the normal as distinguished from universal form of Government according to Professor Macdonald was by Kings, “a situation which, as in the case of the Aryan invaders of Greece and of the German invaders of England, resulted almost necessarily in strengthening the monarchic element of the constitution.”[4]

In the Aitreya Brahmana occur terms which are translated by some as representing the existence of “self-governed” and “kingless” states. These authorities have been collected, translated and explained by K. P. Jayas Wal and Narendranath Law in a series of articles published in the Modern Review of Calcutta.

The Mahabharata, the great Hindu epic, makes mention of kingless states or oligarchies. “In fact,” says Mr. Banerjea, “all the Indian nations of these times possessed popular institutions of some type or other.”[5]

Professor Rhys Davids has said, in his Buddhist India, that “the earliest Buddhist records reveal the survival side by side with more or less powerful monarchies, of republics with either complete or modified independence.” He names ten such republics in Northern India alone. In regard to the system of Government effective within one of the tribes that constituted a republic of their own, the same scholar observes: “The administrative and judicial business of the clan was carried out in public assembly, at which young and old were alike present in their common Mote Hall. A single chief—how and for what period chosen we do not know—was elected an officeholder, presiding over the sessions, or, if there were no sessions, over the State. He bore the title of Raja, which must have meant something like the Roman Consul or the Greek Archon.”[6] There is no evidence of the existence of slaves or serfs in these communities. Evidently all were freemen.

(2) We have the evidence of Greek historians of the period who accompanied Alexander in his Asiatic Campaign, or who, after Alexander’s death, represented Greek monarchs at the courts of Indian rulers. “Even as late as the date of Alexander’s invasion,” says Mr. Banerjea, “many of the nations of the Punjab lived under democratic institutions.” Speaking of one of them called Ambasthas (Sambastai), the Greek author of Ancient India says: “They lived in cities in which the democratic form of Government prevailed.” “Curtius,” adds Mr. Banerjea, “mentions a powerful Indian tribe, where the form of Government was democratic, and not regal.”[7] Similarly Arrian, another Greek writer, is quoted as mentioning several other independent, self-governing tribal communities who lived under democratic forms of government and bravely resisted the advance of Alexander. One of them, when making submission to Alexander, told him that “they were attached more than any others to freedom and autonomy, and that their freedom they had preserved intact from the time Dionysos came to India until Alexander’s invasion.”[8] There were some others which had an aristocratic form of Government. In one of them mentioned in Ancient India, “the administration was in the hands of three hundred wise men.”

Another Greek writer, Diodoros, speaks of Patala as “a City of great note with a political constitution drawn on the same lines as the Spartan.” It may safely be presumed that the Greek meant what he said. Chanakya, the author of a great treatise on political science, mentions many powerful oligarchies that existed down to the fourth century A. D. In one of the inscriptions, said to be of the sixth century A. D., the Malavas are referred to as living under a republican form of Government.[9]

(3) Even when kingship became an established institution the idea that the King was only a servant of the people survived for a long time. His “remuneration” was fixed at one-sixth of the produce. His subjects had the right to depose him or to turn him out if he failed in his duty. The authorities on these points are collected by Mr. Banerjea on pp. 72 and 73 of his book.

(4) Similarly many authorities are quoted by Mr. Banerjea on pp. 74 and 75 of his learned work showing that, according to Hindu ideals practised in ancient times, the king was not above the law. He was not an autocrat. He was as much bound by the law as his subjects. Laws were not made by kings. “Legislation was not among the powers entrusted to a king,” says Mr. Banerjea. “There is no reference in early Vedic literature to the exercise of legislative authority by the king, though later it is an essential part of his duties,” says Prof. Macdonell.[10]

(5) Assemblies and councils are quite frequently mentioned both in the Rig and the Atharva Vedas. “The popular assembly was a regular institution in the early years of the Buddhistic age (500 to 300 B.C.)” Chanakya mentions that in the King’s Council the decision of the majority should prevail.[11] Sukraniti lays down elaborate rules of procedure for the conduct of business in these assemblies. “The Council was the chief administrative authority in the kingdom. The King was supposed not to do anything without the consent of the Council.”[12] In Kerala State, South India, during the first and second centuries of the Christian Era, there were five assemblies one of which consisted of “representatives of the people summoned from various parts of the State.”[13] “From the Ceylon inscriptions we learn that in that island all measures were enacted by the King in Council, and all orders were issued by and under the authority of the Council.”

While all this is true of Ancient India, we cannot claim the existence of the same system of Government for mediÆval India. Even as regards Ancient India, all that is claimed is that it possessed as much democracy, if not more, as Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome. The non-existence of slavery in Northern India gives it therefore a superior character to that of the Ancient republics of Greece and Rome. In the South, it is believed slavery did exist. Coming to mediÆval times generally known as the Mohammedan period of Indian History consisting of two epochs, from 400 to 1200 A.D. and from 1200 to 1800 A.D., we notice that the country enjoyed a durable kind of government, cities under absolute rule, and villages, as before, self-governed. The absolute rule was a benevolent or malevolent despotism according to the character of the Hindu or Moslem sovereign who reigned. But in the villages India maintained a democratic form of government right up to the beginning of British rule; and though under British rule, it has been practically superseded by the rule of the officials, yet in some parts of the country the spirit is still alive, as will appear from the following testimony recorded by Mr. Sidney Webb in his Preface to Mr. John Matthai’s volume, Village Government in British India:

“One able collector of long service in Central India informed me that he had been, until a few months before, totally unaware that anything of the sort existed in any of the villages over which he ruled. But being led to make specific inquiries on the subject, he had just discovered, in village after village, a distinctly effective if somewhat shadowy, local organization, in one or other form of panchayat, which was, in fact, now and then giving decisions on matters of communal concern, adjudicating civil disputes, and even condemning offenders to reparation and fine. Such a Local Government organization is, of course, ‘extra-legal’ and has no statutory warrant, and, in the eyes of the British tribunals, possesses no authority whatever. But it has gone on silently existing, possibly for longer than the British Empire itself, and is still effectively functioning, merely by common consent and with the very real sanction of the local public opinion.”