India is, no doubt, the greatest of the world democracies both in terms of demographic pattern and geographical area. The idea of democracy for the western world, though it started with the teachings of Aristotle on the city-states of Greece, appeared and spread among the people of the West only after the French revolution.
The Euro-American concept of democracy developed fully after the middle ages, and the ancient histories of these worlds are devoid of any such traces of democratic thought. But in the eastern world, especially in Bharat, the common people’s life was modelled on certain vague democratic principles. The evidence of such a life of cooperation and democratic thoughts is spread far and wide in India’s ancient religious and political texts.
A careful analysis of the evidence will shed new light on the true nature of life that was in practice in that pre-historic era. For example, in Rigveda X-191(the last hymn), Rishi Angiras speaks to Agni in the following manner:-
• Over and over, o Agni, you bull, you wrest together all things from the stranger. You are kindled in the footprint of refreshment. Bring goods here to us.
• Come together, speak together; together, let your thoughts agree, just as the gods of long ago, coming to an agreement together, reverently approach their sacrificial portion.
• Common to them all is the solemn utterance, common the assembly, common their thought along with their perception. I (hereby) utter an utterance common to you all on your behalf, with an oblation common to you all offer on your behalf.
• Common is your purpose; common is your heart; let your thought be common so that it will go well for you together.
(Stephanie W. Jamison, Joel P. Brereton (trans.) – The Rigveda, Vol 3,Page 1160)
Sayanacharya finds a collective national mind in these hymns, which gives us evidence of early democratic life. (Neelakandan Aravindan, Hindutva, Origin, Evolution and Future: BuleOne Ink LLP, Noida 2023, page 71)
In India, the earliest evidence of a cultured and ordered life was available with the Harappan people. Archaeological excavations have revealed that those people were peace-loving, mutually cooperative and had built an oligarchic type of administration with people’s participation. The well-planned city life is an indication of an earlier cooperative and democratic set that existed in those ancient times.
AL Basham has given a detailed description of the Harappan Culture in his monumental work of history, The Wonder That Was India. He writes: “when these cities have first excavated, no fortifications, and few weapons were found, and no building could be certainly identified as a temple or a palace. The hypothesis was then put forward that the cities were oligarchic commercial republics, without sharp extremes of wealth and poverty, and with only a weak repressive organisation; but the excavations at Harappa in 1946 and further discoveries at Mohenjo Daro have shown that this idyllic picture is incorrect.
Each city had a well-fortified citadel, which seems to have been used for both religious and governmental purposes. The regular planning of the streets, and the strict uniformity throughout the area of the Harappan culture in such features as weights and measures, the size of bricks, and even the layout of the great cities suggest rather a single centralised state than a number of free communities” (p15-16).
Here a pertinent question arises. How does a society, if its basic concept of social life is not democratic, can build such an organised and well-planned community? One possibility is the presence of an all-powerful, domineering central power to which all the people of the society are subservient. Such power is possible only after prolonged strife among the various strata of the society. But the absence of any archaeological evidence for weapons and palace-like structures rules out such a possibility.
The ground plans of the Harappan buildings remained almost unchanged for millennia. Their script was also steady, showing a comparatively calm and uneventful life. From all this evidence, we can logically infer that the sentiments of the people were based on a proto-democratic notion of equality and co-existence. This idea of the pre-historic people permeated to the later generations, paving the ground for a democratic society which was powerful enough even to cause a change of heart in such ruthless rulers like Asoka in later years.
During the reign of Asoka in the 6th century BCE, Buddhist thoughts and philosophy had made inroads into the thoughts of the common people, making them averse towards violence. Those were the era of wars and great devastations. The edicts of Asoka give us the real picture of the devastation caused by his aggressive empire-building. The Kalinga war caused the death of 1,50,000 people, and 1,00,000 people were caught as captives.
In Asoka’s own words, “just after taking of Kalinga, the Beloved of the Gods began to follow Righteousness, to love Righteousness, to give instruction in Righteousness” (Basham, 54). Historians often dismay at what caused a sudden change of heart in such a violent emperor, who is unmoved of blood, to turn himself into a messenger of peace and righteousness! The only possible answer is the apathy of his people towards violence, and this apathy might have snowballed into an anti-war sentiment among the people, which was strong enough to make a course correction in the reigning emperor. This was a democratic movement indeed, though silent and supported by the teachings of Buddha.
Who among the world’s kings is the most righteous and democratic? Bhagwan Ram, indeed. Valmiki’s Ramayana gives a heart-rending instance of Rama’s adherence to people’s opinions and how the King respected them. When Maa Sita was freed from the bondage of Ravana and brought to Ayodhya after destructing the demon King’s empire, common people started raising questions about the chastity of Sita, which happened to fall in the ears of Rama. Rama, being the emperor of Ayodhya, was at his freedom to ignore such ruminations. But he did heed those popular beliefs and decided to put Sita to an agnipariksha (an oath of fire) to prove her innocence. This, according to Lord Rama, is the duty of a righteous king to take his people into confidence and appear before them unblemished and crystal pure. Such a commitment to the purest democratic values is unparalleled among any of the kings of the world.
Dharma was the cornerstone of Indian philosophical thoughts. Our epics are full of such instances where dharma played its role. During the Mahabharata war, Arjuna is seeking the blessings of his elders and peers on the enemy lines. When Bhishma was forced to wage a war with his guru Parasurama, Bhisma seeks his permission by shooting an arrow passing near his ears and his blessings by shooting another arrow at his feet. Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata gives us a detailed description of the incident. It is the tradition of the Bharath to be democratic even amidst one’s adversaries and in the most tiring of situations.
Democracy generates from the concept of Dharma. Whether ancient or modern, the Indian psyche is modelled on the age-old concept of Dharma. During the freedom struggle, Mahatma Gandhi was able to knit together various sections of the people of Bharat because of this long tradition of Dharma. Awareness of one’s rights, a sense of equality and a desire to create a world free of exploitation resulted in the birth of a democratic form of Government. All these finer concepts of civil society were explicit in various epochs of India, making it the cradle of democracy.
