The Indian Tradition

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Session 6

• The Indian Tradition

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Guruji

• Welcome to my co-star Guru Raminda!

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Introduction

• By India, I mean what we would today call the
  Indian sub-continent or South Asia. It includes
  the modern states of India, Pakistan, Bangla
  Desh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and perhaps
  places like Bhutan and Sikkim.
• However, Indian cultural influence spread far
  outside those borders into southeast Asia, thus
  the term Indo-china. Buddhism remains a major
  religion in the area.
• Before the arrival of Islam, most of Southeast
  Asia was Buddhist and Hindu. Today, only Bali
  remains Hindu but Indian ideas on religion and on
  government remain strong in countries like
  Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia and are
  even found in the Philippines.
• We will examine traditional ideas on power and
  then look at how they affect modern India and
  Southeast Asia.

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Traditions

• You should by now not be surprised to learn that
  there is more than one Indian tradition!
• Hindu and Buddhist ideas were mixed with
  traditional ideas on kingship for most of the
  history of the area but the Moghul incursions
  brought Islam and the British brought European
  ideas on power and government.
• Like China, the Indian subcontinent should be
  compared with Europe, not just one European
  country. It is more diverse than Europe. For
  example, North and South are racially and
  linguistically different.

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Power

• We will start with Hindu notions of power because
  these were the base and are still influential in
  India today. Note that Hindu is a modern term
  for what many call the Great Tradition or
  something similar. These ideas were not seen as a
  separate religion in an organised sense but as
  shared views. Buddhism shares many beliefs with
  this tradition and can be seen as a variant form
  of it.
• The Mongol (Moghul) conquest brought Islam and
  many Indians converted to the new religion most
  of them untouchables because Islam offered them
  equality of status This affects the attitudes of
  Hindus towards Islam.
• Pakistan is a Muslim country where Islamic ideas
  conflict with secular attitudes and older
  traditions.

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Hinduism

• What we call the Hindu tradition goes back to the
  Vedic hymns written in Sanskrit some two and half
  thousand years ago (which were probably handed
  down orally from well before then).
• The next most important is the Mahabharata
  (including the well know Baghavad Gita) which
  deals with the battles of the five Pandava
  brothers.
• Most important of all is the Ramayana which is
  known not only in India but to this day in
  Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.
  It is the basis of dances, wayang puppet shows
  and legends. Its characters and lessons are very
  much alive in many countries.

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Vedas

• The vedas were probably composed when a tribal
  society based on clans and family relationships
  was undergoing changes that ended up in divine
  kingship.
• At this time, sacrifice and ritual was important.
  Rulers and prominent people had to perform the
  rituals correctly if the group was not to suffer
  disasters.
• To this day, ritual remains important..
• There seems to be some distrust of rulers and one
  verse suggests that ten harlots are better than
  one king but this is against the trend.

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Mahabharata

• This is an epic that describes the tribulations
  and triumphs of the five Pandava brothers who
  fight their enemies (and marry the same woman).
• An important concept to come out of this is the
  notion of dharma which teaches that we must
  follow our destiny and that destiny is ordained
  by karma, i.e. it is something we are born with.
• Thus, kingship is something which some people are
  born to and must follow because it is their
  destiny.
• Clearly, this supports the notion of kingship as
  something which certain people are born to.

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Ramayana

• The Ramayana can also be seen as a story or myth
  that supports the notion of kingship. It remains
  relevant.
• Sita, the bride of Prince Rama is abducted by the
  wicked demon king, Ravanna, who takes her off to
  Lanka. Rama then rescues her with the aid of
  Hanuman, the monkey King, and his warriors. They
  return to Ayodha which is a kind of Indian
  Camelot and live nobly.
• Ayodha was taken as the name of the Thai capital
  (Ayuttaya) which was destroyed by the Burmese in
  1767 but whose ruins still exist. Yogyakarta in
  Java is also a version of the holy city.
• The Ramayana is the origin of many Indian ideas
  about the powers and duties of the ruler and we
  will look at some modern uses of it later.

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Buddhism

• The Buddha was the original scientist he
  experimented with asceticism and luxury, found
  neither worked and then found the true middle
  path. He was a teacher who suggested that if
  others repeated the experiment they would get the
  same result.
• His teachings became formalised by priests and
  scholars and Buddhism broke into a number of
  schools and sects. The two major ones are the
  Theravada (or Hinayana) and the Mahayana.
  Mahayana is found in China, Japan and Korea while
  Theravada dominates Southeast Asia Sri Lanka.
  Mahayana also contains many schools including the
  corrupted Tantric version in Tibet.
• The Buddhas teachings have got mixed up with
  local and other beliefs monks may exercise
  temporal power.

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Kautilya

• Machiavelli is the European Kautilya! Both gave
  detailed and practical advice to rulers which was
  more pragmatic than moral.
• Your readings give excerpts from which you will
  see that he considered such things as guile and
  force. Power is about cunning and conquest.
• While rulers, like politicians everywhere,
  couched their power in moral terms, they often
  took Kautilyas advice in practice.
• Who can tell me what Kautilya said that is
  relevant to power?

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Mandala

• Kautilya discusses the cosmological concept of
  Mandala which has remained influential.
• The Mandala is a series of concentric circles. At
  the centre is the sacred Mount Meru which is the
  axis of the world. The innermost circle is
  divided into four lands one of which is the
  earth the next circle is sea, then the next is
  land, and so on.
• Cosmic harmony depends on a hierarchy of gods
  and, because big fish eat little fish, we need a
  hierarchy of kings to maintain earthly harmony.

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Mandala (2)

• According to the notion of raja-mandala, the king
  takes the place of Mount Meru at the centre. The
  maharajadiraja (great king) must weld together
  all the rings through conquest and alliance with
  lesser kings.
• Those in the first circle are natural enemies and
  in the next circle potential allies. Those in the
  third circle are his enemies potential allies
  and those in the fourth are his allies natural
  allies and so on.
• Kautilya says this is the basis for all external
  relations and world order.
• The world order is constantly adjusted as big
  fish eat little fish thus, states come and go
  through conquest and alliances. So, through most
  of Indian history, states have come and gone
  covering different territory.

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Ashoka268-233 BC

• Ashoka was a great king and a devout Buddhist. He
  promoted Buddhism in his empire and encouraged
  moral behaviour.
• His Buddhist ideas on non-violence did not seem
  to stop him winning battles but he did preach
  non-violence and probably practiced it more than
  most.
• His thoughts on human values and non-violence in
  politics were taken up many centuries later by
  Gandhi.

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Caste

• The division of traditional society into four
  castes plus those outside has led to the exercise
  of power by the upper groups.
• The castes are based on occupation (e.g.
  scholars, warriors, tradesmen) with the
  untouchables doing the dirty jobs. There are all
  kinds of ritual restrictions and religion
  underpins the whole system.
• The higher castes tend to have power and wealth
  while the lowest are poor and weak. Buddhism does
  not have castes. Your caste is determined by your
  previous life.
• In modern India cast is illegal but influential,
  especially in rural areas. Caste based trade
  unions exercise power.

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Traditional States

• Up until the time of the great Moghul emperors,
  India was a patchwork of states and empires which
  came and went through conquest and alliance.
• Conquerors from Central Asia began to introduce
  Islam in the thirteenth century and the Sultanate
  of Delhi was a powerful state.
• It was the great Moghuls who conquered most of
  India and left much of the intellectual and
  architectural legacy that is still around.

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Moghuls

• The Mongols invaded India in the 1500s and set up
  an empire which lasted until it was gradually
  replaced by the British some three hundred years
  later.
• They brought Islam but the Moghul court under its
  great rulers was a centre of learning and the
  arts it was not puritan. Under a series of great
  kings its empire covered most of India. It was,
  on the whole, a tolerant society.
• Many Indians converted, especially lower castes
  and untouchables. Its obvious legacy was the
  great divide which led to the break up of the
  British Indian Empire at independence in 1947.

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The British Raj

• During the 1700s the British East India Company
  gradually acquired territory to promote its trade
  until finally the British Government took over
  its territories and ruled for about 100 years
  until 1947. The flag followed trade. The Indian
  Empire was the Jewel in the Crown.
• The British ruled autocratically and, in
  practice, added another caste on top of the
  existing system the Sahib.
• They did however introduce British ideas to upper
  class Indians who could study democracy in Europe
  so long as they didnt try to practice it in
  India.
• The English language became a vehicle for
  education and therefore some power as well as
  a lingua franca for the educated. We will come
  back to this when we discuss language as power in
  a later session.

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British Myth Reality

• The British always liked to take the moral high
  ground and claimed that they brought the benefits
  of peace and British justice to India.
• Unfortunately, their rhetoric did not match
  reality and a number of brutal massacres
  highlighted this e.g. the massacre of women and
  children following the fall of Delhi in 1857 and
  in 1919 when a British general fired into a
  peaceful crowd and killed hundreds of people.
• Of course, the British were not the only ones not
  to suit their actions to their fine words. The
  powerful everywhere and in every time dress up
  their brutality in morality.

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Gandhi

• The independence movement against the British was
  a long and involved process which involved some
  violence but much politicking.
• Mohandas Gandhi, the Mahatma, is well known and
  his influence has spread outside India. He
  preached satyagraha or truth-force. He developed
  it in South Africa and then returned to his
  native India. It was a kind of non-violent
  passive resistance based on traditional Jain
  ideas about suffering and denial as a religious
  discipline.
• It developed into civil disobedience against
  injustice this was sometimes illegal but always
  peaceful.
• Martin Luther King of the US Civil Rights
  movement used his methods. Both Gandhi and King
  were constantly holding back the advocates of
  violence.

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India Today

• India is today divided into a number of states.
  Pakistan is strongly influenced by Islam,
  although traditional Indian ideas may be more
  influential than obvious.
• India is a secular state but strongly influenced
  by Hinduism and, recently, by the emergence of
  Hindu political parties.
• The BJP wants Indian identity to be Hindu (even
  though India has 100 million Muslims) and draws
  on tradition. Modern India has not forgotten its
  traditions as Bollywood films show.
• Most Indians are poor and rural tradition is
  more important to them than in the educated,
  affluent and English influenced urban middle
  classes.

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The Ramayana Returns

• Film versions of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata
  are popular while TV and films draw on its
  characters and stories.
• In 1989 the BJP tried to reclaim the site of an
  unused mosque which they said was the site of a
  temple where Rama was born. The BJP President
  dressed himself up as Prince Rama, complete with
  bow arrow, and set off on a truck dressed up to
  look like Ramas chariot. He was arrested but the
  symbolism is of interest. He was using tradition
  to give his party legitimacy.
• We do not have time to go into detail, but
  tradition is clearly alive in modern India. There
  is a clash between traditional and modern or
  secularist ideas about power and legitimacy.
  Hindu extremists are active.

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Religion

• The Indian State is secular but religion plays a
  part. Traditional ideas on the status of women
  and conservatism by rich, higher caste men
  influence economic, social and political power.
• Hindu views on sacred cows affect the cattle
  industry religion affects economic power.
• However, religious plurality is a feature of
  modern India and the claims by Weber Myrdal
  that religion was a barrier to economic
  development have been questioned (see Barbara
  Harris-White, 2003 India Working, Oxford) for a
  discussion of this.
• Pakistan and Bangla Desh are Muslim but we should
  remember that India has around 100 million
  Muslims. Sri Lanka is Buddhist.
• Both Muslim Hindu traditions demand obedience
  to a just monarch but also support the overthrow
  of an unjust ruler. India has married these
  ideas with European democracy but Pakistan has
  not been as successful.
• Religious extremism does seem to be growing in
  both countries.

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Southeast Asia

• As Christianity was moving slowly into Europe,
  Hinduism and Buddhism moved into Southeast Asia.
  They created famous kingdoms like Funan, Champa,
  Angkor, Srivijaya and Majapahit.
• Indian ideas arrived peacefully probably through
  traders and were superimposed on traditional
  animist ideas. Islam arrived in much the same way
  a thousand years later.
• Today, ordinary people happily accept a mixed and
  eclectic set of ideas but extremists seem to be
  on the rise.

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Thailand

• Theravada Buddhism is the official religion of
  Thailand and the Sangha or Buddhist Council has
  exercised power directly and indirectly at
  various times.
• The King is theoretically a constitutional
  monarch on the European pattern but in fact
  carries much of the divine aura from the Indian
  tradition. He is a Buddhist king.
• Thai religion is a mixture of traditional animist
  beliefs, Hindu ideas and Buddhism all of which
  influence ideas about power. Modern European
  ideas have influenced educated people in Bangkok
  and they are pushing these views as being modern.
• Power in Thailand is therefore based partly on
  traditional sources, partly on influence, partly
  on democratic elections and partly on the kings
  guidance. The present King has great charisma.
• Religion underpins respect for the powerful who
  are thought by many to be lucky in this life
  because of the good karma in their last life. The
  unlucky are getting what they deserve because of
  bad karma.

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Indonesia

• Your reading describes the notion of power in
  Java which is interesting and Indian influenced.
• Indonesia is a secular country with a large
  Muslim population but many of these nominal
  Muslims remain strongly influenced by Hindu and
  Buddhist ideas.
• Bali is Hindu and, if you are interested, you
  could read up on a living Hindu society.
• Discuss Andersons article on Java.

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Conclusions

• This has necessarily been a fairly superficial
  overview but the readings expand on it in some
  more detail.
• Ideas which seem to me to be influential are
  those of the rights and duties of divine kings,
  the Buddhist views on non-violence and the notion
  of dhamma which says our destiny must be
  accepted. People are rich and powerful because
  they led a virtuous life in their last
  incarnation.
• What is called in Indonesia the ratu adil or just
  king is important in that this tradition teaches
  obedience to rulers but not if they are
  tyrannical.

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Discussion

• What do you see as the most important ideas about
  power coming out of the Indian tradition?
• How do they differ from European and Chinese
  ideas? Are there similarities?
• How important are traditional ideas and imported
  ideas in those countries influenced by India.
  People from those countries to lead.