Indian Political Thought Themes And Thinkers Mahendra Prasad Singh by Mahendra Prasad Singh 9788131758519, 8131758516 instant download after payment.

Let us now discuss the six major concepts of political philosophy in India referred to earlier. One can begin with the notion of secularism actuating amidst the peasants or of application of policy and conduct of state towards religion and towards faiths of people. It may be noted here that historically the Indian states were largely non-theocratic. It had multifarious linkages with different religions and there was separation between the personal faiths and political practices of the rulers. The subjects enjoyed religious freedom. The application of few apparently discriminatory policies by the local or central authorities, or their acts of imposing religious conversions on the subjects were minor trends. The absence of any Episcopal order provided conditions for the emergence of new religions, new gods and new sects. The absence was itself grounded in the existence of a large peasantry with diffused land holdings among different castes which acted as bulwark against theocracy and the emergence of a church type Episcopal order. The land holders required, in their routine existence, substantive degree of autonomy to formulate and actuate their decisions for cultivation and management of their properties, a freedom that was effectively transmitted into freedom of other kinds including their religious attitude. Curtailment of this freedom by imposition of fixed ideology by the state/ruling class on such a large number of land owners would have been a difficult proposition and a non-beneficial act. In fact, it would have created condition for a rebellion and a cause for revenue loss. The scattered and the autarkik village existence of the populace with expanding cultivable land acreage benefited the state in terms of increase in revenue generation and in providing insulation to it from economic crisis. In this mutually beneficial and balance of power relations between the state and the peasantry there was no requirement of a theocracy, neither was it desirable or possi