Philosophies of India

SR No.: 007309
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Heinrich Zimmer, Joseph Campbell
Publisher: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
Publication Year: 1953
Total Pages: 709
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 34 MB

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUCCESS the world being what it is; and it has the interesting effect of keeping alive under the protection of the monarch whose "eyes and cars are everywhere" an insidious, self-supporting, crossfertilizing process, by which a continuous mutual regeneration of antagonists, "asking for each other," is maintained. The secret police become the principal support and protection of thic un derground revolutionaries whom it is their function to suppress. Indeed, they are not only the protection of the opposition but even its cause; for the tyrannical system that has to rely for continuance on a crushing, omnipresent secret police inevitably breeds, through its brutal pressures, new enemies from within, every day. And these subversive elements, often highly idealistic, are in turn under the illusion that they are less visible than they really are. When the ruling power brcaks, it sometimes happens that the revolutionaries find themselves justified in their hope that some day their cause should prevail-this much we know from history; but meanwhile, unconsciously, through their sheer Ludding into existence, they have been warranting the precious indispensability of the cat to the lion. Without mice, the oflicers of the Gestapo and Ogpu would be at a loss to keep themselves so terribly important. And so here again we find that the view of political intrigue represented in the Hindu philosophy of statecraft bears a remarkable pertinence to contemporary affairs.
The archaic teachings have a curiously modern ring. In Hindu foreign policy, for example, surprise by treacherous assault and sudden onslaught was regarded as one of the best means of successful foreign action, decp secrecy and perfect concealment forming the proper atmosphere for the ripening of schemes and the achievement of perfect preparations. In the political treatises we find the maxim: "Carry your enemy on your shoulder until you have got from him what you want, then throw him off-throw him off and shatter him, like an earthen jar against a rock." 16 Or again: “Whoever, pursuing his own advantage, intends to 18 Mahabharata 12. 140. 18.
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