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Krishna S. Arjunwadkar
Makaranda
democracies died because they could not survive in changed circumstances. Even tribal groups on their way to becoming states fight with each other for material or imaginary, even flimsy, reasons that hurt their group ego as illustrated by the war between Kosala and Magadha on the score of dowry unpaid. DPC assigns the responsibility of this war to the emergence of states, presuming that tribal groups never fight each other. Even today fights are not uncommon among the urban as well as rural groups. Nothing but prejudice can explain persistence in the view that social evils are the result only of civilization including religion. Cases after cases of corruption against political leaders today are enough to falsify this claim. Human nature is instinctively prone to go to any extent for personal gains.
All roads lead to faith
How to counter this nature has been a matter of worry for cultured minds for ages. No way has been found out of this situation except education in a wider sense in various forms. Education is the cultivation of social qualities which is based on the distinction between good and bad which is a matter of faith. Once this is realised, it carries little weight to argue about the foundation of faith, this worldly or other-worldly. Whatever the foundation, it is the result that matters for a practical man. That is the reason why the author of Arthaśāstra, an expounder of stark politics, advises the rulers to see that the established social order based on religious faith is scrupulously maintained. But prejudiced research finds in his work a reference to the study of Lokāyata in exclusion of what he states elsewhere. It is not judicial blindness', to quote Marx's words?
