Indian Political Thought

Preface

Political thought as an allied branch of philosophy has a long, continual history in India unlike that of philosophy proper which, as Hegel argued, ceased to develop as an independent branch of knowledge after Buddha. Philosophy became ‘identical with its religion’ in the course of the formation and development of hereditary monarchies. The withering away of the free institutions, which existed due to the ‘connection between political freedom and freedom of thought’, created conditions for the philosophy proper—the absolute universal of self- consciousness—to lose its vitality. The Idea weakened and could not fructify into objective. The external and the objective couldn’t be comprehended as a full-blown form in accordance with the Idea. ...