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Political Violence in Ancient India
Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru helped create the myth of a nonviolent ancient India while building a modern independence movement on the principle of nonviolence (ahimsa) . But this myth obscures a troubled and complex a long struggle to reconcile the ethics of nonviolence with the need to use violence to rule. Upinder Singh documents the dynamic tension between violence and nonviolence in ancient Indian political thought and practice over twelve hundred years.
Political Violence in Ancient India looks at representations of kingship and political violence in epics, religious texts, political treatises, plays, poems, inscriptions, and art from 600 BCE to 600 CE. As kings controlled their realms, fought battles, and meted out justice, intellectuals debated the boundary between the force required to sustain power and the excess that led to tyranny and oppression. Duty (dharma) and renunciation were important in this discussion, as were punishment, war, forest tribes, and the royal hunt. Singh reveals a range of perspectives that defy rigid religious categorization. Buddhists, Jainas, and even the pacifist Maurya emperor Ashoka recognized that absolute nonviolence was impossible for kings.
By 600 CE religious thinkers, political theorists, and poets had justified and aestheticized political violence to a great extent. Nevertheless, questions, doubt, and dissent remained. These debates are as important for understanding political ideas in the ancient world as for thinking about the problem of political violence in our own time.
Political Violence in Ancient India looks at representations of kingship and political violence in epics, religious texts, political treatises, plays, poems, inscriptions, and art from 600 BCE to 600 CE. As kings controlled their realms, fought battles, and meted out justice, intellectuals debated the boundary between the force required to sustain power and the excess that led to tyranny and oppression. Duty (dharma) and renunciation were important in this discussion, as were punishment, war, forest tribes, and the royal hunt. Singh reveals a range of perspectives that defy rigid religious categorization. Buddhists, Jainas, and even the pacifist Maurya emperor Ashoka recognized that absolute nonviolence was impossible for kings.
By 600 CE religious thinkers, political theorists, and poets had justified and aestheticized political violence to a great extent. Nevertheless, questions, doubt, and dissent remained. These debates are as important for understanding political ideas in the ancient world as for thinking about the problem of political violence in our own time.
616 pages, Hardcover
Published September 25, 2017
About the author
Upinder Singh
27 books153 followersUpinder Singh is an Indian historian and the former head of the History Department at the University of Delhi. She is the dean of faculty and professor of history at Ashoka University. She is also the recipient of the inaugural Infosys Prize in the category of Social Sciences.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 24, 2018
A very well composed book which puts into perspective much of what has been written in the field of political violence in what the book has called, after the prevalent fashion, 'Ancient India', for which the phrase 'Early India' would be more apt as the former gives an air of senility to it.
The book goes a long way to dispel the cherished myth that early India was an essentially peaceable place where people spent their waking hours reciting the names of gods, taking time off only to discharge the most unavoidable of their animal functions. However, while I sense that the political impetus to violence has been adequately addressed in the book, much of its socio-religious impetuses, which made the violence essentialist in nature to a large extent, have been not given enough attention. I would like to bring out three aspects of such violence in this context.
First, one genre of subaltern violence below the military horizon that marked not only early Indo-Aryan (IA) but also all pastoral and rather all of Indo-Iranian (IIr) society was cattle (and horse) raiding, known as the Gavisti, desire for kine, in the Rg Veda. Youngsters were encouraged to participate in cattle raids, the gathered cattle used to enhance stock of ones tribe, as seed capital to begin new herds, and even as bride price. Heroes in this (sub)-military act were celebrated as Gojit (winner of kine). In fact, the major preoccupation of the Vratya, the IA mannerbund (age-set, undergoing the rite of passage to adulthood -- from Brahmacarya to Garhapatya) was the cattle raid. Such cattle raid marked the passage of youth in several other herding communities too --- like the IIr Marya or the Masai Moran.
Second, the early imperial procedure of the Asvamedha, in its mature form, was a mere shadow of its original purpose, which was to rearrange the protocol of pasture usage among herding tribes on the steppe. Such protocol was important as the tribes had to maintain a carefully regulated sequence of passage and usage among groups using the same set of pastures in their annual peregrinations, so as to not adversely impact the fragile ecology and allow the land to rejuvenate adequately. First use of the best grasslands was naturally reserved by the powerful. Anyone wanting to challenge this protocol would let a horse run free to sniff out the best grass as it willed, backed up with military threat, which was what the original form of the Asvamedha was adn which later was rearranged and recast into an imperial procedure. Such rearrangements are also identifiable among other major yajna or sacrifices, like the Rajasuya or the Vajapeya, which incorporated elements of the campaign to subjugate the quarters, victory over man and beast, funerary chariot race, homeopathic turning of the Sun, etc.
Third, as these early subaltern, sub-military practices like the cattle-raid, or claiming of pastures, were rearranged into great public sacrifices, military power-holders, i.e. the newly formed Ksatriya chivalry, were encouraged by the established heiratic elite to graduate from one sacrifice to another, thereby ritually promoting themselves through various grades of kingship till they could attain the rank of Cakravarti, or conduct the Govitata, which was the most elaborate of the asvamedha. Such ceremonial and ritual incitement to aggregation, aggrandizement and self-promotion governed and engendered much of the Political Violence in early South Asia, identifying which will put paid to the cherished idea of a non-violent India.
I hope these, and some other aspects of inherent violence in Early Indian polity and society, some of which I have identified and touched upon in my two works on military history (Boots, Hooves, and Wheels, and Framing the Mahabharata), the esteemed professor will choose to enlighten us on in future.
The book goes a long way to dispel the cherished myth that early India was an essentially peaceable place where people spent their waking hours reciting the names of gods, taking time off only to discharge the most unavoidable of their animal functions. However, while I sense that the political impetus to violence has been adequately addressed in the book, much of its socio-religious impetuses, which made the violence essentialist in nature to a large extent, have been not given enough attention. I would like to bring out three aspects of such violence in this context.
First, one genre of subaltern violence below the military horizon that marked not only early Indo-Aryan (IA) but also all pastoral and rather all of Indo-Iranian (IIr) society was cattle (and horse) raiding, known as the Gavisti, desire for kine, in the Rg Veda. Youngsters were encouraged to participate in cattle raids, the gathered cattle used to enhance stock of ones tribe, as seed capital to begin new herds, and even as bride price. Heroes in this (sub)-military act were celebrated as Gojit (winner of kine). In fact, the major preoccupation of the Vratya, the IA mannerbund (age-set, undergoing the rite of passage to adulthood -- from Brahmacarya to Garhapatya) was the cattle raid. Such cattle raid marked the passage of youth in several other herding communities too --- like the IIr Marya or the Masai Moran.
Second, the early imperial procedure of the Asvamedha, in its mature form, was a mere shadow of its original purpose, which was to rearrange the protocol of pasture usage among herding tribes on the steppe. Such protocol was important as the tribes had to maintain a carefully regulated sequence of passage and usage among groups using the same set of pastures in their annual peregrinations, so as to not adversely impact the fragile ecology and allow the land to rejuvenate adequately. First use of the best grasslands was naturally reserved by the powerful. Anyone wanting to challenge this protocol would let a horse run free to sniff out the best grass as it willed, backed up with military threat, which was what the original form of the Asvamedha was adn which later was rearranged and recast into an imperial procedure. Such rearrangements are also identifiable among other major yajna or sacrifices, like the Rajasuya or the Vajapeya, which incorporated elements of the campaign to subjugate the quarters, victory over man and beast, funerary chariot race, homeopathic turning of the Sun, etc.
Third, as these early subaltern, sub-military practices like the cattle-raid, or claiming of pastures, were rearranged into great public sacrifices, military power-holders, i.e. the newly formed Ksatriya chivalry, were encouraged by the established heiratic elite to graduate from one sacrifice to another, thereby ritually promoting themselves through various grades of kingship till they could attain the rank of Cakravarti, or conduct the Govitata, which was the most elaborate of the asvamedha. Such ceremonial and ritual incitement to aggregation, aggrandizement and self-promotion governed and engendered much of the Political Violence in early South Asia, identifying which will put paid to the cherished idea of a non-violent India.
I hope these, and some other aspects of inherent violence in Early Indian polity and society, some of which I have identified and touched upon in my two works on military history (Boots, Hooves, and Wheels, and Framing the Mahabharata), the esteemed professor will choose to enlighten us on in future.
January 28, 2018
The book's title is an understatement of the book's wings (at least the aim). Upinder Singh digs into the recorded past of India and surveys Kavyas, socio-political treatise, chronicles and inscriptions to gauge through India's encounter with questions of violence, power, and Dharma. She dispels, very easily, the myth that the Indian ethos is inherently non-violent and at the same time argues against the notion that Indian history has been a bloodbath. India is a place that is as complex as one can get. Singh's book is only testimony to that. As she herself describes, India's intellectual and political story is one of conversation about the inevitability of violence and the virtue in compassion.
May 11, 2018
Excellent and thorough treatment of texts and material culture in ancient India which demonstrate the tension between violence and nonviolence and the way in which political and moral concepts were deployed in the service of power.
November 1, 2021
Had high expectations, but was a slog and couldn't finish. I'm not sure who was the intended audience though. Felt it was moving all over the timeline and wasn't structured well. And drawing conclusions about such a vast period of time and population from a bunch of manuscripts and stone tablets felt a bit incredible
July 2, 2021
Written by an es-professor of history from the Delhi University, Professor Upinder Singh dashes the myth about the peaceful life of ancient Indians and shows us how violence was part of the political landscape of the most humane of rulers.
April 1, 2026
In 1972, René Girard wrote a modern classic titled 'The Violence and the Sacred', a dense and convoluted treatise on the anthropology and philosophy of how violence lies at the heart of the sacred, bifurcating the treatise into mimetic desire and scapegoat mechanism. The fundament of desire for what others desire births a mimesis that is cyclical and oiled by the initiative nature of humankind. On the other side of the spectrum, the machinations of scapegoatism is itself born out of this excess of mimesis, when the community, how much so diverse units to invent a scapegoat that ends up facing the brunt. On the whole, this might seem like an exaggerated response, since the tenability of the thesis rests on borrowing largely from the Greeks, where it might pass on veracity, shown by Girard through a complex web of argumentation, its symbolism in the Indian context is resonant on a tapestry going back to scriptures, epics, poetry, prose and political writings that have defined the mosaic of Ancient India. Take for instance, the primal sacrifice, which according to the Rig Veda describes the dismemberment of the cosmic being by the gods, and from where the universe and stratification, especially in the case of social realm (varnas) were created. Or, the case of Vedic sacrifices, which were eventually ritualized to create the original order, that symbolized the very creation of the culture, the affirmation of it. These are Girardian, not merely as myths, but cultural artefacts and schemas, well echoed in Upinder Singh.
Much of what I thought while reading Upinder Singh's "Political Violence in Ancient India" was to site such sururing between her and Girard, and though the connection is far away from naming Girard as an influence, Girard's provocative claims are reflected and refracted in Singh's confrontation with the majorly accepted premise that ancient India thrived on non-violence. Upinder's scholarship extracts a period from 600 BCE to 600 CE to demonstrate a complex web of intellectual rigor in its struggle for reconciliation with the ethics of non-violence on the one hand hand and the monstrosities of political power on the other. In this attempt, she breaks from the Gandhian and Nehruvian legacy of non-violent historicity that played a central part under their aegis during the freedom struggle. She does this by invoking the central tenet of her work, viz. political violence wasn't merely anomalous or an aberration of sorts in India of the yore, but had very much become the engineering tool that shaped the functioning of the state.
Upinder Singh builds her arguments by taking recourse to the the main pillars that punctuate the work, viz. political writings (Kautilya's Arthshashtra, Kamandaka's Nitisara, and Manusmriti), literary (the epics, Buddhist and Jaina texts), and material (epigraphical, numismatics and artistic resources). If Kautilya epitomizes pragmatism in employing violence as a necessary statecraft, it also has a compassionate side, which, though, qualifiably minor is overshadowed by codified punitive guidelines. It shows avant respect for the forest dwellers, but turns the keys on forests as a valuable capital, a sentiment magnified in the contemporary times in economic policies and social tear. Manusmriti is contentious with its adaptability and acceptance of peace with political violence, an important tenet of Dharma. Both the Arthashastra and Manusmriti reject the possibility of absolute nonviolence in politics. They represent a tradition that grappled with the problem of political violence not by denying it, but by seeking to define, justify, and systematize it. Nitisara is tempered and reflective, it pauses to consider the necessity of state violence as a last resort by recommending cultivation of virtues as a necessary statecraft.
On the epics' side, Singh avers the Mahabharata for its ambivalence, and the war for its futility. There is a Nietzschean import here from his Human, All Too Human, where the German days, "Against war it may be said that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious". Singh questions the righteousness of the Dharma War as anything but that, calling Yudhishthir ambiguously caught between pragmatic realism and renunciation. Ramayana appears to be more righteous, but it constructs arguments to clothe deceit as Dharma. Even otherwise, Rama's violence is not depicted as a fall from grace but as the heavy but unavoidable burden of a king who must destroy evil to protect the social order. Between the two epics, the Ramayana's political vision is centered on the concept of the just king who rules with righteousness. Unlike the Mahabharata, which presents a fractured and contested political order, the Ramayana offers a more cohesive picture, where the king's use of force is a direct extension of cosmic duty. Singh's treatment of the epics is significant because she argues that their narrative form allows them to explore political violence in a way that treatises like the Arthashastra cannot. By embedding political philosophy in story, character, and emotion, the Mahabharata and Ramayana convey the human cost, moral weight, and lasting grief that abstract theories of statecraft often leave out. For Singh, these epics are not just stories; they are the most sophisticated and enduring political texts ancient India produced, precisely because they refuse to offer easy answers.
The most interesting part for me kya in the material aspects, especially those linked with Ashoka. While critics claim that Singh is still too easy on Ashoka, they often overlook the fact that Ashoka is a perfect example of undying tension between the ideal and the real. This implies that Ashoka wasn't an absolute pacifist, especially after the Kalinga War. The tension is clearly evident in his edicts. Does that mean that Ashoka fought with himself on the ethical consequences of a position of pacifist that he was branded with? No. Instead, they became a reference point for subsequent debates, ensuring that the question of whether a king could rule without violence would remain a living issue in Indian political thought for centuries.
The concluding part of the book read like a summary in advance of William Dalrymple's The Golden Road. Or at least some aspects of it. The book is lucid, but there is some repetition that could have been gotten rid of. Moreover, the treatise isn't exhaustive, and some space towards iconoclasm within and without the ranks of the dynasties ruling the land could have been teased out, though Shashank's exploits of Buddhist relics and culture are mentioned, they just slip out marginally the date under consideration. Squaring back to the beginning, Girard and Singh plough on a common ground, and the two converge on the insight that violence is not outside culture, but embedded within it. The divergence, though is between Girard's theoretical "why?", and Singh's "how?" of the historical narrative of violence across geographies. If Girard's agency was communitarian, Singh's is more akin to Hobbes' Monarch. Finally, the role of dissent was unanimous for the French, while, it was dissensus for the latter, this inculcating a broadly realistic democratic picture. Where could Upinder Singh have taken on board Girard? Probably in his skepticism that adds political context on to a historical narrative and subtly reformats the continuing role of state violence.
Much of what I thought while reading Upinder Singh's "Political Violence in Ancient India" was to site such sururing between her and Girard, and though the connection is far away from naming Girard as an influence, Girard's provocative claims are reflected and refracted in Singh's confrontation with the majorly accepted premise that ancient India thrived on non-violence. Upinder's scholarship extracts a period from 600 BCE to 600 CE to demonstrate a complex web of intellectual rigor in its struggle for reconciliation with the ethics of non-violence on the one hand hand and the monstrosities of political power on the other. In this attempt, she breaks from the Gandhian and Nehruvian legacy of non-violent historicity that played a central part under their aegis during the freedom struggle. She does this by invoking the central tenet of her work, viz. political violence wasn't merely anomalous or an aberration of sorts in India of the yore, but had very much become the engineering tool that shaped the functioning of the state.
Upinder Singh builds her arguments by taking recourse to the the main pillars that punctuate the work, viz. political writings (Kautilya's Arthshashtra, Kamandaka's Nitisara, and Manusmriti), literary (the epics, Buddhist and Jaina texts), and material (epigraphical, numismatics and artistic resources). If Kautilya epitomizes pragmatism in employing violence as a necessary statecraft, it also has a compassionate side, which, though, qualifiably minor is overshadowed by codified punitive guidelines. It shows avant respect for the forest dwellers, but turns the keys on forests as a valuable capital, a sentiment magnified in the contemporary times in economic policies and social tear. Manusmriti is contentious with its adaptability and acceptance of peace with political violence, an important tenet of Dharma. Both the Arthashastra and Manusmriti reject the possibility of absolute nonviolence in politics. They represent a tradition that grappled with the problem of political violence not by denying it, but by seeking to define, justify, and systematize it. Nitisara is tempered and reflective, it pauses to consider the necessity of state violence as a last resort by recommending cultivation of virtues as a necessary statecraft.
On the epics' side, Singh avers the Mahabharata for its ambivalence, and the war for its futility. There is a Nietzschean import here from his Human, All Too Human, where the German days, "Against war it may be said that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious". Singh questions the righteousness of the Dharma War as anything but that, calling Yudhishthir ambiguously caught between pragmatic realism and renunciation. Ramayana appears to be more righteous, but it constructs arguments to clothe deceit as Dharma. Even otherwise, Rama's violence is not depicted as a fall from grace but as the heavy but unavoidable burden of a king who must destroy evil to protect the social order. Between the two epics, the Ramayana's political vision is centered on the concept of the just king who rules with righteousness. Unlike the Mahabharata, which presents a fractured and contested political order, the Ramayana offers a more cohesive picture, where the king's use of force is a direct extension of cosmic duty. Singh's treatment of the epics is significant because she argues that their narrative form allows them to explore political violence in a way that treatises like the Arthashastra cannot. By embedding political philosophy in story, character, and emotion, the Mahabharata and Ramayana convey the human cost, moral weight, and lasting grief that abstract theories of statecraft often leave out. For Singh, these epics are not just stories; they are the most sophisticated and enduring political texts ancient India produced, precisely because they refuse to offer easy answers.
The most interesting part for me kya in the material aspects, especially those linked with Ashoka. While critics claim that Singh is still too easy on Ashoka, they often overlook the fact that Ashoka is a perfect example of undying tension between the ideal and the real. This implies that Ashoka wasn't an absolute pacifist, especially after the Kalinga War. The tension is clearly evident in his edicts. Does that mean that Ashoka fought with himself on the ethical consequences of a position of pacifist that he was branded with? No. Instead, they became a reference point for subsequent debates, ensuring that the question of whether a king could rule without violence would remain a living issue in Indian political thought for centuries.
The concluding part of the book read like a summary in advance of William Dalrymple's The Golden Road. Or at least some aspects of it. The book is lucid, but there is some repetition that could have been gotten rid of. Moreover, the treatise isn't exhaustive, and some space towards iconoclasm within and without the ranks of the dynasties ruling the land could have been teased out, though Shashank's exploits of Buddhist relics and culture are mentioned, they just slip out marginally the date under consideration. Squaring back to the beginning, Girard and Singh plough on a common ground, and the two converge on the insight that violence is not outside culture, but embedded within it. The divergence, though is between Girard's theoretical "why?", and Singh's "how?" of the historical narrative of violence across geographies. If Girard's agency was communitarian, Singh's is more akin to Hobbes' Monarch. Finally, the role of dissent was unanimous for the French, while, it was dissensus for the latter, this inculcating a broadly realistic democratic picture. Where could Upinder Singh have taken on board Girard? Probably in his skepticism that adds political context on to a historical narrative and subtly reformats the continuing role of state violence.
January 8, 2022
Book full of facts
Deep analysis of ancient history.writer go through incription to literature and epigraphs to bring us understanding of violence during ancient India.
Deep analysis of ancient history.writer go through incription to literature and epigraphs to bring us understanding of violence during ancient India.
November 27, 2017
Its largely a rehash of many things already written elsewhere but the good thing is that it weaves those things into a single narrative.
March 15, 2020
Lyrical. An in depth study of ancient India. A must read for all Indophiles
February 28, 2021
Very informative and insightful, though somewhat repetitive
December 8, 2017
Get this book in India from
https://www.ideakart.com/book/politic...
After comparing across different online bookstores.
This is a really well written book.
https://www.ideakart.com/book/politic...
After comparing across different online bookstores.
This is a really well written book.
October 23, 2022
It's a brilliant book
It's a tough book to read for a non-academician like me. However its a must read for anyone who wants to understand Ancient India from a lense of political violence.
It's a tough book to read for a non-academician like me. However its a must read for anyone who wants to understand Ancient India from a lense of political violence.
May 20, 2020
coming soon
March 2, 2022
Awesome! Go for it.
January 8, 2026
complete and interesting! important!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews