Besides the evidence furnished by the texts of Hindu codes, law books and political treatises (like the Arthasastra of Kautalaya), and Nítí Shástrá, etc., other good evidence has been produced by Mr. Matthai in support of the above-mentioned proposition.
In Paragraph 23 he refers to the Madras Epigraphic Report, 1912-13, in support of the statement that “there were village assemblies in South India in the tenth century A.D., which ‘appear to have consisted of all the residents of a village including cultivators, professionals and merchants.’”
“In the Private Diary of Anandaranga Pillay, who served as agent to Dupleix, the French Governor in South India in the middle of the eighteenth century, there is an entry referring to a village meeting to consider a case of desecrating the village temple ‘in which people of all castes—from the Brahman to the Pariah—took part.’”
In Paragraph 24, he points out that a village council (Panchayat) might either be an assembly of all the inhabitants of the village or only a select committee consisting of representatives selected on some recognized principle. The first are common among less developed communities like those of the aboriginal tribes and the latter in more highly organized communities.
Evidences of bigger assemblies consisting of representatives of more than one village, sometimes of more than one district, to decide cases of importance or dispute between whole villages are also cited in Paragraphs 26 and 27 and 32. On the strength of certain South Indian Inscriptions relating to the Tamil Kingdoms of the 10th century A.D., it is stated that the administration of the village was carried on by no less than five or six committees, each vested with jurisdiction relating to certain definite departments of village life, though there was no fixed rule on the point. In Paragraphs 33 and 34 the mode of election to the committees and the qualifications for membership are set down in detail. The procedure seems to have been quite elaborate, though suited to the level of intelligence of the people concerned. These village councils and committees looked after education, sanitation, poor relief, public works, watch and ward, and the administration of justice. To describe the methods by which these departments of village life were administered by the village councils requires too much space, but we give two excerpts from Chapter II on education:
“The history of village education in India goes back perhaps to the beginnings of the village community. The schoolmaster had a definite place assigned to him in the village economy, in the same manner as the headman, the accountant, the watchman, and the artisans. He was an officer of the village community, paid either by rent-free lands or by assignments of grain out of the village harvest.”
“The outstanding characteristics of the schools of the Hindu village community were: (1) that they were democratic, and (2) that they were more secular than spiritual in their instruction and their general character.... Nevertheless, when we speak of the democratic character of these early Hindu schools, it is to be understood that they were democratic only in this sense, that they were open not merely to the priestly caste but to all the four superior castes alike. There was never any question of admitting into the schools those who lay outside the regular caste system whose touch would have meant pollution, nor to the great aboriginal populations of the country.”
“This is very similar to the public schools in the Southern States, in the United States, where schools for the white children are closed to coloured children and vice versa.”
From what has been stated above it appears that the general impression that democratic institutions are entirely foreign to India is nothing but the survival of a prejudice originally due to ignorance of Indian history. In collecting his evidence Mr. Matthai has principally drawn upon South Indian sources. There can be no doubt that abundant evidence of a similar kind is available as regards North India and is waiting to be collected, collated and sifted by other Matthais. We do not contend that India had the same kind of representative institutions as Modern Europe has. In fact no part of the world had. They are all recent developments. The democratic nature of an institution does not depend on the methods of election but on the people’s right to express their will, directly, or through their representatives, in the management of their public affairs. It is clear that that idea was never altogether absent from Indian life either in theory or in practise. Even under the most absolute autocracies, the bulk of the people managed their collective affairs themselves. They organised and maintained schools; arranged and paid for sanitation; built public works; provided for watch and ward; administered justice, and for all these purposes raised revenues and spent them in a democratic way. They did so, not only as regards the internal affairs of a village, but applied the same principles in the larger life of their district or districts. Such a people cannot be said to have always lived a life dictated and held together by force. Nor can it be said with justice that the introduction of modern democratic methods in such a country, among such a people, would be the introduction of an exotic plant, with the spirit and working of which it will take them centuries to be familiar.