Page 29 - All India Magazine Aug-2025

matters of a mutual or common interest and represented in some
way and to the degree of its importance in the general assemblies
of the kingdom or empire. The State, sovereign or supreme politi-
cal authority was an instrument of coordination and of a general
control and efficiency and exercised a supreme but not an absolute
authority; for in all its rights and powers it was limited by the Law
and by the will of the people and in all its internal functions only a
copartner with the other members of the socio-political body.
This was the theory and principle and the actual constitution of
the Indian polity, a complex of communal freedom and self-deter-
mination with a supreme coordinating authority, a sovereign per-
son and body, armed with efficient powers, position and prestige,
but limited to its proper rights and functions, at once controlling
and controlled by the rest, admitting them as its active copartners
in all branches, sharing the regulation and administration of the
communal existence, and all alike, the sovereign, the people and
all its constituent communities, bound to the maintenance and re-
strained by the yoke of the Dharma. Moreover the economic and
political aspects of the communal life were only a part of the Dhar-
ma and a part not at all separate but inextricably united with all the
rest, the religious, the ethical, the higher cultural aim of the social
existence. The ethical law coloured the political and economic and
was imposed on every action of the king and his ministers, the
council and assemblies, the individual, the constituent groups of
the society; ethical and cultural considerations counted in the use
of the vote and the qualifications for minister, official and council-
lor; a high character and training was expected from all who held
authority in the affairs of the Aryan people. The religious spirit and
the reminders of religion were the head and the background of the
whole life of king and people. The life of the society was regarded
not so much as an aim in itself in spite of the necessary speciali-
sation of parts of its system, but in all its parts and the whole as
a great framework and training ground for the education of the

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