Chanakya's New Manifesto: To Resolve the Crisis Within India

About the book

Chanakya (c. 270-380 BCE) was classical India's greatest thinker and teacher. Through his unparalleled ability to devise result-oriented military, political, and administrative strategy, he overthrew one king, crowned another and paved the way for the establishment of India's first great empire. His seminal work, the
Arthashashtra
, arguably the world's first comprehensive treatise on statecraft and governance, was written approximately two thousand years before Machiavelli's
The Prince
. 

What would Chanakya do if confronted with the various crises that beset contemporary India? Using this question as the starting point for his new book, celebrated writer and thinker Pavan K. Varma has drawn up a practical and detailed plan, modelled on the
Arthashashtra
, to bring about reform and change in five key areas that require urgent attention governance, democracy, corruption, security, and the building of an inclusive society. Whether it is laying the foundation for an independent and effective Lokpal, or decriminalizing politics and successfully weeding out the corrupt, the solutions he proposes are substantive, well within the constitutional framework, and can make all the difference between intent and action. 

Chanakya's New Manifesto is both a call to action as well as a deeply insightful account of the challenges facing the country today. It is a book that should be attentively read by everybody with a stake in India's future.

About the author

Pavan K. Varma
 studied history at St Stephen's College, Delhi, and took a degree in law from Delhi University. He has been press secretary to the president of India, official spokesman of the Foreign Office, director general of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, and India's ambassador to Bhutan. Having taken premature retirement from the Indian Foreign Service, he now seeks to be actively involved in public life. 

Pavan K. Varma has authored several acclaimed and bestselling books, among them,
Ghalib: The Man
,
The Times
;
Krishna: The Playful Divine
;
The Great Indian Middle Class
;
Being Indian: The truth about why the 21st century will be India's
;
Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity
and
When Loss is Gain
. He has also translated into English the poetry of Gulzar, Kaifi Azmi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

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For the people of India whose tryst with destiny
remains incomplete, but who will wait no more.

CONTENTS

Prologue

The Crisis

1947 and After

Governance

Democracy

Corruption

Security

The Creation of an Inclusive Society

Epilogue

Notes

Acknowledgements

PROLOGUE

About 2,300 years ago, in the fourth century BCE, when civilization was in its infancy in most parts of the world, a thinker and scholar called Chanakya wrote one of the world’s most incisive treatises on statecraft—the
Arthashastra
. Most historians agree he was born in the kingdom of Magadha whose capital was Pataliputra, modern-day Patna. At that time, a debauched and cruel king by the name of Dhana Nanda, of the Nanda Empire, ruled Magadha. Dhana Nanda extracted taxes arbitrarily and excessively, had no time for affairs of state, and surrounded himself with courtiers who only said what he wanted to hear. Those who protested against this misrule and the visible squandering away of the kingdom’s potential were dealt with summarily. Chanakya’s respected and erudite father was arrested and killed by Dhana Nanda because he was amongst those who had dared to protest the king’s rule.

Chanakya had to leave Pataliputra to escape being hounded by the king. He travelled to the university town of Taxila in western India (now in Pakistan, near Rawalpindi), and in time became one of its most learned acharyas. However, he never lost sight of his central resolve to overthrow Dhana Nanda, and worked with single-minded focus to achieve this goal. As he was planning his revenge he came upon a remarkable boy who, even in a make-believe game of ‘king with friends in court’ showed great leadership qualities. Chanakya paid the boy’s grasping uncle to adopt him, and in Taxila gave him an education worthy of a ruler. The boy’s name was Chandragupta. Through meticulous planning, determination, and a series of strategic alliances with the rulers of the Paurava, Kirita, Kamboja and Vahika kingdoms, Chanakya succeeded in toppling Dhana Nanda and put Chandragupta on the throne. Having achieved his life’s purpose to rid his birthplace Magadha of misgovernance and corruption, he voluntarily retired and spent the rest of his life writing the
Arthashastra
.

Besides his campaign to oust Dhana Nanda, Chanakya is credited with working assiduously to prevent the Greeks under Alexander—and later the governors he left behind—from conquering Bharatvarsha, which was the land extending from the Indus to the eastern Gangetic plains, divided into several warring kingdoms and republics. Chanakya felt that although divided, Bharatvarsha constituted a discrete socio-cultural entity; its constituents needed to work as one to repel the foreign invaders. He succeeded in ensuring this.

Thus, in the course of one lifetime, Chanakya groomed a king, deposed another, helped to throw out the mighty Greeks, united a fractious territory, put his nominee on the throne of Magadha and helped consolidate a great empire—the Maurya Empire—extending from the western passes adjoining Afghanistan to the Bay of Bengal and southern India; arguably the first true empire in India’s history. Finally, he crowned all these achievements by writing India’s, and perhaps the world’s first comprehensive treatise on statecraft, approximately 1,800 years before Niccolo Machiavelli wrote
The Prince
.

Chanakya’s story is mentioned in several ancient texts. Perhaps the most comprehensive version is in Vishakhadatta’s play,
Mudrarakhshasa
(The Signet of the Minister), which is thought to date back to between the fourth and eighth century CE. He is also mentioned in Buddhist Pali texts, notably the
Mahavamsa
and its commentary; the Jain treatise
Vamsathapakasini
found in Hemchandra’s
Parisistaparvam;
and in the Kashmiri works,
Katha-Sarita-Sagara
and
Brihat-Katha-Manjari
by Somadeva and Kshemendra respectively, which date to about the same period. Chandraprakash Dwivedi’s hugely popular 47-part television serial on Chanakya is an interesting portrayal of Chanakya’s life and times. Many of the details of his life have been handed down anecdotally from one generation to another. For instance, there is the story that Chanakya once saw a child burn his fingers by starting to eat a bowl of porridge from its very centre. Being an astute observer, who could draw the right lessons from ordinary events in daily life, he inferred that sometimes the right way to defeat an enemy was to attack the periphery and not the centre.

The
Arthashastra
consists of about 6,000 shlokas and sutras. It deals systematically with the subjects of effective governance, the welfare of the people, economic prosperity, the qualities of a king, the competence of his ministers, the duties of officers, administrative acumen, civic responsibility, the importance of the rule of law and an efficacious judicial system, measures to effectively curb corruption, dandaniti or the policy of punishment for wrongdoers, the conduct of foreign policy, war planning and preparedness, the strategy of alliances, and the supremacy of national interest above everything else.

These are precisely the areas in which India, as a relatively young independent republic, seems to have lost its way. But, if more than 2,000 years ago a person like Chanakya could, in a similar situation, bring about change and articulate a new vision of governance, there is no reason why we can’t do the same today. This, then, is what this book is about. If Chanakya were faced with the crises that beset the country at every turn at the present time, what would he do?

To answer this question, we must first understand the qualities that made Chanakya succeed. First and foremost, he had the clarity of vision to unsentimentally identify what was wrong with any situation he was faced with, and what needed to be done to rectify it. This is easier said than done. Most people, especially today, are either mesmerized by the past or paralyzed by the fear of change. Secondly, he had a clear understanding of human behaviour. This understanding was not a prisoner of unrealistic idealism, although it did not devalue idealism per se. Thirdly, he believed in the importance of leadership. The ship of state without the right person at the helm will sooner or later run aground. Fourthly, he had the ability to unerringly spot talent, and even more importantly, groom it for the responsibilities it must deliver. Conversely, he did not hide the fact that he found it very difficult to suffer fools; in fact, he stated that those without talent should stay away from leadership positions. Fifthly, he never lost sight of the fact that all polities must work for the welfare of the people. If that central tenet was ignored, no constitution, however high-minded, was worthwhile. Sixthly, he considered economic prosperity the backbone of a nation’s strength. If the treasury is empty, all promises are mere slogans and all pretensions to power are so much hot air. Seventhly, he believed in analyzing systems; this required an extraordinary prescience and precise knowledge of history, and a true understanding of how complex processes of government worked, something that most observers and leaders of the day were incapable of, preoccupied as they were with symptoms, and not the source of the problem. Eighthly, he believed that systems must be just, and those who threatened the rule of law must be adequately punished. Ninthly, he had the courage and resolve, and iron discipline, to work to achieve what he believed was right. Many people know what the right course of action should be, but do not have the courage of conviction to pursue it. And finally, he never lost sight of the fact that there is one supreme goal that transcends all others when it comes to matters of state, and that is—national interest.

The title,
Chanakya’s New Manifesto,
is derived from the fact that this book is inspired by Chanakya and his great work, the
Arthashastra
. As I’ve said, it tries to imagine how Chanakya would have handled the challenges of contemporary India. In order to write it, I studied the
Arthashastra
at length and spent considerable time thinking about the subjects I would tackle, and the approach I would take, while I analyzed the situation from the inside, from within government. In addition, I combed through all manner of material, from academic studies of governance and governments to political pamphlets, books and journalistic reports on the actions of political leaders since the country became independent. The distillation of these years of study and experience is what
Chanakya’s New Manifesto
is about.