bring back the kshatriyas: a philosophical primer for the indian political animal

8/2/2019 Bring Back the Kshatriyas: A Philosophical Primer for the Indian Political Animal

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bring-back-the-kshatriyas-a-philosophical-primer-for-the-indian-political 1/18

© 2012 Centre Right India. All rights reserved.

1

Bring Back the Kshatriyas: APhilosophical Primer for the

Indian Political Animal

By TechnoFuturist

CENTRE RIGHT INDIA – LONGFORM

“A series of thought-provoking essays devoted to the pressing political issues of our age.”




2

Foreword

Centre Right India (CRI) was established in 2010 with the aim of increasing political

awareness and nurturing an intellectually-vibrant, right-of-centre tradition in India. Over the

last two years, we have taken small but signficant steps in this direction. The size of our

commentator base as well as the issue-areas covered have grown exponentially. This has been

complemented by an increasing readership from India and across the globe. However, we are

not content to rest on our laurels and are working tirelessly to transform CRI into a self-

sustaining intellectual institution that spans a multitude of media platforms.

At the core of CRI’s mission lies a belief in the transformative and redemptive power of

politics. Despite the rot that characterises India’s polity, we remain staunch in our belief that

it is only in the realm of the political that we can emancipate ourselves and our nation. This is

where the power of ideas comes in. In order to live up to its civilisational potential, India

requires bold political thinkers. TechnoFuturist is one such thinker. He is one of the few

thinkers in the radical Indian political thought-space who engages explcitly with grand

political themes.

On the occasion of our second anniversary, we present to you this essay by TechnoFuturist.

Using a historico-mythological framework, TechnoFuturist attempts to identify the reasons

for what he sees as the degeneration of the Indian polity. In doing so, he questions the two

holy-cows of India’s and the world’s received wisdoms: “Democracy” and “Egalitarianism”.

We at CRI do not accept responsibility for the views expressed in the following essay but we

do hope you are provoked by them.

The Editors




3

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this document represent the views of the author

and not neccasarily those of Centre Right India.

Image Source: MorningbellNews.




4

Table of Contents

Foreword………………………………………………………………………………………2

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………5

The History of Political Order………………………………….……………………………..6

Theories of Old Political Orders………………………………………………………………7

Lack of a Formal Theory of the Political……………………………………………………...8

Need for a New Political Theory……………………………………………………………..11

TechnoFuturist Aristocratism: Dynamic Interplay of Power………………………………...15

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………18




5

Introduction

The Indian Political Animal faces a peculiar problem in that the philosophical impulse

behind the Indian Ancien Regime’s political order is lost in the mystery of history. This has

prevented the growth of an intellectually robust right-wing that could critique the project of

democracy and equality from the vantage point of an alternate political theory. What have

grown are scattered critiques of assorted failures of the workings of the universal suffrage

democracy and its inability to help the people, whether the elite or the masses. Rare have

been critiques that have argued against the structure, and not just the function, of the

democracy.

Our essay attempts to rectify this shortcoming by advocating for the development of original

political philosophies that can stand as comprehensive alternatives to the egalitarian-liberal-

democratic project that has gripped the minds of the mindless. However, it is first necessary to

attempt to deduce the political order and the impulse behind the ancien regime as well as its

evolution over time.

But why start at the beginning and what would such a task accomplish?

My thesis is that the political degeneration of Indian polity began not with democracy and not

even with invasions and wars with the Turko-Mongols in 1200s, but even earlier. This

degeneration rotted the Indian polity leading to the many catastrophes with the mania for

democracy being just the latest manifestation of a deeper theoretical-philosophical problem.

In this essay I will examine the philosophy responsible for the political degeneration of the

Indian polity and propose a philosophy that can power its regeneration.




6

The History of Political Order

Let’s start with the Horsemen, for they were the first Indian political animals. The taming of

the horse – just somewhere north of the Himalaya Mountains – was the watershed politicalevent. The art of horse taming spread wildly across the plains and mountains and four major

tribes: Indians, Iranians, Greeks and Romans, were the first ones to master it and put it to

excellent use. Armed with horses they overran the infantry armies of all other tribes that

existed and from these four races arose the four ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome, Persia

and India.

And these were the civilizations that first developed the two concepts of Heroism and

Aristocratism. The political order of these civilizations – created by horse riding warriors –

was also significantly different from that of the political order created by the commanders of

infantry soldiers of ancient Egypt or ancient China.

There is a term that provides a glimpse behind the first political order of Ancient India. A title

bestowed on the coronation of a new King especially the first of a new dynasty, “Shatrapati”

translated as leader of the warriors.

The King of Ancient Indians was the warrior commander who led the horsemen to victoryand in exchange they crowned him their leader. This was the first political order, the first

state and we will call it Warrior Aristocracy.

We get the warrior part, but what about aristocracy? What does that word even mean?

Where does it come from? Does it have an original political meaning or was it a later day

word to denote an elite ruling a state? Look closely at the first three letters ‘Ari’ for that is the

root that holds the key to deciphering many mysteries. It sounds very similar to ‘Ary’. Know a

politically-historically contentious Indo-Iranian word that follows from that? Of course you

do, “Arya”. Perhaps this word has vaused more mischief in history than any other.

The old Greek word ‘Aristoi’ and ancient Sanskrit-Persian word ‘Arya’ are cognates with the

same root. And that is where Aristocracy comes from, both the concept and the word. In

Ancient Greece, as well as Persia and India; the best warriors were referred to with those

words. And it was the belief of these civilizations that the state that governed best was

governed by the best warriors. Hence, the warrior aristocracy as the first political state of

these civilizations.




7

Then the horse clans started settling down. After their enemies were defeated – immortalized

in their epics as mythological tribes – they became more of a settled people. Some of them

took to farming, others to artisanship and some others to priesthood and here divergence

emerged in the evolution of the political order amongst these four. Briefly mentioning the

Greeks who developed city-states each with eclectic types of governments, Romans with an

empire ruled by landed patricians and Persia with a monarchist empire; I will turn my major

attention to the development of Indian polity.

The warrior aristocratic state evolved into two different forms of orders. First a landed

aristocracy and second a monarchy. Under landed aristocracy it was not enough to be a

warrior, although that counted for something, you also had to own a significant amount of

land to have a say in the affairs of the polity. The king in landed aristocracy, was more like a

chairman of a committee: most powerful but dependent on other landowners and cavalry

captains for his power, and he was far less like a chief executive who could simply bark orders.

In hereditary monarchy, the king acquired significantly more powers and the landowners and

captains were more like administrators and officers and far less political actors.

Different geographical, political and military conditions led to this fork in the path, with more

fertile lands creating a monarchist polity and more rugged, mountainous lands producing a

landed aristocratic state. It would be an interesting exercise to map the evolution but we are

more interested in political theory here and less in history, so I will turn my attention to the

political theories underlying these orders.

Theories of old political orders

Here we have to be satisfied with attributing implicit theories and understandings to these

three political orders because either no ancient intellectuals wrote down explicit theories for

them or those manuscripts were lost to moths and dust over time. The key to deduce an

understanding with a reasonable degree of accuracy is to ask the follwing question: What

types of individuals had political power in a particular order and what was the reason behind

their power? Then we can construct a theory of that order, even though the actual

participants may have subconsciously evolved to meet the circumstantial political challenges

of their and not conceived of of their political lives in grand, world-historical terms.




8

In the first order of warrior aristocracy, the warriors held the power. The reason behind it

was that the clan-state faced an environment of perpetual struggle for power and hence

having the best warriors to lead the state would bring the most victories and biggest

expansion. In the proceeding development of a landed aristocracy, when land became the

major source of power and wealth, the clan-state would have benefited the most when the

ambitions of young men were turned towards acquiring the land – either by conquest from

other states or making productive previous empty land – as a way for these young ones to

earn titles and status in the polity as landowners.

In the development of a hereditary monarchy – which developed on more fertile lands – the

emphasis would have been on good order and stability. More wealth could be generated by

better cultivation of existing lands inside the country than conquering more rugged lands

outside. And hence the emphasis on centralization of power in one big landlord: the King,

better to avoid fights amongst different landowners and their allied warriors.

A common idea from these three different types of polity emerges. The political

understanding of those times was that the goal of the state was to enhance the power and

wealth of the clan and country. And the means to do that was to put political power in the

hands of those actors who would be best in the position to do so: warriors, landowners or a

king in different circumstances.

Lack of a formal theory of the political as the

major problem

We have to evaluate whether these political orders were effective or not, and if not where the

defect lay. The egalitarians and the liberals claim that the problem was inherent in these

orders themselves. But we have to consider them in their context, their time and place. The

world was a much more warlike place historically. States battled states constantly for land,

rivers, forests, cattle and the like. Any polity that was not evolutionary competitive with others

would have gone the way of dodos. That these orders survived over centuries indicates that

the logic underlying them: putting state in the hands of those best positioned to deal with

challenge in the particular context, was fundamentally sound.

Nevertheless, there was a major problem proven by the fact that these polities were not ableto deal with two major attacks, the first by Turko-Mongol hordes culminating in the Moghool




9

Empire (Moghool is Persian for Mongol) and the second by East India Company leading to

the British Empire. And thus my argument that political degeneration of Indian statecraft was

far earlier than current scapegoats of corruption, nepotism, divisiveness and the likes.

The main inquiry of this essay is to figure out the cause of this political degeneration? If a new

political theory for 21st century politics has to be created, it has to deal with the cause of this

degeneration and cure it. I have already rejected the view that there was some inherent fault

in the structure of old political orders.

Then it becomes imperative upon me to present an alternative cause and I put forward the

idea that it was the philosophical subversion of the older Indian civilization by the effeminate

clerical class that brought forth the political degeneration. Or in other words, there was no

formal political theory for the defenders of the old order to utilize in intellectual combat

against the mental opium of monkish theology.

Consider the case before the development of monkish theologies. It was the period of

expansion. The horse clans were triumphing over their enemies everywhere. Their gods were

sky gods and mountain gods; gods of thunder and lightning, sun and moon, energy and

power. There was progress in different spheres, the writing of the epics of the heroes, creation

of chariots and utilization of iron and steel and founding of first cities. Their priests were fire

priests, they believed in winning glory and victory in life and after death they believed that ‘In

the Palace of Indra the heroes feast till the end of the days!’

Then came the monks and monkish philosophers. The agricultural economy had allowed

many a weak men to survive, unlike the previous economy revolving around hunting, fishing

and pastoralism where a man had to be strong and fierce to provide for himself and his

family; and thus the clan and polity was strong as well.

These weak men filled with resentment and envy of the manliness and martialness of

horsemen and hunters created ideologies that promoted slavery, weakness-worship, eunuchry

and stagnationist tranquility. They advocated retreat and surrender, called for a life of

servility and deference towards enemies and rivals in the name of peace and harmony. They

concocted hobgoblins like reincarnation and pantheism to breakdown the confidence, the

ego, the belief in uniqueness and distinctiveness and the desire for glory and heroism of the

older culture. They poisoned the minds with abstract, delusional nonsense with which they

hoped to replace concrete, materialist ideas.




10

They brought about a period of stagnation. And then the period of retreat under the two

invasions of Mongols and East India Company. Stagnation leads to a sapping of the strength

and slow degeneration which inevitably means retreat when a powerful enemy appears on the

scene.

It is interesting to note the same phenomenon occurring in the intellectual sabotage of the

other three civilizations founded by horse clans.

Edward Gibbon, perhaps the most famous historian of the Roman Empire, wrote in his book

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that the rise of Monkish theologies

sapped the philosophical strength of the Romans who earlier derived energy from their older,

majestic Olympian gods of strength and vitality.

“The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of

society were discouraged; and the last remains of military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large

portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion;

and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes who could only plead the

merits of abstinence and chastity.”

(Edward Gibbon. Chapter 39, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman

Empire)

Professor Nietzsche of Germany also noticed this phenomenon of the resentment of the slaves

at work with regards to both Greece and Rome. He postulated that weaks and slaves, who felt

resentment towards the majestic heroes, concocted monkish theologies as a method of devious

revenge against their betters.

In Persia as well spread monkish theologies that attacked the older theology based on sun and

fire worship and the virtues that went with it. And soon enough in the historical time framePersia, once a powerful and mighty kingdom that could send its armies all the way to Greece

was overrun by desert tribes.

Coming back to Indian political history, we can’t help but notice a general pattern at play

here. Rise of great heroes in a time and a place and their great deeds, generates the

resentment of weaks and slaves, some of whom with an intellectual bent of mind create

theories and theologies that denigrate strength and glorify weakness.

But what prevented the Indian political actors from dealing properly with such subversion?




11

And here we come to our main point: lack of a formal political theory. They did not create a

philosophy that integrated the virtues of heroes and horsemen such as heroism, honor,

strength, order and victory into a comprehensive worldview. They did not ask themselves the

question as to what would a consistent application of these values would mean to state and

civilization in all their forms and actions? And as the time passed the stagnationist monks kept

preaching weakness and servility, passiveness and mindlessness.

Indian polity thus slowly degenerated over time. It could not produce political philosophers

who would think of ideas and strategies to enhance the wealth and power of the polity and

victory over enemies. Such notions as struggle of power, material progress, accumulation of

wealth and weapons became frowned upon as worthy matters of contemplation by

intellectuals. Over period of time this led to the military and economic degeneration of the

polity as well, following right behind the philosophical degeneration.

With the sapping of the desire for glory, the civilizational vitality also went out the window.

Then came the enemies…

Need for a New Political Theory

The Indian polity has not recovered from this blow inflicted on statecraft and politics by the

ideology-theology of monks, which I proclaim as slave philosophy. Indian political animals,

across the spectrum, all worry whether the ideas they advocate pay due deference to the

slavish gibberish of monkery. They are all afraid of crossing the line and being considered not

playing nice by the ideals of peace, equality, respect for all and other such mindless mush.

This is the reason why Indian polity remains degenerated. And for a regeneration to take

place a whole new political theory based on whole different set of ideas has to be created.

We need to see the connection between the ideas promoted by Monks and the lack of political

ideology and strength in the state. First they promoted the idea of passivity and this in my

opinion directly translates to why Indian state historically became passive.

This idea of passivity contaminated the culture. It is then not a hard stretch to image why the

state would also become passive as the state is made up of people who are part of culture as

well. Instead of actively defining new goals for the country as a whole and for the state to take

the lead in taking the country to those goals, the state became moribund, going about the




12

business that it had inherited from history. It is then not hard to understand why Indian state

did not develop political theories, because political theories are essentially an attempt to

answer the question “What is to be done and why?” by leaders and intellectuals of the

country. But if the culture is contaminated by bias towards passivity then this question does

not get asked.

This bias towards passivity results from two further ideas of monkish characters, one is the

emphasis on avoiding conflicts and second is the erasure of distinctions between categories in

the world. Passivity does not create these ideas, but follows from them as their conclusion.

Let us consider them separately. Taking action and actively working to create goals leads to

unavoidable struggle for power. Different entities have different goals and if one side has to

accomplish its goal it has to seek victory over the other. It has to essentially “define an enemy”

in the language of Carl Schmitt that is against its interests and work to defeat it.

The political involves conflict and a political theory cannot escape it. Then if your goal is to

avoid conflict, you advocate for passivity as a notion hoping no one else will become your

enemy if you have no ambitions of power of any kind. The lack of political in the current

Indian polity then owes much to this idea because for the polity to take action and bring

about changes some entities and individuals will become natural enemies, those who benefit

from existing order.

The lack of political thought also owes to the second idea of monkish characters which is to

erase distinctions and classifications in the world. This leads to sapping of desire to assert

one’s own will and one’s own interest, because this necessarily involves making distinction

between sides, ‘our side’ and ‘the other side’ and actively working to benefit ‘our side’. It is the

act of defining oneself, one’s values and one’s interest as apart from the rest, where political

ideation lay.

When the Indian state was politically active before these ideas came along, it had a strong

notion of distinction of itself from the rest of what was out there. The polity generally took

pride in being descended from a particular clan of horse-riding heroes historically and from

certain sky gods mythologically.

Thus it had no problem creating distinctions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and asserting its will to

increase the ‘good’ and to reduce the ‘bad’. With the arrival of monkish notions of everything

being part of some larger whole, the culture became contaminated with the idea that




13

everything should be accepted and action should not be taken to promote something over the

other. Not hard to see why political thought would have a stillbirth in such an environment.

These notions of avoiding conflicts, not making distinctions and promoting peace and

passivity lie essentially in the resentment of the weak and the slaves; as the strong and majestic

are proud of their glories, lust for victories and for advancement. However, simply ridicule is

not enough as developed ideas have to be answered with other developed ideas.

The only way to counter the Slave philosophy of the emasculated clerical class is to create a

Heroic Philosophy of Warrior Aristocrats. And this philosophy must be cast in terms of a

political theory because it is the state and the political sphere that is most important for the

direction of the civilization. It then calls for the creation of a new political theory based on the

Philosophy of Heroism.

Both political and personal must be infused with this political theory of Heroism. The goal of

the state and the political individuals will then be to reach for heroism, which means defining

tough challenges to be overcome and seeking victory over enemies.

This political theory and others that may be created must be spread within the entire right-

wing political movement. All political movements have one goal, that is for them to

implement their ideology and run the state and reconfigure the civilization according to it.

For a movement to make this possible, it needs to come to power.

For it to come to power, it needs to politically organize and act strategically to acquire

power. But political organization and strategizing can’t proceed before the question is

answered: what is to be done? The movement needs to have to an idea of what is it exactly

that it is going to do when it comes to power. This question cannot be answered on the spot,

either when starting a party or when coming to power.

It requires a political theory to answer the question of what is to be done. Only a

comprehensive political theory provides a coherent, intellectual framework from which

specific laws and policies can be teased out. Only a fleshed out and developed political theory

provides the consistency and rigor required to maintain discipline and dedication amongst the

political animals to keep stalking their prey. It also serves as a foundation on which many

more theories and ideologies can later be built. But, there must be at least one political theory

before a movement can really proceed forward.




14

If the Indian Right finds itself in such predicament then the very reason is this only. The right

has no political theory unlike the left or the liberals. It is not possible to win the war for ideas

without having ideas of one’s own. And it is not possible to continuously turn out new ideas if

one has not dug a deep philosophical well that will serve as the intellectual source. And a

political theory is just that type of a well.

But before a new political theory can be created it has to escape the orbital pull of old

theories. Essentially it has to attain escape velocity.

“Escape Velocity is the speed any object has to attain if it is to escape falling back to the planet. Now

escape velocity is dependent on the gravitational force of the planet, and speed and distance of the object;

nevertheless the crucial idea being that if an object fails to attain the escape velocity it needs, then no

matter how fast it is rising or how high it has already risen, in due course it will fall back down to the

planet."

(TechnoFuturist, Attaining Escape Velocity for Political Theory )

Indian Right fails to attain escape velocity from Left and Liberalism and India as a whole fails

to attain escape velocity from its multitude of problems. I believe the cause of this is

interrelated and it is a refusal to once and for all reject the slave philosophy of monks. The

right must firmly embrace the notion of struggle for power as part of the natural order of the

universe, victory of the strong as the natural principle and glory and heroism as natural goals

of great men. The Right must not stagger around, trying to mince words and pander to the

squeamish who would like to triangulate.

How can this be accomplished?

"Rightists have not been able to attain escape velocity, leave the orbit of left and liberals behind and

discover an entire universe of exciting new possibilities for political theories. What the right needs

essentially are ‘big books’ that will lay out an alternate vision for the present and the future. Big books

that will allow the right to attain escape velocity."

(TechnoFuturist, Attaining Escape Velocity for Political Theory )

The Right then needs a big book that lays out a political theory based on Heroism.

"This process of taking the worldview of a broad political movement and distilling it into big ideas and

then taking those big ideas, applying them to all facets of civilization, teasing out all the implications




15

and imperatives and framing them into comprehensive big books is how new and original political

theories and ideologies are created."

(TechnoFuturist, Big Ideas for Big Books )

So Heroism is the big idea that will be the basis of our new political theory that will bring

about the rejuvenation of the polity. Here is how I define the concept of Heroism itself.

"It would be useful to have a working definition of Heroism first. I will define Heroism as

fighting and conquering a tough challenge. Even better if no one in history has met and

overcome that challenge before. And even better if there are powerful opponents trying to

thwart the victory."

TechnoFuturist Aristocratism: Dynamic

Interplay of Power

The creation of a blueprint for a futuristic right-wing alternative to liberal democratism and

social democratism requires for the Right to define its values. Having defined its values and its

big ideas it can then apply them like a ‘master key’ to all types of political permutations and

combinations to create a corpus of philosophical work. I have previously identified a

multitude of values such as honor, heroism, strength, glory, victory, order and structure and

chosen Heroism amongst them as the main idea that the Right can capitalize on for its

political philosophy.

I also proposed – mind you more as a first exploration than a finished proposal – a House of

Aristocrats; made up of three equal part representations of warriors, industrialists and

scientists. Now these two areas I have covered in my earlier essays for CRI and would point

the interested reader in that direction. Here I will take another approach.

I will put forth a couple of principles that can be utilized to think about political institutions.

First is the idea that a state should be made up of individuals who contain within themselves

the abilities, or the ‘powers’ which are most conducive to civilizational flourishment at that

time when applied on a larger scale. Second idea is that offices of the state and political titles

should serve as inducement and encouragement to young, ambitious men and women.




16

This second idea is easier to grasp and I will deal with it first. Every polity needs to provide

motivations and rewards to get its young and ambitious to pursue work, and not just in the

narrow commercial sense, that will lead to maintenance and growth of the civilization. The

liberal commercial republics use money; the nationalist states use national pride and so on.

Now money is neither a sufficient motivation, nor is always a desirable one and may not be

available at times either.

Many problems with that. To use finance terminology, many activities may have higher rate

of return to the civilization than to the individual pursuing them and hence there will be

underinvestment in them. Other activities will be of a parasitical nature; that is the positive

rate of return generated by them for the individual will create larger negative rate of return to

the society as a whole. More, money does not motivate everybody and it stops motivating

people at different stages. Furthermore, many activities have no monetary rewards to the

individual pursuing them, political theorizing for example, but can have great rewards for

civilization and in other works it may not be desirable to have monetary compensation such

as engaging in politics.

Here, political titles and offices of the state can be used as glorious rewards to those

individuals who have done great deeds for the polity and the civilization; but who may not

necessarily have personally derived any benefits of their heroic actions.

Democratic assembly offers no way of rewarding such individuals as election seats are handed

out by masses who are more likely to vote demagogues, movie and sports stars into office than

philosophers, thinkers and soldiers. Now on the other hand in a right-wing state, structured

differently, if titles and offices were given as a reward for heroic action, it will capture the

imagination of the youth and many will attempt to pursue heroism, across different fields, that

benefits the whole of civilization.

Nevertheless, that is my secondary argument in support of an Aristocratic State, a concept I

will explain soon. My main thrust is that the state that will be best for the civilization is one

that is governed by the best individuals in the civilization, keeping in mind that in my theory

the definition of the best and needs of civilization are both dynamic and context dependent.

Compare that with the democratists’ who want a state that is to be governed by the majority

or representatives thereof, the Left which wants a state that promotes equality and liberals




17

who want a state that protects property rights. The TechnoAristocratic state will be governed

by the best individuals and its goal will be to promote the flourishing of the civilization.

Now what is this notion of an Aristocratic state? Certainly I do not mean anything involving

politically powerful landowners, but I merely use the word to denote the concept of ‘Rule by

the Best’ which was its original, ancient meaning.

I name the political philosophy as TechnoFuturist Aristocratism and define it as the

comprehensive and thorough application of the philosophy of Heroism to the Political.

It is less important for me now to define a concrete structure for a state based on this theory,

than to elucidate what the basis for it will be. The idea here is that individuals within

themselves have various ‘powers’ such as strength, honor, scientific ability. Application of some of these powers widely and the pursuit to increase them leads to great good for the

country. And who is in better position to apply these powers on an entire civilizational scale

than that one entity: the state. Then it becomes imperative for the state to be made up of the

political actors who have the highest quality and quantity of such powers in their personal

constitutions.

Now in different contexts, different of these powers will be of greater utility to the civilization,

while individuals themselves will have growth or decay of these powers in their character and

self.

Then the state must be both aristocratic and dynamic, that is it must be made up of the best

powers but there must also be a dynamic interplay between these powers. The state cannot be

hereditary or fixed for life; at the same time there is no nonsense of equal access to the state

for all either. Heroes rise and heroes fall, champions rise and champions fall, and the goal will

be for the state to induct within its ranks as many of the heroes and champions as possible

who are at the peak of their power, energy, and glory.

And I will go ahead and propose a concrete structure for just such a type of state anyhow,

because I do not want to leave my readers unsatisfied.

What are the powers that are requiem for civilizational progress in our age? And who possess

those powers? First, we need warriors to defeat the enemies. Second, we need scientists and

philosophers to put forth great ideas. Third, we need businessmen to build massive industrial

empires. Then following my theory if the state is to bring the fight to the enemies and score




18

victory, if it is to diffuse great technologies, if it is to encourage the building of industrial

beasts, then these three archetypes must run the state.

Thus we have our House of Aristocrats ruling over a Unified State. Warriors get 1/3 of the

seats; Scientists, Engineers, Thinkers and Philosophers get their 1/3 and self-made

Industrialists get their 1/3; all for 10 year terms with term limits to keep the dynamism going.

The masses will benefit from their benevolent paternalism while the polity will benefit from

their brilliant leadership.

And it is possible to use this principle to create different permutations and combinations when

dealing with different circumstances. In the future when Space Age comes to the forefront

and space exploration and asteroid mining become the great political topics of the day, the

Right will be ready to create a state structure to suit that. A House of Aristocrats; this time

changed to reflect the realities of the space age. Then the Aerospace scientists and engineers

will get 1/3 of the seats, the owners of Space companies will get 1/3 and fighter pilots of

space fighters will get the remaining 1/3 seats.

Institutions will evolve but the political theory of heroism will guide their evolutionary

development, promoting the goal of getting the great heroes of the day in positions of power

where they can further promote the grandeur of the entire civilization.

Conclusion The goal of this essay has been to find the particular ideology that was historically responsible

for the collapse of Indian states’ political strength and independence and then to provide the

beginnings for an ideology that can once again breathe into the polity and the political

animals the same lust for power and glory that beat in the hearts of the horse riding heroes.

It has been my claim that it was the slave philosophy of monks that is the root cause behind

chaos, penury, disorder, defeatism and retreatism. If the tide has to be turned, and order,

opulence, quality and victory to be attained; a philosophy of heroism has to be created,

developed and injected into the culture and politics.

As political philosophers we can do no better than to begin this quest.

“Go call the Heroes! Go call the Horsemen! They are needed to run the state!”

bring back the kshatriyas: a philosophical primer for the indian political animal

Documents