The Indian Machiavelli: Pragmatism versus morality, and the reception of the Arthasastra in India, 1905-2014

This article explores the ways in which the Arthasastra (The Science of Wealth or The Science of Power), an ancient text rediscovered in 1905, was interpreted by Indian politicians and commentators. It seeks to explain why the text's popularity changed so drastically over time, and why, despite the excitement about it in the first 20 years following its reappearance, it was largely ignored in the Gandhian and Nehruvian eras, until a striking revival of interest from the late 1980s onwards. It argues that these changes in the text's fortunes can be explained partly as a result of significant shifts in elite Indian political culture. It also suggests that we need to reassess our analysis of the fundamental fault-lines in Indian politics, questioning Chatterjee's and Nandy's argument on the centrality of tensions between Gandhian 'indigenous' thought and Nehruvian 'Western' modernity, and arguing for the importance of the conflict between amoral politics, endorsed by both Gandhi and Nehru, and a 'pragmatic' politics justified by the Arthasastra.