Republics and Quasi-Democratic Institutions in Ancient India

Abstract

Over the last century it has been established that ancient India, once visualized as ruled entirely by absolute monarchs and age-old hierarchical religious institutions such as the ‘caste system’, was for long periods home to republics comparable to the Greek poleis (city-states) of archaic and classical times, republics that have as good a claim to be called democracies as the communities in the West that gave us the term (Sharma, 1968; Sharma, 1991 [1959]). One might expect this discovery to have some effect on how ancient history, the history of democracy, and even world history are visualized. Yet to this day, outside of India, even professional historians know next to nothing about those ancient republics and other Indian examples of government by discussion. This chapter will briefly describe these republics, try to place them in historical context, and argue that they should be part of the world view of every student of democracy.