Kautilya’s Arthashastra, India and the NE : A dilemma

Dr Salikyu Sangtam
One of the defining features of old civilizations, such as India or Chinese, is that they usually do not look to foreign cultures for knowledge or philosophy to deal with their own societal political, socio-economic, or military problems. The Chinese, for instance, have their own philosophical culture that provides them, even to this day, with means to deal with political or military challenges that necessarily arise. Similarly, India looks to its own culture for directions in dealing with political or military issues. One of the best examples we find of this is New Delhi’s continuous use of the ancient Indian philosopher and strategist, Kautilya’s (also known as Chanakya) Arthashastra. When confronted with an uphill challenge, Kautilya in Arthashastra emphasizes Sham (to charm the other party/side through political reconciliation), Daam (monetary/financial inducements and benefits), Danda (threat and use of force), and Bhed (create divisions and splitting the opponents) to handle political, economic, and strategic affairs of the great Mauryan Empire during the reign of Chandragupta Maurya. These counsels are what India continues to resort to because they have stood the test of times for thousands of years.
We find that New Delhi found in Kautilya Arthashastra directions on how to handle not just the Naga issues, but also to deal with numerous secessionist armed outfits throughout India’s North East (from Assam, Tripura and Mizoram to Nagaland and Manipur). And here we find all these four principles being employed. Without going into a detailed elaboration, here are some brief sketches, from Naga issue, to illustrate this proposition—which has gained a lot of consensus among intellectuals and strategists in India. In dealing with the Naga issue, New Delhi has used danda by utilizing threats and violent force to contain the Nationalist movement, after which they immediately employed sham by charming the Nagas with a political reconciliation by offering separate State (with substantial autonomy) within the Union of India (hence, the State of Nagaland). This was accompanied by daam in a form of substantial financial assistance and development funds from the Central Government—which continues to this day. If these were not enough to calm the movement (which they did not), New Delhi employed bhed by splitting the Naga movement into numerous armed groups (the reality of which we see and experience today) and exploiting the existing tribal sentiments and causing divisions among various tribes. Hence, the entrenched tribalism among Nagas we experience as part of our daily lives.
It may seems that such tactics to be working out well for New Delhi since Nagas are at present divided and separated in the four States of the North East (Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh—not to mention a great number of Naga tribes are in Myanmar), entrenched zero-sum tribal competitions, and a highly fragmented Nationalist armed groups. Such divisions and splitting have worked well for the Government of India (GoI), at least in the short run because these splitting took out the force and impetus from the Nationalist movements (evident by the fratricidal feuds).
However, such tactics (splitting, division, and financial inducements) utilized by New Delhi to deal with the Naga issues has, in fact, seem to have become impediment for the GoI to arrive at a durable, lasting, and concluding solution. What has happened is that, on the one hand, New Delhi has created numerous Nationalist armed groups fighting over the same space (territory) for political legitimacy (competition to claim one group to be more legitimate than others and so forth). This has led to what some call as “Competitive Radicalism,” where groups make impossible and unrealistic demands on the GoI simply to outgun and outsmart the rival groups. Thereby, delaying the process of arriving at an ultimate settlement or conclusion. What we see at present with the competing claims between Framework Agreement of NSCN (IM) and Agreed Position of NNPGs is a case in point.
(To be contd)
The writer is Faculty of Political Science, North East Christian University Dimapur, Nagaland (The views presented are personal and do not reflect the views of the institution and TSE)