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Introduction
In 1914, K. V. Ramaswamy Aiyangar, the leading doyen of ancient Indian history, hailed the recently rediscovered, supposedly third-century BCE text, the Arthasastra (The Science of Wealth):
The finding of the Arthasastra of Kautilya . . . has inaugurated a new epoch in the study of ancient Indian institutions, political and economic . . . [and it] assuredly prove[s] a corrective to the prevalent belief of our day in the total absorption of the ancient Indian intellect in metaphysical speculation. May we not also look on it, with some pride, as indicating the presence of extensive schools of political thought and opinion in ancient India, in the days corresponding, and even anterior, to those of Plato and Aristotle . . .1
A century later, the text is, if anything, even more popular, and appears on the syllabuses of several Indian business schools; in recent years its supposed author, Kautilya, or Chanakya, has become one of India's most invoked Indian statesmen, increasingly displacing Nehru, Gandhi, Akbar, and Asoka.2
But despite the centrality of this text in particular periods of Indian history, it has been surprisingly overlooked by historians of the nationalist movement and Indian political culture.3And this is particularly unexpected given that for some years historians have been interested in the reception and use of ancient Indian texts in the nationalist movement. Instead they have largely focused on religious and legal texts, such as the Upanishads, the Dharmasastras, and the Bhagavad Gita, all of which, in contrast with the Arthasastra, are either religious or philosophical texts--and if they do deal with statecraft, they do so within a religious and ethical frame.4
This article will explore the influence of this largely secular text on politics and statecraft, and the ways in which it was interpreted by Indian politicians and commentators since its rediscovery in 1905. In doing so, this article will seek to make a broader argument about the central themes that have driven Indian political debate in the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Exploring the reception of classic or religious texts can cast a great deal of light on the nature of any political culture: debates over their meaning can reveal tensions...