Natural Order and Wise Synthesis:

Sovereignty-Violence-Varṇa in the Arthaśāstra and Aurobindo

Authors

  • Jimmy Casas Klausen

Keywords:

Varna, Sovereignty, Violence, Aurobindo Ghosh, Arthaśāstra

Abstract

 

The Dalit Panthers Manifesto made the claim that a revolutionary transformation of Indian society was necessary because of its systemic character—i.e., a form of systemic violence that “survives the ever-changing forms of power structure” from premodernity (“Hindu feudalism”) into and beyond the anticolonial struggle.  This article aims to analyze two such systems of sovereignty-violence-varna, one in a premodern and the other in an anticolonial treatise, the Kauṭīlya’s Arthaśāstra and Aurobindo Ghose’s essays “Indian Polity” in The Foundations of Indian Culture.  This article investigates how these visions of Indian polity—rightly ordered distinction; wise, stable synthesis—each necessitate two sovereign violences of varna:  what, in complementary analyses, Walter Benjamin called lawmaking and law-preserving violence, and what Geroges Dumézil identified as magical and juridical sovereignty (of raj and brahman, respectively). By analysing two iterations of the sovereignty-violence-varna system, this article suggests that Brahmanic political theology might be better understood not as primarily based on inclusion/exclusion as in an Agambenian understanding, but rather on relations of opposition and complementarity. 

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Author Biography

Jimmy Casas Klausen

Jimmy Casas Klausen teaches at the Instituto de Relações Internacionais of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro.  He has previously published book chapters on Phule (in the collection Colonial Exchanges, edited by B. Hendrix and D. Baumgold, 2017) and Ambedkar (in Disobedience, edited by E. Loizidou, 2013).  His article 'Economies of Violence: The Bhagavadgītā and the Fostering of Life in Gandhi's and Ghose's Anticolonial Theories' appeared in the American Political Science Review in 2014. 

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Published

2021-11-09

How to Cite

Casas Klausen, J. (2021). Natural Order and Wise Synthesis:: Sovereignty-Violence-Varṇa in the Arthaśāstra and Aurobindo. Sanglap: Journal of Literary and Cultural Inquiry, 6(1), 7–19. Retrieved from https://sanglap-journal.in/index.php/sanglap/article/view/115