The Ashoka code

Drawing on the ideas of Ashoka and Kautilya, this thought-provoking book argues for a civil and international order based on principles that transcend the goals of pure economic efficiency and amoral realpolitik, writes Malini Sood

To Uphold the World: The Message Of Ashoka And Kautilya For The 21st Century
Bruce Rich
Penguin
326 pages
Rs496

Ashoka, the third Mauryan emperor (born in 304 BC), has been hailed by the likes of HG Wells and Arnold Toynbee as an extraordinary world ruler who sought to adopt a secular state ethic of non-violence and reverence for life, which he also extended to international relations. Most Indians know the story of Ashoka’s conversion to Buddhism after the Kalinga war, and his transformation from tyrant to advocate of kindness and benevolence, promoter of public and social good, and his role in propagating Buddhism in India and abroad.

Ashoka’s Dhamma was an attempt to formulate and put into practice the basic rules of civilisation, anchored in shared common values, in a multi-ethnic, multicultural empire.
His edicts, inscribed on rock faces and pillars all over his vast empire, proclaimed religious tolerance and equal protection of the law and announced the establishment of nature reserves and protected species. The edicts bear the message of responsibility, mindfulness, and justice for the benefit of all, and advocate non-violence towards not only humans but also towards all sentient beings.

Paradoxically, Ashoka’s great ethical achievement rested on a centralised government organised and codified by Kautilya, chief minister of Ashoka’s grandfather
Chandragupta Maurya and author of Arthasastra, the world’s first treatise on political economy and statecraft.

What is the relevance of Ashoka’s message and Kautilya’s teachings for the 21st century? Do they — and particularly Ashoka — offer any lessons to a world confronted by ethnic tribalism and religious fundamentalism, and faced by the ethical-political dilemma of globalisation?   

In this engaging and thought-provoking book, Bruce Rich, a lawyer and international environmental advocate, examines Ashoka and Kautilya as “archetypes, metaphors and sources of inspiration for thinking about the perennial conundrums of politics, economics and ethics, which today are played out on a global scale as never before.” Arguing for the contemporary relevance of Ashoka’s ideas on how to “uphold the world”, Rich calls for formulating a global consensus on social, political and ethical values, both for the individual and the community, that is the moral equivalent of an Ashokan Dhamma for the 21st century.

Rich, who has worked for years to promote the adoption of environmental and social standards for the lending activities of international financial institutions, traces the philosophical and historical evolution of the project of economic development in the West. The “people above profits” slogan of anti-globalisation protestors may appear simplistic but it nevertheless expresses a core truth. The world of the global market lacks justice, prudence, and beneficence. Instead, what we need are veneration, participation, and mindfulness. The “essential doctrine” is “reverence for life”, a principle that means “upholding the world”. But the focus on good behaviour based on reverence for life is an incomplete guide to what the world needs. This belief needs to be supplemented by emphasis on building and using social institutions, as advocated by Kautilya. Rich reminds us that values such as justice, prudence, and beneficence are not the inventions of Western civilisation. In the case of Ashoka and Kautilya, in some respects, these values were better developed in South Asia nearly two millennia before the flowering of modern Western civilisation.

Many malcontents of globalisation have critiqued the economistic conception of nature as resources meant for instrumental use by humankind. Utilitarian and rational arguments of enlightened self-interest and social improvement projects have failed to address the basic dilemma of contemporary society. “The short-term lack of mindfulness of our economistic civilisation is profoundly irresponsible; to uphold the world we must be anchored in that which is transcendent in the most fundamental sense, in that which is outside the present and ourselves. The recovery of the future is anchored in mindfulness of the past,” Rich writes.

The challenge before societies in an era of economic globalisation is “the need to found a civil and international order on principles that transcend the goals of pure economic efficiency and amoral realpolitik”. The antidote to the “pathological short attention span of the global market Network Society” is mindfulness to what is unique, specific, and irreducible in human events and existence. We need “a gentler, less arrogant and more attuned approach to social knowledge and action”.

The situation, however, is not entirely bleak. Something truly unprecedented has been occurring over the last two decades: a worldwide growth of a new “biocentric” ethic, linked to a non-anthropocentric sense that transcends the immediate human situation.
The growing global concern for the environment offers hope that we may yet forge an
ethical global consciousness. 

“We live in a Kautilyan world, but more than ever need an Ashokan ethic,” Rich writes, a conclusion supported by Amartya Sen in his foreword and by the Dalai Lama in his afterword. In To Uphold The World, Rich offers a highly readable, wide-ranging and insightful account of our contemporary world and the dilemmas we face. He also shows us how we can strive to live in a more just and peaceful world, if only we recognise the importance of transcending our immediate demands and short-term needs, and the significance of defining areas that are sacred and non-negotiable. 

Malini Sood is a Delhi-based freelance writer, editor and researcher.