Ancient India Research Paper

The role of the state as mentioned by the ancient texts, covered all the aspects of human life, which are religious,social and economic. The famous laissez faire theory advocates for domain of state activity to be reduced to minimum which was not the case in Ancient India. It may be possible that smaller states had a smaller domain of activities but the stronger and bigger states had a well established system to discharge the functions. It can be asserted that the state in ancient India had its domain covering most aspects of human life. The important question is about individual liberty, was it there? On scrolling through the pages of ancient Indian texts, one finds a mention of liberty in the world’s longest epic ‘Mahabharata’. It has a simile

India also witnessed the same effect. The British along with other European nations had made their way into the Indian territories by starting of the 17th century and from the mid 18th century they had started to establish themselves as a major political power in India. With their advent, they also brought the ideas from the western civilizations. People like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Dadabhai Naoraji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and many other were the pioneers of these new ideas in India. Unlike many other nations, India didn’t witness a separate movement for liberalism but all these ideas were a part of the freedom movement. The Constitution Of India was drafted keeping the ideals of liberalism in consideration. The preamble of the constitution mentioned liberalism as on of the objectives for the state. The entire part of Fundamental Rights deals with liberalism. Indian liberalism is a mix of western ideas and also inculcate values from the ancient culture of the country. The fundamental rights contain individual rights which are there in many liberal democracies. Also the rights are equal for all the citizens. India would be celebrating its 70th independence day in few years and so far the Indian state has not seen any division after the bloody partition of 1947. India is the world’s largest liberal democracy and has been able to successfully accommodate the diverse population. Liberalism has been so far the

The then president Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed declared emergency on 25 June 1975 citing internal disturbance as the reason. This order allowed the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to rule by decree, and civil liberties were suspended. The period saw press being censored and elections also got postponed. Human rights were greatly abused. The infamous compulsory sterilization program can be considered as one of the worst attack on personal liberties. There were many allegations of coercion for unwilling people. The government had complete control over the media. People were being detained by police without charges and proper procedure. There was a great level of censorship on artistic works. The political opponents were tortured and