The Interplay of Religion and Polity in Pre-Modern India

Walk into any discussion about Indian political thought and you will quickly notice something that surprises students trained on Western theory: religion and politics here were rarely treated as separate worlds. For most of pre-modern history, the duties of a king, the meaning of justice, and the moral purpose of the state were all expressed in religious language. This was not a flaw to be corrected but a deliberate design. Understanding how faith and governance grew together helps explain why thinkers like Mahatma Gandhi and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad later insisted that politics divorced from ethics was hollow, and why the modern secular state took such a distinctive shape on the subcontinent.

How religion and polity became inseparable
Dharma as the foundation of governance
Pragmatism and morality in the Arthashastra
The ruler exists for the welfare of the people
A civilisation that accommodated many faiths
Ashoka’s Dhamma
Akbar’s Sulh-i-kul
From moral kingship to the modern secular state
Gandhi and Azad on faith and politics
The double legacy of this fusion

How religion and polity became inseparable

In pre-modern India, religion and politics were not two distinct spheres but deeply interwoven domains that reinforced each other. Political legitimacy, lawmaking, social order, and kingship were all shaped by religious doctrines and institutions. A ruler did not simply hold power; he was expected to hold it on behalf of a moral order larger than himself.

This fusion is most visible in the privileged position of the Brahmins. As custodians of sacred knowledge and arbiters of dharma, they advised kings and helped legitimise royal authority. The result was a system where spiritual leaders carried political weight and rulers sought religious sanction to secure their rule. Yet this same arrangement also reinforced the caste system, tying political roles to the varna order and often justifying rigid social hierarchy through religious texts.

Dharma as the foundation of governance

Dharma is the single most important concept for grasping this relationship. The term resists exact translation, covering moral duty, law, truth, and justice all at once. Classical texts argued that the primary obligation of the king was the preservation of dharma. This expanded the scope of political thinking far beyond power and administration to include ethics and theology. A king who upheld dharma was legitimate; one who abandoned it forfeited his claim to rule.

This is why royal authority carried a religious aura. The king was seen as a protector of dharma (dharmarakshaka), and even Manusmriti described the virtues a ruler should embody, such as courage, self-control, and a commitment to justice. Importantly, the king was not above dharma. His authority was constrained by the very moral order he was meant to defend, which gave Indian kingship an accountability that pure power politics lacked.

Pragmatism and morality in the Arthashastra

One might expect Kautilya’s Arthashastra to break this pattern. Written around the 3rd century BCE as a handbook for Chandragupta Maurya, it is often read as a cold, realist treatise on statecraft. Yet even this most pragmatic of texts refused to discard religious ethics.

The Arthashastra advocates a balance between dharma, artha (material gain), and kama (desire), insisting that moral duty cannot be ignored even in practical governance. The judge in the text was tellingly called dharmastha, the upholder of dharma. Kautilya balanced realpolitik with ethical responsibility, suggesting that a ruler who neglected his people’s interests risked losing legitimacy. Morality and pragmatism were not opposites here; they were interdependent.

The ruler exists for the welfare of the people

This brings us to one of the most striking ideas in the entire tradition. Across religious and political texts, the ruler’s purpose was defined by service to the governed. Kautilya put it directly: in the happiness of his subjects lies the king’s happiness, and in their welfare lies his own.

This was not empty rhetoric. The Arthashastra extended protection to the weaker sections of society, advocating for the livelihood of the poor and even the welfare of prisoners. The king was imagined as a father figure responsible for the most vulnerable, including the poor, women, and children. Scholars have described this vision as Rajadharma, an early conception of a welfare state in which temporal power was fused with spiritual wisdom for collective well-being.

A civilisation that accommodated many faiths

What makes the Indian experience genuinely distinctive is that this religiously grounded politics was rarely tied to a single faith. The subcontinent hosted Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and later Islam, and political thought repeatedly found ways to accommodate this diversity rather than suppress it. Values such as tolerance, universalism, and compassion emerged not as abstract ideals but as practical responses to governing a plural society.

Ashoka’s Dhamma

Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE offers the earliest great example. After the bloodshed of the Kalinga war, he adopted a policy of Dhamma, a Prakrit form of dharma, emphasising non-violence, religious tolerance, and social welfare. He inscribed his ethical commitments on pillars and rocks across the empire so that ordinary subjects could read them. By framing tolerance as an ethical imperative, Ashoka helped build an enduring culture of pluralism that influenced subsequent rulers for centuries.

Akbar’s Sulh-i-kul

Nearly two millennia later, the Mughal emperor Akbar pursued a strikingly similar path. His policy of Sulh-i-kul, meaning universal peace, allowed Hindus and other non-Muslim groups to participate fully in the imperial court without conversion or discrimination. Drawn from Sufi mystical thought, the term implied not passive tolerance but active balance, civility, and a willingness to compromise in service of a diverse polity. Akbar abolished the pilgrimage tax in 1563 and the discriminatory jizya tax in 1564, and established the Ibadat Khana where scholars of different faiths could debate openly. Religious pluralism, in his hands, strengthened rather than weakened political authority.

From this inclusive approach emerged the principle of sarva dharma sambhava, equal respect for all religions. The philosophical lineage running from Ashoka’s Dhamma to Akbar’s Sulh-i-kul reflects a sustained civilisational experiment in governing diversity through respect rather than coercion.

From moral kingship to the modern secular state

This long history did not end with the pre-modern era. It directly shaped how the modern Indian state imagined secularism. Rather than excluding religion from public life, Indian secularism sought to ensure that the state respects all religious traditions equally while remaining grounded in moral principles.

This is a meaningful departure from the Western “wall of separation” model. The older civilisational phrase, sarva dharma sambhava, describes not neutrality but active impartiality. The state engages with religion, can reform harmful practices, and treats communities as well as individuals as bearers of rights. As the scholar D.E. Smith observed, secular for most people here means non-sectarian rather than non-religious.

Gandhi and Azad on faith and politics

The thinkers who articulated this vision drew openly on the pre-modern inheritance. Gandhi’s idea of Ram Rajya was never a call for Hindu rule but for an ethical order serving all. His sarva dharma sambhava emphasised the moral and spiritual unity of all religions, using faith as a unifying force rather than a dividing one. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad championed the same inclusive ideal, arguing that religious harmony was indispensable for a united and independent nation. His commentary on the Quran stressed contextuality, interfaith harmony, and rational reasoning, defending the place of ijtihad within Islam.

The Constitution that emerged absorbed these principles, guaranteeing freedom of religion while committing the state to non-discrimination. The Supreme Court later affirmed in the S.R. Bommai case that secularism is part of the basic structure of the Constitution, explicitly linking it to the principle of equality of all religions. The thread running from ancient dharma to modern constitutional secularism is unmistakable.

The double legacy of this fusion

It would be incomplete to celebrate this tradition without acknowledging its costs. The same fusion that produced ideals of welfare and tolerance also entrenched the caste system and concentrated authority among religious elites. Much early political writing was uncritical of the established social order, justifying the degradation of lower castes through religious concepts of dharma and karma. The cohesive moral framework that bound society together also made certain inequalities very difficult to question.

This dual character is precisely why the topic remains so relevant. The Indian tradition offers a powerful alternative to the idea that ethics and governance must be kept apart, yet it also warns how religious legitimacy can be used to freeze social hierarchy in place. Both lessons matter when thinking about politics today.

What do you think? Is a state that actively respects all religions better suited to a diverse society than one that strictly separates faith from government? And can the welfare-centred idea of Rajadharma still guide leaders today, or does grounding politics in religious values risk reviving the inequalities it once justified?

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Table of Contents

How religion and polity became inseparable 🔗

Dharma as the foundation of governance 🔗

Pragmatism and morality in the Arthashastra 🔗

The ruler exists for the welfare of the people 🔗

A civilisation that accommodated many faiths 🔗

Ashoka’s Dhamma 🔗

Akbar’s Sulh-i-kul 🔗

From moral kingship to the modern secular state 🔗

Gandhi and Azad on faith and politics 🔗

The double legacy of this fusion 🔗