Ven. Shravasti Dhammika has posted an excellent article about Buddhism and government, inspired by the recent dethroning of King Gayanendra of Nepal.
Some interesting quotes from this excellent article:
Different religions have different theories about the origins and nature of kinship. The Bible for example, says that all rulers derive their power from God and thus to obey the king is to obey God (Romans 13,1-2). In Europe this doctrine came to be known as ‘the divine right of kings’.
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The Buddha had an entirely different and more realistic concept of kings and kingship. In the Agganna Sutta he posited a social contract theory of monarchy. In ancient days, he said, people saw the need for some form of government and so they elected from amongst themselves a person who they thought would be best able to rule them.
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Thus according to the Buddhist theory, kings derived their legitimacy from general consent, i.e. from the people they ruled. It followed from this that a king retained his right to rule only for so long as his subjects benefited from it. Several stories in the Jataka implicitly suggest that people had a right to overthrow a king who was cruel, unjust or incompetent (Ja.I,326; III,513-14; VI,156).
Such ideas were far too ahead of their time and there is little evidence that they were ever applied. However, the Buddha’s teaching of good governance had some influence in making kings more humane.
Not to trash Europeans or anything, but it is kind of interesting how European countries tend to retain symbolic monarchies along with some symbolic version of the "divine right of kings." Perhaps this is mostly just a sort of clinging to tradition, but there are people in the west who still seem to believe in this "divine right of kings" idea. Essentially they deny that people ever have the "right" to revolt against their government, no matter what, even if democracy ceases to exist.
This tends to come up most frequently in arguments regarding the US 2nd Amendment since this right is used as part of the justification for it. It's not clear that this is always an indication of siding with some sort of "divine right of kings" (or the general idea "subjects" exist for the sake of the government) or just the notion that there should be some non-violent way of revolting.
6 comments:
I can't imagine a successful attempt to overthrow the government here. You bring up an interesting point in that there might even be an unspoken agreement that would follow the old "divine right of kings." It seems like the whole system of government and even voting is sort of rigged to favor and keep in power certain people here and probably everywhere. I never thought of this sort of thing before. It's quite interesting.
Well, I can sort of imagine a possible scenario, but I don't think anyone would seriously bother unless things got really bad. To give you some sense of how many complaints people in colonial America had before they resorted to violence, check out the Declaration of Independence. (People who grow up in Canada and other place, BTW, are generally taught that the declaration is full of propaganda. True or not, it's probably still a good indication of what people feel needs to be true before they start thinking about violent revolt.)
It's worth noting that revolts don't have to be violent necessarily, but if things get to the point where one seems necessary to people they probably end up being that way. Just try to imagine a non-violent revolt in North Korea. Anyone trying to non-violently revolt would just be shot.
It would be interesting to check out the Jataka tales that Ven. Dhammika was talking about. I wonder... do they suggest that people should revolt in certain cases or simply that people will revolt in those cases whether they "should" or not? The reality is that "kings" do ultimately rule by consent. If everyone just decides not to listen to the king and kill him, then there's nothing he can do. No god will come to save him. So regardless of whether they "should" rule by consent, the fact is that ultimately they're only there because people approve or tolerate them.
The world is a rather violent place whether it should be or not.
Robert-
I think you are right about the "approve or tolerate" them comment. I might add that another one might just be plain fear, although that might fall under "tolerate."
Fear would be more like one possible cause for approving or tolerating. Other causes could be more positive, such as admiration for the king's good deeds, etc.
At some sufficiently bad point, fear ceases to become a factor. Like animals backed into a corner with nothing to lose, fear no longer matters to people if things are really that bad.
Dear Robert,
The idea of ‘rights’ in the sense that we use the word today is a very recent (18th cent) and a very particular European concept, so you are quite ‘right’ in raising the question of whether the Buddha (or whoever composed the Jatakas) said people have a ‘right’ to overthrow unjust governments. He did not. I was couching the Jataka’s idea in modern terms. The Jatakas imply that it is understandable, okay, not impious, to do so, it is only to be expected that it will happen. Nonetheless, even this was not a common notion in the pre-modern world. It didn’t matter who was ruling or who was revolting, divine justification was used. Charles I used it to justify his autocracy and Cromwell used it to justify cutting Charles’ head off. The Jatakas present the issue in purely practical and non-religious terms – if it is not to your advantage, if it is to your detriment, get rid of it.
Bhante Dhammika
What's interesting is that the whole "divine right" idea just gets shifted around. Even in the US, the idea has gone from the "divine right" of kings to the "divine right" of the people. I guess in societies where people believe in a god or gods, there's no getting rid of the whole "divine right" of someone or the other to rule. It makes me wonder if the Hindu gods have just shifted their divine rights from kings to the people in places like India which currently have democracy, or what the current thinking is.
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