The roots of Indian pluralism

Introduction: The Asokan Empire and the emperor’s edicts

We have habitually associated the Asokan Empire with ‘religious toleration’ but probably never paid attention to what this means or how significant his achievement was. Here I examine two of his many edicts to explore this issue. The 7^th edict begins with ‘The beloved of the gods wishes that all “Pasandas” [followers of a school of thought or teachings] must dwell everywhere, in every part of his kingdom’. ¹ This seems like a simple, quite inconsequential statement and has been treated as such by commentators who have a rather sanguine view of social and religious conditions in Asoka’s India. Thus, Vincent Smith claims that ‘the Dharma which he preached and propagated unceasingly with amazing faith in the power of sermonizing had few, if any, distinctive features. The doctrine was essentially common to all religions. When we apply to Asoka’s policy the word ‘toleration’ with its modern connotation and justly applaud the liberality of his sentiments, another qualification is needed, and we must remember that in his days no really diverse religions existed in India. Buddhism and Jainism both were originally mere sects of Hinduism – or rather schools of philosophy founded by Hindu reformers – which in course of time gathered an accretion of mythology around the original speculative nucleus, and developed into religions’. ² The same sentiment is echoed by Radhakumud Mukerjee who says:

It is to be remembered that Asoka’s toleration was easy enough among the different denominations of the time, which were all but offshoots of the same central faith and did not differ among themselves so completely as the religions of Jesus, Zoroaster, or Mahomet introduced later into the country. Thus it was not difficult for the emperor, with due credit to the liberality of his views, to discern ‘the essence of the matter in all sects’ and honour it duly. ³

To be sure, some commentators recognized that Asokan edicts are written in times of intense sectarian strife. For instance, D. R. Bhandarkar says that people in Asoka’s times had lost sight of the essentials of their faith and begun to focus excessively on rituals and theology. In these matters, there was unending acrimonious wrangling. Therefore: ‘When Asoka lived and preached, religious fanaticism and sectarian spirit were rampant.’ ⁴ Yet even he seems not to link this wish of the beloved of the gods to have his subjects co-inhabit with rampant sectarianism or to realize its real import. Why should Asoka have said this? What could be the context in which he is compelled to say this? We get no sense of this from existing literature. ⁵ At any rate, it is not clear what form this strife took. Were sects expelling one another from territories where either was dominant? Had they segregated one another? Was something akin to what we call now ‘ethnic or religious cleansing’ attempted in that period? But if intense sectarian strife existed, there must at least have been some violence between sects, even if it was not purely motivated by doctrine. It is again hard to tell unless we try to imagine vividly what the background conditions were to some of these key edicts.

The 12^th edict implores that all pasandas restrain their speech, a specification of a more general self-restraint, samyama, mentioned in the 7^th edict. This is seen as a virtue, even a civic virtue. But why restrain only speech? Why is this the core, the saara of all pasandas? Why burden it with so much importance? What is the link between restraint on speech and coexistence? Does speech have the power to disrupt coexistence? We all know that it can but under what conditions is it so acutely significant as to become one of the central problems of a society and the chief concern of its royal edicts? Does speech have the power to push everyone over the edge or are people already so much on the edge that even speech can push them over it? Surely, it is easy for a reasonable person to tolerate people with whom she or he has minor differences. The difficulty of tolerance arises only when people with major, virtually irreconcilable differences encounter one another. What then is the context in which speech is virtually the sole carrier of deeply uncomfortable, major differences?

Once we properly examine the context of the edicts, we begin to get a sense of the importance of the 12^th edict. For a start, an internal conflict existed within followers of Vedic teachings, between those who indulged in expensive and elaborate rituals and those who found this baroque quality entirely unnecessary, wasteful and distracting from one’s primary objectives. Second, there was conflict between those who believed in the necessity of propitiating gods and those who gradually moved away from this view and felt that the only significant action [karma] was the sacrifice [yajna] itself.

A third conflict also existed. Several commentators attest to the presence of pre-Aryan people in India. One such group were probably called Munis, a wandering group of sparsely clad ascetics, deeply skeptical about the idea of a creator of the universe, believing that the world in which they lived was real and that salvation in this world was possible by exacting practical discipline. ⁶ They were generally pessimistic about other forms of liberation in this world and had little conception of any other world. The Munis are infrequently mentioned in the Vedas, but that is probably due to their radical difference from the Vedic tradition and their consequent marginalization. It does not mean that their existence in this period was rare. ⁷ Thus, a third major conflict existed between the Vedics and the pre-Vedic Munis, one ritualistic, believers in gods, seeking this-worldly goods and pleasures, and very largely materialistic, the other renouncing the world of this-worldly pleasures and rituals, rejecting beliefs in gods and seeking liberation deep in the forests through rigorous practical discipline.

In addition to the three conflicts mentioned above, at least two conflicts went much deeper: (1) between pre-Vedic and Vedic immanentists on the one hand and transcendentalists who developed the Upanishads and evolved the notion of the radical distinction between Samsara and Brahman/Atman; (2) an even deeper conflict between two different ethics, one Upanisadic, which has a transcendental metaphysics but no (or perhaps a weak) conception of transcendental morality and the other which opposes transcendental orders of the real, outer or inner world, but develops a strong idea of transcendental morality, one that allows judgements from outside any this-worldly point to be made on both self- and other-related actions of every subject. Allow me to elaborate.

The key difference between the Rig Vedic and the Upanishidic world lies in the birth of the idea of radical transcendence and therefore of a duality between this cycle of birth and death in this world [samsara] and Brahman or Atman, the ultimate reality pervading the whole universe or our deepest inner, imperishable selves. Samsara is radically separated from Brahmana or Atman in that the latter can be achieved only by totally negating the former. True Liberation [moksha, mukti] lies in escape from the cycle of samsara. Moksha cannot be attained by performing sacrifices. But nor could Moksha be obtained, contra the Muni and early Jain tradition, by physical austerities even for thousands of years. Offerings [dana], sacrifices, recitations of Vedas and performance of austerities may earn merit but only steadfastness in pursuit of the knowledge of Brahman would help us achieve Moksha or true immortality.

Both Brahman and Atman are wholly outside the given, immanent and mundane world [samsara] and manifest a point from which one can, to use Benjamin Shwartz’s phrase, ‘stand back and look beyond’ and contemplate it. Hence the appropriateness of the term ‘radical transcendence’. Hence also the aptness of the use of axiality. The Upanishads provide the axial turn in Indian civilization. Here we have the birth of a major potential conflict between vastly different Weltanschauungen. For nothing that the Vedic peoples or the Munis think to be significant is truly or ultimately important for Upanishadic thinkers.

Nonetheless, there is one sense in which the break between the pre-Vedic/Vedic and the Upanishadic followers may not have been total. This has to do with the necessary place of others in an ethic of self-realization. What follow are very tentative remarks, the principal import of which is that higher-order other-related values or principles (let us call this morality higher, separate and transcendental) are negligible or secondary in pre-Buddhist thought in the Indian subcontinent. Allow me to elaborate. For Vedic Brahmanism, Dharma has less to do with what we owe one another. Neither sacrificial rituals nor gods are invoked for the good of the generalized others, say for the Munis. In both its individual or collective forms, this is a self-focused ethic of fulfilment or realization. The content of this ethic does not change with the introduction of the idea of radical transcendence. The early moment of the axial turn in Indian civilization does not appear to make the generalized other central to its ethic of individual or collective self. To be sure, notions of justice, right and wrong exist, but these are probably in the hands of the kshatriya [the king], matters decided in any given context by his will or judgement. Dharma in its Vedic or post-Vedic, Upanishadic senses has very little to do with what we must, by some transcendental necessity, owe one another.

All this begins to change with developments in later Upanishadic thought and more clearly with the Buddha. With Buddha’s teachings, the transcendental point, to use Gananath Obeyesekhre’s phrase, is ‘ethicized’ (in my terminology, one might say moralized). ⁸ From now on, judgements of the rightness or wrongness of action are ‘mediated and delayed’. They may even be enunciated after one’s death. This is the birth of transcendental morality – a transcendental evaluation of the rightness or wrongness of action in relation to others which affects a person’s life not in this world alone but in the destiny after death, outside this world. This also entails a shift in the meaning of Dharma. Dharma from now on also begins to mean this radically transcendental morality. Quite clearly, there must have been not only a conflict between ancient ethics and this new ethic inspired by Buddha but also a contest over the meaning of key terms, such as Dharma. We now have two radically differing notions of Dharma, one a particular ethic of a single-cosmos-oriented (this-worldly) self-realization and the other a transcendental morality for all concerned with right interpersonal conduct. Indeed, even the term ‘interpersonal’ is not quite correct, because the conduct in question includes how human beings behave towards non-human animals. ‘All’ means all humans and animals, virtually all living species. The protest over ritual sacrifice was perhaps more against the sacrificial killings of animals. This made eminent economic sense but is not reducible to it. For the kshatriyas, war had become a mode of life and perhaps the greatest benefit yielded by yajna [sacrifice] was success in war. The kshatriyas needed animals that they stole from ordinary pastoralists. War on the other hand meant not only the arbitrary killing of humans and animals but also the destruction of people’s livelihoods. Thus both pastoralists and small farmers may have risen in protest against war and sacrificial killing. ⁹ Buddha’s teachings thus instantiate a major transvaluation of Vedic values, a dynamic best captured in Assmann’s notion of normative inversion whereby one group’s ‘rights and responsibilities’ are turned by another group into ‘prohibitions and scandals’. ¹⁰

I hope to have shown the deeply mistaken character of the view that religious interaction in Asoka’s period of rule was relatively trouble-free and that he must have had an easy time finding a common ground among followers of different schools of thought. It is well known that shared philosophical and cultural assumptions provide no immunity against intense conflicts. The assumption that offshoots of an entity conflict weakly with their parent is even more untenable. Buddhism may have been an offshoot of ‘Hinduism’ but conflicted with it at many levels, on many issues. As for Jaina philosophy, it is not even entirely clear what epistemic gain ensues to see it simply as an offshoot of Hinduism. Thus, Vincent Smith and Radhakumud Mukerjee clearly underestimate the depth of conflict in Asokan times. Thapar and Bhandarkar are right that this was a period of intense and bitter sectarian conflict, However, in my view, even they are unable to home in on the novelty of what was at stake in Asoka’s period. By vividly representing the central conflicts of those times, this account now gives an entirely different gloss on Romila Thapar’s remarks that this is a period of intense sectarian struggles and on her claim that the 6^th century BCE was ‘the century of universal questioning’. ¹¹ It also helps us to see the real issues at stake in those struggles – a conflict between notions of weak and radical transcendence as well as between immanent and transcendental moralities. The 6^th century BCE must have been a century of massive intellectual and emotional turmoil with gigantic social implications, the like of which had never been witnessed earlier. It appears that the need of the times was a public or political morality – not only a clear statement of how we must treat ourselves (found in Brahmanical philosophies of that time), but also a firm and well-grounded statement on how we treat each other and all living creatures (not explicitly found in Brahmanical philosophy but found in Buddhism in a radically transcendent form, a transcendental morality), one that could arbitrate between these multiple, radically different, often incommensurable rival conceptions so that each could coexist by discovering or evolving a morality that is learned from one another. ¹²

The real significance of the 7^th edict

I hope by now we also possess a much better understanding of what exactly is so novel about the harmless-looking statement in the 7^th edict. Given the many-layered, incrementally deep conflicts involving several different groups and the necessity imposed by trade and urban conditions for them to cohabit, Asoka had to evolve some way to hold them together. Buddha’s teachings had provided him with conceptual resources to imagine something that would be more than ad hoc and tactical, something long-lasting and endorsable from within each pasanda’s perspective. ¹³ The teachings had given him the hope in the development of public norms from below and the redundancy of orders from above. One of them was that all pasandas must dwell everywhere in his empire.

Among historians, only D. D. Kosambi appears to have grasped the true importance of this statement. Kosambi believes that the edict is meant to communicate primarily to leaders of each pasanda rather than directly to pasandas themselves. Through the 7^th edict, Asoka effectively grants these leaders permission to travel freely everywhere in the kingdom and provides them with an opportunity to teach and convert each other. Asoka impartially grants this privilege to religious teachers of all pasandas. It is likely that the edict became necessary because mutual interaction and the attempt to preach one’s own ethics to others had begun to cause severe friction, leading to the birth of local rules forbidding one pasanda from communicating with or, worse, entering into the territory of another pasanda – something akin to what Sudipta Kaviraj in a different context has called back-to-back neighbourly existence. Instead of perpetuating mutual exclusion and the resulting homogenization of each settlement, Asoka, it seems, gives assurances to the leaders of all the pasandas that they must feel secure everywhere and encourages free interaction and dialogue among them, albeit now regulated by moral norms.

As mentioned above, he is able to do so by virtue of a major conceptual transformation, facilitated by a change in the background conditions, perhaps even in the social imaginary. A new form of society far more heterogeneous than the original simple tribe-community had come into being. Living together here was terribly different but at the same time no longer an optional extra but inevitable, a natural part of one’s environment. To respond to the crisis generated by radical heterogeneity, a new legitimating ethic had become necessary. Buddha’s teachings made possible a different conception of Dharma. It needed a great leap of imagination to arrive at the view that what we call Dharma can be used not only for personal self-fulfillment or the fulfillment of the needs of specific groups but rather to ease the newly emergent problems of a new form of society that simply could not do without diverse groups. It is a discovery of the first magnitude that Dharma or religion can be used to ease the difficulties of early society, to make the common life of diverse elements of society easier. It necessitated that a collective ethic substitute correct ritual by good deeds for the sake of others.

Moreover, Buddha’s teachings opened up the possibility of the radical socio-political restructuring of the world and the self by politico-moral action from above. Buddha’s ethic included the pivotal importance of moral action. Once one stands outside the whole cosmos and is able to see its limitations, and once the transcendental point from which one examines the cosmos is viewed as emanating a moral vision, it becomes possible to imagine a profound restructuring of society and polity in accordance with that vision. Once again, D. D. Kosambi is imaginatively on to this point when he says that more than a personal conversion of the emperor, there appears to have taken place in Asokan times a deeper conversion of the whole previous state apparatus. ¹⁴ The king not only preaches a new morality but is able to launch radically new political and administrative measures that include public morality as an essential ingredient, and provide a framework within which radically differing ethics can coexist and nourish one another. ¹⁵

Search for a common ground

What, despite profound differences in worldviews, could the basis of such coexistence be? For a start, the possibility of coexistence depended on toleration, the capacity to put up with the practices of others despite deep moral disagreement. Better still, it needed mutual adjustment and accommodation. Vedic, Brahmanical ethics needed to be moralized, to some degree; the shramanic worldview, the worldview of Buddhists, Nirgranthis and Ajivikas, needed to accept some value in rituals and rites. This could hardly have been easy, given the shramanic contempt for rituals and the brahmanic distaste for anti-ritualistic, transcendental morality. The edicts encourage partial reconciliation. They note that rituals play an important role in the daily lives of people. They are also significant on occasions of birth or marriage of sons and daughters, journeys, sickness and death. ¹⁶

This concession to rituals is subtly though not totally offset by welfare measures mentioned in the edicts, presumably something all good kings must undertake. Asoka speaks of the importance of planting banyan and mango trees, digging water wells, building rest-houses, and securing varieties of medicinal herbs, hinting that it is the duty of the king to provide a healthy life and physical comfort to his subjects. This is echoed elsewhere in Buddhist texts:

After the cakkavatti had brought the entire universe under his umbrella, he must proceed to ensure that his people live in comparative comfort, in a world where destitution has been wiped out. Instead of only punishing offenders, which would merely ensure the stability of the social order but not make for moral order, the normative king first had to provide the poor and deprived with the essentials of existence. ¹⁷

The dhammiko dhammaraja must not merely be concerned with upholding the property and family rights of people in society but go beyond these minimum obligations and also ensure that everyone’s basic needs are met.

Several edicts mention, however, the limited value of rituals and ceremonies. They may be appropriate in certain contexts but ‘bear little fruit’ and are of ‘doubtful value’. ¹⁸ More importantly, rituals do not address one of the most burning moral issues of the times: inter-pasandic disagreement and conflict. In Edict 12, Asoka emphasizes that he ‘does not wish to overvalue gifts and sacrifice’. More important than these is the reverence one’s faith commands or the number of its followers or its core ethical values. Even more important than these ethical values are the essentials of all faiths and pasandas. It is these essentials that constitute the common ground of these seemingly conflicting conceptions. ¹⁹

What then is the common ground among rival conceptions? For Asoka, Dhamma constitutes the all-important common ground, the essentials, of all pasandas. What then are these essentials? Interpreters here give differing answers: Dhamma is sometimes seen as virtue, religious truth, or simply piety. But the most convincing answer, consistent with what is mentioned above and provided by Obeyesekre and Tambiah, is that Dhamma is akin to transcendental morality. If so, it is fair to say that for Asoka, rites and rituals have no meaning unless embedded within an ethical perspective and the ethical import of these gifts is overridden by their lack of moral significance. This is why they may be offered only as long as they are not injurious to anyone (humans as well as non-humans). No animal may be killed in order to be sacrificed. Nor should there be any samaja [assembly] for such a purpose, implying that other kinds of assemblies, especially the Sangha, are permissible. ²⁰

What then is the content of Dhamma? The fundamental principle of Dhamma is vacaguti, variously interpreted as restraint on speech or control on tongue. In my view, it is best interpreted as the ‘artful management of the tongue’. It is significant that the edicts recommend that there be restraint on speech but have little to say on restraining actions. It is almost as if the spoken word is not only more important than the written word but also more significant than physical action. Here again, it is crucial to retrieve the surrounding context of Asokan edicts.

The 12^th edict: Restraint on speech

We cannot recover that world but we can imagine one where virtually nothing is written or read. Writing and reading have not yet taken possession of our psyche. ²¹ Speech has no visual presence; it cannot be seen. Every word is spoken. Language is rooted and resides almost entirely in sound. Text, meaning something strung together, is also only spoken and heard. Everything is thought aloud and communicated. The spoken word carries the entire burden of our emotional life, all that uplifts us or gets us down, brings us together or pulls us apart. The entire complex of art, philosophy and ‘religion’– poetry, our deepest metaphysical thoughts, acts to honour gods and goddesses – all these are spoken, recited, sung, chanted and heard. All these are composed, transmitted, stored, reproduced and enriched orally. One might even say then that life itself is lived in sound. And, perhaps, destroyed in sound too.

Not only life but also public life is lived and extinguished in sound. Indeed, the public domain is constituted almost entirely by the spoken word and can therefore be disassembled by it too. After all, when words flow off the tongue effortlessly, they also tumble out inadvertently and, what is worse, carelessly. But then, words that matter must be enunciated with great care, even greater thought, for once uttered they cannot be withdrawn. It is important in such cultures to differentiate such unguarded speech from one that carries weight or is valued. If they are to perform all the functions that the written word serves for us now, such treasures must be stored and remembered in memorable forms. To be remembered without being written and to be effective, this speech must be crafted with great economy, and be crisp, rhythmic and rendered with great power. Only thus will it transform into a powerful mode of action. Words in oral cultures have always had enormous power. They can beckon gods to help tide us over problems, create something out of nothing, empower or disempower others, turn them into stone, even kill them. Words can be weapons or an elixir. They can soothe or cause grievous hurt. In oral cultures, words have magical potency.

One can hardly overestimate the immediacy and vibrancy of social interaction and, more pertinently, the agonistic energies in a predominantly oral society and its publics. Verbal duels, speech fights, word-wars, verbal tongue-lashing of adversaries in intellectual combats – all these are commonly found in societies largely unaffected by writing. Moreover, vitriolic reciprocal name-calling exists frequently with fulsome expression of self-praise and excessive bragging about one’s own prowess.

Given this context, one can now understand why oral speech acts appear to have more weight than all other forms of action. It is almost as if the greatest harm that might be inflicted on the other is through speech rather than physical action. It is not clear from the edict what the level of physical violence in that society was, if social interaction was already civil enough for people even to conceive that they could injure or kill one another over philosophical or religious differences. At any rate either ‘hate speech’ was considerably more significant than physical violence or else physical violence was largely confined to the territorial aggression and politics among the kshatriyas. Quite certainly the antagonistic energy in speech was unmatched even by physical violence. Generally people knew how to do things with spoken words. They poked fun, ridiculed, abused, cursed, mocked, scoffed at, were satirical and sarcastic, belittled and humiliated others – all by subtle manipulation of the spoken word.

Two forms of self-restraint

We do not have much evidence of the verbal battles and hate speech of that period but the edicts imply that verbal wars in that period were intense and brutal. They simply had to be reined in. But what kind of speech must be curbed? Edict XII says that speech that without reason disparages other pasandas must be restrained. Speech critical of others may be freely enunciated only if we have good reasons to do so. ²² However, even when we have good reasons to be critical, we may do so only on appropriate occasions and even when the occasion is appropriate, we must never be immoderate. Critique should never belittle or humiliate others. Thus, there is a multi-layered, ever-deepening restraint on one’s verbal speech against others. Let us call it other-related self-restraint. However, the edicts do not stop at this. They go on to say that one must not extol one’s own pasanda without good reason. Undue praise of one’s own pasanda is as morally objectionable as unmerited criticism of the faith of others. Moreover, the edicts add that even when there is good reason to praise one’s own pasanda, it too should be done only on appropriate occasions and even on those occasions, never immoderately. Undue or excessive self-glorification is also a way to make others feel small. For Asoka, blaming other pasandas out of devotion to one’s own pasanda and declaring unreflective, uncritical, effulgent self-praise can only damage one’s pasanda. By offending and thereby estranging others, it undermines one’s capacity for mutual interaction and possible influence. Thus, there must equally be multi-textured, ever-deepening restraint for oneself. Let this be self-related self-restraint.

Elsewhere, in the 7^th edict, Asoka emphasizes the need not only for self-restraint [samyama] but also bhaav shuddhi, again a self-oriented act. Bhaavashuddhi is frequently interpreted as self-purification, purity of mind. However, this term is ambiguous between self-purification within an ethic of individual self-realization or one that at the very least includes cleansing one’s self of ill-will towards others. My own view is that in the context of the relevant edicts, the moral feeling of goodwill towards others or at least an absence of ill-will towards others must be a constitutive feature of what is meant by bhaavshuddhi, a crucial part of the more general purification of bhaava. Self-restraint and self-purification are not just matters of etiquette or prudence. They have moral significance.

Given all this, and in order to advance mutual understanding and mutual appreciation, it is better, the edict says, to have samovaya, a concourse, an assembly of pasandas where they can hear one another out, communicate with one another. They may then become bahushruta, i.e. one who listens to all, the perfect listener, and open-minded. This way they will not only have atma pasanda vraddhi, the growth in the self-understanding of one’s own pasanda, but also the growth of the essentials of all (saravadhi or saaravraddhi) The edicts here imply that the ethical self-understanding of pasandas is not static but constantly evolving and such growth is crucially dependent on mutual communication and dialogue with one another. Blaming others without good reason or immoderately disrupts this process and, apart from damaging Dhamma, diminishes mutual growth of individual pasandas.

The edicts add that no matter how generous you are with gifts and how sincere your devotion to rituals, if you lack samyama, bhaavshuddhi and the quality of bahushruta, then all the liberality in the world is in vain. Conversely, one who is unable to offer gifts but possess the aforementioned virtues lives a dhammic life. Thus, one whose speech disrespects no one, who has no ill-will towards others and who does no violence to living beings is truly dhammic. Dhamma is realized not by sacrifice but by right speech and conduct.

Is this toleration?

Thapar says: ‘The 7^th edict is pleading for toleration among all sects.’ ²³ Likewise, the term ‘religious tolerance’ is also used by Tambiah. ²⁴ Is the term ‘toleration’ or ‘tolerance’ appropriate in this context? In the classical 17^th-century meaning of the term, to tolerate is to refrain from interference in the activities of others though one finds them morally disagreeable, even repugnant, and despite the fact that one has the power to do so. ²⁵ Here one puts up with, even suffers the morally reprehensible activities of others. The powerless other escapes the interference of the powerful because the latter shows mercy towards the powerless, a virtue in the powerful exercised in relation to those who do not really deserve it. Let us call this a hierarchical notion of toleration, given the asymmetry of power between the two groups and the attitude of superiority that one has towards the other. A second conception exists: two groups, equally powerful, may also tolerate one another. Each has power to interfere in the activities of the other and each finds the other morally repugnant but both refrain from interfering because the mutual costs are too high. This is modus vivendi toleration. Clearly the Asokan case does not fall within either of these two conceptions.

A third conception is also non-hierarchical. Here A and B refrain from interfering in each other’s activities out of indifference and because they do not particularly believe that one is more powerful than the other. True, they do not heartily approve of each other. The acceptance of one another may be somewhat grudging, more out of resignation than enthusiasm. It may also be true that this new disposition is a result of the dilution of the perceived power of the larger group, softened by the force of principles or reason or commerce or due to the disuse of collective power in matters concerning ultimate ideals. Neither really cares for one another, as long as each keeps out of the other’s way. This is the live-and-let-live attitude, one that is found in post-industrial, individualist, liberal societies. Everyone, in this conception, has a right to be, as long as he or she causes no harm to others. I may disapprove of what you do but as long you do it in privacy and not in my face, I do not really care. The Asokan case does not fall under this conception either. If none of these conceptions is able to cover the Asokan case, then why use the term?

The basic idea of toleration is that A does not accept B’s views or practices but still refrains from interfering in them, even though she or he has the power to do so. A fourth conception may not violate this basic idea and yet be distinct from the other three conceptions. Parents often put up with the blemishes of their children which they would not suffer in others. We choose to overlook a fault in our lover, even in our close friends, that we would not excuse in others. We might endure deep difference in worldviews in fellow citizens because we value fraternity. In all such cases, we put up with dislikeable states of doing or being in others even if we have some power to do something about them simply because we have love or love-like feelings for those who are doing or being them. Here one tolerates not despite hate but rather because one loves the other. A mixture of love, friendliness and fellow feeling is in the background or becomes the ground of a different conception of toleration.

Unlike other conceptions which presuppose the idea that oneness with significant others as well as God is achieved by abolishing/ignoring/belittling the radical other, i.e. by eliminating plurality, here, in the second conception, oneness is attained by accepting all radical others as equally significant because they variously manifest one supreme being or concept. Thus to tolerate is to refrain from interfering in the life of others not despite our hatred for them, nor because we are indifferent to them, but because we love them as alternative manifestations of our own selves or deeply care for some basic norm common to all of us. We may not be able to do or be what they are, we may even dislike some of their beliefs and practices, but we recognize that they are translations of our own selves or of gods within each of us. This binds us together in a relationship of lasting affection.

So suppose that A accepts the value of many but not all of B’s beliefs and practices but recognizes that beliefs and practices he does not accept follow from some of those he does or that some beliefs and practices he is unable to endorse follow inescapably from B’s different background, then out of respect for some of his beliefs and practices, A would put up rather than interfere with those with which he disagrees. Asoka’s views, I believe I have shown, fall broadly within this fourth conception. If so, one might use the term ‘toleration’ in this context, as long as one is careful not to confuse it with the other three, more standard conceptions.²⁶

But in the end it is perhaps better to avoid using the term ‘toleration’. No matter what its surrounding context, toleration focuses solely on a set of other-related self-restraints. But Asokan edicts clearly go beyond this by also making it necessary to observe a set of self-related self-restraints. In mutual toleration, each observes identical forms of self-restraint: I do not interfere in your beliefs and practices and you do not interfere in mine. But the edicts speak instead of what we might call correlative self-restraints. One is not asked to refrain from excessively criticizing others and oneself. Instead, one is asked not to be immoderately and without good reason critical of others or indulge in the correlative practice of self-praise, quite a different thing altogether. It is by simultaneously observing both forms of self-restraint that one completes a moral act. It is better to say then that the edicts outline original norms of civility and principled coexistence among radically differing pasandas in a deeply heterogeneous society.

The distinction between the two forms of self-restraint is important because it helps us to see more clearly why Asoka’s political morality is not reducible to but goes beyond toleration in every sense of the term. An example here from our own time might illustrate my point. India is a country where a majority of its people either call themselves or are taken to be Hindus. Though not entirely, the ethos of many of India’s social and political institutions is saturated by one or the other strand of ‘Hinduism’. So, regardless of our evaluative judgement, it would not be entirely incorrect to say these institutions are somewhat Hinduized or wear a Hindu look. Yet, India also has Muslims, Christians, Parsees, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, atheists and people with many other not so easily definable outlooks. Sections of Hindus may find their practices disagreeable, morally discomforting, or just downright strange but they tolerate them. They may collectively have power to interfere in them, even banish them, but they refrain from doing so. Indeed, legally they have no other option. These religious communities have rights not to be interfered with in their religious and cultural practices. But the minorities will not be able to effectively exercise their rights, if Hindus do not possess the capacity for other-related self-restraint. Most Hindus do as a matter of fact exercise such restraint. But is this sufficient for a morally justified coexistence between Hindus and minority communities? Suppose then that community-specific rights of minorities are respected but Hindu self-assertion becomes more pronounced. Let us say they build new temples around every corner, ensure that these are mightier in size than mosques and churches, fund new radio and television channels that stream Hindu teachings and no other, introduce textbooks that speak largely of and glorify Hindu gods and goddesses, change national and state symbols in order to make them explicitly and exclusively Hindu and so on. What would the impact be on the psyche of the minorities? Most likely, it will increase their sense of social and cultural alienation. It will force them to feel left out of many public domains. It might even lower their self-esteem. Alternatively, Hindus can show some self-related self-restraint, so as not to show off, not to always wear their religion and culture on their sleeve, not to always advertise their wares, as it were. Indeed, persistently to announce in public than you are the boss in your own country might be a sure sign of deep-rooted insecurities and anxieties, one that is potentially damaging both to others and to oneself. Abandoning this self-related self-restraint might then adversely affect everyone, destroy the very fabric of contemporary Indian society.

I have argued that Asoka’s conception and policy of Dhamma cannot be properly understood unless we vividly imagine the background conditions within which it emerged. The ambition of a new public morality widely endorsed by all affected groups could not have been possible without the pressing need to come up with a novel initiative in conditions of acute conflict among rival worldviews. At the centre of these struggles were bitter disputations between predominantly one-world-oriented practitioners of ritual sacrifice and those who opposed such violent rituals and sought a new, transcendental, world-negating morality for all. The availability of new conceptual resources forged during these disputes made it possible to devise a new policy that, though not guaranteed to succeed, gave the hope for a durable principled coexistence between groups engaged in fierce verbal disputes. This new political morality placed at the centre a series of self- and other-related self-restraints. Only the simultaneous exercise of these new voluntary constraints could ensure amicable collective living. This policy might be called ‘toleration’ but only by a massive change in the term’s dominant meaning. On standard interpretations, toleration involves the privatization of ill-will or hatred. Both must be neutralized if not expunged. However, this new notion implies no such thing. Quite the contrary, for it presupposes in the background something closer to goodwill and respect. But in the end, even this might not be appropriate. Till we discover a suitable Prakrit, Pali or Sanskrit term, it is best to call it civil.

Conclusion: Lessons for our own times

Contemporary polities, including India, can draw lessons from each of these normative models of pluralism. From Asokan edicts we learn first that we need a minimalist common foundation built from elements found in every normative perspective that shapes the lives of cohabiting citizens. For Asoka such a foundation consisted of purity of heart and restraint on speech. Contemporary polities, likewise, must search for analogues of these ethical norms to ground pluralism. An even more important lesson to be drawn is that the moral restraints that constitute this foundation must be viewed not only as obligation or duties towards others but as something we owe to ourselves. An excessive focus on obligation towards others frequently neglects that other-related moral norms cannot function adequately unless proper self-related norms that go deeper than our interest are also put in place.