SICILY, 367–354 B.C.

SOURCES

The content of the two books which Philistus devoted to Sicilian history during the five years after the accession of the younger Dionysius is not determinable, though his presentation of the tyrant whom he served can hardly have been unfavourable. Evidence is also meagre on the whole decade to 357 B.C., apart from information about the relations of Dionysius with Dion and Plato. On the other hand, the crusade led by Dion, which liberated Syracuse from tyranny but terminated after three stormy years in failure and death, proved attractive to contemporaries and posterity alike, largely because of his friendship with Plato and the part played by members of the Academy. Contemporary writers tended to be prejudiced in favour of Dion, and most secondary authorities echo this prejudice, but there are also traces of a tradition hostile towards him.

The earliest extant record of his career is provided by the Platonic Epistles, especially the Seventh and Eighth. Although the vexed question of their authenticity has not been satisfactorily resolved, their value as historical evidence is indisputable. If they were not written by Plato himself, the author must have been a contemporary with an exhaustive knowledge not only of Plato and his experience in Sicily but also of his later dialogues and intellectual outlook. Features of these two Epistles indicating the genuineness of their substance are their uneasily defensive tone and the not wholly unfavourable presentation of the younger Dionysius. They are, however, by no means objective.

INTRODUCTION

Throughout Greek antiquity the ownership and cultivation of the land remained fundamental preoccupations at all levels of society, no less during the fifth and fourth centuries than at any other period. The Homeric scene of ‘two men with measures in their hands, quarrelling over boundaries in the shared ploughland’ finds its counterpart in the fourth-century lawsuit between neighbours in Attica concerning flood damage caused by one to the other's property. Instructions in the Athenian decree c. 422 for Demeter's cult at Eleusis, that ‘first-fruits of the harvest are to be offered to the Goddesses according to ancestral custom and the oracle at Delphi’ stem from the same concerns which prompted Hesiod's precept to his brother, ‘Work, so that hunger may hate you and revered Demeter may love you and fill your barn with food.’ If basic preoccupations remained unchanged, the question then arises whether or not agricultural methods and results underwent any transformation in the classical period. If they did, was this in part a response to developments in scientific thought? to increasing demand for food and growing pressure on the land? to progress made elsewhere in the ancient world? or simply to changes in climate and physical environment? If, on the other hand, they did not, was this mainly because there was no need for change, in that increased demand (generally assumed to have occurred) was satisfied by cultivating marginal land, by emigration, or by importing grain? Or, if change was needed but did not occur, was this due to the Greeks’ failure to advance technologically, or to an ingrained conservatism that preserved traditional farming practices even in the face of repeated shortfalls? Or did the proverbial poverty of Greek farmland and the harshness of the climate make further modification of technique impractical before the development of modern farm machinery and fertilizers? Had Greek agriculture already progressed as far as it could?

The central theme of this chapter is the impact of war on the Greek world in the first half of the fourth century B.C. Thucydides described the Peloponnesian War as the greatest disturbance in Greek history, a war that came to affect almost the whole of the Greek world and part of the non-Greek world as well. His verdict was amply verified by subsequent events.

Not every Greek state was affected at once or to the same degree. The central Peloponnese, for example, was largely unscathed, and Elis was in a flourishing condition at the time of the Spartan invasion of c. 402 (Xen. Hell. III.2.21–31). Boeotia as a whole suffered only one abortive Athenian invasion in 424. In the Decelean War the Thebans enriched themselves on the plunder of Attica and acquired many of the runaway Athenian slaves (Hell. Oxy. XVII (XII). 3–5). The impact of the war on the society and economy of the two protagonists differed strikingly. Sparta's victory, and the role she chose to play in Greek affairs after 404, placed strains on her society which she could not withstand. Whereas the fifth-century Athenian empire had spread prosperity through all classes of Athenian society, and thus helped to cement political and social stability, the Spartan empire aggravated internal tensions and inequalities in Sparta. The gap between Sparta's ambitions, and the resources available to her, seemed dangerously wide. Sparta's decline in the fourth century, within little over a generation after her victory, followed as a long-term consequence of that victory.

Any synthesis of Europe north of the Alps in the first half of the first millennium B.C. is conditioned by imbalances in the archaeological record. Much of the evidence is derived from cemeteries with specialized inventories of grave-goods, or from high-status fortified sites of exceptional character and function, rather than from a full spectrum of settlement or material remains. Even these data are unequally distributed regionally, or at any rate unequally studied, and not equally represented in successive chronological phases. The effect of this imbalance and discontinuity of evidence can be the creation of artificial horizons, which may be used to justify historical episodes or socio-economic climaxes, and which compound a tendency towards a ‘selected highlights’ view of European prehistory.

The classification and chronology of later prehistoric Europe is still largely based upon the system devised by Reinecke at the beginning of the century, named after the Alpine type-sites of Hallstatt and La Tène. In Reinecke's scheme, Hallstatt A and B equate with the Older and Younger phases respectively of the Urnfield Culture, in absolute terms spanning the twelfth to eighth centuries B.C., whilst Hallstatt C and D, dating from later eighth to early sixth, are generally recognized as the first Iron Age in central and western Europe. The system is essentially a Central European one, with important transalpine correlations, and it has been developed in large measure from the concentration of systematic research on the rich cemetery assemblages in these regions. West of the Rhine, in both Urnfield and Iron Hallstatt phases, the cemetery inventories show a more limited range of types, with fewer examples that could be regarded as diagnostic of the Central European culture, and local regional variants that progressively lend assemblages a distinctively Atlantic aspect.

PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY IN INDIA

There has been a basic tension in the post-Independence political order, arising in part out of features of the Indian Constitution itself, between authoritarian and democratic tendencies. These in turn overlap with the tension between forces favoring centralization and those favoring decentralization. During the Nehru era, a balance was struck between these opposing tendencies and forces. British parliamentary conventions were adapted to Indian extra-parliamentary practices.

Although the Center's supremacy was rarely challenged, politics in the states were largely autonomous. The exercise of direct political control of state government and politics from the Center was quite infrequent. Indian parliamentarism functioned freely, openly, and competitively. A balance was also struck between the use of extra-constitutional methods by opposition groups and the state's use of extraordinary powers such as laws permitting preventive detention.

Since Nehru's death, the succession crisis that followed, the imposition of the Emergency regime of 1975-77, increasing difficulties faced by national political leaders in aggregating power throughout this vast country and maintaining it for long, and the recent rise of violent and terrorist movements have unsettled the balance. The use of violence by protest groups has become more common as has the state's use of extreme force. Although Emergency rule was followed by the defeat of Mrs. Gandhi and the restoration of normalcy, the armory of coercive powers available to the state for use against its citizens remained very great and has been reinforced in recent years with the passage of new legislation providing extraordinary powers to the state and limiting those of its citizens in areas where violent secessionist movements are in progress. The use of coercive state powers has increased during the past decade and there has been as well a great growth in the number, size, and deployment of various police and semi-military forces to quell domestic disorder and suppress political dissent. In the process, the autonomy of state politics has been further eroded and the balance of powers in India's federal system has shifted to the Center.

Hindu nationalism, Muslim separatism, and secularism, the official ideology of the Indian National Congress during the nationalist movement and of the Indian state since Independence, have existed side by side in Indian politics since the late nineteenth century. Although the three ideologies and the political organizations and movements they have spawned from time to time have always been perceived as mutually antagonistic, they have shared common goals. Before Independence, they all sought to unite either the entire population of the country or one of the two largest segments of it into united wholes to contest for power at the center of the Indian political system. Moreover, these are the only possible bases for uniting the vast heterogeneous populations of the Indian subcontinent, divided amongst language, caste, tribal, religious sectarian, and many other groupings.

Hindu nationalism has offered the prospect of uniting the country around the idea that all those who consider themselves “Hindus,” whatever their sect, language, or caste are joined in fact by systems of beliefs, philosophical principles, and rituals going back to the Vedas, that they share a common history preceding both the British and the Muslim invasions, and that, as the “majority” population of the country, their beliefs and history ought to provide the ideological basis for an Indian state properly conceived as a Hindu state. Muslim separatists took the position that all the Muslims of South Asia constituted one nation different from the Hindus and that the two nations could only live together as equals, sharing power in a single state, or they would have to part and live in separate states. Secular nationalists argued that these very differences emphasized the need to remove religion and sense of community from the center of Indian politics and to establish the independent Indian state as a neutral force standing above these two antagonistic forces, preventing them from tearing each other and the Indian state apart, and recognizing all citizens of India, Hindus, Muslims, and others, as entitled to equal rights as individuals without reference to their religion or communal affiliation.

India's linguistic, religious, ethnic, and cultural diversities are proverbial. So are the political mobilizations and the violent conflicts and antagonisms which have arisen from time to time among and between persons from its distinctive cultural groups. However, it is important to note that neither political mobilization nor ethnic and cultural antagonisms flow naturally out of India's diversities. The 1971 Census of India enumerated thirty-three languages with speakers of more than one million, but only fifteen of them have achieved any form of significant political recognition.

The 1981 census enumerates a tribal population of more than fifty million persons divided into hundreds of distinct groups. Many political mobilizations have occurred among several of the tribal groups from the nineteenth century up to the present, of which a few have developed into bitter, violent, and secessionist movements directed against non-tribals, against particular state governments, or against the Government of India itself. On the other hand, many tribal groups have not mobilized and have not rebelled. Moreover, the forms which tribal mobilizations have taken have been diverse. Some have focused on economic grievances, have appeared to be class-based, and have drawn support from Marxist political organizations. Others have focused on political demands and have been organized and led by tribal leaders and exclusively tribal political organizations.

The whole modern history of India has been deeply affected and badly scarred by conflict between separatist Muslim political leaders and organizations and the Indian National Congress and by continuing Hindu-Muslim riots and pogroms against Muslim minorities in some cities and towns. Even with respect to these conflicts and the associated violence, however, they must be contrasted against periods of Hindu-Muslim cooperation. Moreover, it must be noted and needs to be explained why such conflicts have occurred more intensely in some parts of the country and have been less intense or non-existent in others where Hindus and Muslims also live side by side.

THE PROBLEM OF THE PERSISTENCE OF THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM

India is virtually unique among contemporary post-colonial countries in having functioned since Independence, with the exception of the Emergency, with a parliamentary system modeled on the British form of government. India's parliamentary system has evolved from one in which the Cabinet and the Prime Minister were dominant and the President was a figurehead – though potentially important — into a form of prime ministerial government, in which both the Parliament and the Cabinet play a secondary role. The specific role of each Prime Minister and the relationship between the Prime Minister and other central government institutions and forces has varied somewhat, but one can also see an evolution over the past forty-five years. Nehru's period was one of prime ministerial government in which the Cabinet played an important role as well and Parliament was a place where opinions were expressed but little real power was exercised. Under Shastri, the influence of the Cabinet declined and that of the Prime Minister's Secretariat increased, a trend which continued under Mrs. Gandhi. However, there was a further shift under Mrs. Gandhi's leadership away from reliance upon any of the formal channels of authority in the system to dependency upon a narrow clique of personal advisers accountable only to the Prime Minister herself. Rajiv Gandhi continued his mother's pattern so that, in effect, prime ministerial government moved a further step toward a form of personal authority in which succession was dynastic and rulership was conducted with the counsel of a virtual princely court, and in which both Cabinet and senior bureaucrats were reduced in importance.

During the Janata period, an entirely different pattern, based on a form of coalition politics, developed in which the Prime Minister was only primus inter pares in a divided government, which ultimately fell in a Parliament that came to reflect the divisions within the Cabinet and for a brief period exercised indirectly its ultimate power of granting or withholding confidence in the government of the day. That pattern was repeated in the rise and fall of the National Front government of V. P. Singh.

The first edition of this book was written between 1986 and 1989. It built upon my own work of the previous twenty-seven years on Indian politics, ethnicity and nationalism, and political economy as well as that of my colleagues who had written on these subjects during the previous three decades. The central theme of the first edition concerned the consequences of increasing efforts by the country's national leaders to centralize power, decision making, and control of economic resources in one of the most culturally diverse and socially fragmented agrarian societies in the world. These centralizing drives, intensified in the post-Nehru era, had increasingly contrary effects. The effectiveness of political organizations had been eroded, ethnic, religious, caste, and other cultural and regional conflicts had heightened, and the ability of the central government to implement in the states and localities economic plans and programs designed in New Delhi had declined. These consequences suggested the existence of a systemic crisis in the Indian polity which, I argued, would not be easily resolved. I had, however, also argued that alternative paths toward such a resolution existed within Indian political and economic thought and political practices and that an alternative leadership might yet arise to seek such a resolution, basing itself on India's own traditions.

In the four years since the final revisions on the original manuscript were made, the several crises evident then have intensified to that turning point signified by the Greek meaning of the term crisis. That is, the Indian polity has reached a turning point in its post-Independence history. The old political order dominated by the Congress and parties sprung from it is in decay. These parties lack effective or popular leadership, compelling ideals, and local organization.

An alternative leadership has indeed arisen in the intervening years, self-consciously basing itself on India's Hindu traditions while pursuing even more relentlessly a Western ideal model of building a strong, centralized, militarily powerful state, possessing nuclear weapons, able to bring order to the country while commanding the respect of the great nations of the contemporary world.

Most theoretical models of political change and development applied to the post-colonial states of Asia and Africa have emphasized the critical role of “state-building” - stabilizing, extending, and strengthening the institutions of the centralized state - as a virtual precondition for “modernization,” national integration, and economic development. The central issue in these models of state-building concerns “penetration” of the institutions of the centralized state into “empty territories” or peripheral areas and into culturally and economically diverse regions which have undergone uneven economic and social development. It also involves establishing the authority of state laws and values over the traditional laws, customs, and values of autonomous religious, tribal, and other local communities. It includes as well the implementation of state goals of urban industrial development, increased agricultural production using advanced technologies, and agrarian reform in societies whose populations are overwhelmingly rural, agrarian, and dominated by peasant cultivators.

One influential model of state-building has been woven around the argument that there is a basic tension between the needs for strong state authority and the increased demands for participation by populations mobilized by nationalist leaders, party politicians, and others in pursuit of a multiplicity of goals which ultimately come into conflict with each other and with the broader public interest which only an institutionalized and autonomous state can pursue effectively. This view magnifies such demands for participation into a developmental “crisis,” threatening to state authority and civil order.

All these views tend to exalt the centralized state, to assume its inevitable triumph in one way or another, and to give it an anthropomorphic shape while assigning only a secondary role to the specific actions of the wielders of state authority. It is sometimes suggested that the state may adopt federal features and may decentralize power to local institutions, but these are rarely seen as anything but measures to make more effective the capacity of the central state itself. Political leaders, especially the nationalist leaders, and some of the more dynamic contemporary military leaders, have generally been seen as playing the important, but secondary role of transferring their charisma to state institutions and thereby imparting legitimacy to them. The “overloads” and crises which may lead to the collapse or functional irrelevance of “differentiated modern [state] structures” do not arise from the actions of the leaders but occur “when environmental strains become too great.”

Some observers of Indian politics, economic development, and social change since Independence argue that it is not state policies, the complexities of building political power in India, or the centralizing drives of Mrs. Gandhi which are principally responsible for the political disintegration and economic failures of the past twenty years. These are all rather reflections of deeper economic forces and of the dominance of particular social classes over Indian society and economy. One view is that there are structural forces in Indian society, entrenched social classes, whose actions constrain the political elites from implementing policies against the former's interests. State policies increasingly have come to reflect the interests of the dominant classes – the rich farmers who benefit from government price support and input subsidy programs, industrial capitalists who have profited from the import substitution policies and have learned to turn to their advantage the industrial licensing system, and the professional bureaucrats who have gained considerable corrupt income from their administration of programs for the benefit of the farmers and their control over the investment decisions of the industrialists and the business classes.

According to another view, the countryside has come under the increasing political and economic dominance of the landed castes. The commercialization of Indian agriculture in the post-Green Revolution period has let loose forces which have undermined traditional social relations in the countryside and have promoted class polarization and class conflict. The latter are in turn largely responsible for increased political instability and violence in the countryside.

These structural class and economic explanations agree that “accommodative politics” have failed and cannot succeed in the face of growing class antagonisms in the countryside and the increasing dominance of India's “proprietary classes.” Their prognosis, in the event of the continuation of the present regime and its policies, is for the intensification of violent class conflict in the countryside. To avert it, they propose the displacement of the dominant rural classes through more thoroughgoing agrarian reform, the strengthening of the Indian state and of its autonomy from the now dominant social classes, and a return to and a more rigorous implementation of policies of state-directed, centralized economic planning and heavy public investment in an economy dominated by the public sector.