Indian political philosophy involves on the one hand speculations on the one hand on the relationships between individual, society and state, and detailed treatises on the mechanics of statecraft, state policy, war and diplomacy and international relations.
For organizational purposes herein only, Indian political philosophy accordingly may be categorized into five distinct traditions: the Sanskritic (c. 1200 BCE - 10th century CE); the Jain-Buddhist (6th century BCE - 2nd century CE); the Indo-Islamic (10th century CE-1857); and the modern (c. 1857).
Sources:
Sources of Indian Tradition (Volume 1): From the Beginning to 1800 (Columbia University Press, 1998).
Famous quotes containing the words indian, political and/or philosophy:
“The next forenoon we went to Oldtown.... The Indian is said to cultivate the vices rather than the virtues of the white man. Yet this village was cleaner than I expected, far cleaner than such Irish villages as I have seen.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I’m not into smoke-filled rooms. I don’t have the time for byzantine political intrigues.”
—Benazir Bhutto (b. 1953)
“A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology and many other things. Without a philosophy and a psychology and all these various other things he is not really worthy of being called a writer. I agree with Kant and Schopenhauer and Plato and Spinoza and that is quite enough to be called a philosophy. But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)