Opinion | Chanakya Was No Fantasy: Why Devdutt Pattanaik's Pseudo-History Falls Apart |
I read Devdutt Pattanaik’s article ‘A fantasy called Chanakya’ in The Indian Express (09 November 2025). Had Chanakya himself been alive, Pattanaik’s fantasies would have survived about as long as the kusa grass Chanakya famously uprooted when he vowed to destroy the Nandas. Beneath the polished prose and familiar rhetoric lies an old ideological trick: confuse the reader with multiple names, shout “interpolation" often enough, wrap it all in modern caste politics, and hope a historical figure vanishes.
But history does not work that way. The moment one actually looks at primary sources, Pattanaik’s thesis collapses flat.
Let us begin precisely where he does not want readers to look: the Arthaśāstra itself. The text explicitly identifies its author in unmistakable terms: “विष्णुगुप्तेन आर्यकौटिल्येन च सम्पादितम्" — compiled by Viśnugupta, the noble Kautilya. And again: “समाप्तं कौटिलीयम् अर्थशास्त्रम्" — here ends the Arthaśāstra of Kautilya.
Pattanaik’s sleight of hand rests on manufacturing two doubts. First that since the author is called “Kautilya", Chanakya must be fictional. Second, that if the Arthaśāstra can be pushed centuries later, Chanakya cannot belong to the Mauryan age or guide Chandragupta Maurya. Both doubts evaporate the moment chronology is taken seriously.
Ashoka’s edicts from the 3rd century BCE describe an empire run through mahamatras, welfare officials, judicial ethics,........