The lost art of ethical rule: Revisiting Milinda’s inquiry |
Most of the time, what we see in modern rulers is reminiscent of a Turkish proverb: when a clown enters a palace, he imagines he will become a king, but the palace instead turns into a circus. Democracy is ironically crumbling, yet a new form of governance has not yet emerged. The most pragmatic governance, as outlined in anarchist thought, has been grievously distorted, and the popular conception now equates anarchism with violence and disorder. However, seminal texts and contemporary interpretations by thinkers such as Noam Chomsky reaffirm that anarchism, properly understood, offers mechanisms to dismantle structural inequalities and bureaucratic apathy, enabling participatory and decentralised decision-making. Yet the gestation of a new paradigm of governance inevitably exceeds the temporality we anticipate, and perhaps only in the coming decades might an unprecedented, universal mode of administration take shape.
Meanwhile, it is lamentable to observe what has transpired in nations nominally anchored in Buddhist principles. Presently, most Buddhist-majority countries suffer from extreme corruption, with political systems that have ossified into nearly irreparable constructs. Leaders no longer trust monastic institutions; temples have transformed into quasi-financial conglomerates sustaining the ostentatious lifestyles of monks.
The ethical substratum the Buddha enjoined — equanimity, compassion and selfless service — has largely vanished. As Aravind Adiga remarks in his novel The White Tiger, if the Buddha were to witness the contemporary state of his religious progeny, he would depart immediately without a backward glance. Societies that once pursued ethical coherence and dharmic governance have now
become distorted caricatures of their philosophical ideals.
It is precisely here that the Milinda Pañha provides an intellectual corrective, a text of extraordinary lucidity and profundity which, while ostensibly a religious-philosophical dialogue, contains the kernel of a governance ethos that modern rulers might desperately need. The text chronicles the engagement between King Menander I, the Indo-Greek sovereign remembered in Buddhist tradition as Milinda, and the........