Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

184 I Ramnath
It was to this trait that Indian society owed its resilience
despite years of crises and upheavals, he claimed,
quoting Metcalfe:
The village communities are little republics, having
nearly everything they can want within themselves,
and almost independent of any fo reign rclations.
'They seem to last where nothing else lasts. Dynasty
after dynasty tumbles down; revolution succeeds to
revolution ... but the village community remains
the same .... 'This union of the village communities,
each one fo rming a separate little state in itself, has,
I conceive, contributed more than any other cause
to the preservation of the peoples ofIndia, through
all the revolutions and changes which they have
suffered, and is in a high degree conducive to their
happiness, and to the enjoyment of a great portion
offreedom and independence.32
We might see here not static timelessness but rather continuity
and surviv:l1 in the face of great change.
Mookerji observed:
The fact is that India presents the rare and remarkable
phenomenon of the state and the society coexisting
apart from, and in some degree of independence
of each other, as distinct and separate
units or entities, as independent centres of national,
popular, and collective life and activity. Both of
them were independent organisms with distinct