Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

Echoes and Intersections I 185
and well-defined structures and functions of their
own and laws of growth and evolution. The limits
of state-interference were accordingly so defined
and fixed as not to encroach upon the sphere of
the activities of the social organization. A policy of
non-interference was recognized as the ideal policy
of the state, the functions of which were ordinarily
restricted to "the irreducible minimum;' vis. the
protection oflife and property and realization of
the revenue fo r the proper execution of that duty.3}
This created a stark contrast between India and the
We st, where
the predominant tendency has been towards a progressive
extension of state interference and state
control so as to bring within its limits all the main
departments of social life and national activity until
the ideal is attained of a complete nationalization
or socialization of all the means and processes of
life itself. The state, heginning as an agent of society,
becomes its master and representative; society
is merged in the state to which it surrenders its
functions, dropping its independent life.34
Even if in the "advanced" countries of the We st the
people's main interface with power was through local not
central bodies, these were still the creations and tools of the
central government, "the wheels of a common machine;'
whereas in ancient India the local bodies had originated