The word Rajan (or King) means one who can keep the people contented. Power and authority vested in the king implicitly rested on the sanction, goodwill and consent of the people. The ultimate right of the people—or collective will—as the sole arbiters of the kind of government they wanted was recognized. This recognition was given concrete and practical form in two restraints on the power of the King:
1. The primacy and supremacy of Dharma as the guiding force of the State. 2. The counsel of the Wise people whose gentle but firm persuasion kept the king from committing excesses.
Then there was the third restraint as well: public opinion. In our own time, public opinion has almost been exclusively associated with the media, especially after the advent of the printing press. It appears that the invention of the printing press has nearly obliterated the historical memory of how public opinion was formed before its advent.
In India, public opinion has always been a force to reckon with since the era of the Vedic kings. This essay narrates the rather delightful history of public opinion from that ancient period roughly up to the fall of the Vijayanagara Empire.
Narada, the Maharshi of Public Opinion and News
The impulse for news is innate in human nature. News, not in the sense we’re familiar with today, but news as understood as a hunger for learning new or unfamiliar things in the world.
In the Indian tradition, Narada is regarded as the World’s First Journalist. However, calling him a mere journalist would be doing injustice to and severely limiting his genius. Our tradition rightly regards Narada as a Maharshi. He did not merely transmit news but worked actively towards stirring action. Unlike our understanding of journalism, Narada’s journalism was not passive reportage. He drew the attention of our Gods, Sages and Kings (thank you, Dr. David Frawley!) to evils occurring in various worlds and spurred them to destroy such evils. But for Narada, we would not have had Narasimha.
This is the great lesson Narada teaches us: the herald of the news cannot pretend to be unattached from the consequences of his news. This is also perhaps the greatest hoax of what is uncritically known as objective journalism. The legendary DVG puts it best:
In the present day, we require this Naradaesque duty. But then, there is no Narada today. News reporters and journalists need to fill his place. However, if Narada were to come to our present world, there is every reason to doubt whether he would enjoy the same reverence as before. This is because in our time “independent thinking” has replaced Narada.
A blunter and a more honest assessment of contemporary journalism is yet to be made.
Read More at https://www.dharmadispatch.in/history/public-opinion-in-bharatavarsha-in-a-pre-news-era-a-delightful-history-of-5000-years
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