MAKING SENSE OF PAKISTAN’S ‘PERMANENT STATE OF EMERGENCY’ THROUGH CHANAKYA’S REALPOLITIK: INSIGHTS FROM ARTHASHASTRA AND KAUTILYAN SPY STATE DYNAMICS

Abstract

Pakistan has been in a permanent state of emergency since partition and its citizenship is devalued. This paper aims to explain this condition by exploring the enduring controversy between state morality and private morality from the dynamics of the Kautilyan spy state. To explore the complex relationships and tensions between political or state morality and private morality, first, this paper describes the hypothetical Kautilyan State and highlights its key elements through the Saptanga theory of the state. Then by sketching out the Kautilyan characteristics of a spy state, it relates it to modern statecraft practices, arguably immoral, with a focused analysis of Pakistan. Concluding this investigation, through qualitative content analysis and documentary analysis the paper argues that the inherent nature of the states is intensely determined by realpolitik as outlined in the Kautilyan spy state which generates profound challenges for the pertinency of the modern constitutional protections of the private morality—referred as the fundamental rights of the citizens. It contends in conclusion that this disputation between realpolitik (state morality) and constitutionalism (private morality) explains the permanent state of emergency that Pakistan has been in since partition.