India democratic since Vedic times, had no aristocracy like in Greece: ICHR note

The note, circulated among Union ministries, underlines that the ancient democratic traditions explain the "survival of the Hindu culture and the civilisation in the face of the 2,000 years of invasions by alien ethnicities and cultures".

“There was no aristocracy in India like, say, in Greece. The Hindu state rarely presented that high degree of centralisation associated with the Roman empire… ,” it said.

“(In India) there was no concentration of the prestige of birth, influence of wealth and political office which made social organisations autocratic and aristocratic,” the note said.

“Whether the existence of two kinds of states janapada and rajya or the two assemblies called sabha and samiti forming essential features of the government – all indicate that the ancient form of governance in India was democratic, contrary to the general belief that it was monarchical,” he said.

Janapadas were republican against the explicitly monarchical rajyas(republican aristocracy), sabha and samiti were prior to state formation.