(a) What arguments does Bodin present to contend that sovereignty must be absolute, perpetual and undivided? Is Bodin's…

(a) Bodin on sovereignty

In the Six Books of the Commonwealth (1576), written amid the French wars of religion, Bodin defines sovereignty (majestas, souveraineté) as “the absolute and perpetual power of a commonwealth”.

Arguments:

• Absolute: the sovereign gives law to all and receives it from none. The first mark of sovereignty is the power to make law without the consent of any superior, equal or inferior. A ruler bound by the laws he makes, or by the estates, is not sovereign.
• Perpetual: power held for a fixed term (a Roman dictator, a regent) is only a trust. The true sovereign is the one from whom it is held and to whom it returns.
• Undivided: the marks of sovereignty (legislation, war and peace, appointment of chief officers, final appeal, pardon, coinage, taxation) cannot be shared. In a mixed constitution, sharing produces rival commands and civil war, so every apparent mixed state has a real sovereign somewhere (monarchy, aristocracy or democracy).

Limits Bodin himself accepts: the sovereign is bound by divine and natural law, by the fundamental laws of the realm (succession, royal domain), by covenants, and must respect private property and family, so taxes need consent.

Compatibility with equality, justice and liberty:

• Justice: Bodin ties sovereignty to “right government” and natural law, so it is not mere force. But there is no institutional remedy if the sovereign breaks natural law, since subjects may not resist.
• Liberty: freedom is the security of person, family and property under law, not participation in rule. Political liberty and rights against the state have no place.
• Equality: Bodin accepts a hierarchical society of estates, paternal power in the family and slavery as a historical fact (while criticising it), so equality is not an ideal.
• Assessment: Bodin’s theory gives the modern state its legal unity and was useful against feudal fragmentation. But modern constitutionalism (Locke, Montesquieu, popular sovereignty, federalism, judicial review, India’s basic structure doctrine) divides and limits power precisely to secure liberty and equality. So absolute sovereignty is compatible with order and a minimal justice, not with liberty and equality in the modern sense.

(b) Gandhi on eradication of caste discrimination

Views:

• Untouchability is a “sin” and a blot on Hinduism, not part of true religion. Gandhi made its removal part of the constructive programme, founded the Harijan Sevak Sangh (1932), ran the paper Harijan, and made an all-India Harijan tour (1933-34).
• Support for temple entry and access movements (Vaikom 1924-25, Guruvayur), and for inter-dining, and later inter-caste marriage. He came to bless only marriages in which one partner was a Dalit.
• Distinction between varṇa (a natural, non-hierarchical division by hereditary calling, with equal dignity of all labour) and caste, which he increasingly condemned as an excrescence. Bread labour and the dignity of scavenging were to remove the stigma of “unclean” work.
• Method: change of heart in caste Hindus through self-suffering and persuasion.

Strengths:

• Moral force and mass reach: he made untouchability a national issue within the freedom movement and pricked the conscience of caste Hindus.
• Insistence that reform must come from the oppressor’s side as well as the oppressed.

Limitations:

• Ambedkar (Annihilation of Caste, 1936, and What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables) argued that caste is rooted in scripture and hierarchy, that varṇa cannot be separated from caste, and that change of heart without rights leaves Dalits dependent on goodwill.
• The term “Harijan” was seen as paternalistic, and Gandhi’s fast against separate electorates led to the Poona Pact (1932), which Ambedkar accepted under pressure.
• He treated caste mainly as a religious-moral issue, underplaying land, labour and power. Gandhi’s approach shifted from reformed varṇa to near rejection of caste, and was powerful in moral mobilisation, but structural and legal remedies (Article 17, reservations, the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act) owe more to Ambedkar.

(c) Equity and equality in Marxian philosophy

• Equality (formal): bourgeois society proclaims equality before law and equal exchange. Marx (On the Jewish Question) shows that political equality coexists with real inequality in civil society, and that the wage contract is an exchange of equivalents that hides exploitation, since labour-power produces more value than its wage (surplus value).
• Equal right in the first phase of communism (Critique of the Gotha Programme, 1875): each worker receives back from society what he gives in labour. This is an advance, but “this equal right is still a bourgeois right”. It applies one standard, labour, to unequal individuals (one is stronger, one has more children), so it is “a right of inequality in its content”.
• Distribution according to need (higher phase): after the division of labour and scarcity are overcome, the principle becomes “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. This treats people unequally in order to respond to their real differences, which is what “equity” would mean in Marx.
• Marx’s own caution: he mocked “fair distribution” and “equal right” as “obsolete verbal rubbish”, because distribution follows from the mode of production. Equity is not a moral principle to be applied to capitalism, but the result of abolishing classes and private ownership of the means of production.
• Difference: equality is uniform treatment by a common standard and belongs to a class society. Equity is differentiated treatment according to need and is realised only in classless society.