Revisiting the Ancient Indian Laws of Warfare and Humanitarian Laws

Abstract

The ethics of war and the humane principles, related to the treatment of the vanquished, of the Vedic period, is buried under the debris of time. With the constant building up of war-oriented ideologies and power play pervading the minds of many in the current international system, it becomes a necessity to regress a little and understand if war was an unsaid norm or regarded as a ruler's last option during the ancient period. In this context, it is also primal to analyze the extent to which the concepts in Hinduism have helped in the development of international humanitarian laws, the focus being to limit the suffering caused by war.