PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE LAW: TRACING DEEP ROOTS FROM THE FORGOTTEN PRINCIPLES OF ANCIENT INDIAN LAW

The ongoing impact of ancient India as a critical node of world trade, especially emphasized through the Indus Valley Civilization (around 2500 BCE) and its central location along historical patterns of trade networks, underscores the significance of analyzing its elaborate regulative systems. This paper contends that the Ancient Indian Knowledge System (hereafter referred to as IKS) presents an elaborate, systemically integrated, and ethically rooted basis upon which current principles of International Trade Law are grounded. It extends beyond purely scholastic expositions to set forth the IKS as a viable, cohesive system of governance, economic control, and juridical administration seeking to foster stability and societal good in diverse field areas of trade. Central to this rule's regime is a confluence of legal scholarship and moral philosophy as exemplified by Kautilya's Arthaśastra. This foundational treatise comprehensively outlines governmental economic policy from minute rules of tariffs and customs to market regulation and safeguarding of national assets in foreign trade. Characteristically, the broader IKS positions business activity in a higher order ethical context that fosters such virtues as balanced trade, mutual advantage, and long-term environmental stewardship. This normative context broadly calls into question narrow, exclusively profit-based objectives of current corporate globalism through an adoption of balanced thinking in wealth creation. Additionally enhancing this framework is the fundamental socio-legal concept of Vasudhaiva Kuṭumbakam (“the world is one family”), which establishes an ethical foundation for interconnectedness and interdependence within international relations. This paradigm reframes global exchange not as a zero-sum transaction focused solely on profit, but rather as a means to promote collective prosperity and facilitate cultural exchange. Moreover, the Indian Knowledge System (IKS) established operational frameworks for the administration of commercial contracts and the resolution of cross-border disputes among merchant guilds, thereby contributing to the foundational aspects of what is presently recognized as private international law in trade, thus ensuring stability and fostering trust throughout extensive Eurasian networks. In short, the principles from Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) provide important normative direction towards structural reform of international trade institutions. An emphasis on community-based development and ethical business practice provides a strong counter-narrative to challenges from ongoing globalization. Furthermore, inherent obligations of IKS to protect Traditional Knowledge (TK) provide a relevant and timely reference to ongoing intellectual property debate that suggests that intellectual property law mechanisms such as trade secret law can be harmonized with age-old ethical responsibility to protect intellectual heritage of a community. This work believes that the IKS provides an all-inclusive, ethically rigorous, and systematic regime of regulation of international trade. By placing an emphasis on holistic sustainability and ethical responsibility rather than just an emphasis on metrics of growth, it provides an alternate architecture that has important application to setting up a more balanced and more sustainable international economic order in this context.