From Sabha to the Constitution: Civilisational Roots, Colonial Experiments, Epigraphical Evidence, and the Urgent Renewal of Village Democracy in India

Introduction

India represents the longest continuous civilisational experiment in decentralised governance in world history. Long before the emergence of the modern nation-state, Indian villages functioned as autonomous political, judicial and economic communities. Decentralisation in India is not an imported administrative device but a civilisational principle grounded in dharma, duty, and community. 

Village Democracy as India’s Governance DNA  

The dominant narrative of democracy locates its origins in the Greek city-state, Roman republicanism, or modern European constitutionalism. India followed a distinctly different trajectory. Here, democracy did not emerge from urban assemblies or aristocratic estates; it arose from the village. For more than two millennia, Indian villages governed land, irrigation, revenue, justice, education, charity, and social order through dharmic local assemblies rather than centralised state bureaucracies.

Charles Metcalfe famously described Indian villages as “little republics, having nearly everything that they want within themselves”. Unlike Western political systems that concentrated sovereignty in the state, Indian political life distributed sovereignty across thousands of local dharmic communities.

The Classical Foundations: Sabha, Panchayat, and Dharma  

Ancient Indian governance operated through sabhas (deliberative assemblies) and panchayats (judicial–administrative councils). These were not informal bodies but legally recognised corporate institutions owning property, enforcing contracts, regulating commons, and adjudicating disputes.

Panchayats functioned as the grassroots tier of judicial authority, settling most civil and social disputes without reference to royal courts. The king was not the daily administrator of society but the custodian of dharma.

Dharma served as the ethical foundation of this decentralised order. Unlike modern legality, which depends on coercive enforcement, dharmic governance relied on shared moral obligation and social consensus. Compliance was secured through legitimacy rather than surveillance.

Epigraphical Foundations of Village Self-Governance  

Beyond textual sources, India’s decentralised governance system is **directly attested through hundreds of temple and land-grant inscriptions**, making it one of the best-documented pre-modern local governance traditions in the world.

The Uttaramerur Inscription (c. 920–930 CE)  

The most famous documentary evidence of village democracy is found in the Vaikuntha Perumal Temple inscriptions at Uttaramerur (Tamil Nadu), issued during the reigns of Parantaka I and subsequent Chola rulers. These inscriptions provide a complete constitutional blueprint of village governance.

They record:

- Ward-wise village organisation (kudumbu system)

- Electoral selection through Kudavolai (lottery)

- Strict eligibility qualifications (property ownership, Vedic education, tax compliance)

- Severe disqualifications (corruption, moral misconduct, audit failure)

- Functional committees for irrigation, tanks, justice, temples, revenue, and charity

- Mandatory public auditing of accounts

- Rotation, recall, and disbarment mechanisms

Other Major Epigraphical Records of Local Governance  

1. Chola Nadu Tank Committees – Inscriptions from Tirukkalukkunram, Tiruvallur, and Tiruchirapalli record technical irrigation committees with punishment for negligence.  

2. Karnataka Brahmadeya and Devadana Inscriptions – Village assemblies managing tax exemptions, water rights, and temple economies.  

3. Andhra Satavahana and Ikshvaku Inscriptions – Local guilds and village arbitration councils (nigamas and gramikas).  

4. Western Indian Copper Plate Grants (Guptas, Maitrakas) – Autonomous village land administration and dispute settlements.  

5. Kerala Temple Sabha Inscriptions – Deeply decentralised temple–village financial governance networks.

Together, these records confirm that:

- Villages possessed corporate legal identity

- Assemblies exercised judicial, fiscal, and administrative authority

- Governance was procedural, rule-bound, and audited

- Power was distributed, not centralised

The Chola Kudavolai System: Ethical Electoral Governance  

The Kudavolai system described above represents one of the most sophisticated pre-modern electoral systems in world history. Candidates were selected through lottery only after clearing strict moral, educational, fiscal, and social qualifications. Disqualifications included corruption, abuse of office, financial irregularities, and moral misconduct. Committees managed irrigation, land revenue, justice, temple administration, and public works under strict public audit.

This system integrated:

- Moral filtration  

- Randomised anti-factional selection  

- Continuous public accountability  

- Term limits and recall  

Modern democracies continue to struggle to achieve this combination simultaneously.

Colonial Disruption and the Dismantling of Village Sovereignty  

British colonial rule fundamentally disrupted India’s decentralised equilibrium. Through the Permanent Settlement, Ryotwari, and Mahalwari systems, land revenue was centralised, and villages were converted into instruments of extraction rather than self-governing communities.

Village courts were weakened, customary law delegitimised, and Panchayats reduced to advisory bodies. Maine himself later lamented that the village institutions which had survived centuries of political upheaval were severely weakened under modern administrative centralisation (Maine, 1871).

Early Twentieth-Century Revival Experiments  

A. The Aundh Experiment (1939–48)  

The princely state of Aundh adopted the most radical decentralisation experiment in modern India. Through the Aundh Panchayat Constitution (1939), the ruler voluntarily transferred all authority—administrative, fiscal, and judicial—to elected village panchayats. The state existed only as a federation of self-governing villages. Gandhi described it as the closest living embodiment of Gram Swaraj.

B. Baroda State Reforms (Sayajirao Gaekwad III)  

Baroda pioneered compulsory education, village courts, local boards, and decentralised administration between 1900–1930, building institutional capacity long before Independence.

C. Maratha & Princely State Experiments  

Kolhapur, Indore, and Mysore expanded village self-governance in sanitation, education, public health, and legal access.

D. Bengal & Chittagong Local Self-Government Acts (1919–1930s)  

The Montagu–Chelmsford reforms institutionalised district and union boards across Bengal and eastern India.

E. Travancore & Cochin (Kerala)  

Kerala’s later democratic depth drew directly from early village institutions in health, education, and land governance developed during the princely period.

Gandhi’s Gram Swaraj and Moral Decentralisation  

For Gandhi, swaraj meant ethical self-rule, not mere administrative devolution. Political power without self-restraint produced exploitation. True freedom required villages to be economically self-reliant, politically autonomous, and morally disciplined (Gandhi, 1909/1938). Authority was inseparable from service.

The 73rd Constitutional Amendment as Civilisational Restoration  

The 73rd Amendment (1992) constitutionally recognised Panchayats as “institutions of self-government,” establishing the Gram Sabha as the foundation of rural democracy. While framed as a technical reform, it represents a delayed civilisational restoration of India’s ancient village sovereignty.

Rudolph and Rudolph (1987) interpret this as the re-emergence of “negotiated authority,” where modern institutions operate through continuous engagement with social traditions rather than their displacement.

Diagnosis: Structural Weaknesses of Contemporary Panchayati Raj  

Despite constitutional status, today’s Panchayats suffer from:

1. Limited fiscal autonomy  

2. Misalignment of functions, funds, and functionaries  

3. Ritualised rather than deliberative Gram Sabhas  

4. Weak administrative capacity  

5. Elite capture and micro-clientelism  

6. Fragmented accountability  

7. Disconnection from moral legitimacy  

8. Collapse of local dispute resolution  

9. Short planning horizons  

10. Weak enforcement of social audits  

Reforming Panchayati Raj: A Civilisationally Anchored Framework  

Immediate Measures  

Mandatory Gram Sabha clearance, enforceable social audits, Kudavolai-inspired committee selection, commons registries, village mediation panels.

Medium-Term Reforms  

Statutory 3F alignment, own-source revenues, performance-linked grants, Panchayat secretariats, women’s leadership pipelines.

Long-Term Structural Reforms  

Village judicial systems, decentralised education governance, binding State Finance Commissions, constitutional clarity on village powers.

These align closely with Ostrom’s core principles of durable self-governance.

Conclusion: From Stone Inscriptions to Constitutional Law  

From the stone pillars of Uttaramerur to the text of the Indian Constitution, India’s decentralised governance tradition reveals an uninterrupted civilisational memory of village sovereignty. Ancient sabhas, epigraphical Panchayat constitutions, Chola electoral ethics, Aundh, Baroda, Gandhian Swaraj, and the 73rd Amendment together affirm one truth:  

Indian democracy is strongest when it flows upward from the village, not downward from the state.

Its renewal today is not nostalgia—it is institutional realism grounded in two millennia of governance practice.

THE GENIUS OF SANATANA POLITY AND STATECRAFT: DECOLONISING INDIAN GOVERNANCE by SANDEEP BALAKRISHNA (Dharma Dispatch)

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s vision of and eulogy to the Indian Civil Services in his inspirational speech on April 21, 1947 to the first batch of the Indian Administrative Services needs repetition if only to underscore how farsighted he was: 

Your predecessors were brought up in the traditions in which they … kept themselves aloof from the common run of the people. It will be your bounden duty to treat the common men in India as your own. [Emphasis added] 

It was a truly rousing and heartfelt speech. It was also a challenge to the best men to see whether they could scale the Mount Everest or just Nandi Hills. Fortunately, a sizeable chunk took up the Sardar’s challenge and showed what the Sardar’s “steel frame” was really capable of contributing towards nation-building. Until at least the mid 1970s, there were any number of IAS officers who were also scholars and culturally learned. Fast forward, a decade later, the downward transformation was as swift as it was brutal and criminal. Recent history is witness to the undeniable living reality that the steel frame has transformed into a moth-eaten hollowness. Indeed, it is inconceivable that brazen “politicians” like Lalu Yadav, D.K. Shivakumar et al couldn’t have gotten away with their venal marauding of both the exchequer and public conscience without being ably assisted by the bureaucracy. 

Nirad C Chaudhuri echoed[i] Sardar Patel as recently as in 1997 when he remarked that

…what disappeared from India with the going away of the British had created remained, intact in all its features and above all in its spirit… The immense noisy crowds that greeted the end of British rule in India with deafening shouts of joy on August 15, 1947, did not recall the old saying: they thought nothing of British rule would survive in their country after the departure of the White men… They never perceived that British rule in India had created an impersonal structure…. a system of government for which there was no substitute. In this system, the actual work of government was carried on by a bureaucracy consisting of the highest British officials together with a hierarchy of officials whose lowest but the most numerous personnel was formed by the clerks. Actual initiation of government action was in the hands of the men in the lowest position, viz, the clerks… the basic character of the Indian bureaucracy as it is now: ‘Theirs is a solid, egocentric, and rootless order, which by its very nature, is not only uncreative, but even unproductive. Its only purpose is to perpetuate itself by inbreeding, and ensure its prosperity. Government by such a bureaucracy can by itself be regarded as a decisive sign of decadence of a people in their political life.

The common feature of both the Sardar and Nirad Chaudhuri’s observation is just one word: rootlessness; in other words, psychological and cultural colonization. In practical terms, if there’s any institution that needs to be urgently decolonized today, it is the Indian Administrative Services (I use this term in an all-encompassing sense to include all the Civil Services like IFS, IPS, etc). Many learned Civil Services officers have themselves written and spoken at length about the need for reform in the Civil Services. But the word they’re looking for is not “reform” but “decolonize.” I would also dare add the following to this: the state at which the Civil Services is currently in, reform is simply impossible.

We can also regard this issue with a bit of historical data pertaining to said colonization.

Rule by Theory

One significant consequence—indeed, a defining feature—since India became a democracy in name is something that I call Rule-by-Theory. Under Nawab Nehru’s extended dispensation of darkness, softcore Communism was the theory that ruled India. Till she lifted the Emergency, Indira Gandhi opted for a slightly hardcore version of the same Communism. And Rajiv Gandhi didn’t have a clue about anything. After his demise, the country was pretty much in free fall except for some breaths of fresh air under P.V. Narasimha Rao and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. 

But what has remained common for the last sixty-odd years is the selfsame Rule-by-Theory. Or to be more specific, Rule by Western Political Theories, which are completely at odds with the millennia-old genius of Sanatana polity, statecraft and governance. What has worsened the situation is the untested implementation of said Rule-by-Western-Theories. And nowhere is this defect more glaring than in the near-obliteration of the time-tested system of the Gram Panchayat, which had largely remained untouched even by the most oppressive Islamic tyranny. Although the Gram Panchayat system exists only in name, its original sturdiness has perhaps been irretrievably lost. In other words, the form of democracy that India adopted after 1947 centralized political power in New Delhi to such an appalling extent that even state governments were reduced to the status of supplicants. As an example, let’s look at an illuminating if not tragic account[ii] of the deliberations over the Panchayat Raj system in the Constituent Assembly.  

·       I want to ask whether there is any mention of villages and any place for them in the structure of this great Constitution. No, nowhere. The Constitution of a free country should be based on ‘local self-government’. We see nothing of local self-government anywhere in this Constitution. This Constitution as a whole, instead of being evolved from our life and reared from the bottom upwards is being imported from outside and built from above downwards. A Constitution which is not based on units and in the making of which they have no voice, in which there is not even a mention of thousands and lakhs of villages of India and in framing which they have had no hand—well you can give such a Constitution to the country but I very much doubt whether you would be able to keep it for long. 

·       We cannot have a strong Centre without strong limbs. If we can build the whole structure on the village panchayats, on the willing cooperation of the people, then I feel the Centre would automatically become strong. 

·       Dr Ambedkar boldly admitted, and the members of the Drafting Committee do concede that in this Constitution there is no provision for establishing Panchayat Raj…When there is no such provision, it can never be the Constitution of India… If the village is to be discarded, someone can also boldly demand that this Constitution be discarded.

Unprecedented Concentration of Political Power

Some conclusions are inescapable from this. At no other time in the millennia-old civilizational history of India—even under the vast and sweeping monarchies of the Mauryas, the Guptas and the Vijayangara Empire—was political power concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority in a single city: New Delhi. Such concentration of political power is not only alien to the Sanatana spirit, it is a crime against this spirit. Indeed, this centralization and concentration of power is the chief reason for the growth of regional and caste-based parties in just about thirty years after we attained freedom. For example, from the “Dravidian” parties up to say the Telugu Desam Party until recently, it was common to hear their leaders drop such grand public utterances about “taking our fight to Delhi.” Think about what that means. Think about what this kind of “democracy” has done to Bharatavarsha and her Sanatana civilisational continuity. 

Rajyashastra is Subservient to Dharmashastra

In the Sanatana tradition, what is known as politics was always subservient to Dharmashastra. In a way, Rajyashastra (polity, statecraft, governance, administration) was a mere subset of Dharmashastra and couldn’t be divorced or separated from it. Politics, economics, etc were worldly subjects to be regarded as mere tools and implements that facilitate a human being’s continuous quest to attain spiritual liberation. Which is why politics was constrained by the tenets of Dharma, and it is Dharma which guarantees spiritual freedom to the individual. All other freedoms are meaningless without spiritual freedom. In the Sanatana conception, this spiritual freedom of the individual received primacy because the collective actions and remembered traditions guided by this spiritual freedom is what gave us civilizational continuity. 

Consider these words[iii] by the iconic D.V.G.

no matter how far India progresses in the achievement of….material wealth, there will always be numerous other countries as competition… our desire…to be equal to England, Germany, America, and Russia in material acquisitions…is itself an adventure. It’s our duty to attempt such things so let’s do it.

But the one field which doesn’t present any such competition is culture: specifically, the spiritual culture of India. This spiritual culture is the best and the finest of India’s wealth. If we don’t account for or neglect this spiritual culture, there’s no other area which India can take pride in. Forget pride, there is indeed no area where India can become useful to the world.

But think about what these Western political theories, democracy etc have become today, in the lands of their origin: they have become instruments to manipulate the public mind. Indeed, even the notion of the term, “public conscience” has all but been eliminated in public discourse in the West.  

From the Vedic period up to the 18^th century, there was an intimate and a kind of deeply personal relationship between the ruler and the ruled. Indian polity represented perhaps the greatest lived example of what is today known as “last mile delivery of governance” and such other fashionable verbiage. The level of decentralization in governance was truly unparalleled. Every village, the last unit of administration was self-contained. Villagers really didn’t have a reason to step out of their confines for any matter concerning their daily needs. 

Genius of Decentralisation 

Indeed, history shows us that the genius of Indian polity can best be observed in our village setups. In a manner of speaking, the village was the physical manifestation of the proverb that “you can create your own world wherever you are.” 

Speaking at a very high level, what do institutions like Gram Panchayat, Sabha, Samiti, Mahanadu, Oor, Parishad etc really mean? For a fairly detailed treatment of this topic, refer to my essay on the Mackenzie Manuscripts. In any case, these institutions were later refinements of the original administrative and governance systems that existed in the Vedic period: Arajaka, Bhaujya, Vairajya, Samrajya, Maharajya, Swaarajya, etc. Roughly speaking, these refinements were brought in practice during the Mauryan rule and continued in a largely unbroken fashion until the Mughals. Thus, in Northern India, we had administrative units such as Rashtra, Ahara, Janapada, Desha, Vishaya, and Bhukti. Their equivalents in Southern India were Rajya, Pithika, Ventte, Vishaya, Seeme, Naadu, Hobli, Valanad, Mandalam, Naad, Aimbadin, Melagaram, Agaram, Chaturvedi, Mangalam, Kuttam, and Palayapattu. 

See another facet of the indivisibility and unity of India?   

But in the realm of practical life, these were intimate institutions that kept our extraordinary civilization alive and unbroken in the daily life, customs, festivals, and consciousness of Indians for hundreds of generations. Only in the rarest of rare cases was punishment actually enforced at the level of the village because there was an unspoken and interiorized understanding among people that even a minor disruption in these systems would bring down the whole edifice. The fabled inscription at Uttaramerur (near Kanchipuram) is one of the extant records that testify to this kind of near-perfect administrative decentralization. 

Maharaja, Samrat and Chakravartin

The Sanatana conception of a Maharaja, Samrat or Chakravartin also offers tremendous illumination. The Taittiriya Samhita, for example, lists what is known as the Dasharatni (Ten Gems). These were ten top administrative officials (Purohita, Rajanya, Senani, Suta, Gramani, Kshatriya, Sangruhitr, Bhagadhugh, Akshaavapa, and Parivrukti), whose permission was mandatory in order to ratify the King’s coronation. Only after the King took the following vow (Vrata): “I will protect Dharma,” was he pronounced as being officially coronated. But there was an even more practical and profound side to this. Let’s hear it in the words[iv] of the gem of a scholar, Dr. Srikanta Sastri: 

Because there is the Law of the Jungle [Matsya Nyaya] in this world, the [institution] of King was created in order to uphold and maintain peace. The King who enforces the power of punishment using Dharma as his guide is compared to Mahavishnu who preserves order in the world. However, it is completely in violation of the spirit of the Dharmashastra to regard the King as having the Divine Right to rule.

At once, the King was the combined embodiment of the following: he was the leader of the society, the commander-in-chief during wartime, the Chief Justice who would dispense justice after free, frank, and open consultation with wise men, and not folks who had risen to high rank owing to mere technical or subject competence. In the Sanatana conception, dispensing justice was to be done with an attitude of Soumanasya (Pleasantness of mind) as a verse of the Atharvaveda (30: 5-6) says beautifully. When we regard this from another perspective, the genius of Bharatavarsha becomes evident: this is an attitude, outlook, and temperament towards life juxtaposed on the complex tapestry of statecraft and polity. Which is why for the major part in its long history, Bharatavarsha had very few instances of dictators and tyrants. However, every Muslim Sultan or Nawab was a despot and tyrant almost without exception. 

One can cite examples of numerous such Samrats but I’ve considered Harshavardhana here. Harshavardhana divided the income derived from his personal landowning into four parts. He gave one part each to:

1.     Take care of Government expenses

2.     Fund the salaries of high-ranking Government officials

3.     Patronise scholars, Vidwans, Pandits, poets, artists etc.

4.     Charity

More than a thousand years later, the warrior-queen and Raja-Rishika, Ahalyabai Holkar followed the same tradition of Harshavardhana. Indeed, they followed the warning in the renowned aphorism, Rajaa Kaalasya Kaaranam, which simply means this: that political system is despicable which loots people without first solving their economic problems.

I leave the gentle reader to draw their own conclusions.  

Postscript

More fundamentally, recall how we address a long and distinguished line of luminaries – Manu, Brihaspati, Ushanas, Parashara, Bharadwaja, Vishalaksha, Vatavyadhi, Baahudantiiputra, Katyayana, and Chanakya – who first laid down the philosophy of Sanatana statecraft: as Rishis. 

Notes

[i] Nirad C Chaudhuri: Three Horsemen Of The New Apocalypse. Emphasis added.

[ii] Dharampal: Panchayat Raj And India’s Polity

[iii] D V Gundappa: Jnapaka Chitrashale: Vaidikadharma Sampradaayastharu: DVG Kruti Shreni: Volume 8: Nenapina Chitragalu – 2:  (Govt of Karnataka, 2013). Upasamhara. Emphasis added.

[iv] Dr. S. Srikanta Sastri: Bharatiya Samskruti. P. 203. Emphasis added. 

Courtesy: https://www.dharmadispatch.in/culture/the-genius-of-sanatana-polity-and-statecraft-decolonising-indian-governance