An Enchanting Miniature of Village-Level Jurisprudence in South India - Sandeep Balakrishna

THE CIVILISATIONAL, CULTURAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY of Bharatavarsha is also the history of its Grāmas or villages. It is in this treasure-chest that we find the foundational and enduring aspects of the all-round life of our people. Our Grāmas really hold the magic key that unlocks an array of secrets. Indeed, from time immemorial, our villages were the countless miniature centres that provided civilizational sustenance and cultural preservation and cushioned both these in face of serial depredations.

As we never tire of repeating in these pages of The Dharma Dispatch, the administrative system of Bharatavarsha was characterized by a genius-level decentralization of which the Grāma was the last, the smallest, and the best functioning unit. 

The first is by a British joint collector, B. Knight:

It is in the villages of southern India that we must go to see Hindu life at its best, unaffected as it is by Mahommedan conquest or by the influence of Western civilisation.

The second is by another British official, the racist Grant Duff:

…no good can be effected for these people, but only much harm, by introducing European methods of Government, foreign to their characters and conditions. What we can do is to enable these myriad little worlds to live in peace, instead of being perpetually liable to be harried and destroyed by every robber or petty tyrant who could pay a handful of scoundrels to follow him.

However, within the scope of this essay, we shall focus on just one chief feature: the typical, timeless Hindu village as a centre of noble jurisprudence, a feature that “democracy” has wholly obliterated and made irrecoverable.

To do this, we will consider a few illustrative examples drawn from inscriptions and epigraphical records describing some real-life cases and their judgements in the Tamil desam. The period spans about three centuries: from the tenth and eleventh century Chola era to the thirteenth century Pandyan era.

Custom as a Hallowed Judicial Precedent

IN THE VEDIC ERA, the Grāmyavādin was the village judge assisted by a Sabha or advisory council. There was also the Śatapati, a judicial official who doubled as a revenue collector.

The Manusmriti gives us Grāmika or grāmaṇi, or village headmen who also performed juridical duties.

Then, Kautilya wisely says that disputes should be settled by Sāmanta-grāma-vr̥d'dhāh, meaning elders and leaders of the village.

All these ancient Sanatana lawgivers and luminaries of jurisprudence were unanimous on a cardinal precept: the centrality of custom and usage which were honoured by time and which no law-book can adequately and fully define. This among others is the reason for Kautilya’s emphasis on the wisdom and the sense of judgement of grāma-vrd'dhāh. In this, he echoes his predecessor Manu:

The customs handed down in regular succession (since time immemorial) … in any country is called the conduct of virtuous man.

The other famed lawgiver Gautama says:

The customs of countries, varnas, and families, which are not opposed to the sacred literature (i.e., Vedas), have authority.

We can append any number of such citations but all of them affirm and reaffirm the same truth of Sanatana jurisprudence: Custom and usage were inextricable from the life of Hindus taken in a total sense. And in the specific case of justice, ancient usage was raised to the dignity of law. The more ancient, greater the dignity, i.e., this antiquity added sanctity to the sanction of law.

If this was the attitude of the proverbial ordinary citizen, there is a profounder side to it. An injunction found in every text of Dharmasastra is this: the ruler had to preserve, respect, uphold and defend the ancient customs of even those lands which he had newly conquered. As we have noted elsewhere, this injunction forms part of the Dharma-Vijayi king.

Imprint on History

Now, when we consider how this tenet of Hindu jurisprudence manifested itself in South Indian history, we get a term used for centuries in the Karnāṭa-dēśa: Pūrvada maryāde, meaning customs, usages, mores and manners inherited from an un-dateable past.

Inscriptions and records from the earliest political empires of the Karnāṭa-dēśa up to the splendid Vijayanagara Empire invariably mention the term. From the obscure chieftain up to fabled monarchs, every ruler proudly declared that he was a promoter of Pūrvada maryāde. In fact, even the Vijayanagara Empire at its zenith under Sri Krishnadevaraya, rarely altered this Pūrvada maryāde; on the contrary, he scrupulously adhered to it. His governors and chieftains and judges decided cases based on these ancient customs and usages that had the sanction of the eons.

Which brings us to the pre-Vijayanagara Era of South India.

In the early years of the consolidation of Vijayanagara power, Tamil and Karnataka kings had already established an efficient and well-oiled system of judicial administration, which largely continued to endure in the same unbroken fashion till the demise of the Wodeyar rule. The success of the awesome longevity of this system was not only its time-consecrated and citizen-sanctioned roots but the manner in which changes or reform were introduced. No drastic changes were thrust. No “revolution” occurred. By itself, that is a subject of a separate study.

Village Jurisprudence in South India: Inscriptional Glimpse

IN THIS SYSTEM, villages had their own well-defined courts of justice, in which the king scarcely interfered.

We have a brilliant inscription authored in the third regnal year of the King Parthivendradhipati Varman, which throws some superb radiance on the spirit of the era and the people embodying the spirit. It was issued by the members of the Great Assembly (Mahānāḍu) of the now-fabled Uttaramēlūr-Caturvēdimaṅgalaṁ. Here is how it reads:

We, the members of this Great Assembly, having received Pūrvācāraṁ from Sandiran Eḷunnūruva Nuḷamba Māyilaṭṭi for the above land, ordered it to be free from all taxes as long as the moon and sun last. We shall not show any kind of tax… against this land. We, the members of this Great Assembly, have also ordered that if any such taxes are shown against it, each person so showing, shall be liable to pay a fine of twenty-five Kaḷan̄ju of gold in the Dharmāsana or court of justice.

Clearly, the operative word here is Pūrvācāraṁ, meaning these tax-free lands were allotted to the village by a certain ruler of the Nuḷamba (Noḷamba) dynasty preceding Parthivendradhipati Varman. The Uttaramēlūr- Caturvēdimaṅgalaṁ villagers are asserting their moral right in writing to continue this tax-free status by directly addressing the King. The assertion makes it unambiguous that it has judicial sanction and penal authority to punish violators.

When we travel up from Uttaramēlūr to South Arcot, we discover some more inscriptions and records that offer us a clear picture of the manner in which these village courts of justice dealt with cases of a serious nature.

We have considered a couple of epigraphs that contain details about cases of murder under provocation and accidental death, and the method by which the culprits were punished.

The first occurs in 1054, in the reign of Rajendra Chola II. A village officer in his dominions demanded taxes from a woman, who declared that she was not liable to pay taxes. However, the unrelenting officer who disbelieved her, put her through an ordeal (Divya). Accordingly, she consumed poison and died. A general assembly comprising the people from “the four quarters, eighteen districts, and various countries” was summoned, and the man was pronounced guilty. As punishment, he had to pay a fine of thirty-two kasu for burning a lamp at the temple of Tiruttandonri-Mahadeva. Unfortunately, I have been unable to trace this temple.

The second incident occurs in the third year of the rule of Kulottunga Chola Deva. In his kingdom, a Sudra, who had gone out hunting, missed his aim, and fatally shot a Vellala. The villagers “from the seventy-nine districts” assembled together, and found the Sudra guilty of homicide not amounting to murder. He was ordered to pay sixty-four cows to the selfsame Tiruttandonri-Aludaiyar temple for burning two lamps.

Functioning of Village Courts

AS WE HAVE NOTED EARLIER, the King not only did not interfere with the village courts, he also gave them full sanction even in the conduct of criminal cases.

Two inscriptions in the regime of the selfsame Kulottunga Chola testify to this.

One of these inscriptions says that a certain individual shot a man belonging to his own village by mistake. Then the provincial governor and people of the district to which the culprit belonged, called an Assembly. The verdict: the man had committed the offence out of mere carelessness. He had to expiate the sin and guilt by burning a lamp in the Tundandar temple at Siyamangalam. This is the same Stambhēśvara Temple we had written about in The Dharma Dispatch.

Accordingly, the guilty man provided the temple with sixteen cows from the milk of which ghee was prepared for burning the lamp.

Another notable feature of a majority of these cases was the near-total absence of Brahmanas in these judicial proceedings. They were called only on rare occasions.

Here’s one such occasion.

In the thirteenth century, a citizen of Arumbondai aimed an arrow at another man, mistaking him for an animal. The wound never healed and the man died.

The Nāṭṭar (derived from Nāḍu; people of the district) formed a court of enquiry and sought the participation of Brahmanas. The final judgement: the accused, on behalf of the deceased, had to provide for a lamp in the temple of Bhūmīśvaraṁ (now spelled, “Bhoomeeshwarar”) at Marakkanam, in the South Arcot district.

A marked feature of these punishments is the fact that they were extremely mild even by today’s standards given that the crime was murder not amounting to homicide. While this is clearly a direct inheritance of the overall humane and gentle nature of penal action in Sanatana jurisprudence, severe punishments were imposed for crimes that disturbed public order and social harmony.

We can cite the case of a certain venal criminal named Aliyangaiyan Sattiyanavan, who with his armed gang, murdered Vamana Bhatta at night. The gruesome episode occurred when Vamana Bhatta, a Purohita, was returning home from the temple. It occurred in the reign of Jatavarman Sundara Pandya I in the village of Karuvakkurichi.

The criminal Aliyangaiyan Sattiyanavan eluded arrest and ran into hiding and became untraceable. At this, the village court approached Sundara Pandya directly. After patiently hearing the case, the Tribhuvanachakravarti ordered the confiscation of all properties of Sattiyanavan. The properties were indeed substantial: vast tracts of land, several houses and a retinue of servants. These were then attached as the Tirunāmaṭṭu kāṇi (seva) to the temple of Nayanar Chokka-Narayana at Tirukkoshtiyur in Ramnad district. Tirukkoshtiyur now falls in the Sivaganga district.

Sundara Pandya’s punishment elicited the anticipated result. The villain, still in hiding, was distraught and sent a representation to the village court pleading his case. After much negotiation, Sattiyanavan agreed to cough up a whopping sum of 800 pon (gold coins) as compensation and recovered his properties.

Closing Notes

WE CAN CITE scores of similar cases but the aforementioned ones suffice to give us a representative flavor of the spirit that informed and shaped the structure, substance and operation of justice in south India, broadly speaking.

These instances also give us the following unerring conclusion: that South India—including the Tamil Desam—from very ancient times, had already put into practice these fundamental and time-tested injunctions of our ancient Sanatana lawgivers: that justice (1) had to administered in proportion to the seriousness of the offence and in a timely fashion (2) that the culprit was always entitled to appeal even after having received his sentence for grave crimes (3) in every case, justice had to strictly conform with ancient custom and usage, and (4) only people living for generations in a particular geography (i.e., village) were the best judges of these customs and nuances, i.e., dēśācāra and kulācāra.

Evidently, this essay is only a pixel of a miniature of an endless panorama representing the lived history of village-level Sanatana jurisprudence.

An ardent student of the subject will find his lifetime insufficient for a single-minded and devoted tapas in this realm.

|| धर्मस्य तत्वं निहितं गुहायां महाजनो येन गतः स पन्थाः ||

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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