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.

Introducing a Miniature Village Republic in the Sevuna Empire - Sandeep Balakrishna

 Preface

IN LETTER DATED SOMETIME IN 1830, CHARLES METCALFE wrote this about Indian villages:

I admire the structure of the village communities… The village communities are little republics, having nearly everything that they want within themselves, and almost independent of any foreign relations. They seem to last where nothing else lasts. Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down. Revolution succeeds to revolution…but the village communities remain the same… This union of the village communities, each one forming a separate little state in itself, has… contributed more  than any other cause to the preservation of the people of India, through all the revolutions and changes which they have suffered and is in a high degree conducive to their happiness and to the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and independence. I wish, therefore, that the village constitutions to is never be disturbed, and I dread everything that has a tendency to break them up.

But Metcalfe was merely echoing our ancient Dharmasastra writers like Gautama and Bodhayana. 

Rishi Gautama, revered as a Gōtra-pravartaka, composed his Dharmasutra roughly between 600 - 400 BCE. 

Rishi Bodhayana, also venerated as a Gōtra-pravartaka, postdated Gautama and composed his Dharmasutra.      

Both of their Dharmasutras define a village in a simple declarative sentence: a village is where righteous men throng. The simplicity conceals its profundity and in a way, also gives us the essence of what is known as Sutra literature. Sutras or aphorisms couch extraordinary truths in their nourishing breasts. Which is why such a vast body of work interpreting Sutras eventually arose in the Sanatana tradition.

And then Bodhayana delineates the specifics: "a righteous man shall seek to dwell in a village where fuel, water, fodder, sacred fuel, kusa grass, and garlands are plentiful. Access to all this must be easy, and many rich people should dwell in such a village. It ought to abound in industrious people, and where Aryas (virtuous, cultured, honest and honourable men) must form the majority. It should have a strong defence against robbers and other disturbers of peace.” 

But both Gautama and Bodhayana mention that their tenets were based on the authority of the “ancients.” Which only means that this conception of a village predated even them.

At any rate, it is clear that this theory and practice of a village had endured nearly intact for several millennia, leading Metcalfe to make his remark in 1830. It is unlikely that Metcalfe had studied our visionary Dharmasastra sages. He was simply describing what he had witnessed: the unbroken continuity of that village system still in operation.  

The evolution and flowering of the Sanatana civilisation inevitably ushered in complexity and change in the village system. However, the raw but profound simplicity at the core of the village setup that our Dharmasastra Rishis had conceived, largely remained intact. The external devices and methods of its functional administration underwent modifications in response to changing times. In fact, we can pick up this theme and reconstruct the political and social history of Bharatavarsha from its civilisational dawn. We get a hint of this element in Metcalfe’s observation that “this union of the village communities, each one forming a separate little state in itself, has… contributed more than any other cause to the preservation of the people of India, through all the revolutions and changes which they have suffered.” 

The “revolutions” that Metcalfe mentions were mostly sudden and substantial upheavals caused by alien Muslim invasions and exploitative European pirates disguised as traders. Pre-Islamic “revolutions” in India were typically battles of territorial conquest or reconquest by Hindu kings. These battles neither disturbed the Hindu cultural continuity nor harmed the existing social harmony. Likewise, unless faced with extreme conditions — for example, the mass migrations of Hindus from their ancestral villages etc., forced by Islamic depredations — the village system remained unspoilt despite these disruptions. 

This feature is precisely what we observe in the administrative histories of all notable and obscure Hindu empires sprawled over nearly two millennia. As such, barring minor differences, the administrative history of one Hindu empire drawn at random almost mirrors that of another. For example, the 28 administrative departments mentioned in the annals of the Sena Empire (Bengal) are directly derived from the Arthasastra. Roughly around the same period, we notice a similar administrative setup in the Sevuna (Yadava) Empire ruling from Devagiri. 

The Sevuna Empire is as good an exemplar as any to expound on the awesome Hindu village administrative system. Its selection has the additional advantage of tracing back the origins of some of the contemporary names and terminology and functions that have survived in our own age.  

But before that, we’ll take a brief sojourn into the undateable cradle of the Hindu village administrative setup.  

IN GENERAL, the Grāma or village was always recognised as a unit of administration. We have already noted the definition of a typical village, given by Gautama and Bodhayana. 

Kautilya defines a village as one constituting 100 - 500 families. Each village has well-defined boundaries and affords common defence against threats, internal or external. If required, the State could establish more villages in sites suited for the purpose. Housing sites of various measurements were to be allotted to all classes of people according to social status and the number of members in the family. 

Overall, some features of the village administrative system in ancient India are common although the terminology varies. This is typically how it looked: 

• Grāma: The smallest unit, i.e., the individual village. 

• Saṅgrahaṇa: A group of ten villages.

• Kharvāṭikā:  A group of two hundred villages.

• Drōṇamukha: A group of four hundred villages  

• Sthānīya: A group of eight hundred villages.

• Gulma: A unit of thousand villages subdivided in three specific groups: (1) two hundred (3) three hundred (4) five hundred.  

• Dēśa: A group of thousand villages. The familiar meaning of Dēśa as “country” came much later.  

Each Grāma had to conform to definite measurements, roughly about two square miles. It’s physical layout too, had to adhere to a strict plan of streets and roads, and each street and road was named according to function. 

• Padya: Footpath. Width = Three cubits. 

• Vīthi: market street. The Kannada word Bīdi is derived from this. Width = Five cubits.

• Mārga: road, transit road, vista, avenue, etc. Width = Ten cubits

• Rājamārga: literally, “road on which the king or royal family travels.” Also means a highway, trunk road, road on which carriages and carts travel. Width = Fifteen to thirty cubits.

An inseparable element of this village system was the ubiquitous Śāla or resthouse, a term that is familiar to us today with its prefix: Dharma-Śāla. These were built between Grāmas for the primary purpose of providing protection to travellers during the night. Helmed by an official known as the Śālādhipa, he played a double role of a quasi police and a manager. 

Which brings us to a partial list of officials who kept the village administrative setup well-oiled. 

• Gōpa, grāmabhōjaka, grāmāṇi: The village headman in charge of all functions in the village including maintaining account books. 

• śālādhipati: The village police chief. 

• The officials in charge of Saṅgrahaṇas, Kharvāṭikās, and Drōṇamukhas respectively. 

• Sthānika: In charge of eight hundred villages, i.e., one Sthānīya. 

• Samāhartā: The imperial official to whom the Sthānika reported. His office  can be roughly equated with the contemporary Finance ministry. The  Samāhartā directly appointed the Sthānika.  

This system clearly exhibits a strict administrative hierarchy which was scrupulously followed. Violation of this hierarchy at any level would invite swift punishment.

***

A measure of the incessant continuity of this system is available in the introductory essay of D.V.G’s classic volume, Maisūrina divānarugaḷu (The Divans of Mysore), where he shows with hard data and lived experience how even the British did not overtly disturb this administrative system. He says that for all practical purposes, the villagers regarded the Amaldar (roughly, the Sthanika) as synonymous with Government. Likewise, in his brilliant Tabbaliyu Neenaade Magane, Dr. S.L. Bhyrappa gives a vivid account of how this system operated in practice and how it impacted the real life of the villagers.    

***

The foregoing birds’ eye view of the village administrative setup in ancient India should serve as a reasonable primer for exploring some details of its practical functioning in the Sevuna Empire, which Ala-ud-din Khalji extinguished in the beginning of the 14th century. The details are quite eye-opening to say the least.

Courtesy: https://www.dharmadispatch.in/history/introducing-a-miniature-village-republic-in-the-sevuna-empire