Chola: Local Government

Chola: Local Government

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The Uttaramerur inscriptions, issued during the reign of Parantaka I (907–955 CE), are the single most important source for understanding local self-government under the Cholas — often described as a “written constitution” of village administration that has fascinated historians and constitutional scholars alike. For UPSC History Optional aspirants, this topic is essential both for the remarkably detailed procedural information the inscriptions provide on village elections, committees, and local justice, and for the historiographical debate over just how “democratic” this system genuinely was. This article examines the village of Uttaramerur and its inscriptions, the detailed constitution they lay out for electing and running village committees, the extent to which Chola local government can be called democratic, and how this local autonomy fit within the Cholas’ otherwise centralised administrative structure.

Local Self-Government under the Cholas

• The system of village autonomy — with assemblies (Sabhas, Urs, and Nagaram) and their committees (Variyams) — developed over the ages and reached its culmination during Chola rule.
• Two inscriptions belonging to the period of Parantaka I, found at Uttaramerur, provide details of the formation and functions of village councils.
  • This inscription, dated around 920 CE in the reign of Parantaka Chola (907–955 CE), is an outstanding document in the history of India — a veritable written constitution of the village assembly that functioned 1,000 years ago.

Uttaramerur and Its Inscriptions

• Uttaramerur is situated in Kancheepuram district.
  • The Pallava king Nandivarman II established it around 750 CE; the Pallavas, the Cholas, the Pandyas, the Sambuvarayars, the Vijayanagara Rayas, and the Nayaks successively ruled it.
  • The village has three important temples: the Sundara Varadaraja Perumal temple, the Subramanya temple, and the Kailasanatha temple.
  • Rajendra Chola, as well as Krishnadeva Raya, visited Uttaramerur.
• Uttaramerur, built on the canons of the agama texts, has the village assembly mandapa at its centre, with all the temples oriented with reference to the mandapa.
• Scholars hold that while village assemblies may have existed before the period of Parantaka Chola, it was during his reign that village administration was honed into a perfected system of elections.
  • Inscriptions on temple walls in several parts of Tamil Nadu refer to village assemblies, but it is at Uttaramerur, on the walls of the village assembly mandapa itself, that we find the earliest inscriptions with complete information on how the elected village assembly functioned.
• During the Chola period, there was democratic government at the village level, as the Uttaramerur inscriptions show a village assembly made up of elected members.
  • The inscription gives astonishing detail on the constitution of wards, the qualification of candidates standing for election, the disqualification norms, the mode of election, the constitution of committees with elected members, the functions of those committees, and the power to remove a wrongdoer.
  • On the walls of the mandapa are inscribed a variety of secular transactions of the village — administrative, judicial, commercial, agricultural, transportation, and irrigation regulations — as administered by the village assembly, giving a vivid picture of the efficient administration of village society in these bygone ages.
  • The villagers even had the right to recall elected representatives if they failed in their duty.
  • The entire village, including infants, had to be present at the village assembly mandapa when elections were held; only the sick and those on pilgrimage were exempt.
• There were committees for the maintenance of irrigation tanks and roads, for providing relief during drought, for testing gold, and so forth.
  • Members were chosen once every year for the Annual Committee, Garden Committee, Tank Committee, and Gold Committee.
  • Several tasks — the maintenance of temples, agriculture, irrigation, collection of taxes, and road construction — were looked after by the local assembly through these committees.
  • The Chola emperors generally respected the decisions of these assemblies.

The Uttaramerur Constitution for Village Committees

• The village assembly of Uttaramerur drafted the constitution for its elections. The village was divided into 30 wards, with one representative elected for each. The salient features of this constitution were as follows.

Qualifications

• In the thirty wards, those living in each ward would assemble and choose, for “pot-tickets” (Kudavolai), anyone possessing the following qualifications:
  • ownership of more than a quarter veli of tax-paying land;
  • residence in a house built on one’s own site;
  • age below 70 and above 35;
  • knowledge of the Mantrabrahmana — that is, knowing it well enough to teach it to others.
  • Even one who owned only one-eighth veli of land could have his name included on a pot-ticket if he had learnt one Veda and one of the four bhasyas well enough to explain it to others.
• Among those possessing the foregoing qualifications, only those well versed in business and of virtuous conduct would be taken; one with honest earnings, a pure mind, and no committee service in the preceding three years would also be chosen.
  • Hence, the essential criteria were an age limit, possession of immovable property, and a minimum educational qualification.

Disqualifications

• The following were ineligible, along with all their relations (son, father, brother, son-in-law, father-in-law, uncle, sister-in-law, and the like):
  • anyone who had served on a committee but had not submitted his accounts;
  • anyone against whom incest (agamyagamana) or the first four of the five great sins were recorded.
• The following were also ineligible in their own right:
  • one who was foolhardy;
  • one who had stolen another’s property;
  • one who had taken forbidden foods of any kind, even if he had since become pure through expiation;
  • one who had committed sins and become pure through expiatory ceremonies;
  • one guilty of incest who had become pure through expiatory ceremonies.
• All those so specified would never, for the rest of their lives, have their names written on a pot-ticket for any committee.

Mode of Election

• Names were written on pot-tickets in the thirty wards; each of the wards, across the twelve streets of Uttaramerur, had a separate covering ticket prepared for it, bundled separately, and these packets were placed in a pot.
• When the pot-tickets were to be drawn, a full meeting of the Great Assembly — including young and old members — was convened.
  • All the temple priests (Numbimar) present in the village that day were, without exception, seated in the inner hall where the Great Assembly met.
  • The eldest among the priests would stand and lift the pot upward, so as to be seen by all present.
  • The packet for one ward was drawn out by a young boy — chosen so that he would not know its contents — and transferred to another, empty pot, which was then shaken.
  • From this pot, one ticket was drawn by the boy and handed to the arbitrator (madhyastha), who received it on the open palm of his hand.
  • He would read out the name on the ticket, which was then re-read by all the priests present in the inner hall, and the name thus read out was accepted.
  • This process was repeated for each of the thirty wards.

Constitution of the Committee

• Of the thirty men thus chosen, those who had previously served on the Garden Committee or Tank Committee, and those advanced in learning or in age, were chosen for the Annual Committee.
• Of the remainder, twelve were taken for the Garden Committee and the remaining six formed the Tank Committee; these last two committees were chosen by drawing the Karai (pot-tickets).

Duration of the Committees

• Members of these three committees held office for a full 360 days before retiring.

Removal of Persons

• Any committee member found guilty of an offence was removed at once.
  • To fill the resulting vacancies, the remaining committee members would convene an assembly with the help of the arbitrator, and appoint replacements by drawing pot-tickets according to the same order of settlement.

Pancavara and Gold Committees

• For the Pancavara Committee and the Gold Committee, names were written on pot-tickets in the thirty wards, with thirty packets bearing covering tickets deposited in a pot, from which thirty pot-tickets were drawn as previously described.
  • Of these thirty, twenty-four were assigned to the Gold Committee and the remaining six to the Pancavara Committee.
  • When drawing pot-tickets for these two committees the following year, wards already represented on them during the preceding year were excluded.
  • Anyone who had ridden on an ass, or who had committed forgery, was ineligible.

Qualification of the Accountant

• Any arbitrator with honest earnings could write the accounts of the village.
  • No accountant could be reappointed to that office before he had submitted his accounts for his prior term to the members of the “big committee” and been declared honest.
  • Whoever had been writing a set of accounts had to submit them himself; no other accountant could be chosen to close his accounts for him.

King’s Order

• As long as the moon and the sun endure, committees were to be appointed by pot-tickets alone.
  • This was the effect of the royal letter graciously issued by the emperor — one fond of learned men, a wrestler with elephants, the crest-jewel of heroes, whose gifts resembled those of the celestial tree — the glorious Parakesarivarman.

Officer Present

• At the royal command, a representative of the Chola emperor was present while the constitution was being written, and thereby caused this settlement to be made.

Villager’s Decision

• The inscription declares: “We, the members of the assembly of Uttaramerur Caturvedimangalam, made this settlement for the prosperity of our village, in order that wicked men may perish and the rest may prosper.”

The Scribe

• At the order of the great men sitting in the assembly, the arbitrator himself wrote this settlement.

How Democratic Was Chola Local Government?

• Each assembly functioned autonomously in accordance with its own constitution, based on custom and usage, and looked after the problems of its members at the local level; matters affecting the people of more than one assembly were decided by mutual deliberation.
  • Local government gave the population a chance to air its grievances and solve its problems, which strengthened the democratic characteristics of the village assemblies.
• Even so, Chola village assemblies were democratic in only some of their political practices, since the Chola polity itself was an absolute monarchy.
  • The central government, through its officers, exercised general supervision and retained the right to intervene in village affairs during emergencies, and the village assemblies had to take the policies of the central government into account.
  • There were close links between some of the Brahmana Sabhas and the Chola court: the Uttaramerur inscriptions state that resolutions of the Sabha were made in the presence of an official specially deputed by the king, and the Tanjavur inscriptions indicate that Rajaraja I issued orders to the Sabha of Cholamandalam to perform various services for the Brihadeshwara temple.
• Other factors indicating a lack of full democracy included:
  • candidates being elected through a lot system rather than a voting system;
  • membership of the Ur (the village assembly of non-Brahmins) being confined to taxpaying landowners, whereas membership of the Sabha (the village assembly of Brahmins) was governed by criteria such as property ownership, family antecedents, learning, and good conduct;
  • the Nagaram — local bodies comprising traders of the nadu, which controlled market centres through their own functionaries, levied cesses on shops, and organised commerce within the market centres — operating on a similarly restricted basis;
  • many people being debarred from contesting elections, such as relatives of criminals and those who had served on any committee in the preceding three years;
  • no reference, in the actual functioning of the assemblies, to any quorum requirement or to decisions being taken by voting;
  • water supply determining, to a large extent, which villages had assemblies and which did not — villages in the central region of the Kaveri river basin were placed under direct royal control, while those in more distant, drier regions remained autonomous and retained self-governing institutions.
• The village assemblies, therefore, cannot be called democratic in the modern sense, as grassroots democracy under the Cholas was not absolute.

Adjustment of Chola’s Centralized Administration with Local Self-Government

• Beyond the direct oversight described above, the Chola centre also worked with local self-government through more formal arrangements.
  • Important brahmadeyas were granted taniyur status — “separate village” — and treated as independent entities with considerable functional autonomy.
  • The Nagaram (assemblies of traders) also acted as an agent of the monarchy in regulating trade and markets.
  • The assessment and collection of revenue was undertaken by local assemblies such as the Ur, Sabha, and Nagaram, who then passed the revenue on to the centre.
• Local administration through these assembly units greatly lightened the burden on the central government: it gave the population a chance to air its grievances and solve its problems, which strengthened the basis of the state by minimising opposition, since the people could not hold the central government directly responsible for local matters.