I’ve previously posted about trial by jury because I recognize the benefits of using lottery for the selection of public officials (what is known as “sortition”). Many believe that sortition is a foreign concept, imposed on us by British colonizers. While it’s true that the British introduced jury trials in India, and that post-independence India abolished them1, sortition was used to select village administrations under the Chola empire, and it continues to be used by tribals to select a kind of combined political, judicial, and religious office.
1 The Kudavolai method
A model of the Kudavolai method of elections conducted by Rajaraja Cholan was the cynosure of all eyes at the exhibition. The model depicts a person putting a palm leaf chip into a pot.
What attracted visitors was the eligibility of the candidates who could contest. A note under the model stated that those in the age group of 35 to 70 could contest.
Under the Kudavolai method, names of the candidates written in palm leaf would be put inside a pot. The pot would be kept in public view. A child would be asked to take one name from the pot in the presence of people.
source (emphasis mine)
I found a blogpost that provides a detailed explanation of this “Kudavolai method” which explains the system in detail based on the Uthiramerur inscriptions. While I cannot confirm the authenticity of every detail in this blog post, it broadly matches interpretations provided by others.
2 Sortition used by Tribals in Jharkhand
The findings of social anthropologist Alpa Shah reveal how tribals select their community leaders. (h/t Rahul Basu) I’m attaching an excerpt from one of her articles in the Hindustan Times, which describes how sortition was practiced and the roles of the leaders selected by it.
I first saw it in December 2000, less than a month after Jharkhand became a separate state, in the Munda tribe village, where I was staying as a social anthropologist. They were selecting their new pahan and paenbharra, who presided over secular and sacred village matters, for three years.
A man with a “light shadow” was blindfolded. He carried a winnowing basket on the edge of a pole, and was possessed by the village spirit, Sarna-mai. Shaking while he walked, as if he was being led by the spirit, he wandered from house to house, before eventually settling at one. He stopped shaking, an indication that Sarna-mai has chosen that house as the next pahan. The process was repeated for the paenbharra.
A few years later, I stumbled across another selection in the neighbouring village. There, instead of wandering across the village, a man with a “light shadow” stood blindfolded in the middle of a large circle of stones. Each stone represented a household. Once possessed, the man went around round the circle until Sarna-mai settled at one of the stones: It was the house that will send the next pahan or paenbharra. A random choice, these villages seemed to be practising a form of ancient Athenian democracy — with a tribal twist.
I tried tracing the local history of the pahans and paenbharras. Although many complained that the process has become corrupt in some villages, and that women did not seem to serve the roles, I could find no other pattern to who was chosen in these two villages. Instead, I found instances of selected households passing on the responsibility to others if they felt they could not fulfil it.
The roles did carry real responsibilities. Apart from propitiating the deities to ensure the village’s safety from droughts, disease and other calamities, the pahan and paenbharra coordinated the villagers to settle their disputes. They had to feed the entire village at least three times a year, and always maintain extra supplies as a social security net for the poor. For that purpose, they were assigned special lands and seven helpers to cultivate it for the duration of their role. In the colonial land settlement records, I found that the Adivasi rebellions had forced the British to recognise the values of these local democratic traditions. Across the 114 villages of that block I stayed in, their records show the method of selecting the local leaders and the lands reserved for the roles.
(emphasis mine)
3 Footnotes
- Contrary to popular opinion, the Nanavati trial wasn’t the last jury trial in India and not even the last jury trial in Bombay. The Indian judicial and political elite was hostile to jury trials and many jurisdictions got rid of them even before the Nanavati trial. The Bombay Sessions court still employed them but only in serious criminal cases. The real last jury trial took place in Calcutta as late as 1973.