Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T08:55:03.639Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

In the Presence of Witnesses: Petitioning and judicial ‘publics’ in western India, circa 1600–1820

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2019

ROSALIND O'HANLON
ROSALIND O'HANLON*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

British observers of the nineteenth-century panchayat were convinced that it represented a judicial forum of great antiquity, in which petitioners were able to gain local and direct access to justice. They contrasted the panchayat favourably with the delays and frustrations that beset the eighteenth-century East India Company's attempts to channel all petitions through its own courts. This article examines the history of the pre-colonial panchayat in western India and its early modern predecessors. During the early modern centuries, a diverse array of state-level and local corporate bodies made up the landscape for the submission of petitions and the hearing of suits. Although many suits were local in nature, the process of hearing and adjudication itself gave these judicial spaces a significant ‘public’ dimension, and their forms of argumentation frequently invoked general principles of justice and moral order. From the early eighteenth century, the new form of the panchayat came to supersede these older corporate bodies and to reshape the forms of public that gathered around them. The Maratha state, based in Pune, sought firmer control over revenue and justice. State officials promoted the panchayat as a new type of judicial arena, weakening the local corporate institutions and tying them more closely to the Pune court.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 53 , Special Issue 1: Petitioning and Political Cultures in South Asia , January 2019 , pp. 52 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Acknowledgements: I thank Robert Travers and Rohit De for the opportunity to present an earlier version of this article to the conference on ‘Petitioning and Political Cultures in South Asia’ sponsored by the Centre for History and Economics at King's College, Cambridge, and for help in rewriting the article for publication, and to Sumit Guha, David Washbrook, and the anonymous reviewers of this article for their useful additional suggestions.

References

1 Chatterjee, Kumkum, ‘History as Self-Representation: The Recasting of a Political Tradition in Late Eighteenth Century Eastern India’, Modern Asian Studies 32, 4 (1998), p. 937CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alam, Muzaffar, The Languages of Political Islam in India. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004, p. 58Google Scholar; Narayana Rao, Velcheru, Shulman, David and Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, ‘A New Imperial Idiom in the Sixteenth Century: Krishnadevaraya and his Political Theory of Vijayanagara’. In Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia, Pollock, Sheldon (ed.), Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011, p. 90Google Scholar.

2 See, in particular, Wilson, Jon E., The Domination of Strangers: Modern Governance in Eastern India, 1780–1835. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Travers, Robert, Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth Century India: The British in Bengal, 1757–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008Google Scholar.

3 Elphinstone, Mountstuart, Report On The Territories Conquered From The Paishwa. Calcutta: Government Gazette Press, 1821, pp. 59Google Scholar and 95–101.

4 For Elphinstone's approach, see, most recently, Jaffe, James, Ironies of Colonial Governance. Law, Custom and Justice in Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There is also a substantial older literature on Maratha judicial institutions and their early colonial inheritors. See Sen, Surendranath, The Administrative History of the Marathas. Calcutta: University of Calcutta Press, 1925Google Scholar; George Franks, H., Panchayets under the Peshwas. Poona: Poona Star Press, 1930Google Scholar; Gune, V. T., The Judicial System of the Marathas. Poona: Deccan College Research Institute, 1953Google Scholar; Ballhatchet, K. A., Social Policy and Social Change in Western India, 1817–1830. London: Oxford University Press, 1958Google Scholar; Choksey, R. D. (ed.), Twilight of the Maratha Raj, 1818. Poona: Choksey, 1976Google Scholar.

5 See, in particular, Zaret, David, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999Google Scholar.

6 van Voss, Lex Heerma (ed.), ‘Introduction’. In Petitions in Social History, International Review of Social History Supplement 9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bailey, Raymond C., Popular Influence on Public Policy: Petitioning in Eighteenth Century Virginia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979Google Scholar.

7 See, for example, Beales, Derek, ‘Joseph II, Petitions and the Public Sphere’. In Cultures of Power in Europe during the Long Eighteenth Century, Scott, Hamish and Simms, Brendan (eds), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 249–268CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Würgler, Andreas, ‘Voices from Among the “Silent Masses”: Humble Petitions and Social Conflicts in Early Modern Central Europe’. In Petitions in Social History, van Voss (ed.), pp. 11–34Google Scholar; da Costa, Ravi, ‘Identity, Authority and the Moral Worlds of Indigenous Petitions’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, 3 (2006), pp. 669–698Google Scholar.

8 See, in particular, Bayly, C. A., Empire and Information. Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996Google Scholar; Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and Wolfgang Schluchter (eds), ‘Early Modernities’, Daedalus Special Issue 127, 3 (1998); Hoexter, Miriam, Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. and Levtzion, Nehemia (eds), The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002Google Scholar.

9 For this argument in other contexts, see O'Hanlon, Rosalind, ‘Speaking from Siva's Temple: Banaras Scholar Households and the Brahman “Ecumene” of Mughal India’, South Asian History and Culture 2, 2 (2011), pp. 253–277CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Benton, Lauren, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002Google Scholar.

11 See, for example, Cohn, Bernard, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996Google Scholar; Saumarez Smith, Richard, Rule by Records: Land Registration and Village Custom in Early British Panjab. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996Google Scholar; Ogborn, Miles, Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East India Company. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, most recently, Raman, Bhavani, Document Raj: Writing and Scribes in Early Colonial India. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 See Gune, Judicial System of the Marathas, pp. 7–37; Kulkarni, A. R., Maharashtra in the Age of Shivaji. Poona: Deshmukh and Co., 1969Google Scholar; Perlin, Frank, ‘Of White Whale and Countrymen in the Eighteenth Century Maratha Deccan’, Journal of Peasant Studies 5, 2 (1978), pp. 172–237CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guha, Sumit, ‘Speaking Historically: The Changing Voices of Historical Narration in Western India’, American Historical Review 109, 4 (2004), pp. 1084–1103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Gordon, Stewart, The Marathas 1600–1818. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 26–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 For paper use in western India, see Perlin, Frank, ‘State Formation Re-considered’, Modern Asian Studies 19, 3 (1985), pp. 453–455CrossRefGoogle Scholar; O'Hanlon, Rosalind, ‘Performance in a World of Paper: Puranic Histories and Social Communication in Early Modern India’, Past and Present 219 (May 2013), pp. 87–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Gune, Judicial System of the Marathas, pp. 51–63.

16 O'Hanlon, Rosalind, ‘Narratives of Penance and Purification in Western India, c. 1650–1850’, Journal of Hindu Studies 2 (2009), pp. 48–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kotani, Hiroyuki, Western India in Historical Transition. New Delhi: Manohar, 2002, pp. 222–238Google Scholar.

17 Sumit Guha, ‘Bad Language and Good Language: Lexical Awareness in the Cultural Politics of Peninsular India, c. 1300–1800’. In Forms of Knowledge, Pollock (ed.), pp. 49–68; and Guha, S., ‘Transitions and Translations: Regional Power and Vernacular Identity in the Dakhan, 1500–1800’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, 2 (2004), pp. 23–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Gune, Judicial System of the Marathas, pp. xxii–xxviii.

19 Ibid., pp. 93–94.

20 O'Hanlon, ‘Narratives of Penance and Purification’, pp. 55–56.

21 For an extended reflection on the mahzar in the broader context of Indo-Islamic law in Mughal and British India, see Chatterjee, Nandini, ‘Mahzar-namas in the Mughal and British Empires: The Uses of an Indo-Islamic Legal Form’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 58, 2 (2016), pp. 379–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Gune, Judicial System of the Marathas, p. 207.

23 Ibid., p. 80.

24 Ibid.

25 R. V. Oturkar, Peśve-kālīn sāmājik va ārthik vyavahār, nos 12 and 13. Pune: Bhārat Itihās Saṃśodhak Manḍaḷ, 1950, p. 7.

26 See O'Hanlon, Rosalind and Minkowski, Christopher, ‘What Makes People Who They Are? Pandit Networks and the Problem of Livelihoods in Early Modern Western India’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review 45, 3 (July–September 2008), pp. 400–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 D. V. Potdar and G. N. Muzumdar, Śivacaritra Sāhitya, vol. 2, no. 341. Pune: Bhārat Itihās Saṃśodhak Manḍaḷ, 1930, p. 343.

28 Ibid., p. 344.

29 Ibid.

30 Potdar and Muzumdar, Śivacaritra Sāhitya, vol. 2, nos 343 and 345, pp. 345–347.

31 V. S. Bendrey (ed.), Mahārāṣṭretihāsācī sādhane, vol. 2, no. 210. Pune: Mumbai Marāṭhī Grantha Samgrahālaya, 1966, p. 243.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid., p. 244.

34 Ibid., p. 245.

35 Ibid., pp. 240–242.

36 S. N. Joshi and G. H. Khare, Śivacaritra Sāhitya, vol. 3, no. 427. Pune: Chitrashala Press, 1930, pp. 37–41.

37 See O'Hanlon, Rosalind, Gergely Hidad and Csaba Kiss, ‘Discourses of Caste over the Longue Durée: Gopinatha and Social Classification in India, ca. 1400–1900’, South Asian History and Culture 6, 1 (January 2015), pp. 102–129CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Potdar and Muzumdar, Śivacaritra Sāhitya, vol. 2, no. 299, pp. 300–301.

39 Oturkar, Peśve-kālīn sāmājik va ārthik vyavahār, no. 49, p. 36.

40 Perlin, ‘State Formation Re-considered’.

41 Gune, Judicial System of the Marathas, p. 176.

42 Joshi and Khare, Śivacaritra Sāhitya, vol. 3, no. 637, pp. 218–221.

43 Gune, Judicial System of the Marathas, pp. 196–198.

44 Ibid., pp. 205–207.

45 Ibid., pp. 227–228.

46 Perlin, ‘State Formation Re-considered’.

47 Krishnaji Vasudev Purandare and Balavant Dattatraya Apte (eds), Śivacaritra Sāhitya, vol. 7, no. 43. Pune: Aryabhusan Press, 1938, p. 63. For Dalit castes in this period, see also Kotani, Hiroyuki, Western India in Historical Transition: Seventeenth to Early Twentieth Centuries. Delhi: Manohar, 2002, pp. 115–135Google Scholar.

48 Purandare and Apte (eds), Śivacaritra Sāhitya, vol. 7, no. 43, p. 63.

49 Ibid., pp. 61–62.

50 The original document is printed in V. K. Rajwade (ed.), Marāṭhyāncya Itihāsācī Sādhane, vol. 2, no. 6. Dhule: Rājavāḍe Samśodhan Manḍal, 2002, pp. 16–21. There is a partial translation in Smith, Graham and Duncan, J. Derrett, M., ‘Hindu Judicial Administration in Pre-British Times and its Lesson for Today’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 95, 3 (1975), pp. 417–423CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Eaton's discussion is in Eaton, Richard M., A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761: Eight Indian Lives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 145–150CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Kulkarni, Maharashtra in the Age of Shivaji, pp. 30–32; Gordon, The Marathas, pp. 85–87; R. V. Heravadkar (ed.), Śiva Chhatrapatīce caritra: Sabhāsad bakhar. Pune: Vhins Press, 2002, pp. 21–38.

52 The term ‘panchayat’ itself seems to have had a long tradition of use in the subcontinent as one of a number of older Sanskrit-based generic terms—pāñcamaṇdaḷī, śreṇi, gana, kulāni—used to describe tribunals of different kinds: Kane, P. V., History of Dharmaśāstra. Pune: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1973, vol. III, pp. 280–281Google Scholar. See also the suggestion of Sen, Administrative System of the Marathas, pp. 565–567.

53 See, for example, the panchayat held in 1779–80 to resolve the disputed adoption case of the important Chaskar banking family. The proceedings, from scrutiny of the evidence to examination of witnesses, were conducted in a variety of different venues in the peshwa's palace, including the temple to Sri Omkaresvara and the judge's own residence. P. N. Deshpande (ed.), Marāṭhyāncya Itihāsācī Sādhane, part 10, no. 1. New Series. Dhulia: Rājavāḍe Samśodhan Maṇḍaḷ, pp. 3–17.

54 Gune, Judicial System of the Marathas, pp. 49–50, 83–86.

55 Bhārat Itihās Saṃśodhak Manḍaḷ Quarterly 28, nos 3–4 (January–April 1948), no. 31, pp. 32–34. I thank Amol Bankar for sharing this material with me.

56 Gune, Judicial System of the Marathas, p. 24.

57 For these changes in Maratha administration, see Kulkarni, A. R., The Marathas. Pune: Diamond Publications, 2008, pp. 146–148Google Scholar; Gordon, The Marathas, pp. 139–143.

58 See the observations in Hamilton, Walter, A Geographical, Statistical and Historical Description of Hindostan. London: John Murray, 1820, vol. 1, p. 197Google Scholar.

59 Deshpande (ed.), Marāṭhyāchyā Itihāsācī Sādhane, part 5, no. 111, pp. 138–143.

60 Ibid., p. 144.

61 Ibid., p. 149.

62 Ibid., p. 151.

63 Ibid., p. 157.

64 Ibid., pp. 138–159.

65 Gune, Judicial System of the Marathas, Appendix B I, no. 13, pp. 288–291.

66 Ibid., p. 313.

67 Ibid.

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid.

70 This document is printed in M. B. Saha (ed.), Itihāsācārya Vi. Kā. Rājavāḍe samagra sāhitya, vol. 11, no. 55. Dhule: Rājavāḍe Saṁśodhana Maṇḍaḷa, 1995–1998, pp. 443–448.

71 Pangarkar, L. R., Moropant: caritra āṇi kāvyavivecana. Mumbai: Hindu Agency Booksellers and Publisher, 1908, p. 109Google Scholar.

72 Ibid., p. 110.

73 For Ramshastri's period as chief law officer at the Pune court, see Athavale, Sadashiv, Rām Śāstrī Prabhuṇe, Caritra va Patre. Pune: Srividya Prakashan, 1988Google Scholar.

74 Sardesai, G. S. (ed.), Selections from the Peshwa Daftar, vol. 45, no. 48: Documents Illustrating Maratha Administration. Bombay: Government Central Press, 1935, pp. 134–141Google Scholar.

75 N. J. Lumsden, ‘Report on the Judicial Administration of the Peshwas’, 24 January 1819, Deccan Commissioner's Daftar, vol. 95. In Gune, Judicial System of the Marathas, pp. 372–384.

76 Elphinstone, Report on the Territories, pp. 76–88.

77 Jaffe, Ironies of Colonial Governance, pp. 21–47.

78 Notes, Memorandum and Relative Letters regarding the Powers of Patails and Punchayets. Mountstuart Elphinstone Papers, India Office Records, Mss. Eur. F. 88/408, ff. 86r–100r.

79 Ibid., f. 86r and ff. 99r–99v.

80 Molesworth, J. T., A Dictionary, Marāṭhi and English. Bombay: Education Society's Press, 1857, p. 482Google Scholar.

81 See, for example, Davis, Donald, ‘Intermediate Realms of Law: Corporate Groups and Rulers in Medieval India’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 48, 1 (2005), pp. 92–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roy, Tirthankar, Company of Kinsmen: Enterprise and Community in South Asian History, 1700–1940. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 45–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prasad Sahai, Nandita, Politics of Patronage and Protest: The State, Society and Artisans in Early Modern Rajasthan. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 89–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 Elphinstone, Report on the Territories, pp. 99–100.

83 Jaffe, Ironies of Colonial Governance, pp. 74–76.

84 ‘Second Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners Appointed to Consider the Reform of the Judicial Establishments, Judicial Procedure and Laws of India, &c’, 1856, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 25, paper no. 2036, p. 7.

85 Jaffe, Ironies of Colonial Governance, pp. 209–291.