Tribal Ethnography: Evolution of Tribal Political Life from Chiefdoms to Panchayati Raj

Long before elections, ballot boxes, or five-year terms, tribal communities across India were already governing themselves. Some societies ran on consensus and councils of elders. Others built kingdoms with courts, forts, and revenue systems that rivalled their non-tribal neighbours. Independence changed almost everything, folding these diverse systems into a single democratic framework. Yet threads of that older political life survive today, protected by specific constitutional provisions and laws. Here is how tribal political life moved from chiefdoms and kingdoms to the Panchayati Raj system we know now.

Before the kings: egalitarian councils in tribal India 🔗

Most tribal societies in pre-colonial India did not organise themselves around kings at all. Authority usually rested with a village council of elders or headmen, chosen for wisdom and standing rather than birthright, and decisions were typically made through open discussion rather than command.

The Naga village republic 🔗

Among many Naga communities, each village functioned as what colonial administrators called a small republic, with its own territory, customary law, and judicial system. Villages such as those of the Maring Naga were governed by a chief working alongside a council of elders who held legislative, executive, and judicial powers together, and customary law, though unwritten, carried real force in settling disputes and managing community affairs, as anthropological studies of Naga village polity describe.

The Santal three-tier council 🔗

The Santal community of the Chhotanagpur plateau built an even more structured system. At the village level, a manjhi or headman led affairs with the help of officials such as the paranik (deputy) and naeke (priest), but real decisions were taken collectively at the kulhi durup, or village assembly, where every adult participated. Above the village sat a pargana council covering several villages, and above that, a regional assembly. This entire structure, still functioning in parts of the Santal Parganas today, is documented in detail by India Seminar’s study of tribal participation in Jharkhand.

When chiefs became kings: tribal kingdoms and chiefdoms 🔗

Not every tribal society stayed egalitarian. In several regions, successful chiefs consolidated power over generations, building dynasties, forts, and even revenue-collecting states that looked a lot like their non-tribal contemporaries.

The Raj Gond kingdom of Chanda 🔗

The clearest example is the Gond kingdom of Chanda in present-day Chandrapur, Maharashtra. Founded around the 9th to 13th century by rulers from the Atram clan, the kingdom eventually shifted its capital to Chandrapur and became known for developing sophisticated irrigation systems and one of the first well-defined revenue systems among the Gond kingdoms, according to Down To Earth’s account of the Gond kingdoms. The ruling lineage, the Raj Gonds, built forts, engaged diplomatically and militarily with the Mughals, Marathas, and Rajputs, and held on to power in some form right up to the 18th century, when the Marathas under the Bhonsles absorbed most of their territory.

Kingdoms of Assam: Dimasa Kachari and Rajbhanshi 🔗

In the northeast, tribal political consolidation went even further. The Dimasa Kachari kings, who ruled parts of Assam for centuries, developed a structured monarchy under rulers carrying the title Narayan, blending traditional tribal institutions with more formal administrative practices to manage agriculture, trade, and craft production, as detailed in records of the Dimasa Kachari dynasty. The Rajbhanshi community of North Bengal and Assam similarly developed its own kingdoms and chieftaincies during this period, reflecting a broader pattern across the region where tribal identity and monarchical rule were not mutually exclusive.

Chieftaincies among the Santal, Bhuiya, Mizo, and Naga 🔗

Elsewhere, tribal groups built chieftaincies rather than full kingdoms. Mizo society, for instance, operated as a gerontocracy where hereditary chiefs led individual villages, assisted by advisors such as the tlangau (village crier) and upas (council of elders), a system that persisted well into the colonial period. Bhuiya and Santal communities similarly recognised local chiefs and headmen with real administrative and judicial authority over their villages, even without forming large centralised states.

Colonial rule and the unmaking of tribal leadership 🔗

British expansion steadily dismantled this patchwork of tribal kingdoms and chieftaincies. Wars, treaties, and annexations stripped Gond, Kachari, and other rulers of sovereignty, converting many former kings into revenue-collecting zamindars under colonial oversight, a shift documented by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs’ account of Gond history. Colonial forest and land policies further eroded traditional authority by treating tribal territory as state property.

In the hill regions of the northeast, colonial administrators often preserved local chieftainship as a low-cost way to maintain order, even while formally annexing territory. This uneasy compromise did not last. After independence, Mizo chieftainship itself was legally abolished through the Assam-Lushai District (Acquisition of Chief’s Rights) Act of 1954, following sustained political pressure from groups like the Mizo Union, marking the final formal end of hereditary rule in the region.

A new republic: from princely states to Panchayati Raj 🔗

Independence in 1947 replaced princely states, zamindaris, and surviving chieftaincies with a single parliamentary system based on adult franchise. But rural local governance took decades to formalise. The real turning point came with the 73rd Constitutional Amendment of 1992, which gave Panchayati Raj Institutions constitutional status and came into force on 24 April 1993, a date still marked as National Panchayati Raj Day, as Britannica’s overview of Panchayati Raj explains.

The amendment mandated a three-tier structure in every state: the Gram Panchayat at the village level, the Panchayat Samiti or Mandal Parishad at the block level, and the Zila Parishad at the district level. It also required proportional reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes at every tier, alongside one-third reservation for women, embedding political representation for tribal communities directly into the structure of local government.

Constitutional safeguards: the Fifth and Sixth Schedules 🔗

The standard Panchayati Raj framework does not automatically apply everywhere tribal communities live. Recognising this, the Constitution created two distinct special regimes under Article 244.

The Fifth Schedule and Tribes Advisory Councils 🔗

The Fifth Schedule applies to Scheduled Areas across ten states outside the northeast. It gives the Governor special powers to protect tribal land from transfer to non-tribals, regulate money-lending, and generally safeguard tribal welfare, while requiring the mandatory establishment of a Tribes Advisory Council in each state to advise on tribal matters. Unlike its northeastern counterpart, this council is purely advisory and does not hold independent lawmaking power.

The Sixth Schedule and Autonomous District Councils 🔗

The Sixth Schedule takes a very different approach in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Mizoram. It allows tribal areas to be organised into Autonomous Districts, each governed by an elected District Council of up to thirty members, most of them directly elected. These councils are not merely consultative; they hold real legislative, executive, and judicial powers over subjects such as land, forests, marriage, and inheritance, as Mongabay India’s explainer on the Sixth Schedule lays out. Ten such councils currently exist across the four states, giving tribal communities there a level of self-governance closer to statehood than to a standard panchayat.

PESA and the return of power to the Gram Sabha 🔗

Even where the Fifth Schedule applied, ordinary Panchayati Raj law from the 73rd Amendment did not automatically extend to Scheduled Areas, since these regions were excluded from Part IX of the Constitution. Parliament closed this gap with the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act of 1996, commonly called PESA, enacted on 24 December that year following recommendations from the Bhuria Committee. PESA has often been described as a constitution within the Constitution, because it deliberately builds the law around existing tribal customs rather than replacing them, a point emphasised in the government’s own Press Information Bureau note on tribal protections under PESA.

The heart of PESA is the Gram Sabha, defined as every adult resident of a habitation or group of habitations organised around traditional customs. Under Section 4 of the Act, the state government’s own official text of the PESA Act makes clear that any land acquired for a project in these areas must first be handed back to Gram Sabha jurisdiction if unused, underlining how far the law goes in restoring local control. In practice, this means Gram Sabhas in Scheduled Areas have binding authority, not merely advisory input, over a defined set of matters: managing minor forest produce, minor minerals, and water bodies; selecting beneficiaries for welfare schemes; approving development plans before they are implemented; and giving mandatory consent before land acquisition or resettlement can proceed.

Implementation, however, has been uneven. Several states have passed rules that route power through the Gram Panchayat rather than the more localised Gram Sabha, which weakens the law’s original intent. Even so, PESA remains the single most significant legal recognition that tribal self-governance did not simply end with colonial conquest, and that the older instinct for consensus-based, community-rooted decision-making still has a formal place in Indian democracy.

What do you think? Do institutions like the Gram Sabha under PESA come closer to reviving the spirit of pre-colonial tribal councils than the standard Panchayati Raj system does? And where implementation falls short, is the problem the law itself, or how state governments choose to apply it?

References

1. https://antrocom.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/shimray-ezung-naga-village-polity.pdf
2. https://india-seminar.com/2002/514/514%20arbind%20kumar.htm
3. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/environment/the-gond-kingdoms-46701
4. https://assaminfo.com/general-knowledge-assam/complete-list-of-dimasa-kachari-kings-and-dynasty-rulers-of-assam-8351832-history-timeline-legacy
5. https://museum.tribal.gov.in/history.html
6. https://www.britannica.com/topic/panchayati-raj
7. https://india.mongabay.com/2024/05/what-is-the-sixth-schedule-why-is-ladakh-demanding-to-be-brought-under-it/
8. https://pib.gov.in/newsite/printrelease.aspx?relid=108320
9. https://www.mha.gov.in/sites/default/files/PESAAct1996_0.pdf