Swaraat / T S Venkatesan

Centre for policy studies says two beautiful and self-governing system was in practice in two north Tamil Nadu villages before Britishers set foot in

TS Venkatesan

Centre for Policy Studies(CPS) a non-profit-research organisation, in a recent study found two villages Ulluvar and Kundrathur where an elaborate self-governing systems existed years before the colonial rulers came to India.
The research paper dated 25th August 2024, details its study highlighting two beautiful, affluent and self-governing locations in India existed. Jatindar K Bajaj Director of CPS in the paper said the main objective of the study was to find out how the polity of Bharat functioned before the British arrived.
The report said “the classical civilizational literature of India is one of the sources where we may find answers to these questions. We did carry out some studies along that direction. The first few books of the Centre, especially Annam Bahu Kurvita: Recollecting the Indian Discipline of Growing and Sharing Food in Plenty were based on our study of our civilizational literature including the Vedas, Upanishads, Ithihasas, Puranas and Kavyas”.
He said “we had access to another source of information on the pre-British Indian polity. Sri Dharampal, the pioneering historian of eighteenth-century India, had, during his extensive archival explorations, come across the records of a survey that the British carried out in about 2,000 Tamil localities from 1767 to 1774. These localities constituted the so-called Chengalpattu Jagir which the British had obtained from the then Nawab of Arcot. The Jagir is located around the city of Chennai. In this survey, the British, it seems, were looking for an answer to the same questions that we were interested in: How were these localities being governed till then and also what could be the value of these? They needed answers to these questions before setting up their own administration in the Jagir.
He said that their study was based on a survey conducted by Thomas Barnard, a British military officer in about 2000 locations in the erstwhile Chengalpattu Jagir between 1767 and 1774. The records are available in English at the Tamil Nadu State Archives. The British had summarized information about the functioning of the villages in the Jagir from Tamil inscriptions on Palm leaves available with traditional account keepers called Kanakkupillais (village accountant).

“These give the name of the head of every household, his jati and occupation and the extent of his house and the backyard. These also record the details of every temple and every lake, pond, pool and well. The accounts also record the location and extent of every piece of cultivated and barren land. For the years 1762 to 1767, the accounts give the extent of crops that were grown in the fields during different seasons and their produce. Further, these accounts give us the process of deduction and allocation of nearly a third of the produce for varied institutions, functions and functionaries of the locality. We have deciphered, copied and translated into modern Tamil the palm-leaf manuscript accounts for about 600 localities. We have also translated the accounts of a few localities into English”.
The study says “The localities of India are mentioned in epigraphs inscribed on stone and copper. The localities have been talked about in epics, stories and legends. Many of the localities have their own sthala-puranas, the founding-legends. The two localities described in these monographs seem to have an especially long and well-described history. As many as 55 inscriptions have been recorded from the locality of Kundratthur. These run from 1153 to 1726, from the peak of Chola period to nearly the end of the Mughals. The transactions and events recorded in these relate mainly to the locality itself, the king is mentioned in the inscriptions often only as a marker of date and time”.
Jatindar K Balaji said “for the study of Kundrathur and Ullavur, the CPS had consulted both the archival summary records and the Tamil Palm leaves. In addition, we have looked at several inscriptions from Kundratthur, Ullavur and the Kasakudi copperplate of the Pallava period.
CPS, which has published two separate books in collaboration with Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (INGCA) is that Indian villages in the pre-British era were self-governing units with well-defined boundaries that were considered sacrosanct in contract to British villages. The villagers were financially, culturally and politically self-contained. Every village had a long history of its own.”
The study highlighted that the annual production of food grains in the whole of the Chengalpattu Jagir amounted to as much as one ton per capita-five times the national average. It also talked about the distribution of abundant agricultural produce among various institutions and functionaries of the village. It said considerable portions of the produce were allocated for the maintenance of water bodies and sustenance of scholars, teachers, musicians and dancers.

The study says “The region around Ullavur has been mentioned in the Kasakkudi copperplate of the times of Nandivarman Pallavamalla. In fact, the coordinates of the village, the grant of which the copperplate records, correspond to the immediate vicinity of Ullavur, if not Ullavur itself. There are a number of inscriptions from the early Chola period in the temples of Thenneri, the vast lake in the north of Ullavur that also irrigates its fields. The channels bringing water from that lake are specifically mentioned in the Kasakkudi copperplate. In the south of Ullavur, there is the Appan Venkatesa Perumal Temple lying on the heart achingly beautiful and sacred confluence of Palar, Cheyyar and Vegavathi. Inscriptions in this temple run all across almost every wall. All these are witness to the ancientness of Ullavur”.