SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Common-law arbitration and the British discovery of the panchayat

It is well-known to historians of southern and western India that during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, East India Company officials attempted to incorporate and adapt the Indian panchayat to the administration of justice within British-held territories. Many have rightly noted that this effort reflected the pronounced Orientalist vision of important and influential Company officials such as Thomas Munro and Mountstuart Elphinstone. While the influence and importance of the Orientalist approach to the administration of justice in India cannot and should not be denied, equally if not more important was the perception that the “Punchayet System,” as it was called, was intended to function in a manner that was similar, if not identical, to that of arbitration practices in Britain.

This paper therefore discusses the nature of arbitration practices in England at the turn of the nineteenth century in order to more fully understand the pronounced attraction of the “punchayet system” to Company officials. As in the case of arbitration, the panchayat was viewed as a cost-efficient and speedy remedy with which to resolve the backlog of cases that had built up in the courts. Indeed the legal language of English arbitration was readily and directly  transferred to the customs and practices of the Indian panchayat. However, the “experiment” to invigorate the panchayat in western India was by the late 1820s deemed to be a failure.  Not surprisingly, the link between arbitration and the panchayat remained as the Company’s analysis of the failure of the “punchayet system” reflected the common juridical analysis of the weaknesses of the system of arbitration in England.