The Politics of Custom: Blood Money, Disputes, and Tribal Leadership in Western India:

TLDR: The case demonstrates two major points that I will focus on in this article as mentioned in this paper, i.e., anthropologists have described panchayats as institutions responsible for dispute resolution and other important matters in the village.

Abstract: I initiated my ethnographic fieldwork in the regions of Southern Rajasthan inhabited by Bhils.1 I examined cases that are addressed by the panchayats or community-based institutions responsible for dispute resolution and managing the affairs of the village. At that time the most popular topic of discussion in tea stalls and shops in the bazaar in the local administrative headquarters of Kotra was about the politics around a murder case involving two boys who belonged to major Bhil political families – the Kharadia and the Uthed. The boys had gone to Gujarat to work on the cotton fields of big non-tribal upper caste landowners, joining the regular seasonal migration of young people from Rajasthan to the neighboring state of Gujarat. The boy from the Kharadia family, Danna, was found murdered and evidence pointed to how he was stabbed by Shome, the boy from the Uthed family. Danna’s corpse was brought to Rajasthan and placed outside the Kotra police station for three days. Over the course of these three days, the families contacted tribal leaders and police officers, who in turn convened panchayat (village council) meetings. The panchayat, in association with police officers, came to the decision that Shome murdered Danna and three boys from the Uthed family were arrested for murder and for aiding and abetting murder. In the tribal regions of Southern Rajasthan the ways in which the police register a case and the direction of court proceedings depend on the decision of the panchayat. In this case the panchayat decided that the Uthed family had to first pay a sum of money for the lokai or the amount that is paid for the cost of cremation, and subsequently pay a sum of money for the ved or blood money to the Kharadia family. The custom of the payment of blood money has taken on a different meaning over time but usually refers to a sum of money paid by the family of a person accused of murder to the family of the deceased. Over subsequent months, tribal leaders convened several panchayat meetings and during these meetings tribal leaders were able to pay off the sum of money for the lokai and fixed the amount that was to be paid as blood money. Subsequently, the key Bhil leaders and Dinesh Trivedi, the defense lawyer for the case, instructed the witnesses to become hostile and the Uthed boys were released. The case demonstrates two major points that I will focus on in this article. First, anthropologists have described panchayats as institutions responsible for dispute resolution and other important matters in the village (Cohn, 1987; Srinivas, 1960). These institutions are considered to be outside