SYNOPSIS

This paper examines the intersections of emotion and time in the formations of panchayat (village councils) practices among Bhil “tribals” in Udaipur district in Western India. While police and panchayat practices intersect in everyday law making local actors have different imaginings of police temporality and panchayat temporality. In order to contain and domesticate what the police view as unfamiliar customary practices and raging and revengeful Bhils, police practices are often excessively violent, immediate, and reveal the fragility of state sovereignty. In contrast to police temporality, certain panchayat practices include a temporality of waiting that recognizes the gravity of the event, acknowledges Bhil rage and revenge, works with uncertainty, and enables different possibilities to unfold. The paper focuses on panchayat temporality by examining a yearlong exchange of mautana or blood money in the resolution of a murder case involving Bhil youth. Panchayat temporality enables emotions of rage and revenge to linger, thereby reclaiming the value of tribal life in the context of state violence, neglect, and dispossession.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Devika Bordia is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Shiv Nadar University. She is working on a book manuscript that focuses on the politics of legal pluralism, the ethics of Bhil “tribal” leadership, and the negotiations of marginality in Southern Rajasthan, India. She is also working on a project that examines how military cultures and martial epics shape an ethic of martyrdom that informs modes of political protest in Rajasthan and Haryana. Her publications have appeared in academic journals like Contributions to Indian Sociology and Diogenes. She has co-edited a volume titled Regimes of Legality: Ethnography of Criminal Cases in South Asia.

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