State and Non-State Polities: A Historical Study of Early Medieval Tribal State Formation in Central India

Abstract

The state is understood to be the product of a social contract, and is seen as constituting itself through various organs or institutions. If we see the nature of the modern state, it is very complex and still in the process of evolution, but when we see its historical development, then we would come across the ‗non-state polities‘ which have contributed to, and accelerated, the expansion of state society, while retaining their specific political identity at the same time. To understand the dialectical process of state formation within the ambit of existing non-state polities, the focus will be on tribal central India where the two entities of state and non-state polities are still struggling for existence for the last one thousand years. Various political scientists, historians and sociologists have tried to understand this tussle between state and non-state, their ideological moorings and organisation, from a historical materialist position, or as a socio-cultural and ritualistic clash between the tribal and nontribal societies. The aim of this paper is to explore and analyse: 1) the historical understanding of state and non-state actors and events in early medieval tribal central India; 2) the model of critical co-existence between these two distinct ideologies; 3) the tribal and non-tribal understanding of state.