The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c16.13

c16.13

In this connection, a related point should be noted. Not only are rights, tax shares, holdings, and even offices such as headmenships fractionized to an often extraordinary degree, but, as appears from the extant documentation, many of these fractional rights of diverse description are held by men of substance, who belong to the wider context and who secure in this way strategic footholds in a wide range of localities. The state—that is, the powerful men who constitute it—is in this way everywhere present and achieves the proximity that we already noticed and that the modern state can only view as next door to corruption. Indeed, the village can be described as a nexus of rights that, far from being closed toward outside powers and their agents, is "the institutionally permissive means" whereby these powers directly take part in its inner life and organization.¹⁰