The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society c19.s12.27

c19.s12.27

50. A case in point is the one analyzed by Frykenberg (*Guntur District*), of a district chief clerk, who, combining various interests, managed to build up a tightly controlled network. In other words, he had used the bureaucratic facilities to build his own “dependency” in much the classical way. Interestingly, the conspiracy was broken by the efficient cooperation of an English administrator and his Indian chief clerk, the latter belonging to the same background and community as the guilty head of the district bureaucracy. Probably it was his particular knowledge and understanding of the utterly tangled and particularistic situation that made the inquiry a resounding success. It almost looks as if the English had to use—albeit unknowingly—the potentialities of intracommunal factionalism in order to break the conspiracy, that is, they acted in the “traditional” way.