This article is an examination of the relationship between traditional authority and the state, using a leadership dispute in a rural adivasi village as the ethnographic backdrop. The primary objective of the article is to examine how traditional authority continues to be reproduced in the context of local notions of political and cosmological legitimacy. It shows how the state can simultaneously buttress and transform traditional authority. By looking at the processes by which the state is experienced by local people, the article also illuminates the relationship that people have with lower–level state officials. Finally, the article sheds light on one way in which Hindu nationalism is making inroads into this particular adivasi community, and addresses the implications of how the RSS, acting as an extra–state power, is used to enforce accountability at a lower level.
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