Legitimacy,Power and Subversion

Abstract

This article explores the diversities involved with the process of power and legitimacy and highlights its interactive and dynamic characteristics. What is rather well known is the way the colonial state and the internal ruling classes (viz., princes and zamindars) devised rituals to legitimise their rule. Thus, these ranged from the associations that were sought to be established with ‘cults’, myths and caste to practices involving complex, ritualised negotiations with the adivasi (tribal)/outcaste population. However, what is normally not taken into account by historians is the way the common people re-worked some of these practices to not only undermine the position of the ruling classes but even challenge and attempt to subvert their dominance. Besides being intimately asso-ciated with the day-to-day survival strategies of the poor, some of these had long-term implications since they were distinctly associated with popular anti-colonial/feudal aspirations.