Cholas in the Crosshairs

In Gangaikonda Cholapuram, beneath the towering granite spire commissioned by Rajendra Chola I a thousand years ago to mark his march northward, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned a sophisticated electoral mechanism from South India’s medieval past, one whose archival evidence has long fascinated historians of democracy, yet remains under-acknowledged in global political thought. “The Kudavolai system,” he said, “is older than the Magna Carta.” The remark, wrapped in ritual and reverence, was both an invocation of Tamil pride and a quiet manoeuvre—an attempt to turn the past into political leverage.

The kudavolai system, etched into the stone slabs of Uthiramerur in Kanchipuram district, describes a remarkably elaborate model of local self-governance. In the 10th century, villages elected representatives to the sabha, a local assembly, by writing names on palm leaf slips and dropping them into a pot—kudam—a process that yielded its name: kudavolai. The rules were exacting. Only those above a certain age, possessing property, well-versed in sacred texts, and without moral blemish, could be nominated. The disqualified included anyone guilty of theft, tax evasion, lechery, or cow slaughter. Relatives of previous members were barred. Bookkeeping was mandatory. Tenures were fixed. And all of this nearly two centuries before the Magna Carta of 1215.

To most historians, the Kudavolai system is less about representative democracy in a modern sense than it is about civic order and Brahminical discipline. Modi’s mention of the system was part of a carefully choreographed visit to Gangaikonda Cholapuram, where he offered prayers, inaugurated conservation work, and invoked Tamil glory as civilisational proof of India’s indigenous systems of governance. In a state where the BJP remains a minor player and the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) guards its ideological turf with vehemence, this moment was an attempt to speak the language of Tamil pride—without straying into the DMK’s idiom.

This reclamation of Chola grandeur has not gone uncontested. Chief Minister MK Stalin has, over the past two years, mounted his own cultural campaign around the Cholas. In 2023, he unveiled a seven-foot bronze statue of Rajendra Chola I outside the Tamil Nadu Assembly, honouring the ruler’s military and administrative legacy. His government has worked to highlight the Cholas in school syllabi, sponsored archaeological surveys, and supported cinematic adaptations. A key cultural ambassador for the DMK, Member of Parliament Thamizhachi Thangapandian, has spoken about how the Cholas must not be filtered solely through a North Indian nationalist frame, but reclaimed as icons of a plural, Tamil-centric civilisational ethos. The subtext is clear: the Chola past belongs to us.

The BJP, meanwhile, is seeking to walk a tightrope. It must assert civilisational continuity and decentralised governance without reviving memories of caste hierarchy or feudal landholding. The Kudavolai system, then, is repackaged as a proto-democratic exemplar. The architectural setting for this is no coincidence. The temple at Gangaikonda Cholapuram, long overshadowed by its elder sibling in Thanjavur, is slowly emerging into national consciousness. Its sculpted lions, granite vimana, and precision engineering have long impressed archaeologists. Now, it has also become a stage.

Although India’s experiments with self-rule didn’t begin with the Kudavolai system, they rarely left such lasting marks in stone. In the Gangetic plains, more than a thousand years before the Cholas, the ganasanghas—clan assemblies like the Licchavis and Mallas—elected leaders through deliberation and vote, though rights were limited to male elites. In medieval Odisha and Bengal, grama sabhas governed irrigation, temple maintenance, and taxation through local consensus, their decisions recorded in land grants and copperplates. In Karnataka, inscriptions from the Hoysala and Chalukya periods reveal temple-linked panchayats with their own treasurers and revenue collectors, functioning under varying degrees of royal oversight. These were not democracies in any modern sense, but they were procedural, consultative, and concerned with moral qualification. Still, none of these systems match the procedural rigour of the kudavolai. Two detailed records from Uthiramerur, dated to circa 919 and 921 CE under Parantaka I, outline the election rules for committees such as the Samvatsara-Varīyam (annual committee), Totta-Varīyam (garden committee), and Eri-Varīyam (tank committee) for 30 village wards (kudumbu). Each candidate—aged between 35 and 70, owning at least one-fourth veli (about 1.5 acres) of tax-paying land, literate in Vedic texts, and resident on their own land—was eligible only if free from offences such as incest, theft, forgery, or tax evasion. Individuals whose relatives failed to file financial accounts were also barred from candidacy. Selection occurred by drawing palm‑leaf ballots from a pot, with names read aloud by priests, and a tenure capped at 360 days. Offenders were punished publicly with rituals including donkey‑ridden parades, and disqualified for generations.

For scholars, the sudden spotlight on the Kudavolai system is not unwelcome, but it is fraught. The Magna Carta was an attempt to constrain sovereign power through a written charter. The Kudavolai was an elite, codified method for selecting community representatives within strict bounds of eligibility. One was adversarial; the other, regulatory.

Indeed, the Modi government has, in recent years, drawn selectively on such symbols to argue for a more indigenous origin story of democracy. In May 2022, at an event celebrating the Constitution, PM Modi said, “Democracy is not just a system for us. It is a part of our tradition, our life stream… India is the mother of democracy.” The Sabhas of Tamilakam are now being positioned as evidence that India didn’t need Athens or Westminster to learn the value of self-rule.

This symbolic wrestle over the past is also a contest over Tamil Nadu’s future. The DMK, rooted in rationalist thought, once derided temple histories and Sanskritic rule as markers of Northern hegemony. But Stalin’s DMK is not Karunanidhi’s. The tone is softer, more willing to embrace Tamil antiquity if it can be wrested from the grasp of Aryan mythologies. The Cholas, with their Tamil inscriptions, naval expeditions, and administrative rigour, are uniquely positioned to offer such common ground.

In this context, cinema has played a curiously pivotal role. Mani Ratnam’s Ponniyin Selvan films, lavish, star-studded adaptations of Kalki’s classic novels, brought Chola characters into multiplexes and memes. While the novels themselves were written in the 1950s, their cinematic revival coincided with this wave of political interest in Chola history. The films humanised the dynasty without mythologising it, offering a less pious, more Machiavellian vision of medieval statecraft. The BJP has tried to seize on this popular reawakening. Modi’s temple visit was, really, an overture—to the Tamil voter, to the regional elite, to the silent anxieties about national homogenisation.

Other nations, too, have turned ancient systems of consensus into national myths. Iceland celebrates the Althing, the world’s oldest parliament, established in 930 CE. Switzerland still holds annual Landsgemeinde, or public assemblies, where citizens vote by raising hands in open squares. India, too, is beginning to assemble its own constitutional prehistory.

But the kudavolai was as much about exclusion as it was about accountability. The criteria it imposed, moral, economic, intellectual, would disqualify large swathes of today’s electorate. It worked because it was designed for a rigidly stratified society, where public order was maintained through social control. Its survival in stone is not just a monument to vision, it is also a warning.

Cholasinvocationkudavolaimedieval ballot systemNarendra ModiTamil history