Indian Feudalism Debate and Other Models of Polity

V.V. Haridas

Abstract: The debates in history always enthused academics and students of history. A large number of such debates created and sustained interest in the historical studies. One of the such debates is on Indian feudalism. Historians considered early medieval as a period of feudalism, described it as an age marked by political fragmentation, the transformation of peasants into serfs and the decline of urban centres and money economy. The feudalism concept has been applied to both north and South India. It is one of the most serious debates in Indian historiography. The impact of several decades of vigorous debate is that it raised important questions about political, social and economic processes. In the present paper an attempt is made to examine various features of this debate and a few other models of polity proposed alternatively by the scholars. In this paper the main arguments on Indian Feudalism and other models of polity are analysed.

Keywords: Bhakti, Early state, Indian feudalism, Kali age, Segmentary state

Edition: Volume 9 Issue 10, October 2020,

Pages: 1384 - 1387