For administrative purposes Dacca is divided into seven wards. Better known by the inhabitants is the division in mahallas or tolas, neighbourhoods with sharply defined boundaries that are generally known. The Muslims in each one of those mahallas used to be organized in a panchayat; in many mahallas they still are more or less so organized. The purpose of the panchayat organization must have been to maintain peace and order among the Muslims of the mahalla, to punish misbehaviour and petty crime, to mediate, to prevent as much as possible intervention by the police and the official lawcourts, to render mutual aid and to take care of festive occasions.

When the institution was still flourishing, the traditional Dacca panchayat was governed by a council of five elected members, experienced elderIy men of good reputation (panch laeq birader). The sardar, the governing head of the panchayat, was likewise elected by general vote of the mahalla, although in some panchayats the office of sardar had become hereditary. There are sardas now in Dacca who are sons or grandsons of sardars. However, election seems to have been the rule.

As long as Dacca was a quiet provincial town the panchayat system could remain what it was and wanted to be: an efficient institution for maintaining the quiet, never ceasing discipline over everybody by everybody, so general in the East and so different from social control in a Westem city.
But change came to Dacca.

The trends mentioned here cannot be proved, statistically or otherwise. Essentially all this remains largely a matter of interpretation and opinion. It also means that the conceptual equipment of the author, his previous experience and findings in comparable situations, may have directed his perception. This is readily admitted.