Abstract
The discussion on the normative meaning of federalism for long have focused on power- sharing. On the one hand it has made federal discourse effective to bring outcomes which can provide better institutional mechanisms but on the other hand have not mapped the possibility of analysing and evaluating indigenous political systems which were available for discussion from post-colonial countries in the mid-twentieth century. The paper highlights the possibility of decolonising the discussion on federalism. It seeks to question the Eurocentrism and Western epistemological foundations of federalism as an idea and suggests with an example from India that there are many possible forms of federal arrangements which remain unacknowledged. The paper attempts to propose the idea of ‘cultural federalism’ as a conceptual category to comprehend the experience of federalism in post-colonial societies. The discussion highlights the uniqueness of tribal communities’ federal character. It concludes by arguing that cultural federalism can be the starting point to relocate the epistemological basis of federalism to the Global South and include post-colonial societies not merely as an object of study but as the basis of subjective considerations for developing theories in federal discourse.