Email: mahehist@gmail.com

Affiliation: Indian Institute of Technology Madras

Nationality: Indian

Oppressed 'Black Gods': Exploiting the Makers of Land and Rice in colonial South India and Their Resistance towards Nature, State, and Social Institutions, 18th century to present times

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to shed light on the unique saga of peasants (from the most exploited and 'untouchable' communities like Pulayas and Parayas) who developed the crude technology of reclaiming rice lands out of backwaters in the princely state of Travancore (present-day Kerala state of India). Fighting the strong currents of backwaters next to the Arabian Sea, these pioneer peasants (who are hailed as 'Black Gods' in their folk songs) made land by constructing massive dykes using crude technologies in an agrarian micro-region named Kuttanad. This land where rice is cultivated below sea level is currently tagged as a Globally Important Agrarian Heritage System. By the mid-eighteenth century, the region fell under the indirect control of British colonial rule and it stopped the hill rice production in the state for advancing commercial plantation crops. Due to the acute food shortage, the focus turned to the minimal production of rice in the peripheries by these peasants. The arrival of indigenous capital and state encouragement made the lives of peasants from bad to worse. The social organisation of caste ensured the veiled form of slavery to be practiced for almost a century where these peasants were exploited to the maximum, often leading to death in many instances.

The peasants who lived in the homesteads very near to the reclaimed rice lands had to take part in the labour-intensive daily upkeep. The breach in the massive dykes was also on many occasions repaired by human sacrifices as per local customs, as late as the twentieth century (the senior-most peasant being buried in the breach). The landlord-reclaimer masters solidified their social standing with their dominant caste affiliations and proximity to the state apparatus. Despite the 'romanticised' slavery, there were instances of resistance to the dehumanising exploitation – which can be learned from the folk songs popular among the peasants. With the Second World War and the spread of nationalism in the rest of India, these oppressed peasants were unionised, mainly under the influence of the Communist movement. With the advancement of technology such as motor pumps to the War-induced demand for more foodgrains, the reclamation process exceeded in unprecedented ways attracting more labour. The unionisation of a large group of peasants crumbled the exploitative apparatus jointly run by high-caste landlords and the state elites.

The sheer ecological onslaught on a biodiversity hotspot (for instance Vembanad Lake, India's longest lake which is a Ramsar site) by reclaiming more lands; unscientific landscape management by constructing bunds, embankments, and spillways to enhance more production; unpredictable climate and injudicious use of pesticides and fertilizers added to the ruining of the agrarian system and enhanced woes of the inhabitants there. By taking up folk traditions and three years of ethnographic field visits along with going through rich archival data from personal and colonial (public) repositories, the paper will focus on the longue-durée saga of peasant life in this unique agrarian system.

Bio

Mahendranath Sudhindranath is a Senior Research Fellow finishing his doctoral studies at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He received the Future Environmental Leader Scholarship 2023 from the DAAD-funded Global Water and Climate Adaptation Centre and was enrolled at the RWTH Aachen University, Germany. He is also an Affiliated Member of the research cluster 'Food, Water and Environment' at the NEW Institute Centre for Environmental Humanities at Ca Foscari University, Italy. His doctoral research focuses on the hydrological relationship between the state and people – taking the case of the princely state of Travancore (encompassing areas that are part of the present-day states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu), from the mid-eighteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. His interests revolve around environmental history, historical aspects of colonialism and climate change, the role of religion in water management, and socio-cultural-political transformations of agricultural societies. A significant part of his doctoral research revolves around the micro agrarian region of Kuttanad where he spent significant time interacting with the peasant community. His major focus includes the social-political-cultural history of rice farming in below-sea-level reclaimed lands, the gender-caste dimensions of farming in Kuttanad, the composition of the caste system in social conditioning of labour, failing agriculture, and ways to achieve climate resilience through historical research. He had spoken about different aspects of Kuttanad in various international and national forums. He is also active among local heritage societies and communities in the region and writes in regional and national newspapers.