Caste and Landlessness in South India Author(s): D. Kumar Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Apr., 1962), pp. 337-363 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/177526 Accessed: 21-04-2019 09:56 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Comparative Studies in Society and History This content downloaded from 42.111.25.161 on Sun, 21 Apr 2019 09:56:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CASTE AND LANDLESSNESS IN SOUTH INDIA I In 1956 there were 16.3 million agricultural labour households in India, roughly one out of three for Indian agriculture as a whole.' Their number has been rapidly increasing; in 1900 only 12 per cent of the agricultural population were landless labourers.2 It is tempting to see the creation of this huge landless class as yet another verification of a general theory of develop- ment which seems to apply to Japan and to much of South-East Asia, as well as to a great deal of Western experience. Such a theory would explain the growth of this class in terms of the weakening of village communities, the breaking down of traditional patterns of land tenure, the spreading of in- debtedness and the consequent dispossession of the peasantry, and it would find the chief cause of these changes in the monetisation of the economy. In India there is the further temptation to see behind every modern devel- opment the influence of British innovations; and this seems as plausible about the growth of landless labour as it does about the fluctuations of the rupee. It is known that landlessness on this scale did exist under the Moguls; from this it is a short step to the conclusion that the creation of this landless class was not only contemporaneous with British rule, but that it was the inevitable result of that rule. Thus the British imposed heavy land dues, which were collected more efficiently than under previous rulers, and they collected them in cash. Peasants could be evicted for non-payment of this land revenue. With changes in the legal system, their land became good security for debt, and the moneylender was enabled to take it over in cases of default. Such a view is generally accepted by historians of modern India.3 To quote only one example: 1 Ministry of Labour, Report on the Second Agricultural Labour Enquiry, 1956-57 (New Delhi, 1960). An agricultural labour household is defined as one where the bulk of income in the previous year was derived from agricultural wages. Such households formed 24.7 % of the total rural households. In 1951 the agricultural population was 82 % of the rural population. 2 Differences in definition may exaggerate the growth of landless labour, but the fact of this growth is undeniable. 3 See, e.g., R. Mukherjee, The Dynamics of a Rural Society (Berlin, 1957); A. R. Desai, This content downloaded from 42.111.25.161 on Sun, 21 Apr 2019 09:56:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 338 D. KUMAR ... there is a consensus of opinion that, in pre-nineteenth century India, there was no noticeably large class of agricultural labourers... The large class of agri- cultural labourers represents a new form of social relationships that emerged during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in India... That in the course of about a hundred years, the whole social basis of a traditional society which had outlived so many previous invaders, could be so completely smashed by a handful of adventurers from an island in the far-off Atlantic and by a few of their native allies, in a country divided from the place of their birth by half the globe; that of its cultivators and artisans one-third could be turned into land- less labourers and one half into petty cultivators, tenants-at-will and share croppers are accomplishments for which one would look in vain for a parallel in the whole history of mankind.4 Of course it is difficult to agree or to disagree with any statement in which a class represents a form of social relationship, but the view behind this bizarre logic - that the whole structure of Indian society was altered under British rule - commands wide agreement. The view has been stereotyped that before the British seized power, the typical Indian village was self- sufficient, consisting mainly of small peasants tilling their own land. This is the picture drawn by Maine and Elphinstone, and then taken over by Marx, who went on to show that the destruction of this system - a destruction he regarded as necessary - had been brought about by British imperialism.5 Marx was here assuming that native institutions could not survive the coming of the British, and that none of the changes in them have been self-generated; and oddly enough he borrowed this assumption from the propaganda of the imperialists themselves, who justified their rule by claiming to be the active agents of change in stagnant societies. But it is far from being self-evident that Indian institutions were as inert and malleable, and that European rulers were as free to mould them, as this view implies. So useful is the theory that the British created an agricultural proletariat, that its truth is taken for granted. But if it should turn out that at the be- ginning of British rule in 1800 agricultural labourers formed as large a part of the agricultural population as they did in 1900, and that the great growth of this class took place during the twentieth century, after more than one hundred years of the Raj, then clearly the theory would be demolished. But this is very difficult to establish. The first all-India census was not taken until 1871,6 and although demographical information was collected for some parts of India in earlier years, the data are defective and full of ed. The Social Background of Indian Nationalism (Bombay, 1948); R. Palme Dutt, India Today, 2nd Indian ed. (Bombay, 1949); S. J. Patel, Agricultural Labourers in Modern India and Pakistan (Bombay, 1952); Tara Chand, History of the Freedom Movement in India, vol. I (New Delhi, 1960). 4 Patel, op. cit., pp. 32, 63. 5 See, e.g., K. Marx and F. Engels, On Colonialism (Moscow, n.d.), pp. 35-37, 271. 6 Work on this census extended from 1867 to 1872, and it was published in 1871-72. It will be referred to here as the 1871 census. This content downloaded from 42.111.25.161 on Sun, 21 Apr 2019 09:56:25 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CASTE AND LANDLESSNESS 339 confusions, particularly about occupational details. But there is an indirect way of attacking the problem. It is derived from the connection between caste and occupation. If it can be established that certain castes were traditionally agricultural labourers, then from the caste data available from 1871 onwards, it is possible by extrapolation to estimate the size of the group at the beginning of the century. Further, many of these labourers were hereditary serfs (a fact which strengthens the relationship between caste and occupation), large numbers of whom could be sold and mortgaged. Whether their status was precisely that of slaves or serfs was far from clear to the British administrators, but the fact of servitude was patent. This attracted the attention of the anti-slavery movement in England, a pressure group so strong that it forced the administrators into submitting a series of reports on "slavery" in India. For the most part, these reports were concerned with the legal disabilities of dependent status, but they also contain information about the social and economic position of the bondsmen and above all about their numbers. These data can be used as a check on the estimates about the numbers of the agricultural labourers at the opening of the century which are derivable from the census. Such estimates can be neither firm nor precise, but they are a great deal firmer and more precise than the vague generalisa- tions that have been made hitherto. To work out estimates for the whole of India would involve detailed studies of the variations in caste, land tenures and so on throughout the sub- continent. But to disprove the general theory, it is not necessary to go so far. All that is needed is to take the region which has been viewed as best illustrating the theory, the Madras Presidency in South India. Here was a region where by 1956 the proportion of agricultural labour to total popula- tion had grown to be one of the highest in the country. Here too, the caste system was particularly rigid, and so presumably was the connection between caste and occupation. In Madras the effects of monetisation should have been seen at their sharpest, for here the British collected the highest rate of land revenue, and did so in cash. For all these reasons, the following study of agricultural labour will concentrate on Madras.