Representations of Agricultural Labour in Randidangazhi K
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
ESSAY ARTICLE Representations of Agricultural Labour in Randidangazhi K. N. Ganesh* Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, Randidangazhi (Two Measures of Rice).1 Literary and artistic production in Kerala underwent a major change in the 1930s and 1940s. The main reason for this was the advent of modernist movements during this period, as well as the impact of the national movement and other social movements in Kerala. The shift was from elitist epic narratives and romanticism to realism, as literary works began to probe the lived experience of the downtrodden. Several writers and artists emerged from among the working people, and represented the life and culture of the working people and the poor most effectively. The emergence of progressive democratic movements in Kerala catalysed realism in Kerala’s literature and gave rise to the progressive movement for “life-based” literature (jeevatsahitya prasthanam). The influence of this movement went beyond communist and socialist activists in Kerala, and a new generation of writers emerged who broke free from established traditions. Randidangazhi (“Two Measures of Rice”), a novel published in 1948 and written by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, one of the most famous writers of this period, is a typical example of the trend that emerged (Pillai 1996 [1948]; Pillai 1967).2 Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, one of the premier novelists and short story writers in the Malayalam language, was a native of Thakazhi, a village in the Kuttanad region, now mainly in the Alappuzha district in Kerala State. Kuttanad is where the story narrated in the text unfolds. Thakazhi, as he is popularly known, worked as a lawyer before he devoted his time to full-time writing and farming. He was an activist of the life-based literature movement in the 1930s and 1940s, a period in which he produced a series of novels, including Thendivargam (The Beggar Class), Thottiyude Makan (The Scavenger’s Son), and Randidangazhi, the subject of this article. Owing to political differences, Thakazhi severed his links with the progressive cultural movement in * Retired Professor in History, University of Calicut, [email protected] 1 The edition used in this review is Pillai ([1948] 1996). 2 The title of the novel refers to idangazhi, a volumetric measure of rice in Kerala; one idangazhi corresponds to about 800 grams of rough rice (or paddy). Review of Agrarian Studies vol. 10, no. 2, July–December, 2020 the early 1950s, but continued writing in a realist vein. His masterpiece Chemmeen (Shrimp) and Enippatikal (The Staircase) were written in the 1960s. In the 1970s he completed his magnum opus Kayar (Coir), which presents a detailed fictional narrative based on the history of Kuttanad. Thakazhi’s novels and stories helped make the people of Kerala people sensitive towards the travails of the working people, whom he portrayed without the romanticism and dilettantism that usually characterise such narratives. I chose to write on Randidangazhi here because the novel is directly linked with the growth of the agricultural labourers’ movement in Kuttanad, which had its origins in the early 1940s, during World War II. The author himself had direct links with the agricultural labourers’ movement as a lawyer and as an activist. The novel was published in 1948, soon after the Punnapra–Vayalar uprising, the reverberations of which can clearly be discerned in the novel.3 LAND AND SOCIETY IN KUTTANAD Thakazhi is a village in the southern part of Kuttanad, in Kuttanad taluk (sub-district), a region that was the centre of working class and agrarian movements in southern Kerala. Kuttanad is an estuarine agrarian belt, where agriculture is conducted in what now has been recognised by the Food and Agriculture Organisation to be a “geographically important agricultural heritage system” of below-sea-level farming (FAO 2020). Kuttanad consists of estuarine islets (thuruthu) that are scattered landmasses within the Vembanad Lake, which is a backwater of the Arabian Sea. Geographers maintain that these islets are remains of the landmass from the carboniferous era whose biomass is extremely fertile and rich in minerals (Mathai 1999). The cultivation of land here is difficult, as the land is waterlogged for most of the monsoon season and, in November–December, saline inflows enter the backwater. Steps to control the annual inflow of saline water into the lake were taken only in 1955, when construction began of a bund at Thanneermukkam in northern Kuttanad. The bund was commissioned in 1974. Until then only one summer paddy crop was possible in a year, and there were times when cultivation was possible only once in two to three years. 3 The Punnapra–Vayalar struggle of October 1946 was a struggle of the working people of Travancore in the region of the villages of Punnapra and Vayalar, against the rulers of the princely state. The uprising was led by the Communist Party. It is very difficult to calculate the precise number of casualties from available sources. It is estimated that more than 1000 people were killed in these two villages alone by the armed forces of the ruler of Travancore in the fierce repression that followed the uprising. Hundreds went missing. Many activists who escaped the bloodbath were later involved in building the communist movement in different parts of Travancore and Malabar. Representations of Agricultural Labour j 115 The enormous potential fertility of the terrain attracted early settlement in the area. The region was held by the rulers of nearby chiefdoms and by a few temple trusts (devaswam).4, 5 As the land fell into the hands of the rulers of the larger southern state of Travancore, the settlement of people in the area was encouraged with a view to increase state revenue. Many Nayar (a category of landowning matrilineal Hindu castes) and Christian families migrated to the area. To the west of Kuttanad lay the Karappuram region, along the northern edge of Vembanad Lake, where many Ezhava (a category of oppressed castes) families, and some Christian and Jewish families, cultivated coconut. The land to the east of Vembanad was also a significant agrarian region. It appears that migration into Kuttanad took place from both east and west, and the farmers of Kuttanad maintained links with surrounding places as a means to procure their needs and market their products. Waterways were the normal way to get from one islet to another or to the mainland. Ordinary people travelled in small boats (kothumpuvallam), while landlords used larger boats with mast and sail (thanduvallam). There were cargo boats (kettuvallam) and several other types of boats of varied construction and use. The boat type used in the famous boat races of the region, called chundanvallam, were war boats designed around the eighteenth century. There are accounts of slave markets where labouring people of the Pulayar and Parayar Dalit castes were bought and sold. The slave markets began to appear from the time of the Portuguese and apparently continued until the time of Gouri Lakshmi Bayi of Travancore (1811–1815), when the Travancore Government decided to ban the slave trade (Unni 2000 [1988], pp. 781–3). The standard practice appears to have been that a labourer pledged his own life and labour and that of his family to a landlord (oozhiyappani), and the landlord undertook the task of maintaining and protecting them. This protection included allocating a share of the produce to maintain the lives of the labourer and his family. The arrangement assumed that all able-bodied men, women, and children would work for their master. Workers of the Pulayar and Parayar castes were settled in homesteads, but farm servants who had pledged their labour to landlords were allowed to build a hut in the allocated place called pantha and to use material for building the hut from the land of the master. Farming practices in below-sea-level fields were marked by extreme drudgery. The terrain was marshy, slushy, and involved removal of water, a process that had to be repeated every year. The method was building temporary bunds around the land using biomass and mud, and then dredging and draining the built land using waterwheels. The waterwheel was operated 24 hours a day for several days, and workers took turns to operate it. Each turn lasted about seven-and-a-half hours, during which the worker turned the wheel non-stop. Tillage and plant protection 4 A devaswam is a trust that manages a Hindu temple and its assets. 5 Kamalasanan (1993). Much of the basic material on Kuttanad in this article is from this text. 116 j Review of Agrarian Studies vol. 10, no. 2 were done by farm servants and their families. Other workers were hired only for harvesting and threshing. Threshing was another round-the-clock job, and was considered complete only when the grain was transported to granaries and the hay brought in sheaves and piled into haystacks. The Pulayar and Parayar farm servants, called onappanikkaar, became bonded labourers of the landlords by means of a system of unfree labour called velakkadam (literally “labour-debt”), in which the landlord advanced money and grain to the workers for subsistence until work began in the field. Such advances were also made for life-cycle events such as marriage, childbirth, and death. The advances carried interest, on which the creditor did not demand immediate repayment but which accumulated until the worker was trapped in permanent indebtedness. For work done in the field, the worker was given wages in paddy (rough rice) or an equivalent amount of money. A woman was paid five kulian (a measure equivalent to one idangazhi of rice) and a man was paid eight kulian (equivalent to one and three-fourths idangazhi of rice).6 Workers were entitled to a certain share of the paddy produced in the fields on which they worked.7 On completion of the harvest, the workers were also entitled to a final sheaf of grain.