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Many Worlds, One Website

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PARI publishes in 15 languages: English, Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Bengali, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Chhattisgarhi, Bhojpuri, Assamese and Gujarati. You can read articles in any of those. Of these, five – Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Urdu and Odia – have ‘localised’ sites, that is, home pages where everything including the menus are in that particular language.Sure, there are giant media corporations that function in up to 40 languages, but those are not on an equal footing. For instance, their Indian language platforms carry a fraction of what you will find on their English sites.In PARI, we work on the principle: Every Indian Language is Your Language. &nbsp; And this implies parity among tongues. If a piece appears in one language, it is our mandate to see it appears in all 15 that we presently publish in. A mandate we will fulfil regardless of the number of languages we might add to PARI. We are able to do this because of a fantastic translations team. So far, we have worked with over 170 translators – with around 40 of them active in any given month. However, we publish not just translations but also original content in Indian languages.We believe the promotion of Indian languages is a must for society as a whole. The linguistic richness of this country gave rise to the old saying that, over here, if at every three or four kilometres the water tastes different, well, there’s a different tongue to be heard at every 12-15.But we cannot be complacent about that anymore. Not at a time when the People’s Linguistic Survey of India tells us that this country, with close to 800 living languages, has witnessed 225 tongues die in the past 50 years. Not at a time when the United Nations claims that 90-95 per cent of the world’s spoken languages will be extinct or seriously endangered by the end of this century. Not at a time when at least one indigenous language is dying every fortnight across the world.Welcome to PARI’s Language Universe. &nbsp;

PARI's Language Universe

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<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“I do not think I am a painter. I do not have the qualities of a painter. But I have stories. I try to write stories with my brush. I don’t claim my strokes are all perfect. It is only in the last two-three years that I am trying to study and understand the work of a lot of painters. Otherwise, I had no knowledge. I painted to tell a story. I feel happy when I can express the story. I paint as if I am writing a narrative.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Labani is an artist, a painter from Dhubulia, in the very rural Nadia district of West Bengal. The village used to station an army camp, with an airfield, during World War II. The largely Muslim village lost a lot of its agricultural land when the British established that camp. Later, when partition happened, many from the village moved to the other side of the border. “But we did not,” says Labani “as our elders did not want to. Our ancestors are buried in this land. This is where we want to live and die.”&nbsp; That connection with the land, and all that happens in its name, has shaped the sensibility of this artist from her younger days.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Her encouragement for painting came from her father who took her to a tutor for a few years when she was a child. Her father is a first-generation learner, the only one among his 10 siblings. A lawyer who worked at the grassroot level, starting cooperatives for peasants and labourers, he did not make much money. <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;display:inline !important;float:none;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;orphans:2;text-align:start;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">&nbsp;“From whatever money he got he would buy me a book,” says Labani. “There used to be lot of children’s books from Moscow Press, Raduga Publishers, that made their way into our home through Bangla translations. I used to love the pictures in these books. That is where my earliest inspiration for illustration came from.”&nbsp;<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">That early age training in painting which her father introduced her to did not last long. But the love for painting returned to Labani in 2016 when language began to abandon her.&nbsp; The country was seeing a rise in mob lynching in the face of state indifference, a deliberate persecution of minorities, and the majoritarian denial of such hate crimes.&nbsp;Labani, then finishing her M.Phil. at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, was deeply troubled by the realities of this country, yet was unable to write about it.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“There was an intense feeling of unease,” she says. “I used to love writing till that time, and had written and published a few articles in Bangla. But suddenly language felt completely inadequate. I wanted to run away from everything then. That is when I started painting. I would paint the sea in all its moods, in water colours, on every little piece of paper I could find. One after the other, I did so many paintings of the sea at that time [2016-17]. To paint was my way of finding peace in an otherwise turbulent world.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Labani remains a self-taught artist to this day.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">In 2017 she enrolled into a doctoral programme at the Centre for Studies In Social Sciences, Calcutta affiliated to Jadavpur University after being awarded the prestigious UGC-Maulana Azad National Fellowship for Minority Students (2016–20). She continued with the work on migrant labour she had begun earlier, but this time getting deeper into their lived realities as part of her larger dissertation project, 'The lives and world of Bengali migrant labour'.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Labani had seen a lot of people from her village leave for Kerala in search of construction labour jobs, or to Mumbai to work in hotels. “My father’s brothers and members of their families, not women as much as men, still work as migrant labourers outside Bengal,” she says. The subject though close to her heart needed a lot of field work. “But just then the pandemic struck,” she recalls. “The worst hit were migrant workers. I did not feel like working on my research anymore then. How could I go and ask questions related to my academic work when they were struggling to reach home, to get healthcare, and for a place in the crematoria and burial grounds? It did not feel right to benefit from their situation. I could not finish the field work in time and so my PhD has dragged on.” &nbsp;<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Labani took to her brush again, this time to document the lives of migrant workers on the pages of the People’s Archives of Rural India (PARI). “Some of Sainath’s articles used to get published in the Bengali daily Ganashakti’s editorial pages. So, I was already familiar with P. Sainath’s work when Smita di got me to do a few illustrations for an article first and then a poem.” (Smita Khator is Chief Translations Editor of PARI). All through 2020 Labani Jangi was a Fellow at PARI where she painted the lives of the subjects of her thesis, as well as of farmers and rural women living out the pandemic and lockdowns. &nbsp;<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“My work with PARI focuses on both the systemic challenges, and the enduring spirit of rural life. By integrating these narratives into my art, I try to create visual expressions that resonate with the complexities of their lives. My illustrations are a medium through which I contribute to preserving and sharing the rich diversities of cultural and social realities in rural India.”

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Labani is not associated with any political party, but sees her art as political. “I saw a lot of painters – and political posters – after coming to Jadavpur to study. And the kind of illustrations I make about all that happens around us has come from my exposure to these and of course from my own sensibilities.”&nbsp; She draws inspiration from the daily realities of being a Muslim woman in a society where hatred is being normalised, and state-sponsored violence is often the harsh reality of the day.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“The world does not want to acknowledge us, our skills, our talents, our hard work,” Labani says. “Our identity plays a huge part in this erasure. This continues even today. The work, especially of a Muslim woman artist, does not even exist for a large number of people." Certainly not until she finds the right patron, if she is lucky. "One does not give it space or engage with it, not even to criticise. That is why I call it erasure. A process that manifests itself in the history of art, literature, and many other fields for that matter,” she adds. But Labani keeps trying by painting and putting her work on the walls of digital platforms like Facebook and Instagram.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">And it is through Facebook that the Chitrabhasha Art Gallery in Chattogram got in touch with her and invited her to Bangladesh for her very first solo exhibition in December 2022, Bibir Dargahs.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The idea for the exhibition Bibir Dargahs&nbsp;came from her childhood, as well as from the present situation in Bangladesh, where she says, she once again sees the rise of conservative Islam. A Bibi ka dargah refers to dargahs memorialising women pirs (spiritual guides). “There used to be two&nbsp;dargahs for women in my village when I was growing up. We had cultural practices, beliefs in tying a thread for mannat&nbsp;[wish or vow]; we cooked together for a feast when our wishes were granted. There was a whole set of syncretic traditions around that place.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“But I also saw them disappear in front of my eyes. Then a maktab [library] comes up in their place later. Conservative Islamic people who do not believe in mazars [graves or tombs], or sufi dargahs&nbsp;&nbsp;–&nbsp;their efforts are towards either breaking these down or building a mosque in its place. There are a few dargahs left now but all of them are for male pirs. There are no Bibi ka dargahs left, their names erased from our cultural memories.”&nbsp;<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">But while the pattern of such destruction is widespread, there is also another parallel pattern that Labani points out. Something that stands against such calculated and violent erasing of memories. “When the time came for a show in Bangladesh, I thought about the destruction of mazars on one hand and the unbreakable resilience of women who fight for their lost land and rights even today. This resistance and resilience are the spirit of the mazar that survives even after the structures are destroyed. This is what I have tried to capture in this solo exhibition.” Long after that exhibition is over, she continues working on the theme.<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">Labani’s paintings have amplified the voices of people, given a second life to many a poem, and to articles, and books. “Artists or writers, we all are connected. I remember Keshav bhau&nbsp;[<a style="color:rgb(0, 103, 106);text-decoration:none;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/inspired-by-ambedkar-salves-liberation-song/" data-linktype="page" data-id="17858" data-parent-id="27" data-original-title="" title="">Inspired by Ambedkar: Salve's liberation song</a>] telling me how I had painted the Shahir exactly the way he had imagined. And it is not surprising to me, because we share our imagination, our collective memories, the soul of our common stories, even when we are separated by our individual, social, cultural identities,” says Labani.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">The bold colours, powerful strokes, and raw depiction of human lives in Labani’s paintings tell stories of resistance against cultural homogenisation, stories of collective remembrance, of identities and cultures, of building connections amidst fragmentation. “I guess I am driven by the urgency for a utopia. Envisioning a new society becomes imperative in response to the surrounding violence,” says Labani. “In a world where political discourse often aligns with destruction, my paintings speak a softer but equally potent language of protest and resilience.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">A language she learnt from her grandmother with whom she lived during the first 10 years of her life. “Mother found it difficult to take care of the two of us, brother and me,” says Labani. “The house was also small. So, she sent me to my nani’s&nbsp;[maternal grandmother's] house where she and khala [mother’s sister] took care of me for a decade. There used to be a pond near her house where we spent every single afternoon doing kantha&nbsp;[embroidery] work.” Her grandmother would weave complex stories in colourful needle work, using a simple running stitch. The art of telling complex stories in simple strokes may have come to Labani from her grandmother, but the space between despair and hope that she inhabits has been created by her mother.

<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">“When I was young, I performed very poorly in my exams. I would get a zero in maths and even science sometimes,” she says. “And all that time I do not know why but ma&nbsp;continued to believe in me, even when baba had doubts. She would assure me that I would do well next time. &nbsp;I wouldn’t have reached so far without her. Also, ma could never attend college even though she wanted to. She was married off. So, she lives her life through me. When I return from Kolkata she comes and sits next to me, eagerly absorbing the stories of a world outside her home. She sees that world through my eyes.”<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width:0px;color:rgb(26, 26, 26);font-family:&quot;Roboto Slab&quot;, Georgia, serif;font-size:20.4px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-weight:300;letter-spacing:normal;margin:0px 0px 1em;orphans:2;text-align:left;text-decoration-color:initial;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-thickness:initial;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;widows:2;word-spacing:0px;">But the world is a scary place, even the rapidly commercialising world of art. “I fear losing my emotional core. In the desire to become a big artist, I do not wish to be emotionally displaced, distanced from my people and from the values for which my art stands. I continue to struggle a lot, about money, about time, but my biggest struggle is to survive in this world without selling my soul.”

Labani Jangi and the strokes of resistance

Darakwadi

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“The SDM [sub-divisional magistrate] came in June and said, ‘here’s a notice to leave’.”Babulal Adivasi points to the large banyan tree at the entrance to his village Gahdara – the place where community meetings are held – and now the spot where the future of his people changed in a day.Thousands of residents of 22 villages in and around the Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR) in Madhya Pradesh have been asked to give up their homes and land for a dam and a river-linking project. <a href="https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1805813">Final</a> environmental clearances came as far back as 2017, and tree cutting has started in the national park. But imminent eviction threats have gained momentum.In the pipeline for over two decades, the project is a Rs. 44,605 crore plan (<a href="https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1779306">Phase I</a>) to link the rivers Ken and Betwa with a 218-kilometre long canal.The project has been widely criticised. “There is no justification for the project, not even hydrological justification,” says scientist Himanshu Thakkar who has been involved in the water sector for 35 years. “To begin with, the Ken does not have surplus water. There has been no credible assessment or objective study, only pre-determined conclusions,” he adds.Thakkar is Coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP). He was a member of the expert committee set up around 2004 by the Ministry of Water Resources (now Jal Shakti) on interlinking of rivers. He says the very basis of the project is shocking: “River linking will have huge environmental and consequent social impacts on forest, river, biodiversity and will impoverish people here as well as in Bundelkhand and far beyond.”

The dam’s 77-metre-high reservoir will drown 14 villages. It will also drown core tiger habitat, cut off critical wildlife corridors, and so eight other villages like Babulal’s have been handed over by the state to the forest department as compensatory land.So far, nothing unusual. Lakhs of rural Indians, especially Adivasis, are routinely displaced to make way for cheetahs, <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/indian-tiger-reserves-tribals-get-out-tourists-welcome/">tigers</a>, renewable energy, dams and mines.The stupendous success of Project Tiger now in its 51st year – <a href="https://ntca.gov.in/assets/uploads/Reports/AITM/status_of_tiger-copredators-2022.pdf">3,682</a> tigers (2022 tiger census), has come at great cost to India’s indigenous forest communities. Overwhelmingly, these communities are among the nation’s most deprived citizens.In 1973 India had nine tiger reserves, today we have 53. For every tiger we’ve added since 1972, we have displaced on average 150 forest dwellers. That too, is a serious underestimate.It’s not ending – on June 19, 2024, a letter issued by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) called for moving lakhs more – 591 villages across the country will be moved on a priority basis.Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR) has 79 of the great cats and when the dam drowns a large part of core forest area, they must be compensated. Babulal’s land and home in Gahdara must go for the tigers.Simply put: it’s the Forest Department being ‘compensated,’ not the displaced villagers who are losing their homes forever.

“We will reforest it,” says Anjana Tirki, Deputy Forest Officer of Panna range. “Our job is to convert it into grassland and manage the wildlife” she adds, unwilling to comment on the agroecological aspects of the project.On conditions of anonymity though, officials admit that the best they can do is only grow plantations to compensate for the 60 square kilometres of dense and biodiverse forest that will drown. This, just two years after UNESCO included Panna in the <a href="https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/panna-india-fuvahmulah-and-addu-atoll-maldives-join-unescos-world-network-biosphere-reserves">World Network of Biosphere Reserves</a>. What will be the hydrological implication of cutting down some 46 lakh trees (as per assessment given in Forest Advisory Committee meeting in 2017) from natural forest has not even been assessed.Tigers are not the only hapless wild residents. One of India’s only three ghariyal (crocodile) sanctuaries is a few kilometres downstream of the proposed dam. The area is also an important nesting site for the Indian vulture – on the IUCN <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22729731/204672586">Red List</a> for Critically Endangered birds. Besides there are many large herbivores and carnivores who will lose habitat.Babulal is a small farmer with a few bighas of rain-fed land which he relies on to feed his family.  “Since no date was given for leaving, we thought we would plant some makkai [maize] so that we could feed ourselves.” As he and hundreds of others in the village got their fields ready, forest rangers appeared. “They told us to stop. They said, ‘we will bring a tractor and crush your fields if you don’t listen’.” Showing PARI his fallow land he grumbles, “neither have they given us our full compensation so that we can move, nor have they allowed us to continue living and sowing here. We are asking the government - as long as our village is here, let us farm our fields…or what will we eat?”Loss of ancestral homes is another blow. A visibly distressed Swami Prasad Parohar tells PARI that his family has lived in Gahdara for over 300 years. “We had the aamdani [income] of farming, of through-the-year forest produce like mahua, tendu…Now where will we go? Where will we die? Where will we drown…who knows?” The 80-year-old worries that coming generations will lose all touch with the jungle.

The river linking project is just the latest land grab by the state for ‘development’.In October 2023 when the final sanctions for the Ken-Betwa River Linking Project (KBRLP) came through, it was welcomed with cheers by then BJP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. He called it a “fortunate day for the people of Bundelkhand who had lagged behind.” He made no mention of the thousands of farmers, herders, forest dwellers and their families in his state that it would deprive. Nor did he see that the forest clearance was awarded on the basis that power generation would be outside the PTR, but now it is inside.The idea of linking surplus with deficient river basins started in the 1970s, and the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) was born. It began studying the possibility of 30 links across rivers in the country – ‘grand garland’ of canals.The Ken originates in the Kaimur hills of central India and is part of the Ganga basin – meeting the Yamuna in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh. On its <a href="https://nwda.gov.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/9361064102.PDF">427</a> kilometre-long journey, it passes through the Panna tiger reserve. The village of Dhodan, inside the park is the site for the dam.Running far west of the Ken is the Betwa. The KBLRP aims to take water from a ‘surplus’ Ken and send it upslope to the ‘deficient’ Betwa. Linking the two is expected to irrigate 343,000 hectares in water-deficient areas of Bundelkhand, an economically backward region and votebank. But in fact, scientists say the project will facilitate export of water from Bundelkhand to areas of upper Betwa basin, outside Bundelkhand.

The notion that the Ken has surplus water needs to be questioned, says Dr. Nachiket Kelkar. The dams that already exist on the Ken– Bariyarpur barrage, Gangau dam and one at Pawai – should have provided for irrigation. &quot;When I visited Banda and surroundings along the Ken some years back, I regularly heard that irrigation water was not available,” adds this ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Trust.Researchers from SANDRP who walked the length of the river in 2017 wrote in a <a href="https://sandrp.in/2023/06/06/the-natural-water-systems-that-make-ken-a-living-river/">report</a>, “...the Ken is now not a perennial river everywhere…For a longer part, the river runs flowless and waterless.”Ken itself has an irrigation deficit, so what it can give to Betwa will compromise its own command area. A point echoed by Nilesh Tiwari who has lived all his life in Panna. He says there is a lot of anger about the dam as it will permanently deprive people of Madhya Pradesh while seeming to benefit neighbouring Uttar Pradesh.“The dam will drown lakhs of trees, thousands of animals. People [forest dwellers] will lose their freedom, they will become beyghar [without a home]. People are angry, but the state is not paying attention,” says Tiwari.“Somewhere, they [state] set up a national park, somewhere a dam in this river and on that…and people are displaced, moved out…” says Janka Bai whose home in Umrawan was swallowed by the expanding PTR in 2015.In her fifties, this resident of Umrawan, – a village of Gond tribals – has been fighting for adequate compensation for a decade now. “The state is not worried about our future, the future of our children. They have made fools of us,” she adds, pointing to the fact that her land, taken for the tigers, will now house a resort. “See here is the land they have surveyed for tourists to come and stay, after throwing us out.”

In December 2014, the Ken-Betwa river link was announced in what was supposed to be a public hearing.Locals however, swear there was no public hearing, only eviction notices and verbal promises. That is a violation of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/the-right-to-fair-compensation-and-transparency-in-land-acquisition-rehabilitation-and-resettlement-act-2013/">Act</a>, 2013 (LARRA). This act mandates that: “Matters of land acquisition should be announced in an official gazette, local newspapers, in the local language, on relevant government sites.” Once the notification has been given, the village gram sabha (council) must be informed by a meeting called for this purpose.“The government had not notified people through any of the ways prescribed in the Act. We have asked multiple times, ‘tell us which section of the Act you are doing this under’,” points out Amit Bhatnagar, social activist. In June this year, he had organised a protest at the District Collector’s office demanding to see proof of the gram sabha sign-off. They were lathi-charged.“First tell us what gram sabha meeting you [state] did, because you didn’t,” says Bhatnagar, a member of the Aam Aadmi Party. “Secondly, this scheme, like the law says, must have people’s consent which they don’t have. And thirdly, if they are leaving, where are you sending them? You have not said anything, given any notice or information regarding this.”Not only was LARRA disregarded, but state officials made promises at public forums. Dhodan resident Gurudev Mishra says everyone feels cheated. “Officials said, ‘we will give you land for your land, a pukka house for your house, you will get employment. Your send-off will be like that of a beloved daughter’.” A former sarpanch, he is speaking to PARI at an informal village meeting. “We are only asking what the government had promised, what the District Collector [of Chhatarpur], the Chief Minister, the officials of the [KBRLP] project had promised us when they came here,” he says. “But they have not done any of that.”

On the eastern side of the PTR in Gahdara, the situation is no different. “The collector [of Panna] said we will re-establish you as you were. It will be to your convenience. We will rebuild this village for you,” says octogenarian Parohar. “Nothing has been done, and now we are being told to leave.”The amount of compensation is also not clear and many figures are floating around – between Rs. 12 to 20 lakh for each male over 18 years. People here ask: “Is that per head or for each family? What about where women are the head? And will they compensate us for the land separately? What about our animals? We have not been told anything clearly.” As a result of the lies and opacity behind state action, in every village that PARI visited, no one knew when and where they would go, or the exact amount / rate of compensation for houses, land, cattle and trees. People of 22 villages seem to be living in a state of suspended animation.<a></a>Seated outside his home in Dhodan that the dam will drown, a worried Kailash Adivasi brings out past receipts and official papers to prove his land ownership. “They say I don’t have a patta [official document of ownership]. But I have these receipts. My father, his father, his father…they all had this land. I have all the receipts.”According to the Forest Rights Act 2006, Adivasi or forest-dwelling tribes are allowed “conversion of pattas or leases or grants issued by any local authority or any State Government on forest lands to titles.”But Kailash is being denied compensation as his papers are ‘not enough.’ “We are not clear now if we have rights on this land and house or not. We are not being told if we will get compensation. They want to chase us away. No one is listening.”

In the next village, Palkoha, Jugal Adivasi prefers to speak privately. “The patwari [headman] declares we have no records of your patta” he says, as we walk away from the village centre. “Half the people have got some compensation, and the rest nothing.” He worries that if he resumes his annual migration due now, he may miss out on any compensation, and the future of his seven children will be jeopardised.“When I was a young boy, I worked on the land and we went into the forest,” he recalls. But in the last 25 years, restriction on entry into the forest that became a tiger reserve has left Adivasis like him with no option but to migrate for daily wage work. Women in the to-be-displaced villages are adamant about getting their fair share. “[Prime Minister] Modi is always saying ‘this scheme for women…that scheme for women.’ We don’t want that. We want what is our right,” says Sunni Bai, a farmer in Palkoha who belongs to the (Dalit) Ravidas community. “Why are only men getting the [compensation] package and nothing for the women. On what basis has the government made this law?” asks this mother of a son and two daughters. “What if a woman and her husband fall out, then how will she feed her children and herself? The law should be thinking of these things…after all, she is also a voter.”

“Jal, jeevan, jungle aur janwar [water, livelihoods, forests and animals],” people here tell PARI, “are what we are fighting for.”<a></a>Gulab Bai of Dhodan shows us her large courtyard and says the compensation for the house has excluded courtyards and kitchens as they lie outside the ‘walls’ of their living rooms. The 60-year-old is not backing down. “Adivasi [like me] have got nothing from the shahsan [administration]. I will fight from here to Bhopal [state capital]. I have the strength. I have been there. I am not scared. I am ready for andolan [protest].”Protests against KBRLP started in a small way in 2017 with village meetings. Momentum built up and on January 31, 2021, over 300 people gathered to protest at the Chhatarpur District Collector’s office against the flouting of LARRA. On Republic Day 2023, the first of three jal satyagrahas (protests for water-related causes) saw thousands of people from 14 villages in the PTR speaking up against the violation of their constitutional rights. Locals say their ire has reached the Prime Minister who decided not to come to Dhodan to inaugurate the dam last year, but this reporter could not independently verify that. The controversy and ill will surrounding the project hit the tendering process that began in August 2023. It saw no takers at all. So, dates were extended by six months.

“Not many people talk about climate change in central India, but it is here that we are witnessing rapid increase in extreme rain events as well as droughts, both indicative of climate change impacts,” points out ecologist Kelkar. “Most rivers in central India are seeing accelerated flows caused by climate change, but they won’t last. These flows may be feeding the notion of surplus now, but under climate change projections, it is evident that they would be short-term.”He warns that if these short-term changes are encashed to link rivers, the possibility of the region facing far more serious drought in the future cannot be ruled out.Thakkar also warns that the hydrological impact of destruction of a huge area of natural forest, is a monumental mistake. “The report of the Central Empowered Committee of the Supreme Court has thrown light on this, but that report has not even been considered by the SC.”A <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41668-x.epdf?sharing_token=l18xYOcwZNh4WiahtGh91NRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MYEAuiVdp9Bwn0zQxojEwWHbFjMairPCqhBtX4PEf6PSATQQAvbz2MmABRhtE8ngZbXyiUJXDFTEqca6763-xgbfo_puG477cSMV1CeBIZRiN0DNV_C1zqdmPxHhERkwk%3D">paper</a> published in 2023 by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mumbai on river linking in Nature Communication also rings a warning bell: “Increased irrigation from the transferred water reduces mean rainfall in September by up to 12% in already water-stressed regions of India…Reduced September precipitation can dry rivers post-monsoon, augmenting water stress across the country and rendering interlinking dysfunctional.”

Whatever data has been used by the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) under whose aegis the project exists, is not being shared with scientists, citing national security concerns, adds Himanshu Thakkar.In 2015, when the dam began to look like a real possibility, Thakkar and others in SANDRP had wrote many <a href="https://sandrp.in/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/drp-july-aug-2015.pdf">letters</a> to the Environment Assessment Committee (EAC). One such titled ‘Flawed Ken Betwa EIA &amp; violations in Public Hearing’ said, “the EIA of the project is fundamentally flawed, incomplete and its public hearings involved numerous violations. Any clearance to the project with such inadequate studies would not only be wrong, but also legally untenable.”Meanwhile over 15-20 lakh trees have already been felled. Threats of eviction hang in the air with no clear idea of compensation. Farming has been stopped. Migrating for daily wage work risks getting excluded from any potential handouts in the name of compensation.Sunni Bai sums it all up in these few words: “we are losing everything. They are taking it away. They should help us. Instead they say ‘here is the package, sign the form, take your money and go’.”

Adivasis in Panna tiger park: dammed futures

পান্না ব্যাঘ্ৰ সংৰক্ষিত অঞ্চলত বিপদত আদিবাসী

ପାନ୍ନା ବ୍ୟାଘ୍ର ଉଦ୍ୟାନରେ ଆଦିବାସୀ: ଅଭିଶପ୍ତ ଭବିଷ୍ୟତ

पन्ना टाइगर पार्क: बिपदा मं परे आदिवासी मन के भविष्य

ਉਜਾੜਨਾ ਹੀ ਹੈ: ਕਦੇ ਚੀਤਿਆਂ ਲਈ ਤੇ ਕਦੇ ਡੈਮ ਲਈ

பன்னா புலிகள் பூங்காவின் பழங்குடிகள்: முடக்கப்பட்ட எதிர்காலங்கள்

अनिश्चिततेच्या झाकोळात पन्नामधले आदिवासी

పన్నా టైగర్ పార్క్‌లో అగమ్యగోచరంగా మారిన ఆదివాసుల భవిష్యత్తు

ಮುಳುಗು ನೀರಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಪನ್ನಾ ಹುಲಿ ಮೀಸಲು ಪ್ರದೇಶದ ಆದಿವಾಸಿ ಜನರ ಬದುಕು

বাঁধের বাঁধনে আটক পান্না ব্যাঘ্র প্রকল্পের আদিবাসীদের ভবিষ্যৎ

बेघर होने के कगार पर पन्ना के बदनसीब आदिवासी

પન્ના વાઘ પ્રકલ્પમાં આદિવાસીઓનું ભાવિ અંધકારમય

പന്ന കടുവാസങ്കേതത്തിലെ ആദിവാസികൾ: ഇരുളിലാണ്ട ഭാവി

केन-बेतवा के मार, आदिवासी भइल बेघर-बार

Yavatmal

eng-nallakannu-desk.png

"There were times during the freedom struggle, too, when things looked bleak. We were told you cannot win. You are up against the greatest empire in the world . . . But we rose above all those warnings and threats. And fought anyway. That’s why we are here today."R. Nallakannu

“Vote for the Yellow Box!” went the cries. “Choose the auspicious manjal petti!”This was Madras Presidency during the 1937 provincial elections held under British rule.The slogans came from groups of youngsters beating drums. Most of them not of voting age. And ineligible to cast ballots even if they had been. not all adults could vote.Franchise restrictions favoured land and property owners and, in rural areas, rich farmers.The sight of young people without a vote campaigning vigorously was not entirely new.As early as July 1935, Justice—the newspaper and organ of the Justice Party—noted with disdain, and not a little contempt:You might visit any village even in outlying areas and you were sure to come across groups of urchins wearing Congress khaddar uniforms and Gandhi caps and holding aloft the tricoloured banner. nearly eighty per cent of these men, workers and volunteers had been drawn from the voteless, propertyless, unemployed hundreds of the urban and village areas . . .One of those youngsters in 1937 was R. Nallakannu, barely 12 at the time, now 97 [in 2022]. He’s telling us of the drama, laughing about his having been one of those ‘urchins’. &nbsp;“Those who owned land and paid a land tax of 10 rupees or more could vote,” he recalls. The 1937 polls did see some broadening of the franchise. But “it was never meant to allow more than 15–20 per cent of adults to have a vote,” he says. “And not more than 1,000 to 2,000 people voted in any one constituency.”

Nallakannu was born in Srivaikuntam, then in Tirunelveli district. Today, the taluk of Srivaikuntam falls in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi district (which used to be called Tuticorin till 1997).Nallakannu’s activism, though, began early.“When I was a child, in fact. Mill workers in Thoothukudi, close to my town, struck work. That was one of the Harvey Mills group. This came to be known as the Panchalai [Cotton Mills] workers’ strike.“To support them, rice would be collected from every home in our town and sent in boxes to the strikers’ families in Thoothukudi. It was young boys like us who would go around to collect the rice.” People were poor, “but every household contributed something. I was just 5 or 6 at the time, and this solidarity with the workers’ struggle had a huge impact on me. It meant I would get used to involvement in politics quite early.”We pull him back to the 1937 polls: What did he mean by voting for a manjal petti or yellow box?“There were only two main parties in Madras then,” he says. “Congress and the Justice Party. Instead of symbols, parties were identified by a ballot box of some colour. The Congress, for whom we then campaigned, was assigned a yellow box. For the Justice Party, there was a pachchai petti—green box. That was the best way at the time for the voter to identify which party he was supporting.”And yes, there was much colour and theatre around the polls even then. The Hindu writes that “Devadasi campaigner Thanjavur Kamukannamal . . . would ask everyone to vote in the “snuff box!” Gold or yellow being a common colour for snuff boxes of the time. The Hindu itself carried a headline calling on readers to ‘Fill the Yellow Boxes’.“And of course, I could not vote at age 12,” says Nallakannu. “But I went out and canvassed as strongly as I could.” Three years later, he would be involved in political campaigns beyond the electoral. And “beating a parai [a type of drum] and yelling slogans.”

But he was no longer a Congress supporter. “I was with the Communist Party of India [CPI] from age 15,” says Nallakannu, ‘Comrade RNK’ to his friends. Formal membership of the party would have to wait till he was older. But RNK would emerge one of the most important figures of the Communist movement in Tamil Nadu over the next few decades. He would be seeking—often successfully— support for the sengodi (red flag) and not the manjal petti (yellow box).

“There was only one school in our part of Tirunelveli and so it was simply called ‘School’. That was its only name.”Nallakannu is speaking to us in his small home office in Chennai. Beside him, on a sideboard of his table, are a bunch of little busts and small statuettes. Lenin, Marx and Periyar right next to him. Behind them, a bigger, golden statuette of Ambedkar that stands in front of a larger sketch of revolutionary Tamil poet Subramania Bharati. Behind the small Periyar bust is another sketch, drawn from a photo of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. And next to all these, a calendar that asks all of us to ‘Use Less Water’.The whole tableau captures, at a glance, the intellectual development and history of the man we are in conversation with for the third time. It is June 25, 2022. The first of our interviews with him was in 2019.“Bharathiyar was the most inspirational poet for me,” says Nallakannu. “Often his poems or songs were banned.” He cites some lines from ‘Suthinthara Pallu’ (Independence Song), an extraordinary song by the poet. “He wrote it, I think, in 1909. So he celebrates independence 38 years before India attained it in 1947!”We will dance, we will sing For we have achieved the joy of independenceThe time when we used to call Brahmins as ‘Sir’ has gone, The time when we used to call the white men as ‘lord’ has gone,The time when we saluted those who took alms from us has gone, The time when we serve people who made fun of us has gone. In all places the only talk is about freedom . . .

Bharathi died in 1921, four years before Nallakannu was born. The song was written even earlier. But it, and others, inspired him through his fighting years. RNK knew many songs and poems of Bharati before he was 12. He is able to recall quite a few of the verses and lyrics verbatim even today. “I learnt some of those from the Hindi pundit Pallavesam Chettiar at school,” he says. And of course, none of those were on the official curriculum.“I also got a book of Bharathiyar’s writings from S. Satyamurti when he came to the school. It was a collection of his poems Thesiya Geetham.” Satyamurti was a freedom fighter, politician and a patron of the arts. Bharati was one of the first to acclaim the 1917 october Revolution in Russia and even wrote a song in its praise.It’s good to try and understand Nallakannu through his love for Bharati and the prism of the agrarian and working- class struggles he was part of for eight decades.For it is really difficult to tell the story of ‘Comrade RNK’ otherwise. This is one of the most self-effacing souls I have ever met. He gently but firmly declines to place himself at the centre of any of the great events, strikes and struggles he tells us about. His role in some of those was vital and central all right. But you can never get him to portray or narrate it that way.“Comrade RNK was one of the founding leaders of the farmers’ movement in our state,” says G. Ramakrishnan. ‘GR’ is a state committee member of the CPI(M), but unreservedly salutes the role and contribution of the 97-year-old CPI leader. “Through the decades—starting from when he was still a teenager—it was he who, along with Srinivas Rao, created the bases of the Kisan Sabha across the state. Those remain a source of the strength for the Left even today. And Nallakannu helped create that by tireless campaigns and struggles all across Tamil Nadu.”Nallakannu’s struggles seamlessly integrate farmers’ battles with the anticolonial movement. And also, very importantly, with the anti-feudal battles that were so crucial to Tamil Nadu of that time. Those too flow over strongly post-1947. His fight was and remains one for many forgotten freedoms. not just Independence from British rule.

“We’d fight them at night, throw stones—those were the weapons we had—and chase them away. Sometimes, there would be pitched battles. This happened several times during the protests that came in the 1940s. We were still boys, but we fought. Day and night, with our kind of weapons!”Fight whom? And chase them away from what and where?“The uppalam [salt pans] near my town. All the salt pans were under British control. The condition of the workers was miserable. Like around the mills, where the struggles began decades earlier. There were protests and there was a lot of public sympathy and support for them.“The police simply functioned as the agents of the salt pan owners. In one clash, a sub-inspector died. There had even been an attack on the police station there. Then they set up a mobile patrolling unit. They would go to the pans during the day and come to camp near our villages at night. That’s when we clashed with them.” These protests and clashes went on and off for a couple of years, maybe more. “But it was around 1942 and the Quit India movement that they really grew.”

Nallakannu’s taking part in all of this while barely a teenager did not go down well with his father Ramasamy Thevar. A farmer, Thevar owned some 4–5 acres of land and had six children. The young RNK was often punished at home. And sometimes his father would withhold paying his school fees.“People would tell him—'Your son does not study? He’s always out and shouting. Looks like he’s gone and joined the Congress’.” The deadline for paying the fees at ‘School’ fell between the 14th and 24th of each month. “If I asked him for the fees, he’d shout at me: ‘You leave your studies and help your uncles on the farm’.”“As time ran out, someone close to my father would placate him. They would promise him that I would not speak and act the way I was doing. only then would he pay the fees.”However, “the more he opposed my life, my ways, the deeper my dissent grew. I made it up to intermediate level in Tamil, at The Hindu College, Madurai. It was actually at the Tirunelveli junction. But it was called Hindu College, Madurai. I only studied there two years. I couldn’t go further.”Because he was busy taking part in protests. And significantly—though he is far too modest to say it—he had even begun to organize them. RNK was swiftly emerging a young leader. But one who never sought, and mostly avoided, a high profile.

It’s hard to keep a chronological track of the events and actions he was involved in. More so as they were many in number and occurred on quite different fronts.He sums up the most important moments for him during the freedom struggle simply, though: “The battles around the Quit India movement.” He was not yet 17 at that point, but already an important figure in the protests. The years between age 12 and 15 were also the time of his transition from Congressman to Communist.What sort of protest meetings did he help organize or take part in?Early on, “we had megaphones made of tin. We’d gather any tables and chairs we could in a village or town and sing. Mainly the table was for the speaker to stand on and address the crowd. Mind you, crowds would unfailingly show up.” Once again, he says little about his own role in mobilizing people. Though it was foot soldiers like him who made that possible.“Later, speakers like Jeevanandam would stand on those tables and talk to fairly large audiences. With no mikes. He did not need them.“Over time, we began to get decent mikes and loudspeakers. The most favoured one,” he recalls, “was what were called the ‘Chicago mikes’ or Chicago Radio systems. Of course, we could not afford them too often.”

What about when there was a British crackdown? How did they communicate then?“There were many such situations. Like after the Royal Indian navy [RIN] mutiny [1946]. There was a total crackdown on the Communists. But there were raids earlier too. And the British would sometimes search every party office in the villages. That happened even after Independence, by the way, when the party was banned. We did have bulletins and magazines. Like Janashakti, for instance. But we had other modes of communication. Some of those were simple signals going back centuries.“Right from the time of Kattabomman [legendary 18 century anti-British fighter], people used to place neem twigs at the entrance of a home. It was a sign to indicate that someone inside was sick with smallpox or other ailments. But it was also used as a secret symbol to signal that a meeting was going on there.‘If there were sounds of a baby crying inside the house, that meant the meeting was still on. If the cow dung near the entrance was wet, the meeting was still on. If the dung there was dry, it was a signal to turn away and leave, as danger lurked. or meant that the meeting was over.’What was RNK’s greatest source of inspiration through the freedom struggle?‘The Communist Party was our greatest source of inspiration.’

‘Why did I remove my moustache when I was arrested?’ RNK laughs. ‘I never did. And I never grew it to disguise my face in the first place. If that was the case, why should I have grown one at all?‘No, the police burnt it off with a cigarette. That was part of the torture inflicted on me by an Inspector Krishnamurthy from Madras city. He tied my hands at 2 a.m. He only untied them the next morning at 10. Then he beat me with his baton for a long time.’Again, like many fellow freedom fighters, he recalls the incident with no personal rancour. no animosity towards his torturer. RNK never looked for the police inspector in later days to settle scores. It never once occurred to him to do so.‘This actually happened in 1948,’ he says, after India attained Independence. ‘The party had been banned in many provinces, including Madras, and remained that way till 1951.

‘But you should understand there were also anti-feudal battles that had to be fought. That we had to pay a price for. And these began long before 1947—and continued well after Independence.‘Freedom movement, social reform, anti-feudal struggles—we combined these issues. That’s how we worked.We fought for better and equal wages. We fought for the abolition of untouchability. We played a serious role in the temple entry movements.‘The campaign for abolition of the zamindari system was a major movement in Tamil Nadu. The state had many important zamindaris. We fought the mirasdari [land held under hereditary title] and inamdari [lands assigned free to individuals or institutions by the ruler] systems. It was the Communists who were at the forefront of these battles. There were very major landlords to contend with, and their private armed goondas and thugs.‘There were people like Punniyoor Saambasiva Iyer, Nedumanam Saamiyappa Muthaliyaar, Poondi Vandiyar. They held thousands of acres of fertile land.’We are now sitting in on a fascinating history lesson. From a man who helped make that history.

‘There were also the centuries-old practices of brahmatheyam and thevathaanam.‘Under the first, lands were given for free to Brahmins by the rulers. They ruled and profited from the land. They would not directly cultivate it, but the profits would go to them. Under thevathaanam, such gifts of land would be made to temples. Sometimes a temple could be gifted an entire village. The small tenants and workers lived at their mercy. Anyone who stood up to them could and would be evicted.‘Know this, these institutions, the madams [mutts or monasteries] owned six lakh acres of land. Maybe even now. But their power has been strongly curtailed by people’s unflinching struggles.“The Tamil Nadu Zamindari Abolition Act came into force in 1948. But it was the zamindars and giant landowners who were compensated. not the people who had worked the land for them. The affluent tenants got some compensation. The poor who worked in the fields got nothing. Between 1947–49, there were a large number of evictions from these temple lands. And we launched huge protests along the lines of: ‘only when farmers own the land can they live well’.“These were our battles—and from 1948 to 1960, the fight went on for getting their rights. C. Rajagopalachari [Rajaji] as Chief Minister took the side of the landlords and mutts. We said, ‘Land to the Tiller’. Rajaji said land belongs to those who have the documents. But our struggles saw us break that total power these temples and mutts had. We defied their harvest rules and protocols. We refused to be slaves.“And, of course, all this could not be separated from the social battles as well.“I remember witnessing one of the protests at a temple one night. The temples would all have chariot festivals. And it was the farmers who would pull the chariots forward with ropes. We said they will not come to pull the chariots anywhere if the evictions continued. We also asserted our right to take some of the grain back for sowing.”

Now he’s moving back and forth between pre and post Independence periods. At one level, that’s confusing. At another, it brings home the complexity of those times. That there were many freedoms involved. That some of these did not have clear start and end dates. That people like RNK remained steadfast in the pursuit of those freedoms.“We also, right through those decades, fought against the beatings and torture of the workers.“In 1943, Dalit workers were still being whipped. And having cow dung water poured on the wounds created by the whips. They had to go to work at 4 or 5 a.m. in the morning—whenever the rooster crowed. They had to be at the mirasdars’ lands to bathe the cattle, gather the cow dung, then go to water the fields. There was a village near Thiruthuraipoondi then in Thanjavur district. That’s where we held their protest.“There was a huge demonstration headed by Srinivas Rao of the Kisan Sabha. The sentiment was ‘if they hit you for carrying the red flag, hit them back’. Finally the mirasdars and Mudhaliars at Thiruthuraipoondi signed an agreement that this whipping, use of cow dung water and other barbaric practices would be stopped.”RNK plays down his own huge role in these great battles all the way from the 1940s to the 1960s and well beyond. He would succeed Srinivas Rao as the head of the All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), Tamil Nadu. In the decades after 1947, the silent foot soldier would emerge a strong general in the battles of farmers and labourers.

Both of them are excited and emotional. We are doing one of our interviews at CPI(M) leader and freedom fighter N. Sankariah’s house. That is, we’re talking to both him and Nallakannu together. The way the comrades of eight decades greet each other touches the emotions of the rest of us in the room, too.

Is there no bitterness, no sadness? They went their different ways when the Communist Party of India split into two some 60 years ago. It was not an amiable parting.“But we have worked together on many issues and struggles even after that,” says Nallakannu. “With the same attitude towards each other as from before.”“When the two of us meet,” says Sankariah, “we are still one party.” &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;How do they respond to the present-day rise in communal violence and hatred? Do they fear for the nation’s survival? A nation whose independence they helped achieve.“There were times during the freedom struggle, too, when things looked bleak,” says Nallakannu. “We were told you cannot win. You are up against the greatest empire in the world. Some of our families were warned to keep us away from the struggle. But we rose above all those warnings and threats. And fought anyway. That’s why we are here today.”There is also the need, both of them say, to build broad unity. To reach out and learn from others as in the past. “I think even an EMS [Namboodiripad] had a Gandhi photo in his room,” says RNK.How do the two of them remain so calm and sanguine about the state of politics that so scares millions among the rest of us? Nallakannu shrugs: “We’ve seen worse.”PostscriptOn Independence Day, 2022, The Last Heroes: Footsoldiers of Indian Freedom had already gone to press when the government of Tamil Nadu conferred the Thagaisal Thamizhar Award on RNK. This is Tamil Nadu’s top prize instituted in 2021 and given to an eminent personality who has contributed a great deal to the state and the Tamil community. It carries a cash prize of Rs. 10 lakhs, and it was handed over to RNK by Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on the ramparts of Fort St. George.

R. Nallakannu’s fight for many forgotten freedoms

മറക്കപ്പെട്ടുപോയ പല സ്വാതന്ത്ര്യങ്ങൾക്കുംവേണ്ടിയുള്ള ആർ. നല്ലകണ്ണിന്റെ പോരാട്ടം

भुलाइल बिसराइल आजादी खातिर नल्लाकन्नु के लड़ाई

शोषितों की आज़ादी के लिए नल्लकन्नु का संघर्ष

eng-nallakannu-mob.png

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It’s 9 in the morning, and Azad Maidan in Mumbai is alive with young
cricketers getting ready for a fun weekend game. There are frequent cries of
joy and anguish as the game proceeds.

Barely 50 metres away, another ‘game’ proceeds silently with 5,000
participants. This one has been going on longer, the stakes are higher and
there is no end in sight for the thousands of Accredited Social Health
Activists (ASHA) – healthcare workers – protesting last month at Mumbai&#39;s Azad Maidan.
More than 50 women participants had to be hospitalised in the first week of the
agitation, which began on February 9.

Within view of the busy road, an ASHA in her early 30s sits down on
the ground. She glances around nervously, avoiding the stares of people passing
by. A group of women gather around, covering her with dupattas and
a chadar as she quickly changes her clothes.

A few hours later, at lunchtime, under the scorching midday sun, ASHAs
gather around their colleague, Rita Chawre, each holding empty tiffin boxes, plates, and even
lids. They patiently wait their turn as the 47-year-old serves them homemade
food. &quot;I manage to feed around 80-100 ASHAs protesting here,&quot; says
Rita who travelled around two hours to Azad Maidan daily from Tisgaon in Thane
district, along with 17 other ASHAs. 

“We are taking turns
to ensure no ASHA remains hungry. But we are falling sick now. And we are
tired,” she adds, speaking to PARI at the end of February 2024.

After 21 days, the ASHAs finally went home on March 1 after the Chief
Minister announced, “ASHA chi nirasha sarkar karnar naahi.
[Government will not disappoint ASHAs].” The CM, Eknath Shinde, was
speaking during the Maharashtra State Assembly’s Budget Session earlier that
day.

ASHAs are an all-women workforce that provides more than 70 healthcare
services. However, they are categorised only as ‘volunteers’ under the
Integrated Child Development Services Program (ICDS) and National Rural Health
Mission (NRHM). Hence, the payment they receive for providing healthcare
services is referred to as an ‘honorarium’ and not wages or salary. 

Apart from the honorarium, they are entitled to receive the PBP
(performance-based payment or incentives). The NRHM states that ASHAs receive
incentives based on their performance for promoting universal immunisation,
services for Reproductive &amp; Child Health (RCH) and other programmes.  

Clearly the money
is not enough as Rama Manatkar, one of the ASHAs, says, “Bin pagari, full adhikari [No money only responsibilities]! They expect that we work like officers,
but are not willing to pay us.”

The CM’s recent assurance – one of many official ones in the last few
months –has not resulted in a government resolution (GR), at the time of this
story being published. By all appearances, the ASHAs continue to have only
promises to go on. 

The thousands of
protesting ASHAs are determined to pin the Maharashtra administration to their
assurance – first made in October 2023 – to issue a GR implementing a salary hike.

“People trust ASHAs more than their own family! The health department
is dependent on us,” says Vanashree
Fulbandhe, also pointing out that a fundamental aspect of their role is
facilitating access to healthcare services for marginalised communities.
“Whenever there is a new posting of doctors, they ask: where is ASHA? Can we
get her number?” 

Vanashree has been an ASHA for 14 years. “I started with Rs 150…is
this not like vanvaas? When Lord Shri
Ram came to Ayodhya after 14 years, he was welcomed, wasn’t he? Do not welcome
us but at least provide us a maandhan [honorarium]
that will allow us to live with respect and honesty?” she adds.

And there’s another demand: could they please get their salaries on
time every month like everyone else? And not after delays of three months each
time. 

“If we keep getting delayed payments, how will we manage?” asks ASHA, Priti Karmankar who is
the District Vice President (zilla
upadhyaksha) for Yavatmal.
“An ASHA provides a service but she also works for her own stomach. If she’s
not paid, how will she live?” 

Even their travel
reimbursements for mandatory workshops and district meetings organised by the
health department, are delayed by three to five months. “We still haven’t
received payments for programmes assigned by the health department since 2022,”
says Antakala More from Kalamb in Yavatmal. “In December 2023,” she adds,
“we were on strike. They made us end it to conduct a leprosy survey. But they
still haven’t paid us.” Priti adds, “We didn’t even get the payment for last
year’s polio, hatti rog [Lymphatic filariasis] and jant-naashak [deworming] programmes.”

Rita joined as an ASHA in 2006 at a salary of Rs. 500. “Today, I get
6,200 rupees a month, of which 3,000 comes from the central government and the
rest from the municipal corporation.”

On November 2, 2023,
the state health minister, Tanajirao
Sawant had <a href="https://twitter.com/TanajiSawant4MH/status/1719939873099096496?t=2Up4fSv2RYrwWRN8ypm2uQ&amp;s=19">announced</a> that the 80,000 ASHA
workers and 3,664 gat pravartaks (group promoters) in
Maharashtra would get increments of Rs. 7,000 and Rs. 6,200 respectively along
with a Diwali bonus of Rs 2,000 each.

A furious Mamta says, “Diwali houn aata Holi aali [Diwali has passed and it is time
for Holi now] but we have nothing in our hand.” She adds, “We did not ask for
7,000 or 10,000 increment. Our initial strike in October was against the extra
online work. We were told to get 100 villagers registered daily on the Pradhan
Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY).”

The scheme, as its official website says, “provides a cash incentive
for partial compensation of the wage loss during pregnancy.” A similar target
was given for the newly launched U-Win app which aims to store vaccination
records of pregnant mothers and children.

Earlier in February 2024, over 10,000 ASHAs had marched from Shahpur
to the Thane District Collector’s office – a distance of 52 kilometres. “Chalun aloy, tangdya tutlya [We walked all the way, our legs
gave out]. We spent the whole night on the streets of Thane,” recalls Mamta.

The months of protest are taking a toll on them. “Initially there were
more than 5,000 ASHAs at the Azad Maidan. Many of them were pregnant and some
also came with their newborns. It was getting difficult to live here in the
open and so we requested them to go back home,” says Ujwala Padalwar. She is the State Secretary
of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and one of the organisers of the
protests. Many women complained of chest and abdominal pain, others suffered
from headache and dehydration and had to be hospitalised, she adds.  

Once the ASHAs were
discharged, they came back again to the ground, calling out in unison: “Aata aamcha ekach naara, GR kaadha! [We have only one call!
Just release the GR!].&quot;

On paper, an ASHA’s role is to bring public health services to
everyone. But after years of caring for the community, they often go above and
beyond. Take ASHA Mamta, who in September 2023, managed to convince a pregnant
Adivasi woman from Sonivali
village in Badlapur
to opt for hospital delivery instead of home birth.

She recalls: “The woman’s husband refused to accompany her and said in
clear words, ‘if anything happens to my wife you will be responsible’.” When
the mother was in labour, “I took her from Badlapur to Ulhasnagar all by myself,” says Mamta. The
mother did not survive the childbirth. The baby too had died in
the womb.

Mamta explains, “I am a widow, my son was in Class 10 at that time. I
left home at 6 a.m., and the mother passed away around 8 p.m. I was asked to
wait in the hospital veranda till 1:30 a.m. After the panchnama
was done they said, ‘ASHA tai now you can go’. Deed waajta me ektee jaau? [Am I supposed to go home alone at
1:30 a.m.]?” 

The next day when she visited the village to update the records, some
people including the woman’s husband abused and blamed her for the deaths. A
month later, Mamta was called for questioning by the zilla samiti. “They asked me ‘how did the mother die and what error
did ASHA tai make?’ If everything at
the end of the day has to be dumped on our heads, then why not increase our maandhan?” she asks.  

Throughout the
pandemic, the government praised the ASHA workers and hailed them “corona
warriors” for their crucial role in distributing medicines and tracing infected
patients from the remotest villages across the state. However, they barely
received any safety gear to protect themselves from the virus.

Manda Khatan and Shraddha Ghogale, ASHA
workers from Nandivali Gaon in Kalyan recall their pandemic experience,
“Once, a pregnant mother tested positive for covid after the birth. When she
learned that she was infected with the virus, she panicked and ran away [with
the newborn child] from the hospital.”

“She thought she [and her baby] would be caught and killed,” says
Shraddha. Such was the fear and
misconception around the virus.

“Someone told us that she was hiding in her home. We rushed to her
house but she had locked the doors,” says Manda. Fearing that she would take
some wrong steps, they stood outside her house until 1:30 a.m. “We asked her,
‘Do you love your baby or not?’ We advised her that if she continued to keep
the baby close to her, she would end up infecting it and would put the infant’s
life at risk.” 

After three hours of counselling, the mother opened the doors. “The
ambulance was on standby. There were no other medical officers or gram sevaks, just the two of us.” A teary-eyed Manda
narrates, “Before departing the mother held my hand and said, ‘I am leaving my
child behind because I trust you. Please take care of my baby.’ For the next
eight days, we went to her home daily to bottle feed the newborn. We would show
her the baby over video call. Till date, the mother calls us and thanks us.

“We distanced
ourselves from our own kids for a year,” says Manda, “but we saved the children
of other people.” Her child was in Class 8 while Shraddha’s was barely 5
years old.

Shraddha remembers when people in her village would shut
their doors. “They would run away seeing us in personal protective equipment
(PPE) kits thinking that we had come to catch them.” Not only that, “We would
wear the kits for the whole day. Sometimes we had to change four in one day.
Our face had turned black wearing them for hours. We would walk with them in
the sun. It would itch and feel like a burning sensation on our skin.” 



Manda interrupts and says, “But PPEs and masks came in much later. For
most of the pandemic period, we would wrap our pallus and
dupattas while moving around.” 



“So, our lives did not have value then [during the pandemic]?” asks
Mamta, “Did you give us some different kavach [protection]
to battle corona? You [government] gave us nothing when the pandemic started.
When our ASHA tais started getting
covid, they faced the same fate as the rest of the patients. Even when the
vaccines were at the trial stage, ASHAs were the first to volunteer.”



At one point in her life, Vanashree Fulbandhe had almost decided to
quit being an ASHA. “It started to take a toll on my mental and physical
health,” she says. The 42-year-old looks after a population of more than 1,500
people in Nagpur district’s Wadoda
village. “I remember once I was in extreme pain due to kidney stones. I had
tied a cloth around my waist and was still working.”



A patient and her
husband came to Vanashree’s house, “She was a first-time mother. They were
nervous. I explained to them I was not in a condition to do anything but they
insisted that I be present during the birth. It was difficult to say ‘no’ so
I went along with them. I stayed with her for two days in the hospital until the baby was born. Her relatives would see the cloth tied around my waist and
jokingly ask me, &quot;Is it the patient&#39;s delivery or yours!”

She recalls her routine during the lockdown when she would complete
her ASHA duties and deliver food to patients in isolation. “It eventually
took a toll on my health. I had very high BP for many days and I thought maybe
I should quit.” But Vanashree’s aunt reminded her that “what I am doing is punya [good deed]. She said two lives, [of the mother and
child] depend on me. I should never leave this job.”



As she narrates the story, Vanashree briefly looks at her phone. She
says, &quot;My family keeps asking when I will return home. I came here with
Rs. 5,000. I barely have Rs. 200 now.” She hasn’t received her monthly
honorarium since December 2023.   



Purnima Wase, an ASHA from Nagpur’s Pandhurna
village recalls a critical situation. “I
had assisted an HIV positive woman in her childbirth. When people
at the hospital found out she was HIV positive,” says the 45-year-old worker, “they acted as if it was a big thing. I told them, ‘When I, being an
ASHA, delivered the baby without any equipment other than gloves and my own
scarf, why should you act like this?’”

An ASHA since 2009, Purnima looks after a population of more than
4,500.  “I am a graduate,” she says. “I
get so many job offers. But, it was my decision to become an ASHA and I will
continue to be an ASHA all my life. Whether I get money or not, agar mujhe karni hai seva to marte dum tak ASHA ka kaam karungi
[Since I wish to serve, I will continue to be an ASHA until my death].”

The game of cricket
continues at Azad Maidan. Meanwhile the ASHAs have moved their fight off the
grounds.

State reassures protesting ASHAs...once again

آشا کارکنوں کو ایک بار پھر ملی صرف ’یقین دہانی‘

నిరసన తెలుపుతోన్న ఆశాలకు మళ్ళీ ‘మరోసారి’ హామీలిచ్చిన ప్రభుత్వం...

ஆஷா பணியாளர்கள் மீண்டும் வாக்குறுதி கொடுக்கும் அரசு

ਪ੍ਰਦਰਸ਼ਨ ਹੇਠ ਆਸ਼ਾ ਵਰਕਰਾਂ ਨੂੰ ਸਰਕਾਰ ਨੇ ਫਿਰ ਦਿੱਤੀ ਮਿੱਠੀ ਗੋਲ਼ੀ

ପୁଣିଥରେ ଆନ୍ଦୋଳନରତ ଆଶା କର୍ମୀଙ୍କୁ ମିଳିଲା ସରକାରୀ ପ୍ରତିଶ୍ରୁତି

സംസ്ഥാനം ആശാപ്രവർത്തകർക്ക് വാക്ക് കൊടുക്കുന്നു…വീണ്ടും

ಪ್ರತಿಭಟನಾ ನಿರತ ಆಶಾ ಕಾರ್ಯಕರ್ತೆಯರಿಗೆ ಸರ್ಕಾರದಿಂದ ಮತ್ತೊಮ್ಮೆ ಬರವಸೆ

हक़ के बदले में आशा कार्यकर्ताओं को फिर मिला सिर्फ़ ‘आश्वासन’

વિરોધ પ્રદર્શન કરતી આશાઓને સરકાર તરફથી ફરી એકવાર મળ્યા વાયદા

मितानिन दीदी: ‘फोकट मं सब्बो जिम्मेवारी’

आशा कार्यकर्ता: लड़ेली बहिनिया, लड़ेली महतरिया

ফাঁপা সরকারি আশ্বাসে নিরাশ প্রতিবাদী আশাকর্মীরা

প্ৰতিশ্ৰুতি ৰক্ষাৰ আকৌ এবাৰ প্ৰতিশ্ৰুতি আশাকৰ্মীলৈ

आंदोलक आशांना सरकारचं वचनः दिलासा का बोळवण?

Azad Maidan

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The woodcutter lifts the axe overhead and – thwack – hits
the log. Ten feet away, I flinch. Sweat trickles down his back; it drenches the
towel wrapped around his waist, over a pair of cotton shorts. Thud! He hits the
wood again. It cleaves… splinters fly. The woodcutter’s name is M. Kamachi. Long
ago, he worked as an agricultural labourer. He speaks to me without raising his
head. His eyes are trained on the business end of the axe. 

Kamachi’s workplace for the last 30 years is a shed near
the Sivagangai Poonga, a grand old garden in Thanjavur. He is 67 years
old. At 150 years, the garden is over twice his age. The temple nearby – the
great Brihadeeshwara Kovil – is 1,100 years old. And the instrument he is
roughly sculpting by hand, is mentioned in texts that go back further, way
further. Kamachi is shaping a veenai – more commonly known as the veena
– from a four-foot log of jackfruit wood. 

To steady the timber, he places his right foot inside the
depression that will, one day, become kudam (resonator) of the veenai.
The shed is dusty and hot even in the shade and Kamachi’s work is hard and
heavy. He gets paid 600 rupees daily for his labour. And skill. He grunts every
time the axe strikes; now and then, he wipes his face with a rough towel.

In a few hours, he
whittles down a 30-kilogram log down to 20, and it will be ready to go to the pattarai (workshop) where it will be chiselled and polished by craftsmen. In a
month’s time, the finished instrument will sit on a player’s lap, and make beautiful music.

The veenai is born in Thanjavur. The Saraswati veena
– an older version of the Thanjavur veenai – is India’s national
instrument. And one of the three ‘<a href="https://search.ipindia.gov.in/GIRPublic/Application/Details/209">celestial instruments’</a>,
with references from ‘vedic times’, along with mridangam and flute. 

Like many other
percussion instruments – mridangam, kanjira, tavil, udukkai – the veenai
too begins its journey in the groves near Panruti, the small town in Cuddalore
district, famous for its sweet and fleshy jackfruit. What is less known is the
jackfruit’s link with some of the most iconic musical instruments of India.

“He agreed to stay, on hearing my words, like a 
bull elephant that could not be controlled by a goad*, but is 
controlled by a yāzh.”

<a href="https://sangamtranslationsbyvaidehi.com/ettuthokai-kalithokai-palai-1-36/">Kalithokai 2, Sangam poem</a> 

The ‘<a href="https://search.ipindia.gov.in/GIRPublic/Application/Details/209">statement of case’</a> to apply
for a Geographical Indication for the Thanjavur Veena – which it received in
2013 – has several references to the string instrument’s history, tracing it
back to the Sangam period (about 2,000 years ago), when the version of
the veenai that existed was called the ‘yāzh’.  

“Will he come, your bard who told me that he 
would not conceal from me if you went to other 
women, swearing on his yāzh many times, to see 
the scars on your neck caused by the bangles of 
women who trusted your lies and united with you?”

<a href="https://sangamtranslationsbyvaidehi.com/ettuthokai-kalithokai-66-100-marutham/">Kalithokai 71, Sangam poem</a>,
What a concubine said to the hero 

The geographical indication document specifies jack wood as
the raw material and has elaborate details of its construction. The four-foot
long veenai, it notes, “has a large, round body with a thick, wide neck,
the end of which is carved into the head of a dragon.” 

The veenai itself is a lot more elegant than its
description. It’s curved in places, carved in others. The dragon head – yali,
as it is called – is striking, and colourful. The wooden neck has 24 fixed
frets and four playing strings, which produce all the ragas. The kudam
(resonator) has intricate designs in ‘special’ veenais, and they are
priced at least twice as much as the ordinary ones.  

For about 30 to 50
years before it is transformed by human hand into an instrument, the palamaram
(jackfruit tree) grows in groves in the villages around Panruti, in Cuddalore
district of Tamil Nadu. Like cattle, trees too are an investment. The rural
populace considers them like stocks – the value usually appreciates, and they
can be sold for a neat profit. R. Vijaykumar, 40, a jackfruit trader in Panruti
town explains that once the trunk is eight hands wide, and 7 or 9 feet tall, “<a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/the-house-that-lakshmi-built-in-panruti/">just the timber alone</a> fetches 50,000 rupees.”

As far as possible, farmers do not cut trees. “But when
there’s a need for capital – for medical emergencies or a marriage in the
family – we choose a few big trees and sell them for timber,” explains K.
Pattusami, 47, a jackfruit farmer. “That fetches a couple of lakhs. Enough to
tide over the crisis, or take care of the kalyanam (wedding)…”

Before the logs reach Thanjavur, the finest portions are
kept aside for the mridangam, a percussion instrument. In Sebastian
and Sons: A brief history of Mrdangam* makers, T. M. Krishna (musician,
writer, speaker and Magsaysay awardee) profiles the unsung heroes who handcraft
the instrument. 

But first the instrument itself, the “mridangam 101” as
Krishna calls it. The mridangam is a “cylindrical two-faced drum, the primary
percussion instrument used in Karnatik* music performances and Bharatanatyam
recitals. Its body is a hollow resonating chamber fashioned from the wood of a
jackfruit tree.” The apertures on either end are fitted with three layers each
of hide. 

Jack wood is “the holy grail” of mridangams, writes
Krishna. “Its holiness is further enhanced if the jackfruit tree grows near a
temple. The wood is then exposed to the sounds of temple bells and Vedic
chants, and the resonance of an instrument made of such wood is, they say,
unmatched. Artists like Mani Iyer would go to any lengths to acquire wood from
an auspicious tree of this sort.”

Kuppusami Asari, a third generation instrument-maker in his
family, tells Krishna that “there is a belief that trees near a church or a
temple, or even a road where people walk and talk, or where bells toll, absorb
the vibrations and produce good sound.”

Krishna, though,
observes that “while mridangam artists believe Hindu temple bells and
chants are the magic ingredient, the woodcrafter is more catholic in his search
for these positive vibrations.”

In April 2022, I visited Panruti town to meet jackfruit
farmers and traders. In the afternoon, I walk into Kuppusami Asari&#39;s
busy workshop. It is at once modern (with lathes and machines) and traditional
(with old fashioned tools and photos of gods and goddesses), much like
Kuppusami’s attitude towards making the mridangam. 

“Go on, ask your questions,” Kuppusami says. He’s in a
hurry; he’s a busy man. “What do you
want to know?” Why jack wood, I ask. “Because palamaram is perfect,” he
says. “It is light weight and the nadam [tone] is very good. Here we
make all the percussion instruments, everything but the veenai.”
Kuppusami is a highly regarded expert. “You can read about us in T.M. Krishna’s
book,” he says proudly. “There is even a photo of me with the lathe.”

Kuppusami trained in Madhavaram, a suburb in Chennai, and
has “around 50 years of experience.” He began learning when he was 10 years
old, with little education, and a lot of interest in working with wood. “Back
then, all the work was done by hand. My father worked on the palamaram –
hollowing out the inside – by mounting it on a vandi sakkaram (cartwheel). Two men turned the wheel, and appa scraped the inside.” But the
family quickly adapted to technology. “We changed with the times.” 

Unlike many craftspersons, he is very excited about modern
machinery. “Look, then you took a whole day to dig out the centre of a mridangam.
Now with a lathe, it is quick, precise and efficient. And the finish is much
better.” He was the pioneer in using a lathe, in Panruti, and installed the
machine 25 years ago. Many people have taken this idea to other towns. 

“Plus,” he says. “I’ve taught four, five men to make
percussion instruments. When they’re fully trained, they set up shop and sell
it to the same retailer I supply in Mylapore, Chennai. They introduce
themselves as my apprentices. And that shopowner then calls and asks me: ‘Just
how many people have you trained?’” Kuppusami laughs when he tells me the
story.

His son Sabarinathan
has an engineering degree. “I told him to learn the measurements and how to make
instruments. Even if he has a job, he can continue this with hired labour,
isn’t it?”

“The Asaris are members of the Vishwakarma community. They are people of material art who work with metal, stone and wood. Away from their creative pursuits, many people in the community have been reduced to labour activities that are adjacent to their traditional caste-based occupations. Those in the younger generation are also moving away to white-collar jobs,” writes T.M. Krishna in his book Sebastian and Sons. “When we do speak of hereditary, caste-bound occupations, we have to be careful not to romanticise it as intergenerational continuity in knowledge creation, because all people and occupations are not equal in our social matrix,” Krishna points out. “Work that is passed down within caste-privileged families is considered knowledge and the perpetuation of such caste-limited sharing as preservation. And the practitioners do not experience oppression. Occupations and forms of work that are continued generation after generation within oppressed or marginalised communities are not considered knowledge. Nor are the people considered knowledge creators. They are looked down upon, undervalued and their work categorised as physical labour. And most importantly, those who practice these occupations experience caste-based oppression and violence. In many cases because of social circumstances they have no choice but to take up the family-caste-assigned job.”“All instrument makers in this country are
spoken about – if at all – in technical terms,” <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/archive/in/entry/tm-krishna-sebastian-and-sons-book-mrdangam-makers_in_5e26c356c5b674e44b9d6bf2?7pk">says Krishna</a>. “They’re looked at like a maestri [carpenter] who is working in a construction site. The [instrument] player would be the
architect. The reason credit is denied – or frugally and grudgingly given – is
because of caste.” 

Mridangam-making is male
dominated, says Kuppusami. “There are a few women who work with leather. But the wood work is
done solely by men. The wood that is sourced is typically from jackfruit trees
that have stopped fruiting. They will “close” the trees that are old and
unproductive,” Kuppusami says. “And for every ten they cut down, they plant
30.” 

Kuppusami has many specifications for the wood. He prefers
trees that are around 9 or 10 feet tall, wide and strong, and planted near the
fence or by the road. Ideally, he’d take the lower portion of the wood, with a
darker colour ensuring better resonance. 

In a single day, he can cut and size about six mridangams.
But the finishing will take two more days. His profits are minimal – he will be
happy if he can make 1,000 rupees on a mridangam, he says. That’s after paying “the labourers 1,000 to
work on this. It is heavy work, they won’t come otherwise, you know.” 

Wood is not available throughout the year. When the trees are
still fruiting, nobody will chop it down, he points out. So “I have to keep wood in stock,” he says. He
invests five lakh rupees, to buy 20 logs which cost 25,000 rupees each. And
that’s where he seeks intervention from the government. “If they gave us a
subsidy or loan, to buy the wood… that would be so good!” 

The demand for mridangams
is good, Kuppusami says, and comes from both domestic and international markets.
“In a month, I sell 50 mridangams and 25 tavils.” The trouble is
getting the right wood and seasoning it for about four months. And since
Panruti jack wood is “the best”, says Kuppusami, “there is heavy demand for
it.” And he attributes the tonal qualities to the red soil in the region.

“From a single ten-foot-long log – costing about 25,000 rupees – you can
cut only three good mridangams.” And every lot is mixed. Some of the wood
isn’t really cut out to make music. The best Kuppusami can salvage from them
are a small udukkai (a hand-held percussion instrument).

A good “kattai” costs “ettu rubaa”, Kuppusami
explains. He uses the word ‘kattai’ (wood or log) to denote the shell of
the mridangam. While “ettu rubaa” – literally eight rupees –
stands in for 8,000. This is “onaam number” (first quality), he says, and
customers will not return it. Otherwise, “if cracks develop in the wood, if the
nadam [sound] is not good, customers will surely bring it back!” 

Typically, the mridangam is 22 or 24 inches long.
These instruments are usually played with a microphone, he says. “For kuthu
[theatre], where it is played without a mike, the mridangam is 28 inches long.
And the mouth is narrow on one side and wide on the other. The beats can be
heard over a long distance as the sound travels very well.” 

Kuppusami delivers the wooden shell to musical companies in
Chennai. They place orders for 20 to 30 a month. And once they receive it, they
give it out to the leather workers who finish the mridangam. This
process adds another 4,500 rupees to the price. “Then there is the bag with the
zip,” Kuppusami explains, his hands fastening an imaginary zipper over a mridangam.


Good quality mridangams around cost 15,000 rupees. Kuppusami
remembers when they were sold for 50 and 75 rupees. “My father used to take me
to Mylapore, Madras (now Chennai), to deliver the mridangams to gurus.
They used to pay us in crisp currency notes! I was a little boy then,” he
smiles. 

Karaikudi Mani,
Umayalpuram Sivaraman – some of the greatest mridangam artists in the Carnatic
music world – have all sourced their instruments from Kuppusami. “So many vidwans (scholarly teachers and practitioners) come here and buy,” he says, with a
touch of pride. “This is a famous shop, traditional shop…”

Kuppusami shares several anecdotes related to the
percussion instrument. His stories are a superb contrast between the old and
the new. “Do you know the late Palghat Mani Iyer? His instruments were so
heavy, he had a person to carry it around for him!” And a hefty mridangam
was preferred because the sound was “ganeer, ganeer” (loud and clear).
Except, it’s not something the current crop aspire to all the time, Kuppusami
says. 

“When they travel abroad, they want a light instrument.
They bring it here, and I reduce its weight from 12 to six kilos.” How is that
possible, I ask. “We scrape out the wood in the belly,” he says. “We keep
weighing the instrument, until it’s down to six kilos.” 

A crash diet for mridangams, if you will… 

But it’s not just mridangams, he also sends other
percussion instruments around the world. “I have sent urumi melams [double-headed
drums] to Malaysia for the last 20 years. It’s only during covid that it
stopped…” 

Jack wood is perfect to make mridangam, tavil, tabela, veenai, kanjira, udukkai, udumi, pambai… Kuppusami lists the names. “I can make
about 15 varieties of percussion instruments.” 

He is acquainted with
craftspersons of other instruments. Some even by name and address. “Oh, you’ve
met Narayanan, the veenai maker? He lives in South Main street,
Thanjavur, isn’t it? He’s known to us.” Making the veenai is such a
tricky job, Kuppusami says. “One time, I watched a veenai being made.
The asari was making the curved stem. I sat quietly and observed him for
two hours. He cut and shaped and placed and checked and cut and shaped some
more… it was amazing. And exciting…”

I first met the veenai makers in Thanjavur in 2015,
in M. Narayanan’s workshop. In August 2023, he invited me to visit again. “Do
you remember the house? It’s the one with the tree outside,” he said. It may
seem like a peculiar landmark, but the Pungai tree (Indian Beech) is possibly
the only one on South Main street. A veenai made of cement graces the
first-floor façade. The workshop behind his house is just as I remember it:
tools on the cement shelf, photos and calendars on the wall, and unfinished veenais
on the floor. 

When the veenai comes from Sivagangai Poonga,
it is a stout and somewhat misshapen block of wood. Once it reaches the
workshop though, the tools change, the treatment changes, and naturally, so
does the result. From the 16-inch wide log with a scooped-out belly, Narayanan
and his team carve out a slim bowl that’s 14.5 inches across, with a half-an-inch
thick wall. He uses a compass, he explains, to get the circle. And then
carefully with a ulli (chisel), removes the extra wood. 

To make music, the wood undergoes intermittent sculpting.
The pauses help the wood dry and season. Shedding weight – inside and outside –
cuts down the size from the roughly 30 kilograms when it arrives in Thanjavur,
to 20, at Sivagangai Poonga. At the veenai pattarai, it is
further chiselled to a liftable eight kilos. 

Seated in his house, in front of the workshop, Narayanan
hands me a veenai. “Here,” he says, “hold it.” It has a good heft, and a
smooth finish, every part perfectly sanded and varnished. “It is all done by
hand,” Narayanan says, the pride evident in his voice. 

“Veenais are
made only in Thanjavur. And they go all over the world from here. We have a
Geographical Indication [GI] that was applied for and secured by advocate Sanjai
Gandhi,” says Narayanan.

This instrument is always made with jack wood. “It is
chosen because palamaram adapts to all climatic conditions. Thanjavur is
39 degrees [celsius] today. And when you make it here and take it to America, where it
might be zero degrees, it will still function properly. And even if you take it
to a hotter region – west Asia, for instance – nothing will happen. It
will play well everywhere. This is a rare quality, which is why we use jack wood.”

“You can’t do it in mango wood, for instance. In the
summer, a mango wood door can be shut. During the monsoon? You have to slam it
hard… Plus, no matter how much you finish it, you won’t get a &#39;nice&#39; look, the
likes of which you can get with jack.” Besides, palamaram has tiny pores, Narayanan explains, smaller than the hair on our head. “It helps the wood breathe.” 

Jack wood is widely grown. “But as far as I know, in some
areas – around Pattukottai [Thanjavur district] and Gandharvakottai [Pudukottai
district] – they have cut many of the
trees. And not planted others in its place. The owners of the groves have sold
their land as housing plots, and put the money in the bank. Without trees,”
Narayanan points out, “there is not even a little shadow. Forget music. Look at
my street, there is just my tree…all the others were chopped!”

New jackwood is
yellow. As it ages and dries, it gets a reddish tinge. And the vibration of the
wood is brilliant. That’s why, Narayanan says, old veenais are sought
after. “And that’s why,” he laughs, “you never get them in the market, as the owners
prefer to restore, repair and retain their instruments. Usually within the
family.”

In the veenais that he makes, Narayanan adds some
modern touches. “See this guitar key, we put them in so that it is easier to
tune and tighten the strings.” He’s not excited about the changes in teaching,
though; he calls them short-cuts (when teachers don’t teach the students how to
fix the pitch), and he tunes a veenai as he explains it. The jack wood
and metal string produce a beautiful sound, a background score for our
conversation. 

Like many of the makers, Narayanan too can play the
instrument he crafts. “Only a little bit,” he says modestly, plucking the strings with his right
hand, his left fingertips moving up and down the frets. “I know enough to
understand what the customer wants.” 

On his lap is an Ekantha veenai, made from a single
piece of wood. He holds it carefully, like a mother would a sleeping child.
“Once upon a time, we used deer antlers for decoration. Now it is Ivory Plastic
from Bombay…” 

If just one person
were to make a veenai fully, it would take 25 days. “That’s why we give
different jobs to different people and assemble it faster. And we can make two
or three veenais a month. Each of them can cost anywhere between 25,000
to 75,000 rupees.”

Like the other veenai makers, Narayanan sources his
wood from Panruti. “Either we go there and buy a ‘lot’, or they bring it here. Forty or 50-year-old trees, that are mature, are ideal. Traders might sell us a 10-foot
log for 20,000 rupees, from which we can make an Ekantha veenai. There is some
room for negotiation. Once we buy it, we get it sized and then shaped at the
association space at Sivagangai Poonga.” Wood, however, is risky
business, says Narayanan. “Sometimes there could be small cracks which will
allow water to enter the tree and spoil it. We won’t know until we actually cut
the log!” 

Narayanan estimates that there are 10 full time veenai makers
in Thanjavur and many more who work on it part time. Together they make about
30 veenais a month. From the time a log of wood reaches Thanjavur, it
takes about 30 days for it to become an instrument. “There is definitely a good
demand,” says Narayanan. “Many big artists like Chittibabu and Sivanandham have bought from my father.
The new crop of student artists are also very interested. But most of them buy
from ‘musicals’ in Chennai. Some come here directly and ask for a particular
design or customisation.” And Narayanan loves that. 

What he would love better is if the business thrives. “I’ve
done this work for 45 years. My two sons don’t want to get into this. They are
educated and have jobs. Do you know why?” The pause is filled with pathos.
“This mason,” he points to the person working in his house, “earns 1,200 rupees
a day. And I buy him two vadais and tea on top of that, twice a day. But
for the meticulous work we do, the earning is half of that. There is no rest,
no timing. Sure, it is a good business, but only the middlemen seem to make
money. My workshop is 10 foot by 10. You saw it right? Everything is done by
hand. And yet we get commercial rates for electricity. We tried telling the
authorities it is a cottage industry – but we are not able to make any
representations and sort it out…” 

Narayanan sighs. Behind his house, in the workshop, an old
craftsman sands down a kudam. With chisels, drills and blades, slowly, he
makes the jack wood sing…

This research study is funded by Azim Premji University as part of its Research Funding Programme 2020. 

Goad* - a metal tool carried by the mahout, it
guides the elephant to move/behave in a certain way Mrdangam* - also spelt as mridangam Karnatik* - also spelt as Carnatic [classical
music]

The sweet music of jack wood

کٹہل کی لکڑی سے پیدا ہونے والی مترنم موسیقی

ਕਟਹਲ ਦੀ ਲੱਕੜ 'ਚੋਂ ਉਪਜੇ ਮਿੱਠਾ ਸੰਗੀਤ

ପଣସ କାଠର ସୁମଧୁର ସଂଗୀତ

പ്ലാവിന്റെ മധുരസംഗീതം

ಹಲಸಿನ ಮರದ ಮಧುರ ಸಂಗೀತ

कटहल की लकड़ी का मधुर संगीत

ફણસના ઝાડના લાકડાનું મધુર સંગીત

कटहर लकरी ले निकरत सुग्घर संगीत

सुनीं कटहल के गाछ के मीठ धुन!

কাঁঠাল কাঠ কুঁদে সুরের ঝংকার তোলে কাদের দুই-হাত?

কঁঠাল কাঠত সুৰৰ ঝংকাৰ

பலாமரத்தின் இன்னிசை

Thanjavur

01-_MG_7515-PD-Kunos_caged_cheetahs_and_exiled_Adivasis.jpg

When Gutti Samanya, a Sahariya Adivasi was enlisted as a ‘cheetah mitra’ (friend of the cheetah) by the Madhya Pradesh forest department, he was told to “inform the forest ranger if you see the cats.” It seemed an important enough job, even though not paid. After all, the African cheetahs were coming to Kuno national park from over 8,000 kilometres away, over sea and land, in cargo and military planes and helicopters. The Indian state was spending undisclosed amounts of foreign exchange on their travel, and emptying the coffers for conservation on their stay. Cheetah mitras would keep them safe from poachers, and also save them from irate villagers into whose homes they might stray. So, the roughly 400-500 mitras, all forest dwellers, farmers and daily wagers, spread across small hamlets and villages bordering Kuno-Palpur National Park (KNP), readied for national service. But since the cheetahs landed, they have spent a lot of time in caged spaces, and fences have gone up in the forests of Kuno, both to make sure they stay in, and others stay out. “We are not allowed in. There are new gates at Sesaipura and Bagcha,” says Sirinivas Adivasi who also signed up to be a cheetah mitra.

Gutti and thousands of other Sahariya Adivasis and Dalits, once lived in the forests of Kuno with leopards and other wild animals. In June 2023, he was among the last residents of the park’s Bagcha village who were moved out 40 kilometres away, for the high-profile cheetah project. Now, eight months after losing his home to the cats, he’s a bit miffed at why he has to be locked out of the forest. “How can I be a cheetah mitra if I live so far away from the forest?” he asks. For any Adivasi to even lay eyes on a cheetah has been impossible given the tight security and secrecy surrounding them. Both Gutti and Sirinivas say: “we have only seen a cheetah in a video,” circulated by the forest department. February 2024 marks 16 months since the first batch of eight cats landed in September 2022, followed by a second batch of 12 in 2023; seven of the imported ones have died, as have three of the now 10 born on Indian soil – a total of 10 deaths so far. Nothing to worry about, says the <a href="https://wii.gov.in/cheeta_introduction">Action Plan</a> for cheetah introduction as the criteria for the projects’ success needs a 50 per cent survival rate. But this is for free-ranging cheetahs, while Kuno’s cats have been held in bomas (enclosures) ranging from 50 x 50 metres and 0.5 x 1.5 square kilometre holds to allow them to quarantine, acclimatise, recover from any ill health and possibly hunt – all constructed at an estimated cost of Rs. 15 crores. They have not spent much time ranging in the wild, living, breeding and hunting despite that being a key aim of the project. Instead, cheetahs are hunting in the current camps. However, “they cannot establish territories and start breeding. None of the South African female cheetahs have had sufficient time to interact with males. Six of the seven cubs born at Kuno have the same father, Pavan,” says Dr. Adrian Tordiffe. A veterinarian from South Africa, he was a key member of Project Cheetah before he says he was sidelined and finally dropped for speaking out.

Kuno, once a small sanctuary of <a href="https://www.kunonationalpark.org/about/introduction">350 sq km</a> was doubled in size to become a national park so that wild animals could hunt in the open. Since 1999 over 16,000 Adivasi and Dalit people have been evicted from here for big cats to have a run of the place.  “Hum bahar hai. Cheetah andar [We are out. The cheetahs are in]!” exclaims Mangilal Adivasi, a Sahariya tribal from Bagcha. The 31-year-old newly-displaced young man is desperately trying to get his new fields and home in Chakbamoolya, in Sheopur tehsil, up and running.Gutti, Sirinivas and Mangilal are Sahariya Adivasis, ranked as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) in Madhya Pradesh, and highly dependent on the forest for income from resin, firewood, fruits, roots and herbs. “In Bagcha [from where they were displaced] we had access to the forests. I have left behind my over 1,500 chir gond [resin] trees over which my family has had rights for generations,” says Mangilal. Read: <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/in-kuno-cheetahs-in-adivasis-out/">In Kuno; cheetahs in, Adivasis out</a>. Now he and his village are 30-35 kms from their trees; they cannot even enter their forest – they have been fenced out. “We were told we would get 15 lakh rupees [for the displacement], but we only got three lakh rupees to build a house, 75,000 to buy food and 20,000 for seeds and fertilisers,” says Magilal. The rest – the bulk of over Rs. 12 lakh – he has been told by a displacement committee set up by the forest department – has gone towards the nine bighas (roughly three acres) of land, electricity, roads, water and sanitation.Ballu Adivasi is the patel (headman) of the newly established Bagcha village – the displaced people want the old name to continue. In the fading light of a winter evening he looks around at the construction debris, tents of black tarpaulin and bits of plastic fluttering in the cold wind. Half-finished brick and cement houses stretch into the distance, running parallel to a busy highway into Sheopur town. “We don’t have money to complete our homes or establish our fields with channels and slopes,” he says.

“What you see is not a harvest we planted. We had to give the land on batai [lease] to people from around here. We could not plant a crop with the money they gave us,” says Ballu, who also points out that their land does not compare to the well-ploughed and levelled land of the host village of upper caste people. When PARI interviewed Ballu in 2022 he had pointed out that others who had been displaced were still waiting for the state to fulfil its promises made 20 years ago: “we don’t want to be caught in that situation,” he said then as he dug in against the displacement. Read: <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/in-kuno-park-no-one-gets-the-lions-share/">In Kuno, no one gets the lion’s share</a>But that is exactly where he and the others are now.“When they wanted us to leave Kuno, then phata phat [in no time] they would give in to our demands. Now if you ask, they turn away,” says Gutti Samanya, his cheetah mitra status notwithstanding.

With the last of the Adivasis out, the 748 sq km of the national park is now exclusively for the cheetahs – a rare privilege and one that baffles Indian conservationists. They say it’s the Gangetic Dolphin, Great Indian Bustard, Sea Turtles, Asiatic Lion, Tibetan antelope and other native species that are “highly threatened… and priority species,” as listed in India’s  <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/indias-national-wildlife-action-plan-2017-2031/">Wildlife Action Plan 2017-2031</a>. Not cheetahs. Getting cheetahs to Kuno has required the Indian state to jump hoops through legal and diplomatic obstacles. A 2013 Supreme Court (SC) order had “quashed” the plan to bring African cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) to replace Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus) which had gone extinct in India.But in January 2020, on a plea filed by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), the SC said cheetahs could come on an experimental basis. It also said that the NTCA alone could not decide its viability but should be guided by an expert committee.

The high-level Project Cheetah Steering Committee of roughly 10 members was constituted. But scientist Tordiffe, who was on it, says, “I was never invited [to a meeting].” PARI spoke to many experts involved in the cheetah project who say their counsel has been routinely disregarded and, “people on top have no idea, but will not let us function independently either.” What was clear however was that someone very high up wanted the project to appear to be succeeding and any ‘negative’ news was frowned upon. With the SC ruling opening a window, the cheetah project went full steam. In September 2022, the Prime Minister claimed it a victory for conservation and celebrated his 72nd birthday at Kuno with the first release of imported cheetahs. The Prime Minister’s zeal for conservation is at odds with his alleged role in not allowing lions that were termed by the state as ‘the <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/in-kuno-park-no-one-gets-the-lions-share/">pride</a> of Gujarat’ to leave the state when he was Chief Minister in the early 2000s. This was despite a SC ruling ordering the same as Asiatic lions are on the IUCN  <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/15952/5327221">Red List</a> of threatened species (International Union for Conservation of Nature). Two decades later, a second home for lions continues to be a critical conservation need – we have the only population of the Asiatic lion (Panthera leo ssp persica) and they all live in one location – the Saurashtra peninsula in Gujarat. It was the lions that were supposed to come to Kuno – a conservation agenda rooted in science not politics. Such was the push for cheetahs that India broke its strong stand against ivory sale to appease Namibia – from where the second lot of cats came. Our <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/the-wildlife-protection-act-1972/">Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972</a>, section 49B, prohibits any trade in ivory, even imports. Namibia is an ivory exporter, and so India abstained from voting on the commercial sale of ivory at the Panama meet of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) conference in 2022. A clear case of quid pro quo.

Back in Bagcha, Mangilal says the cats are not on his mind – his concerns are food and firewood for his family of six. “We are not going to be able to survive on farming alone. It won’t be possible,” he says firmly. In their homes inside Kuno they grew bajra, jowar, corn, lentils and vegetables. “This land is good for paddy, but to prepare the land is expensive and we don’t have money.”Sirinivas says he will have to migrate to Jaipur for work. “There are no jobs for us here, and no earnings now that the forest is shut,” says the father of three, the youngest being just eight months old.Jobs for locals was mentioned in the Action Plan for Cheetah Introduction in India  released in November 2021 by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). But besides a hundred jobs around cheetah care and tourism, no locals benefitted.

First lions and now cheetahs are playing a star role in both state and national politics, and image-building of politicians. Conservation aims are an eyewash. The cheetah action plan is a 44-page document that lays the nation’s entire conservation agenda at the feet of the cheetahs who would ‘revive the grasslands…save the black buck…free the forests of humans…’ boost eco-tourism and even our global image would be embellished  – ‘India would be seen to be contributing to world efforts to conserve cheetahs’. Money for the project has come from the roughly Rs. 195 crore budget (2021) of the NTCA, the MoEFCC and public sector IndianOil’s corporate social responsibility (CSR). No other animal or bird has ever had it so good with money, manpower and management coming from Delhi. Ironically, it is exactly this intense attention from the Centre that has put the cheetah project into jeopardy. “Rather than trusting the state government, the GoI officials chose to control the project from Delhi. That lead to many issues being left unaddressed, says J.S. Chauhan.He was the Chief Wildlife Warden of Madhya Pradesh when the cats came. “I requested them that we don’t have enough space in KNP for 20 plus cheetahs and to allow us to send some animals to an alternate location as identified in the Cheetah Action Plan.” Chouhan is referring to Mukandra Hills Tiger Reserve [in neighbouring Rajasthan] that has  <a href="https://ntca.gov.in/assets/uploads/briefnote/mukundara.pdf">759 sq km</a> of fenced-in forest.

A veteran Indian Forest Service officer, Chauhan says he wrote multiple letters requesting S.P. Yadav, Member Secretary, NTCA to “take appropriate decisions keeping in mind requirements of the species,” but got no response and was relieved from his post in July 2023, and retired a few months later. Those managing the cheetahs on the ground were told categorically that sending the prize animals to a state (Rajasthan) then ruled by the opposition Congress government was not possible. “At least not till the elections [held in November and December 2023].” Cheetah welfare was no longer a priority. “We were naive to believe it was a simple conservation project,” says a chastened Tordiffe, who feels he now needs to distance himself from the project. “We did not anticipate the political impact of this.” He says he has done many other cheetah translocations but they were conservation-led, lacking this intense political juggling. After the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party returned to power in MP in December, a press release was issued saying that Gandhi Sagar wildlife sanctuary (not a tiger reserve) also in Madhya Pradesh will be readied for the next translocation of cheetahs. But where the third tranche of cheetahs will come from is not clear since South Africa is not rushing to send more animals as their government has received a lashing from conservationists at home who are asking why cheetahs are being sent to die in India. “There was some mention of asking Kenya, but Kenya&#39;s population of cheetahs is declining,” says an expert who prefers to remain anonymous.

“Jangal mein mangal ho gaya [The jungle is alight with celebration],” says Mangilal, half in jest. A safari park doesn’t need wild cheetahs, caged ones will do just as well. Cheetahs have the weight of the Indian state behind them – a bunch of veterinary doctors, a new hospital, over 50 trackers, 15 drivers of camper vans, 100 forest guards, wireless operators, infra-red cameras operators and even more than one helipad for important visitors. That’s only in the core area. The buffer zone also has its staff of guards and rangers. Radio collared and tracked; the cheetahs are not ‘in the wild’ so exposure to humans is an event yet to happen. No locals are cheering as weeks before the cats landed, armed guards carrying rifles and accompanied by sniffer Alsatian dogs walked into their hamlets bordering the KNP. The men flashed their uniform and the dogs flashed their teeth – people were warned that if they messed with the cheetahs, the sniffer dogs would find their scent and be let loose to kill.

Kuno was chosen for having “adequate prey base,” says the Introduction of Cheetah in India, <a href="https://ntca.gov.in/assets/uploads/Reports/Others/Project_Cheetah_Annual_Report.pdf">Annual Report 2023</a>. But either those facts are wrong, or the government is not taking any chances. “We need to build the prey base in KNP,” is what this reporter was told by Aseem Shrivastva, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF), Madhya Pradesh. He took over in July 2023 and says the leopard population has grown to roughly 100 animals, putting pressure on food.“We are building a 100-hectare enclosure to breed chital [spotted deer] as prey supplementation is critical,” adds Shrivastava, a career Indian Forest Service officer who has spent over two decades managing Pench, Kanha and Bandhavgarh tiger reserves. Funds are not a problem for the cheetahs – the recently released <a href="https://ntca.gov.in/assets/uploads/Reports/Others/Project_Cheetah_Annual_Report.pdf">report</a> says, “Cheetah introduction phase 1 is for five years with a budget of INR 39 Crores (US$ 5 million).” “The most hyped and one of the most expensive conservation projects,” is how conservation scientist, Dr. Ravi Chellam describes the cheetah introduction. He says supplemental feeding of the cats is setting a dangerous precedent. “If this is about conservation, by supplementing prey, we are upsetting the natural process with unknown consequences. We should be treating these cheetahs as wild animals,” adds the wildlife biologist who has studied the lion and is now watching the cheetah project carefully. By holding them captive for prolonged periods and releasing prey animals into the relatively small enclosures, we are actually reducing their fitness in the long-term, adds Chellam, who had <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/in-kuno-cheetahs-in-adivasis-out/">warned</a> in 2022: “It’s going to be nothing but a glorified and expensive safari park.” His words are coming true: Cheetah safaris started with a five-day festival on December 17, 2023 and have already been used by around 100-150 people a day who are spending anything from Rs. 3,000 to 9,000 for a jeep safari into Kuno.

Upcoming hotels and safari operators are raking it in – a night’s stay at an ‘eco’resort’ with a cheetah safari is priced between Rs 10,000 to 18,000 for two people. Back in Bagcha, money is scarce and futures uncertain. “We got no benefit from the cheetah coming,” says Ballu. “If they had given us the full amount of 15 lakh rupees, we could have got our fields laid out properly with channels and levels, and finished building our homes.”  Mangilal adds worriedly, “we are not doing any work, so how are we going to eat?” Other aspects of daily life of the Sahariyas have also taken a hit. Deepi, a student of Class 8 in his old school, has dropped out after coming to the new settlement. “There is no school close by,” he says. The closest school is too far away. Younger kids have been fortunate – a teacher arrives every morning to instruct them under the open skies – there is no building. “But they all go,” says Mangilal grinning at my surprise. He reminds me that it’s the holidays in early January and the teacher has not come today. A borewell has been dug for drinking water for the residents, and large water tanks are lying around. The complete absence of sanitation facilities is particularly tough for women.” Tell me what should we [women] should do?” says Omvati. “There are no toilets. And the land has been cleared so completely, there are no trees behind which women can hide. We can’t go in the open or in the standing crop which is all around.”

The 35-year-old mother of five, says she has other more pressing problems than the grass and tarp tents they now live in: “We have to go very far to bring firewood. The forest is now far away. How will we manage [in the future]?” Others say they managing on the little wood they brought with them when they came, and the roots they are pulling out of their land, but that will soon be over. The huge loss of non timer forest produce (NTFP) is being felt all around Kuno as the cheetah project has raised new fences. More on that in the next story. The cheetah action plan had noted that 40 per cent of revenues from tourism should be ploughed back into the surrounding communities, a “Cheetah Conservation Foundation for those displaced, paid incentives to cheetah watchers in each village, eco- development projects like roads, sanitation, schools and more for surrounding villages.’ Eighteen months later it remains only on paper. “How long will we live like this?” asks Omvati Adivasi. Cover image by Adrian Tordiffe

Kuno’s caged cheetahs and exiled Adivasis

کونو میں قید چیتے اور بے گھر کیے گئے آدیواسیوں کا حال

அடைக்கப்பட்ட சிறுத்தைப் புலிகளும் வெளியேற்றப்பட்ட பழங்குடியினரும்

ਕੁਨੋ: ਚੀਤੇ ਆਪਣੇ ਮੁਲਕੋਂ ਉਜੜੇ, ਉਜੜੇ ਆਦਿਵਾਸੀ ਆਪਣੀ ਜ਼ਮੀਨ ਤੋਂ

କୁନୋର ଖୁଆଡ଼ ଆବଦ୍ଧ ଚିତା ଓ ନିର୍ବାସିତ ଆଦିବାସୀ

कुनोमध्ये चित्ते पिंजऱ्यात आणि आदिवासी वनवासात

കുനോയിലെ കൂട്ടിലടച്ച ചീറ്റപുലികളും നാടുകടത്തപ്പെട്ട ആദിവാസികളും

ಕುನೋ: ಪಂಜರದಲ್ಲಿ ಚಿರತೆಗಳು ಮತ್ತು ಬೀದಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಆದಿವಾಸಿಗಳು

કુનોના જંગલમાં પાંજરામાં ચિત્તા અને સરહદપાર આદિવાસીઓ

कुनो के पिंजरा मं चीता, बेदखल आदिवासी

‘चीता सभ मरे खातिर भारत काहे भेजात बा’

কুনোয় খাঁচাবন্দি চিতা, ছিন্নমূল আদিবাসী

কুনোৰ আবদ্ধ চিতা আৰু নিৰ্বাসিত আদিবাসী

कूनो: क़ैद में मरते चीते, ज़िंदगी से जूझते आदिवासी

Vijaypur Tahsil, Sheopur, Madhya Pradesh, 476332, India

01-20230106_1354263-AK-Everybody_loves_a_good_pickle.jpg

Here we are
in the scrub jungle, looking for the ‘Devil’s backbone.’ That’s what pirandai<a> </a>(Cissus quadrangularis) is
called anyway. This square-stalked creeper that Rathy and I are searching for
has many fine qualities. Typically, the tender new stem is picked, cleaned and
preserved with red chilli powder, salt and sesame oil. Done properly, the
pickle so created stays unspoilt for a year. And it tastes great with rice.

It&#39;s a warm
January afternoon and our path to the jungle follows an ancient, dried-up
creek. It has an evocative Tamil name: Ellaiathaamman Odai. Literally,
the stream of the Goddess Without Boundaries. It’s a phrase that gives you
goosebumps. And the trail – over rocks and sand, wide here, wet there – gives
me some more.

Rathy tells
me stories as we walk. Some are fictional and fun – on oranges and butterflies.
Many are real and chilling – on the politics of food and caste clashes that
spiked during the nineties, when she was in high school. “My family fled to
Thoothukudi…”

Two decades
later, Rathy is back in her village as a professional storyteller, library
consultant and puppeteer. She talks slowly; she reads fast. “During the covid
pandemic, in seven months, I read 22,000 big and small children’s books. At
some point, my assistant begged me every day to stop reading. Otherwise, I
began talking in dialogues.” And she laughs.

Her laughter
is a gurgle, like the river she’s named after: Bhagirathy. She goes by the
abbreviated Rathy, and lives about 3,000 kilometres south of the Himalayas
where her namesake becomes the Ganges. Her village – Thenkalam, in Tamil Nadu’s
Tirunelveli district – is surrounded by hills and scrub jungles. She knows them
well, just as everybody in the village knows her. 

“Why are you going to the jungle?” ask the women
labourers. “We’re foraging for pirandai,” Rathy replies. “Who is that
woman? Your friend?” demands the cowherd. &quot;Yes, yes,&quot; Rathy grins, I
wave and we walk on...

Foraging for
plants is a widespread, traditional practise across cultures and continents. It
is tied in closely with the idea of Commons – the physical, natural and other
resources available to all members of a society – where the wild produce of the
region is consumed locally, seasonally and sustainably.

In <a href="https://publications.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/4670/1/soppu.pdf">Chasing Soppu</a>, a book that celebrates urban foraging in the city
of Bengaluru, the authors write that “collecting and utilising wild plants
helps to preserve local ethno-ecological and ethno-botanical knowledge.” They
note that – like in Thenkalam – it is women who typically gather wild plants.
“They are vital knowledge holders and experts on the local wild plants around
them. They know what parts of the plants are used for food, medicine, or
cultural uses, and which is the best season to forage. They also have delicious
recipes that have been passed down through the generations.”  

An easy and appealing
way to make seasonal produce last the year is to preserve them. Among the most
popular methods are dry curing and wet pickling. In south India, particularly
in Tamil Nadu, sesame (gingelly) oil is used instead of the more common
agent vinegar.

“Sesame oil contains sesamin and sesamol. These
compounds are natural antioxidants and act as a preservative,” says Mary
Sandhya J, who has an M.Tech in Food Technology and her own brand of fish
pickle called ‘Aazhi’ (Ocean). Sandhya prefers cold pressed sesame oil
in her fish pickle, “mainly for the shelf-life extension, nutritional benefits,
taste and colour.”

Rathy’s
family uses sesame oil in a number of preparations – pickle and gravies, made
with vegetables and meats. But food hierarchies rankle her. “When an animal is
killed in the village, the good parts used to go to the higher caste people.
And offals [entrails and internal organs of the animal] came to us. We don’t
have a history of meat dishes because we were never given the best cuts. We
were only given the blood!” she says.

“Oppression, geography, local species of flora, fauna and animals, and
caste hierarchy have deeply influenced the food culture of Dalit, Bahujan and
Adivasi communities in ways that social scientists are still trying to map,” writes Vinay Kumar, in an essay titled &#39;Blood Fry and other Dalit recipes from my childhood&#39; published in online magazine Goya.

Rathy’s
mother Vadivammal has an “amazing method to clean blood, intestines and
different parts,” she says. “Last Sunday, amma cooked blood. It is a
delicacy in the city: blood sausage and blood pudding. Brain fry is supposed to
be a super food. When I went to a city, I found the valorisation weird. Paying lots
of money for what I would get for 20 rupees in the village.”

Her mother is
also deeply knowledgeable about vegetation. “If you turn around, there are
medicinal herbs and oils in those bottles,” Rathy tells me, in their living
room. “My mother knows all the names and uses. Pirandai is supposed to
have excellent digestive properties. Amma shows me what plant or herb she
wants, I go to the forest, forage and clean it for her.”

These are seasonal produce and not available in the
market. Each trip takes her roughly four hours and she walks up to 10
kilometres to look for the plants. “But after I bring them home,” Rathy
laughs, “I don’t know what happens to them.”

The walk to
the forest is enchanting. Much like a pop-up book for children, every turn has
a surprise: butterflies here, birds there, and trees that throw big, beautiful
shadows. Rathy points at berries which aren’t yet ripe for picking. “In a few
days, they will be delicious,” she says. We rootle around for pirandai,
but they’re all gone. “Someone’s picked them before us,” Rathy says. “But don’t
worry, we’ll find some on our way back.”

As if to make
up, she stops under a huge tamarind tree, bends a heavy branch and plucks a few
pods. Snapping the brown shell between our thumb and forefingers, we devour the
sweet-sour flesh. Her early reading memories include tamarinds. “I used to
squirrel away in a corner, with a book, and chomp on green tamarind.” When she
was a little older, she sat on a Kodukkapuli maram [monkey pod tree] in
the backyard and read books. “Amma chopped it down because I was
climbing it when I was 14 or 15!” And she bursts out laughing.

It’s high
noon and the sun beats down on our heads. It’s unusually fierce and withering
for January. “Just a little further,” Rathy says, “we’ll reach the puliyuthu,
that’s the water source for the village.” There are tiny patches of water along
the edges of the dried-up stream. Butterflies dance on the mud puddles. They
open their wings (inside, an iridescent blue) and shut their wings (outside, an
ordinary brown). When I think it can’t get more magical…it does.

Puliyuthu, the pond, is next to an ancient temple for the village goddess. Right
across, Rathy points out, a new one for Lord Ganesha has come up. We sit under
a huge banyan tree and eat oranges. Everything around us is soft – the afternoon
light deep in the forest; the sweet scent of citrus; the orange and black
fishes. And softly, Rathy tells me a story. ‘This one is called Pith, Pip and Peel,’ she begins. I listen, rapt.

Rathy always
loved stories. Her earliest memory is her father Samudram, who was a bank
manager, getting her Mickey Mouse comics. “I remember very well: he got my
brother Ganga a video game, my sister Narmada a toy, and he got me a book!”
Rathy picked up the habit of reading from her father. He had a huge collection
of books. Plus, her primary school had an extensive library. “They did not
gatekeep the books and even opened up the rare section for me – national
geographic and encyclopaedias, which were usually locked up. All because I
liked books!”

She loved
them so much, she spent her childhood reading. “There was this book translated
from the Russian, which I thought we lost. I didn’t remember the title, only
the images and story. Last year, I found it on Amazon. It’s about sea lions and
sailing. Do you want to hear it?” And she narrates the story, her voice rising
and falling, much like the waves and sea she describes.

Her childhood
too was choppy, much like the sea. She recalls the violence around her, when
she was in high school. “Stabbing. Buses being burnt. We constantly heard about
it. In the village, we had a culture, they would screen a movie during
festivals and functions. That was a prime source of violence. There would be a
stabbing. When I was in Class 8, the violence was at its peak. Have you seen
the movie Karnan? Our lives were like that.” <a href="https://ijels.com/detail/karnan-the-social-commentary-for-change/">Karnan</a> is a fictionalised account of the 1995
caste-riots in Kodiyankulam and stars actor Dhanush in the lead. ‘The story revolves​ around Karnan, a fearless and compassionate young man​ from a marginalized Dalit community who becomes the​ symbol of resistance against oppression.’
‘The upper-caste​ villagers
enjoy privilege and power, while the Dalits face​ discrimination.’ 

Until the
late nineties when caste violence peaked, Rathy’s father used to live in a
different city, where he worked. And she and her siblings stayed in the village
with their mother. But for Classes 9, 10, 11 and 12 she moved to a different
school each year. 

Her life and experiences influenced her career
choices. “Look, I was a reader, in Tirunelveli, 30 years ago. There was nobody
to curate books for me. I picked up Shakespeare in primary school. Do you know
one of my favourite books is [George Eliot’s] Mill On the Floss? It is
about colourism and classism. It has a female with a dark skin as the lead. It
is prescribed in undergraduate courses. But since someone had donated it to
school, I read it in Class 4 and related to the lead character. I was also
hurt by her story…”

Several years later, when
Rathy rediscovered children’s books, it set the course for her career. “I had
no idea you had books for children. I had no idea there were books like Where
the Wild Things Are and Ferdinand. They had been around for 80 or 90
years and kids in cities had read them. It made me think – what if I had access
to these books when I was young? My journey would have been different. I’m not
saying better, but different.”

Then again, reading is still
seen as something that is taking away from academic work. “It’s seen as
entertainment,” she shakes her head, “not skill building. Parents too only buy
academic and activity books, they don’t see how kids can learn while having fun
reading storybooks. Plus, there is a huge rural-urban gap. The kids from the
villages are at least two to three scales (in reading levels) behind their
counterparts in cities.”

And this is why Rathy likes
working with rural kids. She has been conducting Lit-fests and book-fests for
six years now, besides curating village libraries. Very often, she says, you
find qualified librarians who maintain a great catalogue, but won’t always know
what’s inside the book. “If they can’t recommend what you can read, it doesn’t
make sense!”

Rathy lowers her voice conspiratorially. “One time a librarian asked me
“why are you letting children inside the library ma’am?” You should have seen
my reaction!” And her incredulous laughter fills the afternoon.

We find the pirandai while walking back home.
They’re tough and twisted over plants and shrubs. Rathy shows me the light
green shoots we should pluck. The creeper breaks with a snap. She gathers it in
her hand, a small tidy stack of pirandai, ‘Devil’s backbone’, the name
making us laugh again.

The plant will grow fresh
shoots after a rain, Rathy promises. “We never pick the dark green parts.
That’s like removing the breeding fish, isn’t it? How can you have small fry
then?”

The walk back to the village
is blistering. The sun is harsh, the palm trees and scrub jungle are brown and
dry. The earth shimmers in the heat. A flock of migratory birds – black ibis –
take flight as we walk closer. They soar gracefully, tucking their feet,
spreading their wings. We reach the village square, where Dr. Ambedkar stands
tall, with the Constitution in his hands. “I think it was only after the
violence that his statue was protected with an iron mesh.”

Rathy’s house is a few minutes
from the statue. Back in the living room, she tells me she finds stories
cathartic. “There are a lot of emotions I play on the stage as a storyteller
that I would not bring out otherwise. Even very simple emotions like
frustration and exhaustion, you tend to cover it up and hustle along. But these
are emotions I reveal on stage.”

The audience was not watching
Rathy, she points out, but the character she was playing. Even grief finds an
outlet on stage. “I have a beautiful fake cry that makes people run towards the
room, saying they heard someone wail.” I ask if she can perform the wail for
me, but Rathy laughs. “Not here, certainly not here, at least three relatives
will come running asking what happened…”

It’s time for me to leave, and Rathy packs a generous batch of pirandai pickle.
It glistens with oil, it’s studded with garlic. And it smells like heaven, and reminds
me of the long walk on a warm day, to forage for green shoots and stories…

Rathy’s mother Vadivammal’s
recipe for pirandai
pickle:

Clean the pirandai
and chop it fine. Wash well and drain well in a colander. There must be no
water. Take a pan and add enough sesame oil for the pirandai.
When hot, splutter mustard seeds, and add methi seeds and garlic pods if
you like. Saute well until it becomes a rich copper colour. Pre-soak a ball of
tamarind in water and squeeze for pulp – tamarind cuts the irritation that pirandai
can cause. (Sometimes even when washing and cleaning it, the plant can make
your hands itch.)

Add the tamarind water, followed by salt, turmeric powder, red chilli
powder and asafoetida. Keep stirring, until the pirandai cooks
well, and the whole mixture comes together, and the sesame oil floats on top.
Let the pickle cool, and bottle it. It should keep for a year.

This research study is funded by Azim Premji University as part of its Research Funding Programme 2020.

Everybody loves a good pickle

مزیدار اچار سبھی کو پسند ہے

ਮਸਾਲੇਦਾਰ ਅਚਾਰ ਕੌਣ ਪਸੰਦ ਨਹੀਂ ਕਰੇਗਾ?

ଭଲ ଆଚାରକୁ ସଭିଏଁ ଭଲ ପାଆନ୍ତି

लज्जतदार लोणच्याची लोककहाणी

എല്ലാവരും ഒരു നല്ല അച്ചാറിനെ സ്നേഹിക്കുന്നു

ಒಳ್ಳೆಯ ಉಪ್ಪಿನಕಾಯಿ ಅಂದ್ರೆ ಎಲ್ಲರಿಗೂ ಇಷ್ಟ

अचार: जिसके स्वाद की दीवानी है दुनिया

ચટાકેદાર અથાણું કોને ન ભાવે?

बढ़िहा अथान सब्बो ला भाथे

अचार केकरा ना भावे!

টকঝাল আচারে জারানো মনের জমিন

ভাল আচাৰৰ জুতি কোনেনো নোলোৱাকৈ থাকে

உணவின் சுவை கூட்டும் ஊறுகாயின் கதை!

Thenkalam

01-_PAL5500-AK-Open_Sesame.jpg

In the gathering darkness on the sandy bank of the Kollidam river, 10
minutes from his sesame fields near Srirangam, farmer Vadivelan tells me stories.
Of this very river in spate, 12 days after he was born in 1978. Of his village,
where everybody grew ellu (sesame seed) that is crushed for its honey-coloured,
fragrant oil. Of learning to swim ‘clutching two banana plants that floated on
the water,’ falling in love with Priya, who lived on the banks of a bigger
river – Cauvery, marrying her despite his father’s objections. And farming
their one and a half acres with paddy, sugarcane, black gram and sesame… 

The first three crops fetch some money. “We use the income from raising
paddy to cultivate sugarcane, and we plough that money back into the land,”
Vadivelan explains. Sesame – ellu in Tamil – is raised for oil. The
seeds are crushed in a wood press, and the nallenai (sesame or gingelly
oil) is stored in a large pot. “We use it for cooking, to make pickles,” Priya
says, “oh, and he gargles daily with it.” Vadivelan grins. “And oil-baths,” he
says, “I love that!” 

There are many things Vadivelan loves, and all of them are simple
pleasures. Fishing in this river as a young boy, grilling and eating the fresh
catch with his friends; watching the only television in the village, in the
panchayat leader’s house. “Why, I liked TV so much, I would even listen to the ‘oiiin’
sound when it didn’t work properly!”   

But the rose-tinted nostalgia fades, just like the daylight. “You can no
longer depend on the land alone,” Vadivelan points out. “We manage because I
also drive a cab.” He’s brought us in his Toyota Etios from his house in Thiruvalarsolai, Srirangam taluk to the river bank.
He had bought the car with a private loan at eight per cent interest; the
repayment is a hefty Rs. 25,000 a month. Money is always a struggle, the couple
says. Often, a piece of gold is pledged to tide over tough times. “Look, if
people like us wanted a bank loan to build a house,” Vadivelan sighs, “we will
wear down 10 pairs of chappals. That’s how much they will make us run around!” 

The sky is now an oil painting: pink and blue and
black. A peacock calls from somewhere. “There are otters in the river,”
Vadivelan says. Not far from us, young boys dive and play as nimble as otters.  “That’s what I did too, there was no other
entertainment growing up here!”

Vadivelan also worships the
rivers. “Every year, on Aadi Perukku - the 18th day in the
Tamil month of Aadi – all of us go to the banks of Cauvery. We break a
coconut, light camphor and offer flowers and prayers.” As if in return, Cauvery
and Kollidam (Coleroon) nourish their fields here in Tiruchirappalli (also spelt as Trichy) district of Tamil Nadu, as the rivers have done, for almost
2,000 years.

“Offering steamed lentils, sesame seed balls, rice mixed
with meat, 
flowers, incense and freshly cooked
rice 
women hold hands together and dance in
a trance 
as old elegant women bless and
proclaim 
“In this great land led by our ruler 
may hunger, disease and enmity leave; 
may rains and wealth spring forth”

This prayer ritual, from the Tamil epic Silappathikaaram, written in the 2nd century CE, “is almost
the same as it is practiced in Tamil Nadu today,” writes Chenthil Nathan, in
his blog Old Tamil Poetry. [Poem: Indira Vizhavu, lines 68-75] 

Ellu (sesame)
is both ancient and commonplace. And a crop that has various – and interesting
– uses. Nallenai, as sesame oil is called, is a popular cooking fat in
south India, and the seeds are also used in native and foreign desserts. The
little white or black sesame lends a lovely bite to savoury dishes, and it is
an important part of rituals, particularly ones where ancestors are remembered
or worshipped. 

Sesame seeds contain 50 per cent oil, 25 per cent
protein and 15 per cent carbohydrate. An Indian Council for Agricultural
Research (ICAR) project on <a href="https://icar-iior.org.in/sites/default/files/iiorcontent/pops/sesame.pdf">sesame</a> and niger notes that , it is a ‘store house of energy
and very rich in vitamins E, A, B Complex and minerals viz., calcium,
phosphorus, iron, copper, magnesium, zinc and potassium.’ Not surprisingly, the
meal after the oil is pressed – ellu punaaku – is fed to livestock.

‘Sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) is the <a href="https://icar-iior.org.in/sites/default/files/iiorcontent/pops/sesame.pdf">oldest</a> indigenous oilseed crop, with the longest
history of cultivation in India.’ The Handbook of Agriculture, published by the
ICAR goes on to add that India is the largest producer of sesame in the world,
accounting for 24 per cent of the land worldwide where the crop is grown. It
also notes that India accounts for 12 to 15 per cent of the world’s oilseeds
area, 7 to 8 per cent of the output and 9 to 10 per cent of global consumption.


This isn’t some modern phenomenon, though. K.T. Achaya, in his
pioneering work Indian Food, A historical companion notes that there is
plenty of evidence regarding its export. 

Historic descriptions of the sesame trade from south Indian ports date
back to at least the 1st century CE. The Periplus Maris Erythraei (Circumnavigation
of the Erythrean Sea), authored by an unknown Greek-speaking Egyptian sailor
writing from first-hand experience, records great details of the trade of that
time. He mentions, that among the precious commodities sent abroad – including
ivory and muslin – were sesame oil and gold, both from Kongunadu, in the
western part of present-day Tamil Nadu. The pairing seems to indicate the
stature of the oil.

Local trade, Achaya notes, was vibrant too. A picture of the town of
Madurai in the Mathuraikkanchi written by Mankudi Maruthanar conveys the
excitement of the marketplace: ‘Sacks of pepper and sixteen kinds of grains
such as paddy, millet, gram, peas and sesame seeds are heaped in the grain
merchant’s street.’

Sesame oil had royal patronage. Achaya’s book Indian Food
mentions Domingo Paes, a Portuguese merchant who lived for several years in
Vijayanagar around 1520. Paes wrote about King Krishnadevaraya: 

“The king is accustomed to drink a three-quarter pint
of gingelly (sesame) oil before daylight and anoints himself with the same oil;
he covers his loin with a small cloth and takes in his hand great weights, and
then taking his sword exercises himself till he has sweated out all the oil.”

Vadivelan’s father Palanivel would have approved. He seems, from every
description, to have been a sports-loving man. “He maintained his physique
carefully. He lifted stones [weights], taught kushti in the coconut
grove. He also knew Silambam [ancient martial art of Tamil Nadu mentioned in
Sangam literature] very well.” 

The family only used sesame from their fields for oil,
and occasionally coconut oil. Both were stored in large vessels. “I remember so
well, my father used to drive a Raleigh cycle, and load it with sacks of black
gram and go to Gandhi Market in Trichy. He’d come back with chilli, mustard,
pepper and tamarind. It was like a barter. And the kitchen would be stocked for
the year!

Vadivelan and Priya got married in 2005.
Their wedding was held in the Vayaloor Murugan temple, near Trichy. “My father
did not come, he did not approve of our marriage,” Vadivelan says. “To make it
worse, my friends who came to the village to pick up my relatives promptly went
and asked my father if he was coming. He got furious!” Vadivelan bursts out
laughing. 

We’re seated in the couple’s house, in the
hall, next to a shelf full of pictures of gods. On the wall, there are photos
of the family – selfies, holidays, portraits, and a television which is Priya’s
escape, when she can find the time. The kids are away when we visit, both at
school. Their dog comes to say hullo. “That’s Julie,” Vadivelan says. “She’s
pretty,” I admire her. “It’s a boy,” Vadivelan grins. Julie walks away
unhappily. Priya invites us to eat. She’s prepared a feast, with vadai
and payasam. She serves us on a plantain leaf. The food is delicious.
And heavy.

To stay awake, we talk business. What is it
like to raise sesame? “Frustrating,” says Vadivelan. Farming itself is, he
points out. “Returns are poor. But input prices keep going up. Urea is so
expensive, as are the other fertilisers. Then we have to plough the field, sow
the sesame seeds. Next, we have to raise furrows, so that water flows in
between. And we only irrigate the field when the sun is down.” 

The first proper watering is around the third
week, Priya explains. By then, the plant is so high, she holds her hands nine
or 10 inches off the ground. “Then it starts growing quickly. In the fifth
week, you remove the weeds, add urea, and irrigate it every 10 days or so. If
there’s good sunshine, you’ll get a good yield.” While Vadivel goes to work, Priya watches the fields.
At any time, they have at least two crops in their one and a half acres. She
wraps up the house work, sends the kids to school, packs a meal for herself and
drives her bicycle to join the labourers in her field. “At 10 in the morning,
we need to buy everybody tea. And after lunch, it is tea and palakaram [snacks].
Usually we get suiyam [sweet] and urulai bonda [a savoury].” She
zips up and down, fetching, carrying, bending, lifting, cooking, cleaning...
“Have some juice,” she says, before we leave to see their fields.

The ellu vayal, sesame field, is a
thing of beauty. The flowers are delicate, almost ornamental, and they come in
shades of pink and white, reminiscent of chiffon sarees and French manicures.
Hardly the stodgy oil that’s the staple of south Indian kitchens.

The sesame plant is tall and thin, with dark
green leaves. There are many green pods on the stem. Each is as big as an
almond, and shaped like a cardamon. Priya pops one for us. Inside, there are
several small pale white sesame seeds. It’s tough to imagine how many of these
need to be crushed for a spoonful of oil. Why, a single idli is
typically coated with at least two, and some idli podi (a dry
chutney). 

It’s hard to think straight though – the
April sun is ferocious. We seek out a little shade in a grove nearby. This is
where the women agricultural labourers too rest, Vadivelan says. Many of them
are hard at ­­­­work in his neighbour Gopal’s black gram field. They’ve wrapped
cotton towels over their heads, to protect themselves from the great heat of
the day. They work without pause, with breaks only for lunch and tea.

All of them are older women. The oldest,
perhaps, is V. Mariyaayi, in her seventies. When she’s not weeding or
transplanting or harvesting, she takes tulasi (holy basil) garlands to
the Srirangam temple and sells them there. She speaks softly. The sun blazes.
Relentlessly… 

The sesame plant apparently doesn’t mind the
sun. It doesn’t mind a lot of things, Vadivelan’s neighbour S. Gopal, 65, tells
me. And Vadivelan and Priya agree. The three farmers barely talk about
pesticide and sprays – those are only mentioned in passing – and neither do
they fret about water. Sesame is by all accounts similar to millets – easy to
raise, requiring little attention. What can damage it is unseasonal rain. 

And that’s what happened in 2022. “It rained
when it shouldn’t – in January and February when the plant was young, stunting
the growth,” says Vadivelan. He is close to harvesting the field, but only
expects a very small yield. “We got 150 kilograms from the 30 cents (a third of
an acre) we planted last year. This time, I doubt it will cross 40 kgs.” 

This quantity, the couple estimates, will
barely meet their annual oil need. “We grind the seed in batches of about 15 to
18 kilograms. That fetches us around seven or eight litres of oil. We need at
least two batches, to get by,” explains Priya. Vadivelan promises to take us to
an oil-mill the next day. But what about the seeds? How are they collected?  Gopal kindly invites us to watch. His sesame field is
a little away, next to a brick kiln where many migrant families live and work –
earning the grand sum of one rupee a brick. It’s where they raise their
children (who in turn raise goats and poultry). The kiln is quiet in the
evening. And M. Seeniammal, a brick kiln worker, walks over to help.

First, Gopal removes the tarpaulin that
covers the harvested sesame plants. They’ve been heaped together for a few
days, to increase temperature and humidity and encourage the seeds to pop.
Seeniammal turns the stalks over expertly with a stick. The pods are ripe and ready;
they burst and the mature seeds fall out. She gathers them with her hands and makes
little mounds. And repeats the process until all the stalks are empty. 

Priya, Gopal and others collect
the stalks and bundle them. They no longer serve as fuel. “I remember they were
used to boil paddy. But we get that done in the rice mill now. Sesame stalk is
simply burnt,” Vadivelan explains. 

Many old practises have vanished, Gopal
continues. He’s especially upset that the concept of uyir veli (live
fencing) has disappeared. “When we had them, jackals lived in burrows along the
hedges. And they kept a check on birds and animals which ate up our crops. You
just don’t see jackals now!” he laments. 

“Very true,” Vadivelan agrees. “There were jackals
everywhere. Before I got married, I picked up a pup near the river bank,
thinking it was some kind of fluffy dog. My father immediately said it looked a
bit off. That night a group of adult jackals howled behind our house. I went
back and left the cub where I found it!” While we chat, Seeniammal transfers the sesame seeds –
now mixed with straw and dried leaf – onto a winnow. She raises it over her
head, and expertly shakes it. The process is at once graceful and vigorous. And
skilled. The sesame falls like rain, like music.

An old Tamil song plays on the radio at Sri
Ranga Marachekku (a wood press) at Srirangam. The owner R. Raju is seated behind
the cash register. The mill whines as it crushes the sesame seeds. Big steel
vessels brim with golden yellow oil. More sesame seeds dry in the backyard. 

“It takes 1.5 hours to grind 18 kilos of
sesame seeds. We add 1.5 kilos of palm jaggery to it. The yield is about 8
litres. Slightly less than what you’d get in a steel mill,” Raju explains. He
charges clients 30 rupees to grind a kilo. And sells cold pressed sesame oil
for Rs.420 a litre. “We only use first quality – bought directly from the
farmer or from the Gandhi market at 130 rupees a kilo – and good quality palm
jaggery at 300 rupees a kilo to enhance the flavour of the oil.” 

The machine runs four times, between 10 a.m. and
5 p.m. and the freshly squeezed oil is kept out in the sun till it clears. The de-oiled
cake (ellu punaaku) has some residual oiliness, and farmers buy it at
Rs. 35 a kilogram for their livestock. 

Raju reckons he spends a little over Rs. 20,000
to farm, harvest, clean and bag an acre of sesame. The yield is typically upwards
of 300 kilos of sesame. He calculates a profit between Rs. 15,000 to 17,000 an
acre for this three-month crop.And that’s where the problem lies, Vadivelan says.
“You know who benefits from our labour? Traders. When the crop changes hands,
they make twice the amount they paid us,” he alleges. “What is their value addition?”
he shakes his head. “That’s why we don’t sell sesame. We raise it for the house,
for our own consumption. Enough…”

At Trichy’s busy Gandhi Market, the sesame
shops are humming with activity. Farmers sit outside, on sacks of black gram,
green gram and sesame. Traders are seated inside the cavernous shops that belonged
to their grandfathers. P. Saravanan, 45, says there’s more black gram around
the day we visit. Women and men labourers sieve and weigh and pack the dal.
“The local sesame harvest has just begun,” he points out. “The sacks will start
coming in soon.” 

But even at its peak, S. Chandrasekaran, 55,
estimates the output to be only a fourth of the crop they saw in his father’s
time. “In June, there used to around 2,000 ellu mootai [sesame sacks]
coming to Gandhi Market every day. The past few years, it’s down to 500.
Farmers are quitting. This [crop] is so laborious. The price is not going up – it
hovers between 100 and 130 rupees a kilo. So, they’re switching to black gram
which can be harvested with a machine and stored in sacks on the same day.” 

But the price of the oil is high, I point out,
and only going up. Why don’t farmers get a better price? “It depends on the
market,” Chandrasekaran replies, “on supply and demand, on the production in
other states, on the stock that big oil mill owners pile up.” It is the same story everywhere, for every crop and
commodity. The ‘market’ is benevolent to some, and malevolent to others. It’s fairly
obvious who it favours...

The edible oil
industry has a long and complex history of imports and displacements: of crops
and cultural practices. As Dr. Richa Kumar, Associate Professor of Sociology
and Policy Studies at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, explains in a
paper: “As of 1976, India was importing almost 30 per cent of its edible oil requirements.”
 The paper, titled <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv309h1fx.20">From self-reliance to deepening distress</a>, goes on to say; ‘The government wanted to
duplicate the success of dairy cooperatives that had boosted milk production.”

But,
points out Kumar, “despite the yellow revolution, India witnessed a growing
scarcity of edible oil beginning in the mid-1990s, due to a shift of land away
from mixed cropping of oilseeds-cereals-pulses to crops like wheat,
rice and sugarcane that were given special incentives and purchase guarantees
by the government. In addition, liberalisation of edible oil imports in 1994
paved the way for cheap palm oil from Indonesia and soybean oil from Argentina
to flood the domestic market.” 

“Palm oil
and soybean oil became cheaper substitutes for other edible oils, especially in the manufacture of vanaspati (refined, hydrogenated vegetable shortening), a very popular substitute for more expensive ghee (clarified
butter). Together, they displaced a multitude of traditional and regional oilseeds and oils from farms and plates across India including mustard, sesame, linseed, coconut and groundnut, as farmers found these crops unremunerative,” writes
Kumar. It&#39;s come to such a pass, that, edible oils are now the most imported commodity
after petroleum and gold in India. They account for 40 per cent of the agricultural
import bill and 3 per cent of the total import bill, says a paper published in
June 2023, titled <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40009-023-01294-z">Pushing
for Self-sufficiency in Edible Oils in India</a>. It
goes on to note that around 60 per cent of domestic consumption demand is met
by imports.

Sixty per cent of Vadivelan’s family’s
expenses are met by his taxi. Like the Cauvery that splits into two just ahead
of his village, Vadivelan’s time – and life itself – is divided between farming
and driving. The former is tough, he explains. “It’s unpredictable and
demanding.” Because he has a day job (and drives for long hours),
his wife pitches in with work in the fields. On top of the domestic work that’s
mostly all hers. Vadivelan lends a hand often. Sometimes watering the field in
the night, and running around for days to fetch a harvesting machine when
they’re in great demand with everybody’s fields ripe for cutting. He used to do
a lot of the heavy labour on the field. “But these days, I get a catch on my
back if I work with the shovel and then I’m not able to drive the car!”

So, the couple hire labour. When they can get
them. For the weeding and transplanting and threshing sesame, they mostly get
older women to come in and do the work. 

Black gram is equally hard. “It rained just
before and after the harvest, I had such a terrible time, trying to keep it dry.”
He describes his ordeal and the effort sounds super human. It makes me respect
the ulundu (black gram) in my idli and dosai a lot more. 

“I used to drive a lorry in my twenties. It
had 14 wheels. We were two drivers and we took turns, and went all over the
country. Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Kashmir, Rajasthan, Gujarat…” He tells me what
they ate and drank (camel milk tea, roti and dal, egg burji), where they
bathed (by a river, or sometimes they didn’t, like when it was so cold in
Srinagar), what they listened as they drove (“Ilaiyaraja songs, of course and Kuthu
paatu, to keep us awake!”). He talks fondly of the camaraderie, the
gossips, and ghosts. “One night, I got down from the truck to relieve myself. I
had a blanket over my head. The next morning, the other chaps said they saw a
hooded ghost!” And he laughs.He quit cross-country driving as it took him away from
home for weeks. After his marriage, he drove locally, and farmed. Vadivelan and
Priya have two children – a daughter who’s in Class 10 and a son in Class
seven. “We try to give them everything, but maybe I was happier as a young
boy,” he says thoughtfully.

The stories of his childhood are not easy.
“Back then, nobody really raised us, you know,” he turns and smiles at me. “We
just grew up.” He got his first pair of slippers when he was in Class nine.
Until then, he went around barefoot, often taking the leafy greens that his
grandmother foraged or grew and sold each bundle for 50 paise. “Some people
would bargain even for that!” he sighs. He went around on a bicycle, with a
vest and shorts given by the school. “It would last us three months. My family
got us new clothes only once a year.” 

Vadivelan vaulted over the tough times. He
was athletic, and ran races, won prizes. He played kabbadi, swam in the river,
hung out with friends, and at home, listened to the stories his appayi (paternal
grandmother), told him every night. “I would sleep halfway, and the next night,
she would start from there. She knew so many stories, of kings and queens and
gods…” 

But young Vadivelan was unable to compete at
the district level, as his family couldn’t afford the gear and diet. At home
the food was porridge, rice and gravies and sometimes meat. At school, he got upma
for lunch. And in the evening, he remembers drinking rice-water and salt as a
‘snack’. He uses the word on purpose. And he buys his children packaged ones
now. 

He also shields them from the hardships of
his childhood. The second time I visit his town, on the banks of the Kollidam,
his wife and daughter dig the sand. Six inches in, water trickles up. “This
river has pure water,” Priya says. She makes a mound, hides a hairpin, her
daughter looks for it. Vadivelan and his son take a bath in the shallow water.
We’re the only people around, as far as I can see. There are footprints in the
sand, of cows going home. The river grass rustles. It’s beautiful in the way
only vast, open spaces can be. “You can’t get this in your city,” Vadivelan
says, leading the way back home. “Can you?”

The next time I meet the river, it feels like
I’m in the city. It’s a crush. It is August 2023, more than a year after my
first visit to Vadivelan’s town. I’m here for Aadi Perukku, celebrated
on the banks of Cauvery, where history, culture and ritual meet on the
riverbank.

“It’s going to be crowded,” Vadivelan warns,
parking the car in a quiet bylane in Srirangam. We walk to Amma Mandapam, a ghat
on the Cauvery where pilgrims gather. It’s only 8:30 a.m. and it’s packed.
There is no place on the steps, they’re filled with people and plantain leaves,
with offerings for the river – coconuts, bananas pierced with incense sticks,
small turmeric Ganeshas, flowers, fruits and camphor. The atmosphere is
festive, like a wedding, only bigger. 

Newly-weds and their families gather around
priests, who help them restring the gold ornaments of the thali
[mangalsutra] on to a new thread. Then the husband and wife pray, and throw
their carefully preserved wedding garland into the water. Women tie turmeric
threads on one another’s neck. They offer kumkum and sweets to family
and friends. The Uchi Pillaiyar Koil, Trichy’s famous Lord Ganesha temple,
shines in the morning sun across the Cauvery. 

And the river flows swiftly, carrying prayers
and wishes, irrigating fields and dreams, as she has, for thousands of years… 

The author would like to thank Dr. Richa Kumar, for sharing
the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv309h1fx.20">paper</a> From Self-Reliance To
Deepening Distress: The Ambivalence of the Yellow Revolution in India.

This research study is funded by Azim Premji
University as part of its Research Funding Programme 2020.