Would Cattle Make Sense Anymore?

Sharing an overview I wrote of the recent notification regarding Animal Markets, popularly known as Cattle Slaughter Ban, and what it could mean for small farmers, pastorialists and other cattle rearers.

You can read it more comfortably at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B71R_DY8_oV6NTJWMWJDcnFJeFU/view?usp=sharing

The classical and the folk

Classifying the arts as classical and folk has been an idea that’s long been embedded our mainstream thinking. Classical has always been the art forms such as Carnatic, Hindustani,etc. Forms that have been viewed as higher art, as catering to a higher sense of aesthetics. These are enjoyed by specific castes and communities in India, who've been traditionally powerful. Whereas folk music is seen as the contra. This classification is intriguing.

I used to disagree with the mainstream definitions of classical. I thought they were too narrow and ridden with casteist and hierarchical mindsets. I formulated my own definition of classical as being music with feeling. For instance, mainstream pop music I wouldn't have considered classical. As I see no bhaavam in it. It is not music that lingers, makes you think, titillates your hearts. It doesn't go deep. Our enjoyment of it is mostly aesthetical. However, even metal music when performed with Bhaavam, in its music, lyrics, tone, raagam, etc would be considered classical in my definition. Some rock and metal connoisseurs would approve of the feeling that’s evoked by specific songs when performed by specific performers. I truly believe music with bhaavam of any kind is a higher art. The experience of that art will always be emotional. It is this bhaavam component that makes for certain music a truly enriching experience. Such music always is spiritual…regardless of what our spirituality is.

But does that mean Folk doesn't have the Bhaavam??

This last question proved my definition as wrong. Ultimately, I've now settled for a more social based definition.

All arts are pursuits of people in their spare time, whatever little they have of it. It is when we are pure - free from the clutches of materialistic concerns. The Bhaavam is embedded in the passion of the performer, and the passion of the receiver.

'Classical' arts had passionite performers. But it also had enormous patronage - from courts, rich merchants, temples, etc. There was a market for it, an ecosystem of livelihood. People could become full time performers. Hence, their continued patronage depended on how well they're able to perform.  If lyrics and Bhaavam and the Mehfil is what patrons wanted… that’s what the performers focussed on… they lyrics, their intonations, their deviations, all carefully practiced and crafted to evoke certain feelings, and provide an experience for the patron. It was a committed effort. This effort manifested itself into the disciplined, a set of rules… all of which evolved over years of practice, innovation and adaptation. The art evolved through such a process.

Folk arts have been performed by certain people in different communities - agrarian, forest, coastal, etc when they had free time. Performers were hardly full time. They were always part-time.  This kind of patronage ecosystem never existed. Even if it did, it would've been part time patronage of a very localised, village level. Those incentives for the practitioners to keep refining and developing their art weren't there. The kind of focussed effort to cultivate their art were never necessary from a market angle. One dare says, folk arts have existed only due to the pure passion of its performers, as there was a lack of market patronage ecosystem.

The bhaavam of folk music… I'm yet to discover, but when I do… I feel that it shall be a slightly different one. One that’s travelled a different path.

I also look forward to discovering folk music histories. If any reader has any interesting links or stories on folk histories, I would be thankful if they could paste it in the comments. Just so that I can discover their trajectories of how they’ve evolved over the years. So that once again, I can change my thinking of the arts :)

The Old Tree

There was this old big tree. It stood by for a long time. No one really knew who planted it, no one knew who nourished and  grew it. But the people around it did water it from time to time. A few came to pluck its fruits, a few came to enjoy its shade, a few needed a place to pee. But to most, the tree was just there… it was a reality of that place, It was the landmark of that place. But there was something wrong.

It was a sick tree. Its roots were deep, dry and rotting.

Some said , its rotten to the core. Burn down the whole thing… it isn't worth saving… we don’t need a tree. The fruits numb you. We should learn to live without it.

Some said, uproot and throw it away. Rotten roots give poisonous fruit, the shade will whiter away. Let's get rid of this, and plant a new tree. A good tree, with sweet fruit. It will take time; but it shall be worth it. It'll be better than this rotten tree.

Some said, the fruit is already sweet, the shade is cool and large. Let us fix the rotting roots with care. It shall take even longer, but it shall provide shade throughout, the effort shall be worth it.   

And some said, there's hardly anything wrong with it. A few blemishes on stem, leaves or the fruit perhaps… nothing a few sprays can't fix, nothing major. It's mostly fine.

They keep talking about it. Each one does their own thing.

The tree also does its thing.

The tree keeps changing.

A wedding, and after

She stayed with her uncle and aunt. Her parents were long dead. And she wasn't 16 yet. Her uncle and aunt did raise her up for a few years, but were also seeking for a suitable house to marry her into. They probably didn't want to keep supporting her for much longer.

Soon came a proposal from a nearby village. It was a similarly poor family, with just sufficient land to produce a little surplus. The horrible monsoon had badly affected all families in the region. They had a 17 yr old healthy son, who had to now offer his labours elsewhere to pay their debts, in the absence of a good harvest. The mother was a gem of a woman. She was hard working, straightforward, confident, and overall, known for her progressive values. She had managed to tame her alcoholic husband out of the habit, made important decisions for her family, became a leader of the local SHGs and encouraged others to get out of the debt trap. All this, and she wasn't loud. In short, she spoke little, spoke with amazing clarity and firmness whenever she did. She was respected.

But the last few seasons weren't great for her too. Some medical bills, crop failures and family emergencies all made her household slightly precarious. She was also getting old, and couldn't maintain the entire farm on her own. She thought its high she had some extra hands to help out. There weren't too many others at home too, it wasn't a large and unmanagable family for anyone new, she thought.

So she approached this family she had heard of. She met the girl, her uncle and aunt, and seemed to like them. They too agreed.

They soon got engaged. Our mother here thought it would be a reasonable idea if she  moved over to her new place for a few days. After all, Rakshabandhan was approaching , the girl anyway had to get back to her uncle's place for the festival. The mother felt a few days of familiarising before the wedding would be good. Everyone agreed, and the girl moved.

Soon it was Rakhi time, the girl got back to her uncle's. a few days later, the young couple got married too. As per custom, the groom's side paid a bridal price of Rs.30,000.

They decided the girl could stay for a few more days with her folks. And reach her new home later. The mother said, "you may not have parents, but you now have a home".

As in any place, this uncle did have his share of rivals in his village. The next few days presented an opportunity for them to mouth their opinions to the girl.

The day to leave had come, the girl was all ready. She boarded the bus and finally she left her village once and for all.

The bus halted for a bit at a town midway. The girl got down, boarded another bus, met a few of her villagers, went over to the police station, and lodged a complaint that she was a victim of child marriage, and the wedding to be annulled. And thats that...   

The night of cleansing

I stay with a very generous and sweet family in this village. The couple are from a nearby village, but have been staying here for long. The house we stay in has a soakpit for sewage waste emanating from the washrooms. The house also doubles up as a makeshift office for my organization, hence always has a steady stream of visitors from nearby villages. Since its one of the few houses in the village to actually have toilets, you do have a few people who use the toilets placed just outside our rooms. So, compared to its traffic, the soakpit is comparatively small, and fills up pretty soon.

We periodically pump it out with a motor to our small backyard farm. Even though it is partially decomposed human excreta, it still counts as liquid manure, albeit not a great one. 2 nights back, we had started the motor pump for the same purpose, but it was taking much longer than usual. It was 11 pm and my host and I decided to go to sleep, and wake up at 4am to check and switch off the motor. I slept well. Not a single dream, nothing to remember about the sleep, just blankness, the hallmark of a sound sleep.

I then heard this soft voice calling out, I awoke to find my host  guy calling me out. It was 3 am, and I told him the pumping wouldn’t be done yet. He called me out, smiled and showed me the soakpit. Sometime while we were asleep, the pipe got clogged, and the pressure loosened the pipe. The result was glaring in front of us, the pumped sewage waste, spread out on our's and our neighbour's front porch. Many days of partially decomposed toilet sewage just out there… the sight was plain and simply awful.

The village was all asleep, it was still and silent. We were lucky.

We thought... If we wait till morning, the entire village would get to know of this - not a pretty sight. The sight of everyone watching while we clean up was also not to be avoided; for all we know, some might begin to boycott us.  Also, the neighbor whose porch was filled, wasn't the best of friends and was a source of constant complaints over small issues. Compared to the minor issues we have argued profusely on, this was ‘End of Days’.  But personally, my biggest concern was that the neighbour’s place was also the venue for the village’s mini-Anganwadi, with many tiny tots expected the next day. This is the last place to leave in an unhygienic manner.

It was clear what we had to do. My host and I stared at each other, laughed a while. The heavens opened then and it started drizzling too… we were going to be cleaning shit in the rains :P

We assembled a bucket and a mug each, collected the dark viscous liquid waste on the floor by hand, filled the buckets and emptied in on our backyard farm. We had to race against time, we had to finish this entire operation before 4:30, when folks start waking up. Getting caught in such an activity, was not a position we wanted to find ourselves in. It was dark, and we had a tough time handling the torch while operating. It also meant there was no photo opportunities :P

Once we were mostly done, we decided to water down the remaining bits, and wiped them far away. We then prayed for intense rains so as to remove all traces of the night’s work. And as luck would have, it started raining hard. Standing there with all filth on us, with the rains pouring on us, one could so easily visualize an epic scene from a film climax.  

To take a bath at 4:30 after cleaning so much shit with our bare hands, was a truly satisfying experience. I shall remember this bath for a long long time to come. 

Mass Marriage

It was tense. But it wasn't meant to be so. It was meant to be joyous, perhaps a bit of relief, a dash of anxiety for the unknown future lying ahead too. But the nerves weren't that. It was palpable tension cause so few knew what was happening at the present. Cause they just could not relate to it.

The setting was the mass marriage ceremonies conducted by the government of Madhya Pradesh, under the 'Mukhyamantri Kanyadaan Yojna' for couples preferring not to spend extravagantly for their wedding. It is open to the general public, all classes and communities. The couples get a Rs.17,000 Fixed Deposit in the name of the bride, Rs.5000 worth vessels and pressure cooker as 'Kanyadaan', and Rs.3000 spent for arrangements per couple. This particular one had 46 couples, almost all of them belonging to the ST communities of the Korku and the Bhilala. So what exactly was so alienating, that made the air so tense?

The couples had a small fire alter placed in front of them. There were 8-9 pandits chanting sanskrit slokas, and asking the couples to repeat them, and also perform some tasks like pouring various items into the fire, and on each other. They were clueless about what to do and what to say. The pandit went on and on in the incomprehensible language. The only recognisable words were some of the names of the gods like Krishna, Rama, Narayana, etc - words the people have become accustomed to over the decades. Repeated invocation of the "Brahman Devta Abhishek ji Maharaj" had most couples go "kaun?". Once, the grooms were asked to draw a swastika on the bride's hand - the junior pandit went mad as most of them dint know what a swastika was, or why it was needed here. The pandit kids running around to assist the couples were shocked at levels of ignorance amongst the couples. None of these ever made sense to the bulk of them. The new word most folks learnt that day was the one they had repeated the most - "swaahaa". So much so, that when the actual exchange of garlands took place, one couldn't spot smiling faces of relief. But flat faces, of cluelessness. 

The Bhilala wedding has no place for such fire alters. They have a wooden stump, the 'Kakad' fixed to the ground symbolising their family goddess; it’s the centre piece of their wedding ceremony. There's no place for a pandit chanting mantras in a completely unrecognisable language, and frankly, boring the crap out of them. Their ceremonies have the sister and sister-in-law conducting it, asking for their mutual consents, and fixing what their families would exchange with each other and invoking the sun, the moon, their crop deities and their family goddess. Following this would be the women of the house singing songs about their families, and also some raunchy songs about the pleasures of marriage :P  (Simultaneously of course, you'd have folks having copious amounts of Mahua!)

There are a number of ways of viewing this. I think its commendable that the state launches such schemes, I really do. Weddings are one of those high expenditure activities that cause indebtedness in most parts of our country. Its also one of the several reasons many in our country prefer male kids to female ones. When folks can get together and perform financial transactions through SHGs, or sell crops together through Cooperatives, why cant they get married together! As a development intervention, I think its right up there. I daresay, its ok for the state to subsidise such events. Its got a clever name too. Since the state purchases the items for kanyadaan on behalf of the families, in a sense, the kanyadaan is performed by the state - taking the meaning of the 'paternalistic state' to an altogether different level :)

Now at the implementation phase, the organisers would have had to think about making arrangements. Now, it is at this juncture that our sociological backgrounds come into the picture. The event organisers, mostly block level officers, by default assumed that getting a troupe of Sanskrit pandits to conduct the weddings is the norm - the natural way of doing things. And its quite natural to assume so too. It might not have been something they particularly gave time to think through.  After all, in our lives, we get exposed to marriages of only a certain kind. In pop culture, all portrayals and imageries of weddings involve a sacred thread bearing pandit with mantras and fire alters. The trouble is it’s the norm for only a section of the population - the ones who fall into the patterns set by mainstream Hinduism, along with its thrust on Sanskrit and Vedic rituals. It is precisely this trap that sits like an unmovable block of rock in our heads; it calls for a learning - that our mainstream does not pertain to all. This is even more pertinent when the mainstream norm accounts for the better off in society, while the ones who're outside its fold - the 'others', have been on the receiving end through much of history. The power relations between these two groups blinds the powerful to nuances of the oppressed.

 The 'sickularist' in me naturally tends to laugh at this, but also view this suspiciously through the lens of the state (BJP ruled) attempting to spread Hindutva's tentacles to communities not quite yet within its fold. But it might be too harsh a judgment. I choose to stick with the line of thought of the previous paragraph. 

Another observation on the same note of Hindutva. The block has a sizable Muslim population, especially in the block headquarters. There were no Muslim couples participating in the function. Let us not fool ourselves into thinking expensive weddings are a Hindu problem. It could be that the organisers did not make that much of an effort to canvass for this scheme amongst the Muslim communities, cause we know that there are a few private initiatives amongst the Muslim communities where group weddings do take place. The argument could also be made that the community doesn't come forward for such schemes - as is the favourite right wing argument. But based on how the function went about, I guess it would seem very unwelcoming to couples of other faiths. A small gesture of simply having a Qazi on stage for standby would've been so nice to see - that the organisers had at least given some thought to it. The absence of such things is quite sad.     

Amongst the couples were also two mixed couples - OBC boys with ST girls, specifically landed, moneyed Sirvi boys with Bhilala girls. Being the ravishing romantic, yours truly instinctively took it to be couples madly in love with each other, with parents refusing to accept them. Its only then that it struck me, that a practice has taken off in recent years among the Sirvi community, of marrying Bhilala girls after paying their families, owing to an apparent 'shortage of girls' within their community. At first sight, such a story has all the makings of a torrid time ahead for the girls in question - for it could well be that the boys' folks were 'shopping for cooks'. However, this seemingly strange phenomena should be dealt with in a separate post on the history of the Bhilalas of this place, and their complex relationship with other communities here.

Oh, and by the way, there's apparently a government reward of Rs.50,000 for such inter-caste marriages. Now, go figure that out.

But as the defining piece, I think my everlasting memory of the event would be the following couple, of Savita marrying Gabbar Singh - a match truly made in dreams :)

 With all the youthness in our hearts, let us fervently wish them a truly great future ahead ! 

Farms and forests

My work area lies in the ST dominated regions of Bagli block, in Dewas district of Madhya Pradesh. Among the ST communities here are the Bhilala, Korku and the Barela. But among them, for a variety of reasons, the Barela evince much more interest. One of the reasons for coming here was to gain an understanding of the developmental story of the people here. Based on my months here, there is an outline of the Barela story that is quite fascinating. It’s a story that is quite common to so many communities and regions in a world undergoing rapid change. It’s a story of migration, complete with ecological, economic, social and political causations and ramifications.

The Barelas were the latest to migrate into this region, after the Bhilalas and Korkus. Based on oral records, a bulk of them moved in from areas in and around Badwani, beyond the south bank of the Narmada, some 200 kms away.

Oral sources here cite a flood in the early 60's on the Narmada, near the town of Anjad in present day Badwani district. (But I'm yet to find references to this flood  in official records). The exact causes of the migration could be several.

Upon reaching, they received actual land pattas of over 10 Hectares per family from the state government. But all the land they received was forest land with thick bush vegetation; they were poor, red-soiled, loose land. The task of clearing the forest, and make it cultivable was entirely up to them. So, this period witnessed a large government mandated clearing of forest lands, as they were officially parted away through government pattas to these migrant families. Barela families, thus have settlements much closer to the present day forest boundaries. 

This story we see here can now be linked to the story of Land Reforms in India. In brief, Land reforms meant

1.       Tenancy rights to tenant farmers.

2.       Land ceiling to large land holding families

3.       Land redistribution to landless families.

We shall focus on points 2 and 3, as there are more relevant to this discussion. Point 2 meant there was to be a limit over how much a single family could own. The surplus agricultural land over and above the limit was to be seized by the government, with due compensation paid to the families. This was to then create a massive land-bank of seized agricultural land, which was subsequently to be distributed among landless families willing to eager to farm, which is Point 3. Thus, what was envisaged was a more socially equitable ownership pattern of the existing agricultural land. In other words, points  2 directly feeding into point 3.

But Point 2 and Point 3 did not simultaneously occur in Madhya Pradesh. There is extensive scholarship available which highlight the political reasons for which states like Madhya Pradesh did not enforce point 2 effectively - as landed castes were an immensely powerful lobby within the ruling Congress. So in the name of Land Reforms, what got enforced was only point 3. But where would the extra land needed for such distribution come from? Being India's most forested state, Madhya Pradesh ate into its ample forests for precisely this.

This practice also conveniently converged with India's then agrarian policy of increasing agricultural land to produce more food for its population - a policy of extensive agriculture, rather than intensive. Back then, increasing food production was linked to increasing cropped area, rather than increasing productivity. Our focus shifted to the latter only after the mid 60's, when the Green Revolution was sought after. Ecologically, agricultural land increased by eating into forest land. Socially, it did not change the power held by landed castes. 

A check at the official statistics ('India Forestry Outlook Study - MoEF')  conveys the contrary:

One guesses the devil is in the detail, based on the definitions used for forest land - about which lands were considered ‘forest’, which were considered waste land, etc. One would need to explore that further.    

But how and why exactly the government decided and actually managed to give formal pattas to them remains unanswered, especially when it is so hard to set right their land records even now. 

I'll conclude with a clear hypothesis on the implementation of Land Reforms in India, in different states - States where political will to take on the landed gentry was lacking, tended to distribute forest/common land, as part of its Land Reforms and increased the net sown area. 

This hypothesis surely deserves to be tested, and I'm sure there is plenty of work already done on it. 

PS: The full India Forestry Outlook Study is available online here