Caste Dynamics and Festival Narratives in Agriculture

Akhil Ruchin Dayal

SYBA

Agriculture accounts about 17.5 to 18 per cent to the country's GDP, higher than other sectors, yet the situation of farmers is not as good as the people engaged in the services sector (The Hindu, 2023).  Agriculture in India has a dynamic interconnection with caste, class, religion. These identities play out in different ways for different people. Historically, during the ancient and Mediaeval Period, the people belonging to the upper caste specifically the Brahmins were usually associated with religious and intellectual pursuits, while the political and military power of the state would be under the control of the Kshatriyas who would be the Raja or Maharaja along with their army made up of only Kshatriyas. Land ownership during this time would be linked to political power, the Kshatriyas were the landowning classes, they had control over vast territories of land usually administered by members of the same caste or sometimes members of the Vaishya community could be given managerial powers over the land. There was a clear caste based division of labour, while the ownership of land was with the Upper Caste, the actual labour was carried out by individuals from the lower castes (The Free Press Journal, 2023). 

Following this, we had the Zamindari system during the feudal era under the Mughal and British Rule. Zamindars emerged as a new class of landed elites from mostly the Rajput Bhomias and the Jats, while the old Zamindars mostly belonged to the Khanzadas and the Meos community (Bhardwaj, 2016). Several systems like the Jajmani system, through which in some regions, communities involved in agricultural labour would be tied to the land and the landowning families for generations. In other words serfdom was being practised. Serfdom is a socio-economic system in which individuals, known as serfs, are legally bound to work the land of a lord (in this case Zamindars), typically in exchange for protection and the right to cultivate a portion of the land for their subsistence (Tandon, 2021). The British solidified the Zamindari system by passing Acts such as the ‘Permanent Settlement Act, 1793’ (Arroyo, 2021) and the British East India Company also introduced the ‘Ryotwari System’ in the Madras Presidency which stated that the individual peasant cultivator would be recognised as the owner of the land. This system was introduced to get a direct connect between the State and the cultivator, even though this system could have been beneficial to the cultivators it did not have a great positive impact (Gomanthi & Esther, 2020). 

The post independence scenario of caste dynamics in agriculture was not very different to that from the pre independence dynamics. From the perspective of the State, their initiatives were with the aim to improve the conditions of the farmers. Immediately after gaining independence, various states started working towards implementing land reform measures, like West Bengal, Kerala and Bihar. The First Five Year Plan emphasised on land reforms and the abolition of the zamindari system and to redistribute land to tenant farmers along with tenancy reforms (Sarma, 2021). The Land Ceiling Act and the redistribution of land was enacted. This was what was done by the government, but even though the land reforms have led to some redistribution, the gap in land ownership between upper and lower castes persists. SCs and STs own disproportionately smaller share of land (Bandyopadhyay, 1986). ‘The NSO data shows skewed distribution of land ownership across social groups, with socially dominant groups having greater access to land. According to the report, ‘OBC households made up 46% of total agricultural households and SC and ST households accounted for 16 and 14% respectively of the total agricultural households. Households belonging to privileged castes that have been categorised as ‘Others’ formed almost 24% of the total agricultural households’ (D'Souza & Arora, 2022). This is not only related to the agricultural sector, today ‘Hindu High Castes  hold 41% of the total wealth in the country, which is almost double their population size of 22.28%’ (Agarwal & Madhukalya, 2019). 

Even though the Nehru Government tried to reduce caste based inequalities in our nation by banning caste discrimination in 1950, several government policies that were implemented by successive governments have faced severe criticisms that they only catered to the upper castes. The Land Reforms that were intended to reduce the size of land with the rich, upper caste communities and zamindars  failed to have any real changes on ground with regards to land distribution and land holdings of the lower castes. The Green Revolution is another example. It began in 1960 (Karthikeyan, 2021) and was able to solve the severe food shortages that were being faced by the nation. However, it failed to provide the lower caste farmers with any benefits and was highly concentrated among the wealthy and upper caste farmers who were provided with high yielding variety seeds, fertilisers, weedicides, and pesticides, while the lower caste farmers were left to fend for themselves. The retrospective assessment of the Green Revolution is being done wherein decades after the revolution, Punjab started grappling with issues such as poor soil health, pest-infested crops & overexploitation of groundwater leading to catastrophic consequences (Bajpai, 2023). The National Food Security Mission has also been criticised for failing to address the needs of  small and marginalised farmers. 

The most controversial reform and initiative done by the Indian Government in recent times were the Three Farm Laws, which included the ‘The Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce Act’, ‘The Farmers Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act’, ‘The Essential Commodities Act’ that was implemented by an ordinance by the government. The Acts allowed the farmers to sell their farm produce outside the Agriculture Produce Market Committees (APMCs), for contract farming and to market their produce freely. The ‘Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act’ was an amendment to the existing Essential ‘Commodities Act, 1955’ This law  freed items such as food grains, pulses, edible oils and onions for trade except in extraordinary situations. 

The major contention with the laws was that because the farmers would now be free to sell their produce to whoever they want, hence this could lead to private buyers buying the produce at rates below the Minimum Support Price (MSP), making the MSP irrelevant and this was a major blow to  small and marginalised farmers (Dutta, 2020). The bills were withdrawn a few months later after a ‘nationwide’ agitation, however, a report published by the Supreme Court appointed committee on the farm laws showed that an overwhelming 85.7% of the farmer organisations the committee directly interacted with lent support to the three farm laws (The Wire, 2022). Other efforts to promote the agricultural sector include using and promoting forgotten staples like millets (Ramadurai, 2023), Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, Agri Infrastructure Fund, Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana, Soil Health Card scheme (India Today, 2019).

When we try to understand these caste differences that are observed in several parts of our nation, we must understand that caste based inequalities continue to exist and are even promoted at times due to political opportunism and the idea of caste. How can such an idea continue to plague our society that not only impacts the way agriculture is seen and operates but deprives people of their basic human rights? A major contribution is the cultural narratives built around various festivals and rituals that are followed till date with upper caste perspectives  that demonise lower castes and perpetuate further violence against them. Today we are seeing a pattern emerge where the narrative of festivals are being hijacked in favour of upper castes, such as Onam. Recently there has been a legal suit filed by the Hindu Aikyavedi (Hindu United Front) against the setting up of a Mahabali memorial at a temple in the Ernakulam district of Kerala (Arafath, 2017). According to the Puranas, Hindu Gods were threatened by the popularity of the charismatic leadership of King Mahabali, a dalit, under whose leadership Kerala was a prosperous land, a land free from moral evils. If we go by Aryan hierarchisation, lower castes and tribals often took on the comportment of ‘asuras’ and ‘dasyus’, therefore the Brahmin narrative considers Mahabali as an impure ‘asura’ and the rustic ‘other’ of pure Hindu divinities (Dam, 2016). Onam celebrations were banned and disallowed particularly in the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi due to opposition from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) due to them claiming that the festival and the image of King Mahabali were being used to support Hamas (Misra, 2023). 

The many versions of the story behind the festival of Holi can be traced and connected to Hiranyakashipu in Hindu mythology, who was a demon King. He had a son named Prahlad, who was a devotee of Lord Vishnu. The king was angered by his son’s devotion and tried many ways to kill him. The king’s sister, Holika had a boon that made her immune from fire so the King made Holika sit on a burning pyre with Prahlad on her lap but due to the devotion of Prahlad, Holika perished away in the fire while Prahlad was unharmed. Holika was a bahujan and hence many lower caste activists and writers like K.Jamnadas have called Holi a festival to commemorate Bahujan burning (Waghule, 2017). 

There have been many instances where some have tried to justify the position of the lower castes in society and their ‘acceptance’ to it due to a number of factors including complex interplay of psychological factors, survival instincts, and societal conditioning. They also claim that despite the caste system not being ordained by Hinduism, it persisted due to strict adherence and corruption (Vijayaraghavan, 2019). Such reasoning allows caste and Varna sympathisers to claim that the Varna system was actually not ‘bad’ for society but was ‘corrupted’ by ‘outside forces’. They do not acknowledge the fact that the Varna system was also a root cause for the caste system and therefore, the root cause can never be justified.

Throughout the article we have observed the denial of historical materialism to  lower caste communities, which is evident with the denial of agricultural land that goes as far back as the medieval period. The traditional allocation of farming responsibilities to lower castes reflects a caste-based division of labour, in line with functionalist perspectives. From a conflict standpoint, the power dynamics within the agricultural structure, especially during feudal and British rule, contributed to heightened social conflicts. The fact that these inequalities continue after the much hyped land reform initiatives, underscores the influence of structural functionalism and conflict theory in shaping up caste dynamics within the agricultural sector. 

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