Indian Agricultural Collapse Courtesy British Experts

Indian Agriculture Collapse courtesy British Experts :
Courtesy of HVK Editor -
India - Once Plentiful -
Hinduism Today May 1997 -

Records reveal British schemes diminished crops and dismantled a native system of abundance
Most of us college - educated Indians were taught that inefficient technologies and low productivities pervaded through long ages in practically all parts of India," states Dr. S.K. Bajaj, director of the Centre for Policy Studies, a Chennai think tank.
In the 1920s Gandhi's Young India presented some proof of a rich and prosperous pre-British India. Then in the 1960s, the Centre's founder, historian Sri Dharampal, discovered at the Thanjavur Tamil University a set of palmleaf records documenting a British survey of 2,000 villages of Chengalpattu, a large area surrounding present-day Chennai. "
Startling features of Tamil society in the 18th century emerge from these palmleaf accounts," said Bajaj.
"Between 1762 and 1766 there were villages which produced up to 12 tons of paddy a hectare. This level of productivity can be obtained only in the best of the Green Revolution areas of the country, with the most advanced, expensive and often environmentally ruinous technologies. The annual availability of all food averaged five tons per household; the national average in India today is three-quarters ton. Whatever the ways of pre-British Indian society, they were definitely neither ineffective nor inefficient."
Food production is just one aspect of the colonial impact being addressed by the Centre.
The Chengalpattu records are part of Dharampal's research which has uncovered a politically, technologically and economically vibrant Indian society of the 18th century.
"That society was dismantled and atomized by the British, by force," states the Centre's brochure, "and the diverse skills of the Indian people were pushed out of the public sphere and made to rust and decay. For India to become a vibrant and dynamic nation again, we only need to re-awaken the political, economic and technological skills of our people."
The records are especially useful for understanding how Hindu religious institutions were originally supported, and why they declined under Britishrule.
Dharampal believes Indians must rediscover their nation's traditional sense of chitta, mind, and flow of time, kala.
"Since we have lost practically all contact with our tradition, and all comprehension of our chitta and kala, there are no standards and norms on the basis of which to answer questions that arise in ordinary social living.
Ordinary Indians perhaps still retain an innate understanding of right action and right thought, but our elite society, seems to have lost all touch with any stable norms of behavior and thinking. The present attempt at imitating the world and following every passing fad can hardly lead us anywhere. We shall have no options until we evolve a conceptual framework of our own, based on chitta and kala, to discriminate between right and wrong, what is useful for us and what is futile."

The Centre's three main researchers are: M.D. Srinivas, a theoretical physicist teaching at the University of Madras, who specializes in Indian science; T.M. Mukundan, a mechanical engineer specializing in technologies such as water management and iron smelting; and J.K. Bajaj, also a theoretical physicist, now involved in economy, agriculture and energy.

The Chengalpattu data was a Godsend for the Centre, and has allowed them to support many of their central theories about pre-British India. The accounts detail a complete economic, social, administrative and religious picture of the society.
Every temple, pond, garden and grove in a locality is listed, the occupation, family size, home and lot size of 62,500 households meticulously recorded. Crop yields between 1762-66 are tallied.
Per capita production of food in this region (which is of average fertility) was more than five times that achieved on average today.

Bajaj and his associates didn't do all their work in a library. The team set off in person across the Chengalpattu region to verify the picture presented in the leafs. They found most of these villages deserted--perhaps since the beginning of the 19th century--by all who had any resources, education or skills.
Inhabitants had left behind their palatial houses, their temples and groves. Abandoned as well were the eyrs--the irrigation tanks and channels--often cut across by British-built roads which left dry land on one side and stagnant water on the other. Their on-the-ground inspection confirmed many aspects of the inscribed leaves.

Of importance to Hindu history is how the religious institutions were maintained. Lands called manyam were assigned for the support of various functions, including religious activities. Certain percentages of the production from this land were divided among the various public functions, such as administration, army, education and religious institutions.
Small temples received income from nearby villages. Larger ones, such as those of the great center of Kanchipuram, received income from over a thousand villages. The amount dedicated to religion from the manyam lands, according to the leaves, was a substantial four percent of the total produce of the region. It supported temples, academies of learning, dancers and musicians. A portion was also provided for Muslim and Jain institutions. This system resulted in the vast network of temples, most now neglected, seen across South India.

The British government changed this system. In some areas they calculated a percentage figure of total tax revenue going to the institutions and fixed it as a dollar amount, in 1799 dollars. Some institutions still receive this same government allotment--worth next to nothing today. Others became owners of the land from which a share of production once came. This introduced its own set of problems, also still with us today, where temples are unable to collect the rent. The collective result was that the great religious and cultural institutions of the 18th century decayed and lost touch with the community.

The British taxes were so high there was no money left to support the administration or cultural establishments. School teachers, musicians, dancers, keepers of the irrigation works, moved away, or took to farming. By 1871, 80% of the area was engaged in agriculture (up from less than 50% earlier), and many of the services and industrial activities that dominated the Chengalpattu society of the 1770s ceased to exist.

The value of the Centre's research is obvious: India, and Hinduism with it, flourished in the not-so-distant past--without the Green Revolution or the Industrial Revolution or the Worker's Revolution.
Dharampal, Bajaj and their associates want India to look back at this time, dissect and understand it, and use that indigenous knowledge to reinvigorate the world's largest democracy.

How the Green Revolution failed :
Dr. Ramon De La Peqa of the University of Hawaii is one of the world's foremost experts on rice. He also happens to be a neighbor of the ashram from which Hinduism Today is produced. Asked to comment on the Chengalpattu reports, he said: "Such yields as 12 tons per hectare were definitely possible with the old methods and two crops a year. The best modern US production is eight to nine tons per hectare (one annual crop). The world average is presently three to five tons/hectare. Before the Green Revolution[which introduced new, high-yielding strains] the average was one to one-and-a-half tons/hectare.
The Green Revolution worked in some areas but not in others. The short variety of rice developed for it grew just one meter high. To be productive, it needed fertilizer, and the fields had to be kept weed free. The old varieties were two meters high, not so suspectible to weed competition, resistant to insects and did not need fertilizer. If the new varieties are not managed correctly--with fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides--the harvest is less than with the old methods of minimum input. New is not always better."
Courtesy of HVK Editor
- Jai Maharaj

Google Group - Dharampal

A new Google group has been created for people interested in the work of Shri Dharampal to discuss and network, and hopefully find new ways of carrying historical and philosophical research forward. All are welcome.
Feel free to ask questions, answer questions and network.
We feel that possibly the best way of remembering Shri Dharampal, is to find new ways of collaborating with a new generation of Indian youth, forming and encouraging responsible and creative networks, that advance the spirit of enquiry and humble teaching that Shri Dharampal Ji personified.

Dharampal - http://groups.google.com/group/dharampal

Ooranis - PreColonial Water Management in South India

Ramanathapuram District : Ooranis, locally managed water tanks : Colonial decay
Ramanathapuram district is drought prone and water scarcity is the biggest problem here.People migrate after January and return by August when the monsoon sets in. The northeast monsoon (September to November) is expected to bring maximum rain and usually chilli, cotton, onion and paddy are cultivated.
Charcoal is produced in Ramanathapuram and adjacent Tuticorin districts. Agriculture, charcoal production and fishing in the coastal areas are the sources for livelihood of the people. There are some industries in nearby Virudhunagar district where people migrate for work. A good number of workers in hosiery and knitwear units of Tiruppur are from the district. Usually men go out in search of jobs and women, old people and children stay home.

Once upon a time the ooranis and tanks had been maintained by the people through a group of individuals chosen by the villagers and called kudimaramatthu . This practice stopped after the British regime took over. Tanks and ooranis became Government property maintained by the Public Works Department.

With the arrival of bore wells, the concept of conserving water through such water bodies was forgotten. The ground water level plummeted and water turned saline. The Government-sponsored desalination plants in the district are insufficient to meet the demand.
Every village has one to three ooranis for drinking water, domestic water needs and livestock and temple pond.
The main water source is rain, but the district falls in rain shadow belt with scanty rainfall. People could at most store water in ooranis and tanks for three to six months a year. Rest of the time women, girls and men must trek three to five kilometers every day in search of water. This affected their livelihood, health, and the education of girls. There are incidents of conflicts for drinking water among villages.
On the other hand, there are instances of sharing oorani water between villages. If an oorani is built, the water would be shared by about 500 families of three villages. Most of the ooranis are either dilapidated or small.
In some areas, the percolation rate of water is high because the base layer is sandy.

If an oorani is renovated and technically modified, it would quench the people's thirst in three to four villages. Besides it would improve the quality of life. Girls could go to schools; women could finish their household chores faster and help in the fields. The search for water has affected health, education and livelihood. It is common to find men and women in the district spending a whole day in search of water. The family income is Rs.1, 500 to Rs. 2,500 a month and lower during the summer. People have to spend Rs.150 to Rs.250 on water every month.

You can also do it ….To help save the lives of the Life saving Ooranis -
Kind hearted well-wishers -- Can sponsor an Oorani - Dhan Foundation -
Website - http://www.dhan.org/ooranis/districts.php

Trans Atlantic Slavery - African Artist Hazoume

I recently had the fortune of viewing a free, thought provoking exhibition in British Museum commemorating 200 Years of the Abolition of Trans Atlantic Slavery.
It was a feast for my visual senses, my ears, as well as for my mind, which has often struggled to come to terms with the intellectual legacy of colonialism in India and the question of whether the past and colonial history, have a bearing on the modern Indian consciousness. And the question of whether, if they have a bearing, what could it likely be ?
The exhibition was hosted by The British Museum and was the creation of an artist from Republic of Benin in West Africa - Romuald Hazoume. It was billed as artwork and a meditation on human greed and exploitation, the Atlantic Slave Trade of the past, and the different forms of oppression that continue today.
The exhibition brochure informed me that the 25 March 1807 Act of the British Parliament, banning Atlantic Slave Trade, was in response to the anti slavery campaigning of a British anti slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson. It seems abolition was ultimately achieved by the continual resistance of enslaved people like Toussaint L'Ouverture who led the slave revolution in 1791 in Haiti.
However, it was another over thirty years before slavery itself was abolished through out the British Empire.
The European links with, and interest in Africa over last 500 years - Portuguese, French, British, Dutch, Spanish, Germans, Italians colonists - have had very colourful and intricate ( synergistic and competitive), and the motivations of the slavery banning by British Parliament, were no doubt more than the campaigning of Mr Clarkson and resistance led by Toussaint L'Ouverture and experts have studied some of these motivations.

It was heartening as an Asian writer, to confront the reflections of a contemporary middle aged, African artist - on history, legacy of colonialism, the present day space for discussions on colonialism, the brief discussions of neo liberalism and neo colonialism, in which there might be no need to make the debates amenable to Western ears and sensibilities.
Visual arts offer a wealth of such opportunities, especially in the hands of a multi talented Aftrican artist, working in many mediums and media - like Hazoume.
I look forward to seeing a tradition of Asian and African exchanges on legacy of colonialism established, especially in the visual arts and what is called intermedia, where artists are not constrained by European sensibilities / moderators / gate keepers - and can explore common understandings in more universal settings.
Hazoume's comment echoes with my sensibilities, when I examine the environment of the Liverpool slave ship he has represented with oil cans. He says of his West African people from the Mono River estuary, Grand Popo -
" They didn't know where they were going,
but they knew where they had come from.
Today they still don't know where they are going,
and they have forgotten where they come from."
- We, the big strong Africans, the Yoruba, we caught our brothers from Nigeria, and sold them to the White Man.
Nagarjuna - 06 May 2007