Kerala

The introduction to the edited volume problematises the category of 'region' as exclusively defined in terms of nation and nationalism by the dominant methodologies. The central argument is that region is not pre-discursive a category, but actively participating in shaping experiences of modernity. Thus this paper explores the possibilities of studying Kerala modernity by foregrounding the multiple space-times of the region by reviewing the methodologies of the scholarship on Kerala modernity as well as wider methodological takes on modernity such as multiple/national modernities.

The southwest coast of India has always been a significant site within the global network of relations through trade and exchange of ideas, commodities, technologies, skills and labour. The much longer history of colonial experience makes Kerala’s engagement with modernity polyvalent and complex. Without understanding the multiple space-times of this region, it is impossible to make sense of the complexities of Kerala modernity beyond its general description as ‘Malayalee modernity’.
From the colonial pepper trade and Narayana Guru’s philosophical engagement with the question of caste, to the seemingly disparate elements that weave together an ‘eclectic past’  through the Muziris Heritage Project; from the debates on women’s sexuality around the Suryanelli rape case, to the gendered constitution of public space during the mass annual Attukal Pongala ritual; from the changes in state attitude towards providing piped water supply to how Cochin port’s inter-War history has scripted the story of urban modernity; from the shaping of the public sphere to the radical Left politics of the 1970s and the emergence of popular janapriya literature—this book analyses the ideas, spaces and practices that intricately weave the region’s experiences of modernity.
Kerala Modernity emphasizes the methodological need to re-examine the idea of ‘region’ as a discursive category to explore Kerala’s regional modernity apart from Eurocentric and nation-centric frames of analyses. The interdisciplinary presentation—complete with a Dalit critique of modernity in the Foreword—will be an important contribution to literature on Kerala and the debates on alternative modernities in South Asia. It will be of interest to students and scholars of history, sociology and literary and cultural studies, as well as the interested general reader.

CONTENTS
List of Tables, Figures and Map
FOREWORD : Gopal Guru
Acknoweldgements

INTRODUCTION / Situating an Unbound Region: Reflections on Kerala Modernity
    Satheese Chandra Bose and Shiju Sam Varughese

CHAPTERS
01. The Routes of Pepper: Colonial Discourses around the Spice-trade in Malabar
        Vinod Kottayil Kalidasan
02. Colonial Intellectuals, Public Sphere and the Promises of Modernity: Reading Parangodeeparinayam
        Shiju Sam Varughese
03. (Re)construction of ‘the Social’ for Making a Modern Kerala: Reflections on Narayana Guru’s Social Philosophy
        Satheese Chandra Bose
04. Port Building and Urban Modernity: Cochin, 1920–45
        Justin Mathew 
05. At the End of the Story: Popular-Fiction, Readership and Modernity in Literary Malayalam
        Ancy Bay
06. Contemporaneity and the Collective: The Reportage in Amma Ariyaan
        Ameet Parameswaran
07. The Politics of Sexuality and Caste: Looking through Kerala’s Public Space
        Carmel Christy K.J.
08. Attukal Pongala: Myth and Modernity in a Ritualistic Space
        Darshana Sreedhar
09. The Pipe Dreams of Development: Institutionalising Drinking Water Supply in Kerala
        S. Mohammed Irshad
10. Archaeology and the New Imaginations of the Past: Understanding the Muziris Heritage Project
        Rachel A. Varghese

REFERENCES
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX

This paper reviews the experience of creation and functioning of ward committees in urban local bodies in states of Kerala and Maharashtra. The 74th Constitutional Amendment Act provided for ward committees to be constituted in urban local bodies with more than 3 lakhs population. The ward committees were expected to act as an institutional space for participation of citizens in matters of urban local governance.
The state of Kerala has provided an elaborate legal and institutional framework for functioning of ward committees especially with regards to participation of citizens. This paper examines the functioning of ward committees in a municipal corporation in Kerala for the past decade and points out achievements and shortcomings in actual functioning of ward committees in the state.
        The state of Maharashtra while legislating for ward committees in its municipal acts has not provided an elaborate legal framework. Ward committees in Mumbai Municipal Corporation was constituted only after judicial intervention. In 2009, the state enacted Community Participation Law, which is yet to be implemented. This paper questions the legal framework for ward committees in Maharashtra from the point of view of enabling participation of ordinary citizens in matters of urban governance.
        In light of the experiences of both states with regard to ward committees, This paper concludes with issues for further discussion on citizen participation in urban governance and functioning of ward committees in India.

"In the Wayanad District of Kerala in southern India, questions of ecological modernity focus on the boundary of fields and forest. In the last decade, so-called “human-animal conflicts” have emerged as one of the most contentious issues among farmers, forest department officials, and local politicians. The most severe cases of conflict with “forest animals” occur when wild elephants leave the wildlife sanctuary, raid the fields of farmers,
and occasionally kill people. Wayanad’s ecological modernity is rooted in two historical trajectories that are mostly treated separately in studies of political ecology: the history of agrarian change (tenure systems, land reforms, agrarian crisis, and agrarian capitalism) and the study of state-led forest conservation (science and planning, enclosure and dispossession, wildlife protection, transnational environmental governance). Today, these agrarian and forest histories meet in a series of contestations and conflicts involving humans and animals, mainly with elephants. In this paper, we take violent elephant encounters as a very “material” ethnographic illustration of recent efforts—at the intersection of environmental history and agrarian political economy—to think the agrarian and the environmental together."

With reference to original ethnographic and historical research on India, the papers collected in this forum suggest conceptual refinements that might re-centre the study of class in regional scholarship. Through discussions of class politics in industrial, construction and agricultural contexts, the authors interrogate the conceptual oppositions between stably employed fordist labour forces and the ‘working poor’ that have often constrained ethnographic and historical analyses of India's working classes. Inspired by Marxist historiography, this forum engages with the historically contingent emergence of Indian working classes through different types of labour, gender and ethnic struggles, and considers the complex political boundaries that are produced by such processes.

Contributions by Geert De Neve, Jonathan Parry, Andrew Sanchez, Christian Struempell, Luisa Steur

This article explores how 'Zero Budget Natural Farming', an Indian natural farming movement centered on its founder and guru Subhash Palekar, enacts alternative agrarian worlds through the dual practices of critique and recuperation. Based on fieldwork among practitioners in the South Indian state of Kerala and on participation in teaching events held by Palekar, I describe the movement's critique of the agronomic mainstream (state extension services, agricultural universities, and scientists) and their recuperative practices of restoring small-scale cultivation based on Indian agroecological principles and biologies. Their critique combines familiar political-ecological arguments against productionism, and the injustices of the global food regime, with Hindu nationalist tropes highlighting Western conspiracies and corrupt science. For their recuperative work, these natural farmers draw, on one hand, on travelling agroecological technologies (fermentation, spacing, mulching, cow based farming) and current 'probiotic', microbiological, and symbiotic understandings of soil and agriculture. On the other hand, they use Hindu nativist tropes, insisting on the exceptional properties of agrarian species native to, and belonging to India. I use the idea of ontological politics to describe the movement's performances as enacting an alternative rural world, in which humans, other-than-human animals, plants, mycorrhizae, and microbes are doing agriculture together.

Cet article explore la manière dont «Zero Budget Natural Farming», un mouvement d'agriculture naturelle indien centré sur son fondateur et gourou Subhash Palekar, met en oeuvre des mondes agraires alternatifs par le biais de la double pratique de la critique et de la récupération. En me basant sur le travail de terrain effectué auprès de praticiens de l'État du Kerala, dans le sud de l'Inde, et sur la participation à des événements pédagogiques organisés par Palekar, je décris la critique du mouvement concernant le courant agronomique (agents de vulgarisation agricole, universités agricoles et scientifiques) et leurs pratiques de récupération à la restauration à petite culture basée sur les principes agro-écologiques et les biologies indiennes. Leur critique associe des arguments politico-écologiques bien connus contre le productionnisme et les injustices du régime alimentaire mondial, avec des tropes nationalistes hindouistes mettant en lumière des complots occidentaux et une science corrompue. Pour leur travail de récupération, ces agriculteurs naturels s'appuient, d'une part, sur les technologies agroécologiques itinérantes (fermentation, espacement, paillage, élevage bovin) et sur les conceptions «probiotiques», microbiologiques et symbiotiques actuelles du sol et de l'agriculture. Par ailleurs, ils utilisent des tropes nativistes hindous, insistant sur les propriétés exceptionnelles des espèces agraires originaires et appartenant à l'Inde. J'utilise l'idée de politique ontologique pour décrire les performances du mouvement en tant que représentation d'un monde rural alternatif, dans lequel des humains, des animaux, des plantes, des mycorhizes et des microbes autres que les humains, pratiquent l'agriculture ensemble.

Este artículo explora cómo Zero Budget Natural Farming, un movimiento agrícola natural centrado en su fundador y gurú Subhash Palekar, promulga mundos agrarios alternativos a través de las prácticas duales de crítica y recuperación. Basándome en el trabajo de campo entre los practicantes en el estado de Kerala, en el sur de la India, y en la participación en los eventos de enseñanza organizados por Palekar, describo la crítica del movimiento a la corriente principal en agronomía (extensión estatal, universidades de agricultura, científicos) y sus prácticas de recuperación para restaurar cultivos en pequeña escala. Basados en supuestos biografías y principios agroecológicos indios. Su crítica combina argumentos familiares, ecológicos y políticos contra el produccionismo y las injusticias del régimen alimentario global con los tropos hindúes nacionalistas de las conspiraciones occidentales y la ciencia corrupta. Para su trabajo de recuperación, estos agricultores naturales recurren, por un lado, a tecnologías agroecológicas ambulantes (fermentos, espaciamiento, acolchado, cría de vacas) y entendimientos "probióticos", microbiológicos y simbióticos actuales del suelo y la agricultura, y por otro lado en hindú tropos nativistas, insistiendo en las propiedades excepcionales de las especies agrarias nativas de (y que pertenecen a) la India. Utilizo la idea de la política ontológica para describir los movimientos de los movimientos como la promulgación de un mundo rural alternativo, en el que los humanos, los animales, las plantas, la micorriza y los microbios están haciendo juntos la agricultura.

Der Artikel untersucht wie eine indische Naturlandbaubewegung, die Zero Budget Natural Farming Bewegung, die sich auf ihren Gründer und Guru Subhash Palekar konzentriert, alternative agrarische Welten durch die doppelte Praxis der Kritik und der Genesung (recuperation) erschafft. Basierend auf Feldforschung bei Kleinbauern im südindischen Bundesstaat Kerala und bei Lehrgängen von Palekar beschreibe ich die Kritik der Bewegung am agronomischen Mainstream (Landwirthschaftsberater, Landwirtschaftsuniversitäten, Wissenschaftler) und ihre Praktiken der Wiederherstellung von kleinbäuerlicher Landwirtschaft basierend auf vermeintlich indischen agrarökologischen Prinzipien und Biologien. Ihre Kritik kombiniert bekannte politisch-ökologische Argumente gegen den Produktionismus und die Ungerechtigkeiten des globalen Nahrungsmittelregimes mit den hindunationalistischen Theorien einer westlichen Verschwörungen und korrupter Wissenschaft. Für ihre wiederherstellende Arbeit greifen die Naturlandbauern einerseits auf bekannte agroökologische Technologien (Fermentation, Pflanzabstand, Mulchen, Kuhhaltung) und aktuelle „probiotische", mikrobiologische und symbiotische Vorstellungen von Boden und Landwirtschaft und andererseits auf nationalistische Ideen, die auf den außergewöhnlichen Eigenschaften von in Indien heimischen landwirtschaftlichen Arten bestehen. Ich benutze den Begriff der ontologischen Politik, um die performative Produktion einer alternativen ländliche Welt, in der Menschen, nicht-menschliche Tiere, Pflanzen, Mycoriza und Mikroben gemeinsam Landwirtschaft betreiben, in dieser Bewegung zu beschreiben.

Migration, Mobility & Displacement is an online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal. It seeks to publish original and innovative scholarly articles, juried thematic essays from migrant advocacy groups and practitioners, and visual essays that speak to migration , mobility and displacement and that relate in diverse ways to the Asia-Pacific. The journal welcomes submissions from scholars and migrant advocacy groups that are publicly engaged, and who seek to address a range of issues facing migrants, mobile and displaced persons, and especially work which explores injustices and inequalities. We welcome submissions and inquiries from prospective authors. Please visit our web-site: mmduvic.ca, or contact the editor for more information.