This article was downloaded by: [Moskow State Univ Bibliote]

On: 19 January 2014, At: 15:58

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954
Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,
UK

Journal of Contemporary Asia

Publication details, including instructions for
authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjoc20

Class developments in South

India
Published online: 02 Apr 2008.

To cite this article: (1976) Class developments in South India, Journal of

Contemporary Asia, 6:1, 30-38, DOI: 10.1080/00472337685390041
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00472337685390041

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the
information (the Content) contained in the publications on our platform.
However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no
representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,
or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views
expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and
are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the
Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with
primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any
losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,
and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or
indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the
Content.

Downloaded by [Moskow State Univ Bibliote] at 15:58 19 January 2014

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.
Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,
sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is
expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at
http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

30

JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORAR Y ASIA

Class Developments in South India

Downloaded by [Moskow State Univ Bibliote] at 15:58 19 January 2014

Anonymous
it was clear by the mid-1960s that the Indian people could not adequately develop
their human and economic potential by following a capitalist or state-capitalist path
of development. ! The contrast with China was already sharp; today it is far sharper.
In China, whatever the internal conflicts or the vagaries of foreign policy, the people are well fed and clothed; they are developing their talents and are vigorous and
hopeful. China has no inflation, no noticeable unemployment, no marked "population problem". In India all the familiar signs of Third World degeneration are
present and increase alarmingly: unemployment, inflation, an ever widening gap
between rich and poor, and for the past eight years, massive popular threats to the
existing order that have so far been outmatched by repressive violence. In the past
year many thousands have died in a famine that might have been avoided by earlier
developments in irrigation and flood control, adequate land reform, and equitable
distribution of food grains. With minor differences the same conditions obtain in
Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. For those who care to read the evidence the
verdict is in: to progress, these countries must undergo revolutionary changes in
their social structures of a kind similar to those already experienced by China,
North Korea and North Vietnam.
The success of the lndochinese liberation struggles may hasten revolutionary
change in South Asia. it is likely to do so because it has weakened the United
States' prestige and reliability as a counter-revolutionary power, has further restricted the sphere of capitalist enterprise and markets, and has given neighbouring
peoples an example of what faith, organization and morale can accomplish in the
face of overwhelming military and material odds. The main questions are when and
how revolution in South Asia will be accomplished.
Except in Cuba, Marxist-Leninist revolutions have come about in the wake of
world wars - although the "wake" lasted thirty years in lndochina. Nevertheless,
it was World War II and Japanese invasion which first seriously disrupted the colonial fabric of French lndochina, as it did the semi-colonial structures of China and
Korea. By loosening or dislodging established colonial powers, the second world
war also created conditions favorable to Marxist-led revolutionary struggles in Burma, Malaya and the Philippines, and to a smaller extent in India, and made possible
the nationalist struggles of Indonesia and Algeria. These struggles were eclipsed by
the post-war expansion of nee-colonialism domioated by the United States. The
experience of Cuba indicates, however, that it is possible for revolutions leading to
socialist transformation to occur in Third World countries without world war, even
though the more recent experience of Chile has underlined the costs and dangers.
If revolutionary change is to begin mainly through internal developments, without or prior to foreign invasions and disruptions of the indigenous governmental
and social structure, the precise class composition and class development of the

Downloaded by [Moskow State Univ Bibliote] at 15:58 19 January 2014

CLASS DEVELOPMENTS

IN SOUTH INDIA

31

laboring poor in these countries would seem to be of even greater importance than
it was in China or Vietnam. This paper is about some class developments in Tamil
Nadu, the largest state of Southern India, having about 45 million people. It is c ~ eerned mainly with the countryside, in which 70% of the people dwell.
It is logical to suppose that the most favorable ground for a socialist revolutionary movement would be a very large class of propertyless laborers who are virtually
homogeneous in their poverty and in their relations of production. Facts as well as
J
logic support this view, for the Commumst movement in South India has had greatest success in organizing within large but localized groups of landless agricultural
laborers and of tea and rubber plantation workers, mnong transport workers, in
large hand industries and semi-processing plants such as coir, cashew nuts, and textiles, and in some machine industries, notably cotton mills.
The mai, argument of this paper is that since independence, and especially since
about 1960, landless or near-landless agricultural laborers have greatly increased in
the villages of Tamil Nadu, and that they may in time form the principal rural base
for an expanded Communist movement. Although ! lack figures for the most recent
years, a similar increase has taken place in Sri Lanka, West Bengal and Kerala, and
perhaps in other states of India.
Tamil Nadu lies in the southeast of the Indian peninsula. It slopes from the
mountains of the eastern and western Ghats in the northwest and west of the state
to the coastal plains of the east and southeast. The state (carved out of the old
Madras State in the mid-1950s) now contains 14 districts.
Rice constitutes 78% of Tamil Nadu's foodgrains although it occupies only 56%
of the acreage devoted to food grains, which is 65% of the total area sown. Maize,
millets and grams are the other foodgrains. 2 Rice cultivation depends almost entirely on irrigation and s o is unevenly distributed, since only 41% of the net sown area
is irrigated. Five of the 14 districts, where irrigation is most prominent, account for
55% of the total rice grown: they are Chingleput, North and South Arcot, Thanjavur and Tiruchirappalli on the eastern coastal plains. 3 Most of the irrigation in
Tamil Nadu is carried on with the aid of small reservoirs or ponds (called tanks) or
wells. Only in Thanjavur district, on the southeast coastal tip, is irrigation mainly
dependent on canals from the delta of the River Kaveri. Eighty-four per cent of
Thanjavur's net sown area is irrigated, 4 and the district provides about a quarter of
the state's total rice production. Thanjavur also exports rice to the deficit state of
Kerala, where more than 40% of the land is under export crops such as tea, rubber, cashew nuts and coconuts. Twenty-four per cent of Tamil Nadu's total acreage
is devoted to specialized crops such as cotton, groundnuts, sugarcane, oilseeds, tea
and tobacco. After leather goods, the main foreign exports are tobacco and cotton
yarn and textiles, while tea and groundnut are minor exports, s
The areas of intensive, irrigated rice cultivation have the highest productivity per
acre with respect to food. For at least 2,000 years they have supported much
denser populations, more centralized political systems, and more elaborate and
steeply stratified class structures than the regions of predominantly dry cultivation.
Before British rule began in the late eighteenth century, they formed the heartlands and contained the capital cities of South India's major kingdoms. Apart from
Madras city and the small southernmost district of Kanyakumari which combines

32

J O U R N A L OF C O N T E M P O R A R Y ASIA

Downloaded by [Moskow State Univ Bibliote] at 15:58 19 January 2014

wet rice with intensive coconut growing and fishing, 6 Tamil Nadu's most densely
populated districts are the two main rice-growing coastal regions: Thanjavur, the
centre of the ancient Chola empire with 75% of its gross acreage under wet rice and
1022 persons per square mile in 1971, and Chingleput, the ancient Pallava heart.
land, with 71% under wet rice and with 952 per square mile (Table 2). At the other
extreme is the hill district of the Nilgiris with 0.8% of its acreage under rice and
only 503 persons per square mile, 7 most of them employed on Anglo-American tea
plantations (Table 1).

Table !. Irrigation, Paddy Cultivation and Population Density in the Districts of

Tamil Nadu, South India, 1951-71.
Distrwt

Scheduled
Gross irrigated as Gross paddy as
Density per
Castes (Hari]ans)
% o f gross sown 70 o f gross sown
square mile
acreage
acreage
as % o f Pop.
1951 1961 1971 1951 1961 1971 1951 1961 1971 1951 1961

Thanjavur
79.8
Chingleput
64.9
South Arcot
42.7
North Arcot
42.6
Kanyakumari
NA
Madura
43.5
Ramanathapuram40.6
Tirunelveli
38.8
Tiruchirappalli
33.8
Coimbatore
32.4
Salem
21.2
Nilgiris
0.3
TamilNaduState32.1

78.7
56.1
46.2
47.7
46.0
41.0
43.3
41.0
34.2
37.7
20.6
0.7
44.2

76.0
72.7
57.4
51.2
53.2
38.0
37.5
41.4
36.0
37.8
30.4
0.8
45.7

81.6
65.2
35.7
32.4
NA
21.9
47.0
24.1
30.7
5.8
11.6
7.3
39.4

78.2
74.9
37.1
31.5
53.9
23.4
33.7
25.4
26.3
12.1
10.7
6.7
34.4

75.0
71.2
43.1
39.6
50.8
20.6
41.2
25.2
27.2
37.8
13.1
5.9
35.2

798 868 1022 22

607 696 952 28
660 724 861 25
612 671 793 18
NA 1545 1883 NA
589 660 809 15
429 502 589 14
563 619 726 15
535 579 698 17
464 590 723 14
477 539 897 15
317 417 503 18
554 672 822 15

23
28
26
20
4
15
15
16
17
16
17
18
18

Source: Censuses oflndia, Madras State (Tamil Nadu/, 1951, 1961 and 197 l , G o v e r n m e n t of
Tamil Nadu Press, Madras.

The district surrounding Madras city, and the small mountainous district o f Dharmapuri, have
been omitted.

On the whole, the main rice growing regions have the most stratified agrarian
structures, that is to say the highest percentages of both tenant cultivators and landless or near-landless agricultural laborers, and the smallest percentages of landowners. Thus in Thanjavur, only 31% of the agricultural households lived mainly
from their own land in 1961, while 21% cultivated mainly leased land, and 48%
were agricultural laborers (Table 2). 8 Most of the tenant farmers paid between
about half and three fifths of their produce as rent, and so were only slightly better
off than the laborers. 9 Among the owners, 75% were small owners of less than 5
acres, possessing only 37% of the total land, whereas the top 10% of tile biggest
owners possessed another 37% of the land. Fifty-six per cent of the owners, indeed,

CLASS D E V E L O P M E N T S IN S O U T H INDIA

33

Table 2. Agrarian Classes in Tamil Nadu, 1951 to 1971

LandownersCultivating Agricul. Labor- Agri. Labas % o f

Tenants a.s % ers as % o f Agri-r_ers as ~o
Agricul,
o f Agrieul.
cul. Workforce l. otal
Workforce Workforce
worrlorce
1951 1961 1951 1961 1951 1961 1971 1961 1971

Downloaded by [Moskow State Univ Bibliote] at 15:58 19 January 2014

District

Thanjavur
Chingleput
South Arcot
North Arcot
Kanyakumari
Madura
Ramanathapuram
Tirunelveli
Tiruchirappalli
Coimbatore
Salem
Nilgiris
Tamil Nadu State

40
47
58
62
NA
54
69
59
65
51
68
57
58

31
47
56
65
58
56
68
57
67
55
74
52
59

20
16
!0
1l
NA
10
10
10
12
10
4
7
12

21
11
7
10
9
10
11
12
10
10
7
10
11

40
36
32
27
NA
35
25
23
23
39
24
36
30

48
42
37
25
33
34
21
31
23
35
!9
38
30

59
54
47
46
67
52
40
56
36
57
44
62
48

33
25
29
17
9
20
14
16
16
16
13
11
18

41
31
35
31
35
32
25
30
25
31
27
8
29

Total Agricul.
Work/orce as
% o f Total
Workforce
1961 1971
69
60
78
68
30
59
67
51
7 I"
46
68
30
60

70
57
75
68
52
61
63
54
69
54
6!
13
60

Source: Censuses o f india, Madras (Tamll Naclu) State, 19S i , ! 961 a n d 19"71, G o v e r n m e n t o f
T a m i l N a d u Press, M a d r a s .
Note:

Figures for l a n d o w n e r s a n d t e n a n t s in 1961 are a p p r o x i m a t e , being d e r i v e d f r o m figures

for o w n e r s , t e n a n t s , a n d o w n e r s w h o are also t e n a n t s . O w n e r - t e n a n t s c u l t i v a t i n g less t h a n

5 acres have been classed as t e n a n t s .

(some o f whom were also tenants) owned less than 2.65 acres and so could be
classed among the rural poor. n This means that about 85% of the agricultural households in Thanjavur were comparatively poverty-stricken, although they were
divided in terms of actual income, class membership, and felt class interests, into
owners, various kinds o f tenants, and laborers.
Chingleput district rankeJ second to Thanjavur in 1961, with 75% o f its acreage under wet rice, and with landowners comprising 47% of its agriculturalists,
tenant farmers 11%, and agricultural laborers 42%. In the other districts there was
a strong tendency for the percentages of tenant farmers and o f agricultural laborers
to decrease, and of owner-cultivators to increase, proportionately to the decrease in
the percentage of wet paddy land. Thus Ramanathapuram district with 34% o f its
acreage under wet rice had only 21% of its agriculturalists working as agricultural
laborers in 1961, while 68% of its agricultural households lived from their own land
and 11% were tenant farmers. In Salem district where less than 11% of the land was
under paddy, only 19% o f agriculturalists were laborers, while 74% owned their
own land and 7% were tenant farmers. When we note that in the state at large in
1961, 30% of agriculturalists were agricultural laborers, 59% owned their own land
and 11% were mainly tenant farmers, we can see that Salem and Ramanathapuram
had well above the average percentage o f landowners, while Thanjavur and Chingeput had well above the average percentages o f tenants and laborers. Similar conclu-

Downloaded by [Moskow State Univ Bibliote] at 15:58 19 January 2014

34

J O U R N A L O F C O N T EIe l PO RAR Y A S I A

sions emerge from a consideration of the percentage of the total cultivated acreage
leased out to tenants: this was 56% in Thanjavur and 30% in Chingleput, but only
22% in Ramanathapuram and only 13% in Salem. I l
The caste system,which before British rule was very closely co-ordinated with relations of production, is more complex in the predominantly wet rice regions, less
complex in those which have only little rice cultivation, and virtually absent (at
least traditionally) in areas with little or no wet rice at all. By "complexity" I refer
to the total number of named castes and subcastes in a district, the total number in
one village, the extent of the division of labour among the castes and subcastes, and
the stringency of rules regarding ritual pollution arising from contact between
castes of higher and lower rank. A Thanjavur village of 800 to 1,000 people, for
example, may contain from 25 to 40 named subcastes 12 between whom marriage
and intel-dining are prohibited; a Salem village about 14 to 18,13 and a village
among the hill Kallar of Madura, who formerly had semi-independent chiefdoms,
about six or seven. 14 in mountainous regions with little or no wet rice cultivation,
typified by the Nilgiris, there was traditionally little or no caste system but instead
a series of contiguous, and to some extent interdependent, endogamous primitive
tribes. The fundamental reason for these differences was, no doubt, that areas of
higher productivity through wet rice culture could maintain a large proportion of
the people in non-agricultural occupations as craft, trading, service, governmental,
military, artistic or religious specialists, whereas regions of lower productivity could
support fewer groups and smaller numbers of such specialists, and the least fertile
mountainous areas none at all.
Where the caste system was the most elaborate and the classes of tenants and
landless laborers most populous, there were the highest percentages of Untouchables (now called Harijans). Oversimplifying somewhat, we may say that the vast
majority of Harijans were once slaves serving either landowners or (in a few areas)
tenant farmers. In the wet rice heartlands of Tamil Nadu such as Thanjavur and
Chingleput, they were formerly slaves of the Tamil kingdoms. They were distributed by the kings to join communities of priestly or aristocratic landlords of peasant
cultivators; they lived in segregated ghettoes outside each village, and they did the
bulk of wet rice cultivation and built and maintained the irrigation works. In Kerala
with its feudal kingdoms and family estates, by contrast, slaves belonged to the individual landlord or peasant household. The slaves, who were legally freed in 1843,
were the ancestors of a substantial proportion of the agricultural laborers of
modern times. Thus we find, for example, that 23% of Thanjavur's population were
Harijans in 1961, and as much as 28% of that of Chingleput, but that Salem and
Ramanathapuram had only 17% and 15% respectively, while the hill regions of
Madura had fewer than 10 per cent. The Nilgiris had none until the 19th century,
but now have 18% because of the immigration of indentured plantation workers
on to the British tea plantations. Wherever they are found, the majority of Harijans
continue to be landless laborers.
The net result of all this is that, as Joan Mencher has pointed out, ss class consciousness has been hard to foster among the laboring poor of Tamil Nadu's villages.
Where the land was relatively infertile and productivity low, the vast majority of
villagers were owner-cultivators, mostly poor, often themselves subordinate to a

Downloaded by [Moskow State Univ Bibliote] at 15:58 19 January 2014

CLA.~S D E V E L O P M E N T S I N S O U T H I N D I A

35

few big landlords on whet.; mey depended for loans, protection, and marketing
outlets, but eager to maintain their advantages and status in opposition to the much
smaller numbers of tenant famlers and landless laborers in their vicinities. In the
highly productive areas, by contrast, the large numbers of petty owners, tenant farmers, and agricultural laborers were divided into many endogamous castes and
sub,castes with differing ranks, economic perquisites, and cultural traditions, each
imbued with a sense of religious and social exclusiveness, in particular tile main
block of the agricultural laborers - the Harijans - were socially, residentially and
ritually segregated from other laborers and from the tenants, who were drawn from
the comparatively "clean" agricultural Hindu castes.
Consequently, although Communist organizing among the rural poor began in
Tamil Nadu in the 1930s, the chief regions where the Communists made significant
inroads were those having the highest proportions of landless laborers (and thus of
Harijans), especially in Thanjavur. in Kerala, too, the Communists had great appeal
for landless laborers, but they also succeeded in organizing workers in tea and
rubber plantations, semi-processing plants, and factories, 16 while in some other
states such as Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal, they attracted formerly primitive
tribespeople whose land had been encroached on by the plains Hindus. IT In Tamil
Nadu, however, the Communists have remained chiefly a party of the agricultural
laborers and especially of the Harijans: in Thanjavur indeed they are often called
"'Pallan-Parayan Katchi'" or "the party of Pallas and Parayas," the two main Harijan
agricultural workers' castes. ! s
During the 150 years of British rule, although drastic changes were made in the
production of crops and of craft goods and the disposal of surplus value, the
agrarian class structure appears to have remained rather stable. Hand industries were
partly destroyed, and tile industrial export trade wiped out. Private property, contractual tenures, and contractu',d wage labor were created on the land. About 40%
of the cultivated land was diverted into industrial export crops, and a few areas, especially Thanjavur, were developed as monocrop rice-producing regions to help feed
the other areas and the Tamil indentured laborers who had been taken off to plantations in Ceylon, Malaya, Mauritius, and Kerala. A large part - perhaps up to a
third - of the value of the gross produce was converted into revenue for the British
government and armies, and profits for British plantations, mills, banks, and export,
import, transport and trading firms. In villages, the main changes seem to have been
some decline in the proportions of craft workers and some increase in the proportion of agricultural laborers. This last was not, however, very startling: Dharma
Kumar estimates that the landless laborer (or slave) population of Madras was about
l0 to 15% of the total population at the begim|ing of the 19th century and about
15 to 20% (or about 30% of the agricultural population) in 1875-1900. t9 Thereafter there was little change in the state at large: Tamil Nadu's aglicultural laborers
were about 30% of the agricultural population in 1901, test to 37% by 1931, but
declined again to 33% in 1951 and 30% in 1961. 2 In some districts there was also
a remarkable continuity in the content of agrarian relations, at least during the
second half of British rule. Thus Thanjavur in 1951 had practically the same statistical distribution in the size of land holdings, the same percentage of the crop paid
by tenants to landlords, and the same payments in kind and cash for landless

Downloaded by [Moskow State Univ Bibliote] at 15:58 19 January 2014

36

JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORAR Y ASIA

laborers, as it had in 1871.

Since 1961, however, Tamil Nadu's rural class structure seems to have changed
more drastically than it did throughout the century and a half of British rule,
chiefly through a marked increase of agricultural laborers and a corresponding
decline in the proportions of tenant farmers and of owners. 21 In the state at large,
agricultural workers increased from 18% to 29% of the total workforce between
1961 and 1971, and from 30% to 48% of the agricultural workforce (Table 2). In
Thanjavur agricultural workers have now reached 41% of the total workforce and
59% of agricultural workforce, whereas they were 33% and 48% respectively in
1961. in Chingleput agricultural laborers were 31% of the total workforce in 1971
as against 25% in 1961 and 54% of the agricultural workforce as against 42% in
1961. Every other district has increased similarly. In no district except the Nilgiris
are agricultural workers now less than 25% of the total workforce, and in no district are they less than 35% of the agricultural workforce, while in 7 out of 14
districts they are now more than half the agricultural workforce.
Several reasons for this increase seem likely, although it is hard to assign weights
to them. One is ecological: until 1961, Tamil Nadu mainly expanded its production
by increasing its cultivated acreage. This provided the growing population of owners
with new cultivated acreages, and afforded new leased fields for tenants. After
about 1960, however, intensification rather than expansion appears to have become
more profitable; indeed, in some regions no further expansion was possible. Especially with the green revolution policy initiatives of the United States after 1965,
effort was put into increasing the irrigated and the double-crop acreage, and money
into fertilizers, tube-wells, high yielding seeds, and tractors. Intensifying production
on old lands does not, however, yield new lands for a growing number of owners or
new leased fields for tenants; hence, in part, the increasing percentage of landless
laborers. With population growth at 22% between 1961 and 1971, this class would
in any case have grown numerically, since there are few opportunities for urban
employment, in fact, however, in every district it has grown out of proportion to
the population increase, while the actual numbers, as well as the percentages, of the
landowning class have declined very greatly (see note 20).
A second reason for these changes stems from the land reform acts. Tamil Nadu
had a major "land distribution" act in 1961 and a major act purporting to give
fixity of tenure to tenant farmers in 1969. 22 In fact, as is well known, many landlords evicted their tenants in advance of these acts, distributed their lands among
their kinsfolk, and began what is euphemistically called "self-cultivation" through
landless laborers in order to retain the maximum amount of land. Some disguised
tenancy persisted in practice, and some persons recorded as laborers in 1971 may
be de facto tenants, but the number of landless or near-landless laborers greatly
increased. In short, rather than fulfdling the Gandhian slogan of "Land to the Tiller", land reform acts in Tamil Nadu, as elsewhere in India, dispossessed the cultivating tenant.
A third factor is the green revolution itself. Although less successful than was
predicted in the late 1960s, it did increase rice production in the late 1960s and
early 1970s, making Tamil Nadu for the first time self sufficient for food grains.
Thanjavur's rice production doubled between 1951 and 1971, at least partly

Downloaded by [Moskow State Univ Bibliote] at 15:58 19 January 2014

CLASS DEVELOPMENTS IN SOUTH INDIA

37

through green revolution techniques. The green revolution, however, exacerbated

the landlord's tendency to evict his tenants, for he was able to make a greater profit
by investing in modern farming with wage labour than by accepting compensation
for lands confiscated under the land reforms, or by leaving them with tenants. The
green revolution coupled with inflation also appears to have bankrupted those of
the smaller owner cultivators who could not keep up with the new cultivation costs
or the general price rise and had to sell their land.
Whatever the reasons, Tamil Nadu is fast becoming a land of capitalist farmers
and rural proletarians. We might argue that it has been so in a sense ever since it
entered the world market during British rule: tenant farmers forced to cultivate
cash crops for their landlords' profit are as much at the mercy of regional and
world markets as are owner cultivators who produce for the market. Agricultural
laborers, too, are subject to capitalist exploitation whether they are paid in cash
or kind, provided that, as in Tamil Nadu, they produce commodities which their
masters sell for profit. Even so, the most recent shift to farming with much larger
numbers of wage workers does create a more homogeneous and easily recognizable
proletariat.
For this reason if not for others, I cannot agree with India's present Communist
parties that the main tasks of the "democratic revolution" are to get rid of imperialist controls in the country at large and "semi-feudal" relations in the countryside,
rather than to attack directly the structure of Indian capitalism. 23 To begin with,
there is of course a strange anomaly about a revolution in which the main revolutionary vanguard is supposed to be the industrial working class, yet the main attack is against exploitation by foreign imperialists and "feudal" landlords, and not
against that exercised by the whole capitalist class, both indigenous and foreign.
More germane, however, I would argue that the countryside is part and parcel of
nee.colonial capitalism in India; the agricultural laborers are the rural working
class, and the landowners are either rural capitalists or small producers at the mercy
of the bigger landlord and the merchant. ! would expect the rural proletariat to
form the v~nguard of revolution in the countryside, as the plantation workers will
do on the plantations, and the industrial, craft, transport and service workers in the
cities.
Tamil Nadu's Communist strongholds, like those of Kerala, are in the districts
and taluks with the highest percentages of landless lal:orers, it is sometimes argued
that Communist influence cannot spread further because of the divisiveness induced
by the .caste system, or because of the smaller numbers of landless laborers in other
regions.24 There is, however, evidence from both Thanjavur and Kerala that when
middle-ranking castes of cultivators are dispossessed, they are capable of joining
Harijan laborers in a Communist movement. Given the increasing proletarianization
of Tamil Nadu's villagers, not to mention the recent famine, it is possible that Communist influence may spread quite rapidly and lead to widespread struggles for land
and grain, similar to those already seen in Thanjavur and Kerala. The main obstacles
appear now to lie in the ideology and strategy of the organizers and in repression
by the state and landlords rather than in relations among the rural poor. The alternatives to struggle appear to be increasing dispossession, unemployment and famine
in South India's villages.

38

J O U R N A L OF C O N T E M P O R A R Y ASIA

FOOTNOTES
I.

Downloaded by [Moskow State Univ Bibliote] at 15:58 19 January 2014

2.
3.
4.

5.
6.

7.
8.
9.
I O.

I i.
12.

I 3.
14.
15.

16.
17.

18.

19.
20.
21.

22.
23.
24.

See, e.g. Prabhat Patnaik, "Imperialism and the Grow t h of Indian C a pi t a l i s m" , in Roger
Owen and Bob Sutcliffe, eds., Studies in the Theory oflmperiaUsm, Longman, 1972,
pp.217-225.
Statistical Handbook o f Tamil Naclu, t 972, Department of Statistics, Madras, pp.94-95.
Op.cit., pp.98-99.
The net sown area is the actual land acreage cultivated. The gross sown area is the total
acreage cultivated in a year, including second and third crops. The gross irrigated acreage
(shown in Table I) is the total acreage irrigated in a year, including second and third
irrigations.
Op.cit., pp.220-22 t.
K.C. Alexander, "Some Characteristics of the Agrarian Social Structure of Tamil N a du" ,
Economic and Political Weekly, VoI.X, No.16, April 19, 1975, p p . 6 6 6 , 6 6 8 . Although !
disagree w i t h some of his more idealist interpretatio ns , I am i nde bt e d to Dr A l e xa nde r' s
article and tables for much of the remaining numerical data in this article.
Op.cit., pp.82-83, 98-99.
See f o o t n o t e 6.
Badrinath, A Report on the Tamii Nadu Agricultural Land Record o f Tenancy Rights
Act o f 1909, Chepauk, Madras, 1971, pp.19-23.
Census o f India, ! 9 6 1 , Vol.IX, Madras, Part ! -A(ii), pp.480-482.
K.C. Alexander, Ioc.cit., 1975, p.668.
See, e.g. Andrd B~teille, Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patter~s o f Stratification in a
Tan~ore Village, University of California Press, 1965, pp.73 and 90; Kalhleen Gough,
"Caste in a Tan/ore Village", in E.R. Leach, ed.0 Aspects o f Caste in South India, Ceylon
and Pakistan, Cambridge University Press, 1969, p.18.
Brenda E.F. Beck,Peasant Society in Konku, University of British C ol umbi a Press, 1972,
pA$ 9.
Louis Dumo nt, Une Sou$.caste de I'Inde de Sad, Mouton and Co., 1957, pp.32-38.
Joan P. Mencher, "The Caste System Upside Down or the Not-so Mysterious East",
Current Anthropology, V o l . l S , No.4, December 1974, p.471 ; "Conflicts and Contradictions in Ihe 'Green Revolution' ", Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.lX, Nos. 6, 7
and 8 (Annual Number), February 1974, p.317.
For mote detail see Kathleen Gough, "Kerala Politics and the 1965 Elections", Inter.
national Journal o f Comparative Sociology, VoI.Vlll, N o . l , March 1967, p.59.
See, e.g., Mohan Ram, "The C o m m u n i s t Movement in Andhra Pradesh", in Paul R. Brass
and Marcus F. Franda, eds., Radical Politics in South Asia, Massachusetts Ins t i t ut e of
Technology Press, 1973, p.313; Kanu Sanyal, " R e p o r t on the Peasant Movement in the
Tetai Region", Liberation, Calcutta, VoL2, N o . I , November 1968.
For C o m m u n i s t organization among Harijans in Thanjavur see, e.g., Kathleen Gough,
*'Harijans in Thanjavur", and Mythily Shivaraman, " R u m b l i n g s of Class Struggle in
Thanjavur", in Kathleen Gough and Hari P. Sharma, eds.. Imperialism and Revolution
in South Asia, 1973, pp.222-266.
Dharma Kumar,LandandCaste in South India, Cambridge University Press, 1965, p.193.
Census o f India, 1961, op.cit., p p . 3 4 5 , 3 4 7 .
Separate figures for owners and tenants are not yet available for 1971. In the State at
targe, "cultivatocs'" (owners and tenants) decreased from 6,458 million in 1961 to 4,608
million in 197 I, while agricultural laborers increased from 2,828 million to 4,490 million
(Statistical Handbook o f Tamil Nadu, 19 72, p.86).
The Madras Land Reforms (Fixation of Ceilings on Land) Act of 1961, and the Tamil
Nadu Agricultural Lands Record of Tenancy Rights Act of 1969.
Although they differ greatly on other matters of strategy and on tactics, this view is held
by the Co mmunist Party of India, the C o m m u n i s t Party of India (Marxist), and all the
various Maoist groups.
See e.g., Andr[ B$teille, Studies in Agrarian Social Structure, Oxford University Press,
1974, pp.168-170.