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THE HARBINGERS 0F RAIN: CULTURE

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THE HARBINGERS OF RAIN: CULTURE AND DROUGHT IN
BIJAPUR, INDIA

BY

Aninhalli Rame Vasavi

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Anthropology

1993

ABSTRACT

THE HARBINGERS OF RAIN: CULTURE AND DROUGHT
IN BIJAPUR, INDIA

3?

Aninhalli name Vasavi

In the semi-arid district of Bijapur, Karnataka state, India,
droughts are defined and understood in culturally specific ways.
Droughts are addressed in multiple domains thereby indicating the
larger cosmology within which conditions of nature and human-nature
relations are contextualized. In the domain of agriculture the
classification.of land.types, the associating'of'different crops to
different lands, and the evaluation of food crops are premised on
a set of cultural precepts. Located within the annual agro-ritual
cycle are a repertoire of provisioning transactions between the
landed, service, and ritual caste groups of the villages. In
addition, an array of rituals ranging from annual rain-crop
prophesying, rain-divination, and drought-alleviation rites are
conducted at various periods.

While such conceptualizations and transactions attest to the
close human-nature relations within, the culture they do not
necessarily provide an effective mechanism in which drought-related

(and hence nature-related) scarcities of resources are addressed.

Instead, such cosmological conceptualizations act as ideological
foundations which legitimize resource differences within the
society. Such factors then provide a basis for noting that,
contrary to popular portrayals, some non-western cultural
conceptualizations of human-nature relations do not lead to
arcadian, harmonious, and sustenance-oriented conditions.

Increasing marginalization, recurring droughts, and widespread
food scarcity in the district have led to the establishment of
programs and policies to address the situation. Two specific
schemes, the promotion of modern agriculture and drought-
alleviation programs, act as hegemonic forces which are reordering
the ecology, agriculture, and culture of the region. The end
result of such reordering is the generation of new social
conditions and symbolic forms in the region which attest to the
formation of new human-nature and human-human relations.

The dissertation concludes by noting the importance of culture
in the conceptualization and appropriation of nature. At the same
time it calls attention to the world-wide reordering of nature

which thereby has implications for the content of cultures.

Copyright by
ANINHALLI RAKE VASAVI

1993

TO ALL THE RESIDENTS OF MADBHAVI VILLAGE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank the people of Madbhavi village for accepting me as a
member of their village and for their kindness towards me. I
wish to especially thank Mr. Basavaraj Biradar and his
family, whose concern and care for me went beyond the call
of duty and hospitality. Many others keep me in their debt
for their assistance and advice. Hanumant Halangalli
assisted me during the latter part of the field work, and
Gopal Parvati, Srinivas Tavaregere, and R.V Kadival provided
guidance about the district and assisted me with the
logistics of travel and lodging. Writers, Simpi Linganna,
Shangu Biradar, Srinivas Kulkarni, Hanumant Tasgoankar, M.
Lingadahalli, and M.N. Wali shared their knowledge of the
region with me. The many Agricultural Assistants I trailed
and the other officers of the District Agricultural Office
(Bijapur) were tolerant of my queries.

N. Kedarnath has been a steady supporter whose
friendship and advice have been indispensable to me.
Virendra Kumar has not only shared his ideas and interests
on nature and society with me but has been a encouraging and
concerned friend. I share the satisfaction of seeing this
study come to fruition with my surrogate family, Mrs Rita
Ratnam and Commander R.S.K. Ratnam. Tirthankar Ghosh and
Zaheer Baber have also provided friendship and encourgement
at different periods of this endeavour. My gratitude to

Drs. Ann Gold of Cornell University and Morgan

vi

Maclachlan at the University of South Carolina for their
encouragement and guidance in this project. The members of my
Doctoral Dissertation Committee, Drs. Judy Pugh, Harry Raulet,
Charles Morrison, and David Campbell have given me extra-wide
latitude to pursue my interests and have then suffered reading the
many avatars of this dissertation. I thank them and my colleagues
Brian Brown, Cati Pelissier, David Perusek, and Michael C. Ennis-
McMillan for their support. Special thanks to Drs. Rosalind Shaw
and Stephen Bailey at Tufts University for providing vital support
during the last leg of this endeavour. Financial support for
fieldwork was provided by the Thoman Program, Michigan State

University, and the American Institute of Indian Studies, Chicago.

vii

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.

g.
h.
1.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

a.
b.
c.
d.

e.

a.
b.
c.
d.

TABLE OP CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE NUMBER
INTRODUCTION 1-28
INTRODUCTION

LITERATURE REVIEW

SOCIETY, CULTURE, AND NATURE

ETHOS 0F SUBSTANTIALISM

SOCIAL CONTEXTS OF DROUGHTS
ADMINISTRATIVE REORDERING OF NATURE
AND SOCIETY

EXPERIENCE AND EXPRESSION
FIELDWORK

CHAPTER LAYOUT AND SUMMARY

BIJAPUR 29-45

SETTING

HISTORY AND CULTURAL INFLUENCE

THE COLONIAL REORDERING OF VILLAGE
ORGANIZATIONS

REGIONAL CULTURAL COMPLEX

HISTORY OF DROUGHTS AND FAMINES

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIEF CENTERS

LIFE IN THE BLACK LAND 46-70

LANDSCAPE AND SOCIETY

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION OF NATURE
CLASSIFICATION AND SIGNIFICANCE
OF RAINS

AGRO-RITUAL CYCLE

SEEING APPROPRIATENESB 71-96
THREE AGRARIAN PRECEPTS OF BIJAPUR
BHUMI-GUNA: LAND CHARACTERISTICS

HADA: APPROPRIATENESS
HULIGE: BESTOWED ABUNDANCE

viii

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.

a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

CHAPTER VII.

a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.

g.

a.

CALLING THE RAINS 97-136

COSMOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF DROUGHTS
RAIN-CROP PROPHESYING

DROUGHTS AS AFFLICTION

COSMOLOGY AS IDEOLOGY

COSMOLOGY AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE
DHARMAKARYA: AXIOM OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

AN ENEMY LIKE THE STOMACH 137-169

INSTITUTIONALIZED PROVISIONING TRANSACTIONS
DASOHA: COMMUNITY SHARING

AYA: INSTITUTIONALIZED SERVICE PAYMENTS
DANA: CHARITABLE GIVING

A MORAL ECONOMY OF PROVISIONING?

BECOMING SYSTEM 170-195

AGRICULTURAL ENCOUNTERS

BECOMING SYSTEM

SHIFTS IN THE LANDSCAPE AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE
DISPLACEMENT OF LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

METAPHOR OF HYBRIDS

A HYBRID DROUGHT TO COME 196-224

A DROUGHT SETS IN

ADMINISTRATIVE HEGEMONY

DROUGHTS AS A PROBLEM OF PRODUCTIVITY
DECLARING DROUGHTS

REGION AS DROUGHT-AFFLICTED
DEVELOPMENT AND DISARRAY

A HYBRID DROUGHT TO COME

CONCLUSION 225-234

CULTURE-NATURE

ix

GLOSSARY

APPENDICES

A. MAJOR FAMINES IN BIJAPUR
B. HINDU-ENGLISH MONTHS

C. CLASSIFICATION OF RAINS

D. AGRO-RITUALS IN BIJAPUR

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

235-237

238

239

240

241

242-247

248-263

LIST OP FIGURES

Page Number

I. BIJAPUR DISTRICT MAP 30
II. CLIMATE AND AGRICULTURAL CYCLES 62
III. AGRICULTURISTS' RAINS 65
1V. BHUMI-GUNA: LAND CHARACTERISTICS 78
V. HADA: APPROPRIATENESS 84

VI. RAIN RITUALS IN THE AGRO-RITUAL CYCLE 100
VII. RAIN-CROP PROPHESYING CENTERS 106
VIII. RAIN POTS 109

IX. AGRO-RITUAL CYCLES AND PROVISIONING
TRANSACTIONS 141

xi

CHAPTER:I

INTRODUCTION

In the context of increasing ecological degradation in
India and the widespread stress associated with the
depletion of ecological resources, both academic and
activist narratives now center on the debate of indigenous
conceptions of nature and societal relationship to natural
objects and processes. Both the urgency of the issues that
an understanding of culture-nature relations can highlight
and the fact that "the complex relationships between the
meaning systems and natural environments of South Asia
remain to be established" (Herring 1991:23) point to the
importance of studying culture-nature relationships.

I have chosen to study conceptualizations of society-
nature relations in Bijapur, one of India's chronic drought-
prone regions. Focusing primarily on contexts in which
drought and its related effects are conceptualized and
addressed, I use drought as a window through which to study
a culture's conceptualization of nature. With this in mind,
I first delineate the cultural significance accorded to
natural objects and processes in the region. Based on
details from the domains of agriculture, rain-rituals, and
provisioning transactions I indicate that an ethos of

substantialism is the framework of significance within which

2
society-nature relations are constituted and conducted. I
observe that such a framework enables people to recognize
the various and specific characteristics of different
objects and persons and to make links between contexts and
actions.

In Bijapur local conceptualizations of drought are
closely aligned with the cosmology of the region which
emphasizes a non-dualistic relationship between humans and
nature. Yet, there are no ameliorative strategies encoded
within these cosmological conceptualizations with which the
people can overcome drought-related scarcities.
Cosmological constructions of society-nature relations, I
note, serve as ideological foundations which legitimize
resource differences within the society.

Bijapur is subject to programs and policies, such as
drought relief works and the promotion of modern
agriculture, that attempt to address the problems associated
with recurring droughts and widespread poverty and
deprivation in the region. The programs and policies of
modern agriculture and drought-alleviation schemes act as
hegemonic forces and are reconstituting the region’s
ecology, agriculture, and culture. In attempting to
understand and come to terms with such changes, the people
draw on metaphors that are based on an ethos of
substantialism. Such a framework continues to assert the

importance of the links between the land and the people.

3

The study as a whole elaborates on a regionally
specific framework within which society-nature relations
(especially in the context of drought) are conceptualized
and articulated. It attempts to encapsulate the ideological
dimensions of such conceptualizations and the effects of
hegemonic forces on local culture-nature relations. The
study concludes by noting the implications of the
reconstitution of local cultures by larger political and
economic forces and the generation of new symbolic forms in
a society.

Subject to recurring droughts, the district of Bijapur
is host to several harbingers of rain. There are deities
who are propitiated for rain, there are hereditary rain-men
and ritual specialists who call the rains, there are
agriculturists who work their land to enhance the fertility
and productivity of the land, and now there are government
agencies that attempt to bring rain. Together, these varied
harbingers of rain, they produce a cultural fabric that

makes Bijapur compelling to study.

LITERATURE REVIEW
The literature pertinent to this study is
contextualized and presented in two sections. This section
presents an overview of studies and debates relevant to the
anthropological problem of locating culture-nature

relations. The section that follows reviews studies and

4

perpspectives on the social contexts of droughts.

SOCIETY, CULTURE AND NATURE

The importance of linking conditions of society to
conditions of nature has been emphasized by studies that
locate the integral manner in which each is contoured by the
other. The framework for such analysis was set by Schmidt's
(1971) compelling exegesis of Marx's concept of nature which
eschews the mechanical, deterministic construction of nature
that is often attributed to Marxist analyses. In contrast
to such constructions, Schmidt elaborates on how (for Marx)
labor as a mediating force unites nature and society, making
them two sides of a single coin, dual partners in a
metabolic process where "nature is humanized while men are
naturalized" (1971:78).

Several studies (Burgess 1980; Smith and O'Keefe 1988;
Redclift 1987) which followed Schmidt locate the significant
ways in which nature and society influence and effect each
other. These studies note the forces and relations of
production, labor process, capital and resource allocation,
social organization, and the production process as they
relate to the conditions of nature. This dissertation is
oriented to the recognition of the inextricable and
significant link between conditions of nature and those of
society. It asserts that a reading of the conditions of

nature and nature's links to the meaning systems of a

5
culture are as important as interpreting and understanding
cultures in their social contexts.

Anthropological literature has added new dimensions to
the debate on society-nature relations. Some
anthropological studies have questioned the very relevance
of positing nature and culture as separate categories (Barth
1975; Strathern 1980). A pertinent question in this regard
is: Do all societies recognize domains and categories of
nature as being different from those of culture? Addressing
such questions, Strathern rejects early anthropological
perspectives which uphold a universally valid dichotomy
between categories of nature and culture and argues that
"there is no such thing as nature or culture. Each is a
highly relativized concept whose ultimate signification must
be derived from its place within a specific metaphysics"
(1980:72).

More recently, Ingold (1992) has eschewed not only
theories that uphold a culture-nature dichotomy but has also
questioned the relevance of perspectives which either see
culture as agaptlng to nature or those which give primacy to
culture thereby portraying nature as being culturally
cggstggcteg. Ingold calls attention to the "mutual
constitution of persons and environments" (1992:40) in the
course of a life process. Humams as actors act on and
interact with a given environment in patterns that are

culturally specific. Yet, such culturally specific actions

6
recognize the characteristics and the "affordances" or the
uses provided by objects in the environment. Such a
perspective ties in with my data which indicate that the
classification and use of land and other natural resources
in the area are hinged primarily on the recognition of the
specific characteristics of each object.

In addition to noting the non dichotomy of culture-
nature relations, ethnographies from several geographically
and culturally diverse societies have highlighted that
nature and culture are not always constructed in terms of
opposition to each other (Shiva 1988; Reichel-Dolmatoff
1976). Hierarchical, deterministic, and antithetical
relationships between ecological objects and processes, and
geo-physical features of land and culture are not
discernable in many societies. For societies whose
cosmological and lived realities are embedded in nature, and
which have not been subject to an estrangement of nature
from culture, or where Western science and technology have
not placed nature and culture in terms of opposition to each
other, the expressive forms of culture are a myriad of
patterns and structures which integrate humans with nature.

Moreover, Indianist perpectives concur with the
anthropological stance in which nature and culture are seen
as being closely intertwined. Studies of Hindu classical
and folk constructions of nature-culture relationhips

indicate a close, interdependent relationship between the

7
two (Gold 1991; Marriott 1989; Ramanujan 1989; Zimmermann
1987). The fundamental and important place that nature as
category, process, phenomenon, and characteristic occupies
in Indian thought and actions is testified to in studies
that note the monism of Hindu thinking in which cosmogonies
are "a totalistic homological system. . . in which there is
a confounding of the natural, supernatural, the religious
and ritual, and the social" (Smith 1989:242).

In Hindu thinking nature is not considered a mere
object through which humans make a livelihood; rather, it is
a reflexive mirror in which humans perceive themselves. As
Gold observed in the villages of Rajasthan, the natural
environment is considered to be an interactive agency that
"participates in human identities, states of mind and moral
enterprises" (1991:4). Such a perspective is largely valid
for understanding culture-nature conceptualizations in
general in South Asia and for the study of culture-drought
conceptualizations in particular. Moreover Gadgil and Cuba,
who have documented the shifts in the cultural and
ecological conditions in various parts of India, have called
attention to the ways in which "custom and tradition provide
the overarching framework within which human-nature
interactions are carried out" (1992:32).

I use the construct "culture-nature" to refer to the
ways in which culture (a set of meanings, values and

frameworks of significance) addresses and understands

8
various forms, objects, conditions, and processes of nature.
I use a "society-nature" construct to emphasize the ways in
which humans, as members of a particular society,
appropriate, relate to, and utilize natural objects and

processes.

ETHOS OP SUBSTANTIALISM

In the context of South Asia, scholars have identified
a close symbiosis between natural objects and processes, and
social actions and meanings. Referred to as substantialism
(Zimmermann 1987; Marriott 1989), this concept accounts for
the ways in which people consider all actions, conditions,
words, thoughts, places, relationships, and feelings to have
particular substances. Based on this attribution and
recognition of substances, people identify specific
qualities and characteristics in various domains and actions
(Marriott 1989). While the perspective of "substantialism",
linked to the ethnosociology of India school, propounds
substantialsim as a paradigm to account for and understand
all actions and interactions in the context of South Asia, I
use the substantialism perspective in a limited way.

I identify the ethos of substantialism as a paradigm
which explicates the ways in which the people relate to
natural objects and processes and, in some cases, to
changing material conditions and values. As a paradigm it

provides insight into the interlinking of contexts and

9
actions, such as the continuity associated between the
domains of divinity, nature, and society. An ethos of
substantialism also explains the coinciding of the literal
(such as the heat of a drought) with the metaphorical (such
as the heat of a deity's anger). Finally, an ethos of
substantialism provides a format for the conceptualizations
of human-nature relations in a non-dictomized and non-
dualistic perspective.

The cosmological construction of droughts, the
agricultural practices, and the rituals performed to
apprehend and prevent droughts are presented as being based
on an ethos of substantialism. Such a perspective provides
an explication for both the general society-nature relations
and for the ways in which culture mediates the
understandings of droughts. A perspective such as this
underscores the cultural basis of understanding a phenomena,
such as drought, that was often considered in only natural
terms and as determining the society in which it occurs.

As central as the perspective of the cultural
constitution of society-nature relations is, it is
insufficient to present nature and culture in only their
substantive dimensions. What must also be considered are
the multiple ways and forms in which nature, as object of
livelihood, source of living, and as a dimension of human
consciousness, is contextualized, understood, and interacted

‘with by the people. Some studies (Agarwal 1991; Gold 1991)

10

go beyond the epistemological and cosmological constructions
of society-nature relations and elaborate on the forms in
which culture-nature relationships have significance for
livelihood, consumption, and conservation practices.

Similarly, in the context of understanding nature-
culture relations in Bijapur I move away from classical
terms and models and focus on local, folk models of culture-
nature relations. I first provide a general perspective on
the ways in which natural objects and processes such as
climatic cycles, the celestial bodies, the flora and the
landscape are understood and interacted with. I then
elaborate on the specific type of agriculture in Bijapur and
note the cultural basis of its practice. Though conducted
through a set of precepts that are culturally ordered, the
local agricultural practices recognize the ecological
specificity of the region and incorporate drought as a

constantly plausible phenomenon.

SOCIAL CONTENTS OP DROUGHTS

Social science literature has increasingly focused on
identifying droughts, more than any other "natural
disaster", as products of larger economic and political
factors. Studies such as those by Copans (1983), Ball
(1978), and Watts (1983a) have elaborated on the forces of
colonialism, capitalism, and ongoing "underdevelopment"

processes as accounting for the increasing proclivity of

11
some regions to droughts. Blaikie and Brookfield (1987)
point to the importance of understanding the production of
drought and other ecological degradation on the basis of a
”regional political-ecology". The production of particular
ecological conditions are to be understood as results of
political and economic forces. The historical conditioning
of land-use, shifts in forces and relations of production,
and social structural factors are upheld in their study as
causative factors in the production of droughts and other
ecological conditions.

Following such leads I contextualize the study of
Bijapur, and its society-nature relationship with reference
to droughts, with a brief review of the historical
experience of drought and famine in the region. Using
colonial reports and studies I identify the influences of
the British administration on the district's village
structures and social organizations. I make note of the
impact of the colonial reorganization of the villages and
its effects on local strategies to manage and address
droughts.

Studies of droughts in other parts of the world have
also focused on the importance of the relationships between
drought and society (Campbell 1990; Glantz 1987; Spitz 1980;
.Platteau 1990; Watts 1983a, 1983b). They have emphasized
both the importance of social and cultural factors in

‘understanding drought-affected societies and the ways in

12
which droughts impinge on the social and material conditions
of societies. In the context of Bijapur I note not only the
historical conditioning of the region by political and
economic forces, but, also delineate the major social
structural and cultural patterns within the region. I
identify three cultural strands, that of Virashaivism,
Sufism, and pastoral deitism, as forming the underlying grid
on which the local cultural complex rests and within which
human-nature relations are addressed.

A third and important dimension that recent social
science literature on droughts has provided is that of
eschewing the paradigms of discontinuity in which societies
and natural hazards, such as droughts, are located (Hewitt
1983; Smith and C'Keefe 1988). Hewitt, for instance, noted
the tendency of most research to stress the "unness" of

natural hazards wherein:

Disasters are uuugnageg phenomena. They are the
unexpected, unprecedented. They derive from natural
processes or events that are highly uuggrtuiu.

guawageness and uureadiuess are said to typify the
condition of their human victims (1983:10).
Similarly, droughts are often studied and presented as
"hazards" that disrupt and pose threats to the continuity of
societies in which they occur. Instead of the "unness"
often associated with drought conditions, in places where

droughts are recursive they are contextualized in

established social and cultural idioms. As ethnographies

13
of societies in Africa and Australia which have a proclivity
to drought, indicate, droughts are encapsulated in the
larger cultural complex of the society (Munn 1973; Krige and
Krige 1947; Comaroff 1985; Frierman 1990). These
ethnographies have also noted the ways in which culturally
specific etiologies of droughts influence the ways in which
droughts are ritually addressed.

Similarly, I note the multiple ways in which droughts
are contextualized and addressed in the agricultural and
ritualistic domains of Bijapur. Droughts are addressed as
constantly plausible phenomena in the context of agriculture
and as the results of recalcitrant human actions in the
context of rituals. In providing details of the ritual
strategies by which droughts are collectively addressed I
note the specific cosmology within which droughts are
embedded. I then link these cosmological conceptualizations
to the implications they have for local scarcity alleviation
measures.

Several ethnographies have also detailed the strategies
by which various societies address droughts and thereby
incorporate droughts as regular aspects of life (Chen 1991;
Maclachlan 1983; Watts 1983b). These studies have
emphasized the specific ways through which household and
community level strategies attempt to overcome drought-
related resource and food shortages. While I do not detail

such specific scarcity alleviation strategies, I describe

14
and analyze community level food transactions and link them
to an analysis of the local moral economy of provisioning.

Linked to an understanding of the local provisioning
mechanisms and transactions is the problem of food scarcity
and threats to life that droughts pose. The forces of
colonialism, capitalism, and the displacement of traditional
strategies of adaptation to drought have been highlighted in
drought-related literature as factors that enhance the
reproduction of droughts and food scarcity problems in
different societies (Glantz 1987; Platteau 1990; Spitz 1980;
Watts 1983a). Within such arguments it has become
commonplace to locate food security problems as emanating
from breaks and discontinuities in the traditional social
structures that assured provisioning and sustenance to the
indigent (Campbell 1990; Greenough 1982; Epstein 1967;
Platteau 1990; Watts 1983b).

But Torry (1986b, 1986c, 1987) has consistently
questioned the "breakdown" metaphors which associate crises
of food security with collapses in established norms of
provisioning. He argues for going beyond the dependency and
underdevelopment theses of drought production and locates
such crises as food deprivation, the withdrawal of food
transactions, and the acceptance of such situations, in the
existing social structures and cultural codes of societies.
More specifically, Torry’s arguments highlight the need to

question the now generally accepted dictum that pre-

15
colonial, pre-capitalistic agrarian social formations were
based on an ethic of provisioning that effectively contained
deprivation and starvation.

My conclusions relating to the local cultural
provisioning mechanisms of Bijapur largely validate Torry's
analyses. I first analyze the provisioning transactions in
terms of being social strategies that take into account the
ecological specificity of the region and hence as the social
addressing of natural conditions. In addition I analyze the
ability of these mechanisms to contain both persistent
hunger and drought-related scarcities of food. I assert
that in the contemporary period there are no strategies or
mechanisms which are linked with the cosmological
conceptualizations in which droughts are understood in
Bijapur. Finally, I note how these cosmological
conceptualizations of drought may themselves be ideological
foundations in which resource differences and deprivation
among residents of the villages are legitimized. In
highlighting the ideological dimension of this society-
nature conceptualization, I argue for noting a non-adaptive
and a non-arcadian component in this society-nature
construct. Despite a cosmology which generally and ritually
articulates a collective moral onus for the production of
droughts, the experience and impact of droughts, especially
the hardships associated with resource deprivation, are

experienced on a household basis. The lack of fit between

16
the hierarchical and changing social structure and the
cosmology do not render strategies in which drought-related

scarcities of resources are addressed.

ADMINISTRATIVE RE-ORDERING OP NATURE AND SOCIETY

Since the nineteenth century both the frequency and
spread of droughts and the significant number of people they
affect have compelled nation states to take measures to
alleviate drought-related distress. Administrative
intervention to prevent mass famine, starvation, migration,
and dislocation have led to the establishment and
entrenchment of bureaucratic apparatii in several drought-
prone areas of the world. Such intervention has been
particularly significant for the drought-prone areas of
India and West Africa.

Many studies and reports have recorded the conditions
through which droughts have become recurring phenomena;
their social, economic, political, and ecological effects,
and the mechanisms and effects of organized relief for areas
in which they occur (Dreze 1990; Glantz 1987; Platteau 1990;
Spitz 1980). In the context of Bijapur, I note the regional
cultural complex and the historical and contemporary
conditions that have combined to mark the region in specific
terms. As a region that is marked as economically
"backward" and which requires periodic state-directed relief

Bijapur is subject to government programs which attempt to

17
"drought-proof" the region and hence re-order the region. As
a hegemonic discourse, the administrative re-ordering of the
region has implications for the local society-nature
relations, and hence on the forms in which droughts are
addressed and managed. Focusing particularly on the
discourse by which modern agriculture is promoted and made
acceptable to the people, I note its impact on the local
agriculture and agrarian culture.

As a result of state intervention Bijapur’s culture has
been subject to alterations in identity and continuity. Such
conditions exemplify recent anthropological concerns with
the "predicament of culture" (Clifford 1988) in which the
representations of a culture, its authenticity, and its
continuity are brought into question. What may have been
typical, ideal or representative is faced with threats of
change, displacement, and assimiliation. New orientations
generated by larger economic and political forces and
external institutions and values are incorporated into and
understood through a pre-existing cultural framework. Such
observations tie in with Ohnuki-Tierney (1990) and
Comaroff’s (1982) theses that the reconstitution of local
cultures by larger political and economic forces and the
generation of new symbolic forms must be accounted for.

An ethos of substantialism (outlined previously) also
provides a format in which the people understand and comment

on social and cultural changes. The re-ordering of the

18
physio-geographic landscape, changes in agrarian precepts,
and the restructuring of economic and social relationships
are all encoded in idioms and terms that assert local
conceptual links between physio-geographic setting and

social life, and context and actions.

EXPERIENCE AND EXPRESSION

Understanding a larger cultural corpus through a prism
of droughts poses certain dilemmas. Can a study hinged on
cultural analyses re-present or portray the more immediate
dimensions of life in a society where droughts are
recurrent? How does one re-present other people’s life
experiences, especially those as harrowing as drought? Can
the issues of the synergistic processes of drought--
differential allocation of resources, ecological
degradation, lack of entitlements to resources, sustenance
problems, marginalization, deprivation, stress, and
exploitation--be represented in an analysis of the cultural
bases of society-nature relations?

In encapsulating such concerns within this study I
focus on the ways in which resource deprivation, scarcity,
and stress experienced by the people are encompassed and
made explicit in a culturally specific form. To note the
ways in which these experiences are culturally constructed
and expressed is to note the intersubjective and ideological

dimension of these experiences.

19

As an ethnography based primarily on people's
experiences and views, and on my observations and
participation, I emphasize multiple discourses and sets of
social action as sources of data. People's understandings
and explanations of everyday activities and life experiences
form the basis of local discourses. It is from these
discourses that I delineate some specific precepts which
embody culturally-based knowledge systems and practices. I
note the contexts that these precepts refer to and the ways
in which these precepts influence social actions and
interactions. I contrast precepts from an older,
established cultural corpus with those from a new,
externally-induced cultural force to highlight the changes
in Bijapur's contemporary society and culture.

I rely on people's recollections and commentaries to
contrast present cultural forms and relationships to those
of the past in order to provide a diachronic perspective.
The shifts in the cultural constructions of the region,
droughts, and social relations throw light on the historical
changes and the forms by which such changes are understood
by the people. I note the forms and patterns of social
organization, meanings, and values that are either retained,
assimiliated, or dispensed with.

In addition to the narratives and actor-centered
perspectives of the study, I draw on images, metaphors, and

idioms encoded in everyday speech, poems, and literature of

20
the region to represent the "structure of feeling" (Williams
1981 in Marcus and Fischer 1986) expressed by the people. It
is these feelings and expressions that give voice to the
lived realities of existing conditions, changing situations,
and fluctuating relationships.

Many of the images and metaphors invoked by the people
of Bijapur address human-land relations and cultural
identities. Based on an ethos of substantialism these
images and metaphors are drawn from the contexts in which
people engage in meaningful social actions and interactions.
At the same time these images and metaphors provide a
conceptual grid through which people understand that very
context and come to terms with it.

Although Bijapur is a hierarchical society in which
caste and class positions make for a sharply differentiated
social world, there exist generalized sets of meanings,
values, and ideas that are collectively shared and related
to. The sentiments expressed in conversations, poems, and
songs, and the metaphors, images, and idioms are largely
relevant to all segments of the society. These idioms and
expresssions are representative of generalized trends, such
as the results of agricultural commercialization and the
effect of administered relief on the village community that

encompass and effect all members of the society.

21
PIELDNORE

Fieldwork for this dissertation was conducted during
the years of 1989 and 1990. I spent the whole of 1989 in
the village of Madbhavi, a dry village that is thirteen
kilometers from Bijapur town, the district headquarters of
Bijapur district.

Having decided to study a region which was incidentally
in the state to which I also belong, I expected to be quite
at home with the language and culture of the region if not
with village life. But, as I was to find out immediately as
I settled into village life, my southern Kannada was vastly
differently from the Kannada of the North and it took me
several weeks to completely comprehend the dialectical
differences. Subtle variations seemed to make a sea of
difference--for weeks I was confused by the poor response I
received to my morning greeting. As is common in my
provenance, the Southern region of the state, I greeted
people by asking if they'd had their breakfast (gulnul
aye;ha?). I received confused glances and embarrased
murmurings. As I was to learn later, gnlngl in the regional
dialect did not mean "breakfast" but tickles!

In addition to the initial dialectical differences, I
was not seen as a complete ”insider" by the village
residents. Apart from the differences in dialect, my
ignorance of village life, lack of agricultural and cooking

skills, and my status as unmarried and literate set me apart

22

from them. I was as they referred to me, a "bai" (a marathi
term for sister and used in this Kannada speaking area to
refer to outside women), one to whom they had to explain and
teach about life in the village. Once I was sufficiently
profficient in the regional dialect and had learned the
subtle but important differences in our use of similar
words, I was able to establish a rapport with the people.

Both the nature of the issues that I was attempting to
study and being a woman posed several problems during
fieldwork. There was no drought during 1989 and
observations relating to specific strategies to alleviate
drought-related scarcity were ruled out. Further, getting
people to talk about and describe previous drought
experiences was difficult. Those who had actually
experienced severe food scarcity and who had had to rely on
borrowed money or work on government relief centers were
reluctant to speak about their personal experiences. Some
people were, however, more forthcoming and some of the
descriptions pertaining to scarcity experiences were
gathered from a select few. Questions about land ownership
and use, especially tenure relations, were always a
sensitive issue. The state had promulgated several land
reform and redistribution laws and I was warned that any
survey about ownership, tenure relations, produce
distribution etc would be sensitive. This and a general

lack of emphasis on quantitative data has weakened this

23
study considerably. Any further research in this area will
attempt to make up for this oversight.

Agriculture is the fulcrum of village activities and as
a woman it was problematic for me to fully participate in
all the agricultural activities. Though women participate
in the conduct of agriculture and some are active in the
decision-making and management of their units, agriculture
is considered primarily a male domain. As a woman both
cultural decorum and the need to be accepted by all
compelled me to keep primarily to the company of women.
However, I did accompany several families to their fields
and many men were particularly cooperative in answering my
questions and explaining things to me. Yet, I believe that
this study would have benefitted more if I had been able to
participate in all the men's activities, including being
able to fully participate in all the agricultural
activities.

Getting acquainted with the men and women who were
permanent agricultural laborers was also difficult. Many of
the fields were at a considerable distance from the village.
I was unable to accompany them regularly and their schedules
of leaving for the fields at dawn and returning after dusk
made both getting to know them and interviewing them
difficult. Two communities of people, also residents of the
village I lived in, are not well represented in this study.

The Jatghars are muslims, who are primarily engaged in

24
buffalo trading in the area. Some of the Jatghar men also
work as agricultural laborers, but, by and large they do not
participate in the cultural complex of the area and occupy a
marginal position in the village society. The Lambadi are a
tribal people, who were once nomadic baggage carriers.
Government programs in the State have encouraged many to
settle down in villages, but, their residences are often at
a distance from the main settlement areas. They are
predominantly agricultural laborers, but, many of them in
the village of Madbhavi have resorted to migration and work
at large construction sites.

Having spent the whole of 1989 in the village of
Madbhavi, I returned to the U.S for the months of January-
May 1990 and reviewed some of the themes that seemed
pertinent to the study. After completing a month of
archival research at the India Office Library in London, I
returned to Bijapur in July, 1990, just as a drought was
setting in. Attempting to make this a regional study, I
travelled extensively within the district and covered the
following villages and towns: Honutgi, Kaulagi, Bableshwar,
Toravi, Mundugnur, Kanamadi, Nagaral, Uppadinahalli,
Mammadapur, Murnal, Gadankere, Sigikeri, Sirur, Gunapur,
Madarkhandi and the towns of Banhatti, Jamkhandi, Bilgi,
Chadchan, and Bagalkot. Basing myself in Bijapur town, I
returned regularly to Madbhavi village and reviewed some of

the information, ideas, and concepts with the residents.

25
Hanumant Halangalli, a young student scholar and poet from
the district, helped me as a research assistant and
accompanied me during these trips and helped collect and
record more interviews and songs about the region.

I conducted informal interviews in many of these
villages and corroborated some of the data and some concepts
and ideas with residents from different villages. Cross-
checking information and ideas within villages enabled me to
assess the validity of generalising some of the concepts and
meanings to the region as a whole. I was also able to
observe the resource use, employment strategies, and
migration patterns that the onsetting drought initiated.

In 1989 I had observed Agricultural Assistants
(employees of the state agricultural extension service) as
they interacted with agriculturists in the villages and in
the agricultural fields. Recognizing that agriculture and
the promotion of the green revolution package would be a
central theme in my study, I contacted the District
Agricultural Office and joined the Agricultural Assistants
on their field trips. I also participated in a week-long
agricultural training program at the Farmers Training Centre
at Jamkhandi in which women agriculturists from the district
were being trained in the principles and methods of "modern"
agriculture. I use the term agriculturists to encompass all
people, irrespective of caste and class differences, who are

engaged in agricultural activities and the culture

26
associated with it. This is in preference to the term
peasants, associated with self-subsistence cultivators, or
farmers who are considered to be those who produce for the
market.

In addition to the usual ethnographic methods of
participant observation, informal interviews, and
informants' perspectives, I have drawn on the views and
expressions of several scholars and activists in Bijapur.
School teachers, college lecturers, activists, poets,
dramatists, and other scholars in the district proved to be
invaluable informants on the region and its culture. Their
unique position of being active participants within their
own culture, and of having a sholarly interest in the region
enabled them to have critical and reflecitve insights on the
regional culture. In many ways their commentaries on the
region, its society, and problems associated with the social
and economic changes, were insightful.

I have occasionally drawn on popular literature,
published in Kannada and available in local bookstores, bus
stops, and bazaars of the district as additional sources of
data. These popular books are rich in embodying the
regional culture and in dispersing meanings and ideas to the
people. Relatively cheap, the books and pamplets are
popular with the people and it is not unusual to come across
groups of people clustered around a single person who reads

aloud from the book while the others sing. I also recorded

27
songs, poems, and stories in several villages that pertain
to the history of the region, agricultural practices, and

social life and changes.

CHAPTER LAYOUT AND SUMMARY

This chapter was intended to provide an overview of the
theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches that
inform this study. A historical and geographic introduction
to the district of Bijapur is provided in the following
chapter, including Bijapur's cultural specificities and
commonalities with the regions in its vicinity, and its
history of droughts and famines. Chapter Three elaborates
on the ecological context of agrarian Bijapur and notes the
ways in which nature is culturally appropriated.

Chapter Four discusses and explains the local agrarian
precepts which are predicated on a cultural framework of
society-nature relations. That chapter emphasizes the
cultural precepts through which agriculture is'practiced and
the ways in which the ecological specificity of the region
and droughts are incorporated in the local agricultural
complex.

Chapter Five notes the ritualistic forms associated
with the relationship between society and nature. It
details the rituals that enable people to collectively
address, apprehend, and alleviate droughts and drought-

related stress.

28

Chapter Six analyzes the repertoire of provisioning
transactions in a single village and relates them to the
ecological cycle and social structure. It questions the
ability of a moral economy of provisioning to be effective
in containing resource inequities and drought-related
stress. Chapter Seven details the reordering of the region
through modern agriculture that has led to shifts in the
landscape and significant changes in the socio-cultural
fabric of the society. It identifies the dominant forces,
such as the state management of drought-relief, the
reordering of the local ecology, and the spread of modern
agriculture, that initiate changes in the region’s landscape
and culture. Chapter Eight further details the conditions
of the district during the 1990 drought. It notes the ways
in which Bijapur is subject to statist interventions which
further induce shifts in society-nature relations. Chapter
Nine concludes the study by summarizing the contributions of
this dissertation to understanding culture-nature relations

in the context of South Asia.

CHAPTER: II

BIJAPUR

Bijapur is the northernmost district of the state of
Karnataka, India, and is bordered by the state of
Maharashtra (see Figure I). Its eleven taluqs or
administrative subunits of Badami, Bagalkot, Muddebihal,
Bagewadi, Bijapur, Bilgi, Hungund, Indi, Jamakhandi,
Muddebihal, Mudhol, and Sindgi cover a geographical area of
17069 sq. kilometers. Its population stood at 2.4 million in
1981 (District Census Handbook 1981) with a density of 141
persons per sq. kilometer. The topography of the district
is largely of vast flat plains that stretch into the
horizon. With scanty tree cover and sparse shrubs that dot
the land, it is the signs of intense human use of the land
that give the landscape its character. Parcels of
agricultural land, with embankments of various sizes, take
on varying colors during the different agricultural seasons.
The desolate look of the landscape during the long period of
fallow in the hot summer months (April-May) is broken by a
green hue of the first seasonal crops of groundnuts and
wheat. The landscape gets its richest appearance during the
winter season when sorghum, millets, sunflower, and pulses
are in full maturity and a full bodied lush green colors the
landscape.

Part of the Deccan plateau, lying in the rain shadow of
the Western gnu; or mountain (1) ranges, Bijapur is subject

29

30

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31
to low and irregular rainfall. The district's average
annual rainfall of 550 millimeters--only half of the average
of the state--often falls short in quantity and timing,
making Bijapur the most drought-prone region in the state
and one of India's most chronic drought areas (District
Census Handbook 1981; Singh 1978). Consequently,
intermittent droughts, scarcities of resources, and famines
have marked Bijapur’s history. Five rivers, the Bhima,
Doni, Ghataprabha, Malaprabha, and the Krishna traverse the

district.

HISTORY AND CULTURAL INPLUENCE

In its history and culture, Bijapur, as part of the
Deccan belt, is considered a "shatter zone" (Stein 1980),
containing elements of both the Northern and Southern
cultures of India. Bijapur's chequered history partially
accounts for the region's complex cultural patterns. Between
the sixth and mid twelveth century it was ruled by the
Pallavas, Chalukyas, and the Kaluchuris dynasties (District
Gazetteer 1981). The mid-twelveth century was witness to
the rise of the Virashaiva movement and the cultural,
political, and economic changes initiated by the movement's
philosophy (Ishwaran 1983). The thirteenth century saw the
arrival of the Mughals and the establishment of independent
Islamic sultanates. Consequently, Bijapur's political,

economic, and administrative history since the seventeenth

32

century was tied to being a "marcher territory" (Fukazawa
1963): subjugated by Mughal invasion, alternating between
independent Islamic rule and being ruled by the Mahratta
Peshwas. From its annexation to the British dominion in
1818, and its establishment as a separate district in 1885,
the political and economic history of Bijapur up to 1947
was tied largely to the colonial administrative policies of

the Bombay Province (2).

THE COLONIAL RE-ORDERING OP VILLAGE ORGANIZATIONS

Bijapur's village organization has been subject to
several alterations. On the eve of its amalgamation with
the British dominion of Bombay Presidency, Bijapur's rural
organization had been based primarily on the Maratha
administrative system. The positions of the village headman
(Euugl) and the accountant (Kulkgrul) were hereditary and
assured them the rights of revenue collection. As a
corporate group, members of these heritable offices, called
yuuunguu, had various responsibilities and obligations
towards the village community. The position of the headman
(zgugl) entitled him to fix the time of revenue payments, to
allocate lands for cultivation, and gave him authority to
settle disputes (Baden-Powell 1896). Such an office, the
Vuuaudur, was "heritable, saleable and transferable with
acknowledgement of State authorities and village assembly"

(Fukazawa 1982:250 in Perlin 1985), and also enabled the

33
village headman and the accountant to receive payment in
kind from cultivators and artisans. Such hereditary
positions were also associated with the responsibility for
the general welfare of the village community.

The British retained the existing organizational
structure of village administration but reworked the
responsiblities and rights of the ygtgudau. The Survey and
Settlement of 1835 terminated the rights of the Vataudar to
collect revenue and individual cultivators paid revenue
directly to the State (McAlpin 1983)). This reorganization
was aimed at inducing security of tenure and creating a
landed class of farmers who would increase agricultural
production and induce economic growth in the rural areas.
Such economic and administrative changes enhanced the
economic strength and mobility of the elite without any
concomitant change in the general economic growth of the
villages. These political changes engendered the
fragmentation of the village community structure.

In their new positions, as salaried representatives of
the Government, the yutuugu; continued to enjoy the
privilege of having a hereditary office that conferred land
rights and a stipend. But as appointed officers and as
salaried representatives of the Government, the yuuuugu;
were under no social obligations or moral compunction to be

responsible for the general welfare of the village.

34
The holders of these (the hereditary office) were
relegated to being rentiers and pensioners or
merely stipendiary employees selected and paid
in a slightly anachronistic way. There was no
place in the new system for that hybrid figure,

part entrepreneur, part official and part
territorial magnate..." (Guha 1985:52)

Though this policy was aimed at undermining the
authority of the traditional elites, it was more successful
in undermining the collective bargaining power of the
village and the responsibility of the elites to the people
than it was in undermining the elites themselves. Their new
de jure status, recognized by the colonial government,
enabled the yuuuudu; to perform the functions and duties
incumbent with the positions (as headman, and as
accountant), without the traditional social obligations.
Their officially recognized position undermined their local
accountability to the residents of the village and led to
the neglect of their traditional obligations of provisioning
the village indigent during periods of food crisis
(McAlpin:1983).

By the 19403, the ”large, distinct and superficially
self-contained" (Charlesworth 1985:70) villages of the
Deccan that provided the model for official and academic
portrayals of typical Asiatic villages had changed
significantly. This was especially seen in the decrease in
responsibility of the landed elites to maintain the

village's public resources and enable the people to contain

35
short—term drought-related contingencies within the village
itself.

With the post-independence reorganization_of Indian
states, Bijapur was amalgamated to the then state of Mysore,
now called Karnataka. With the contiguous districts of
Gulburga, Bidar, and Raichur in North Karnataka, Bijapur
shares both a similiarity in the geo-physical setting where
droughts are recurrent and a common cultural complex. I
identify three major cultural strands in the district.
Virashaivism, a syncretic tradition of sufism and popular
Hinduism, and pastoral deitism, which combine in the North
Karnataka belt to produce a specific cultural complex which

differentiates it from the Southern belt of Karnataka.

REGIONAL CULTURAL COMPLEX

The reformist sectarian movement of Virashaivism
initiated in the twelveth century occupies an important
position in the religous practices and cultural identity of
the region. As the birth place of Basava, the founder of
Virashaivism, Bijapur is one of the core areas where
Virashaivism is practiced through a specific corpus of
religous precepts. The adherents of Virashaivism (called
Lingayats or lluggyuuuuu, from the tradition of wearing the
phallic symbol [Llugg] around their necks) are encouraged to
practice the principles of Kuyuku (work) and gggunu

(communal sharing), the central motifs of Virashaivism.

36
Ideally, Virashaivism eschews caste segregation and the
practices of ritual impurity. Contemporary observations
nevertheless reveal the working of caste differences and an
assimiliation of popular and classical Hindu rituals by the
Lingayats (Bradford 1985; Ishwaran 1983). As Lingayats form
the dominant caste group in the region, the practices of
Virashaivism, such as the donning of the Lluga on
themselves, the reciting of the yugnuugg (metric poetry of
Virashaivism), and the ritually encoded transactions of food
and grains, are models for imitation among the other castes.

Sufism, Islamic mysticism that emphasizes emotive ways
of relating to god, once flourished in Bijapur under the
aegis of Islamic rulers (Eaton 1983). The guzguug or burial
sites of the Sufi saints continue to be central places of
worship in the district. Ritualized healing and exorcizing
of demonic possession are regularly performed at the dgzguug
of the villages and towns. Combining elements of popular
Hinduism with elements of Islamic practice, some gauguug
also conduct rituals of "rain-crop" prophesying as part of
their annual festivals.

In addition, temples and shrines of pastoral deities
dot the regional landscape and indicate the historical
significance of the region as a once predominantly pastoral
area (Sontheimer 1989). The pastoral deities are associated
with the Kuuubg or shepherds who are culturally recognized

as being blessed with oracular powers and whose knowledge of

37
the region's ecology and ability to read and predict the
weather are well recognized.
The caste groups in the district are the dominant
castes represented by the occupation-based sub-castes of the

Lingayats, the priests (Juuguuu), the agriculturists

(W and Bugakaliga) . the merchants (W) .
oil-pressers (Quulgu), and the dyers (Bunuugguu). In
addition, the other castes are the shepherds (Kuuuugz),
barbers (nyakur), clothes washers (Aggsg), potters (Kumpgz),
stonecutters (Egggu), leatherworkers (Magnu), the harijan
(figleya), and the menial domestic servants (Thuluuu). The
Muslims, predominantly Shias, form a significant proportion
of the urban population in the towns of Bagalkot and Bijapur
and are also active agriculturists in some of the villages.
Another significant group of people are the Lguuunl, salt-
sellers and carriers, who were once nomadic (Nanjundayya and
Iyer 1928). The Luuuuul have now settled into the rural
landscape of North Karnataka and are attempting to carve out

a niche for themselves.

HISTORY OP DROUGHTS AND PAMINES

Bijapur's long history of being subjected to drought
and famine helps explain the dual use of the term hurugnala
to refer to periods of both drought and food scarcity. From
as far back as the devastating Skull Famine (Qggl_fig;gghglu)

of 1791, when the ground was strewn with skulls of the

38
unburied dead, recurrent drought and plague-related famines
are retained in the oral and written history of the region.
Apart from localized and shorter periods of scarcity, the
periods of 1818-19, 1824-25, 1853-54 and 1863-64 were
periods of intense food scarcity and misery for the people
(Bijapur District Gazetteer 1981). The 1876-79 drought-
related scarcities followed the closing period of a short-
lived cotton boom, and saw large-scale hoarding of grains
and exhorbitant grain prices. Despite government attempts
to regulate grain prices, a qul, a measure of grains equal
to about four kilograms, of sorghum sold for a rupee and
gave the drought of 1876 its designation as the ”pugl_b§;3”
or ”padi drought” (Horakere 1987).

After its amalgamation with the Bombay Presidency, the
region’s rich tracts of black, regur soil were utilized for
cotton cultivation. A market encouraged by the outbreak of
the U.S. Civil War increased the proportion of land under
cotton. For some sections of the district which took to the
cultivation of cotton in a significant way, the
international cotton boom of the Civil War period led to
short-lived periods of prosperity. The recession that
followed the end of the American Civil War saw hard times
and a gradual return to increased food crop cultivation
(Choksey 1955, McAlpin 1983).

More droughts, famines and plaques were to visit the

district in the years Of 1876-77, 1879, 1891, 1896 and 1898,

39
making Bijapur the most drought and famine ridden area of
the Bombay Province. Compelled by widespread criticism of
the devastation and high mortality caused by the mid-
nineteenth century famines, the British administration
established scarcity relief measures in the region. Though
the first famine relief camp in Bijapur was started in 1832
(Etheridge 1868), it took several years before the program
gained widespread acceptance and administered relief became

effective.

ESTABLISHMENT OP RELIEP CENTERS

After the amalgamation of Bijapur into the British
Empire in 1818, the area’s susceptibility to famines came to
the attention of the colonial administration, who then made
efforts to mitigate the large scale mortality and
destitution that these famines imposed. But as colonial
records show, the institutionalization of relief was never
easy. Colonial attempts to provide public relief in the
district during different periods of scarcity was only
marginally accepted by the people.

As colonial administrative reports indicate, the relief
works were not immediately successful. During the 1877
drought-related famine, the Governor of Bombay noted that
the public relief works had not been fully utilized.
Instead, "...despite vast loss of crops, despite the misery

protracted for a full twelve months, the majority of the

40
general population, and almost the whole of the peasant
proprietors sustained themselves without assistance from the
state" (Bombay Government Gazette 1878:117). The Governor
added: I
”How strong, then, must have been the self-
supporting power of the people, how large must have
been their stores and stocks of food-grains, how
extensive their credit, how great their means of
purchasing supplies from a distance, how resolute
their spirit of self— help" (Bombay Government
Gazette 1878:117).

And as soon as it had rained in September of 1877, the
people ”left the relief works with great rapidity” (Bombay
Gazettee 1878). The past ability of village organizations
to successfully overcome food scarcities during short-term
droughts at the village and regional level is evident from
the manner in which the inhabitants of clusters of villages
recollect periods of drought-related scarcities. The grain
or cereal on which a majority of the people subsisted was
chosen as the name by which people recall periods of
scarcity. Names such as "finger millet drought" (zugi
guru), and "hemp drought" (pungi para) emphasize the manner
and the source through which resource scarcities were
overcome in the past.

Pointing to an additional dimension to the people's

reluctance to accept relief was another administrator, J.

Gibbs:

41
It is no question whether one and half annas a day
or so many ounces of food will keep them alive,
when they refuse to take either the one or the
other, but prefer to eat, not in this case the
bread of idleness but the weeds of the earth, or
the scanty morsel which their importunity may wring

from someone nearly as destitute as themselves”
(Bombay Government Gazettee 1878:940).

The people's reluctance to leave the village and
subsist on administered relief stemmed largely from fears
associated with being tied permanently to labor pools (3)
and to the stigma associated with subsisting on relief. Such
reluctance and the associated social stigma can be linked to
agrarian values that induce agriculturists to be self—
sufficient and to produce and consume their own food. Self-
sufficiency and independence even during times of scarcity
were markers of the ability and strength of agriculturists.
Even today it still is considered a shame for agriculturists
to put their "stomach out" (ugue horage hakuuudu).

Combined with these values of self-sufficiency and
independence were caste taboos pertaining to the performance
of manual labor and the receipt and consumption of cooked
food. Though all the Lingayat sub-castes performed
agricultural work, there were, as there are today, strict
rules that restrict the receipt and consumption of cooked
food from non-caste members. Strict vegetarians, the
Lingayats like Brahmins, consider the breaking of food rules
as transgressions on caste identity. Gastronomic

regulations combined with the cultural stigma of receiving

42
relief, and as the Gazeeteer of 1884 observed about the 1879
conditions in the villages:
...when the famine became more intense and
charitable relief increased, the great difficulty
was to induce people to leave their villages and go
to centres of relief. The Kanarese seem to have a
high feeling of pride or self-respect. People
almost dying for want of food refused to leave their
villages preferring to die at home rather than
accept general relief among strangers. In
consequence of this it often became
necessary to establish small relief kitchens in
villages to keep alive those who had steadily

refused to let themselves be sent to a relief camp"
(Gazetteer of Bombay Province 1884: 242)

Pride, self-respect, cultural stigma, and caste rules
combined to make the relief works an unattractive option for
subsistence. Village residents opted to starve rather than
leave the village and subsist on relief.

Compelled by the widespread criticism of the
devastation and high mortality caused by the mid-nineteenth
century famines, the British administration sought to make
scarcity relief more acceptable to the people. By 1877,
instead of the centralization of relief and the
establishment of Poor Houses, relief was decentralized to
the village level, and grains instead of cooked food were
distributed. The extension of the philosophy of the British
Poor Laws to India meant that, instead of gratuitous dole,
the people had to "earn their alms", and the relief works
were promoted as employment centers (Bhatia: 1969). As

McAlpin indicates, the policies of giving employment instead

43
of gratuitous aid or charity and the generation of
employment enabled the people to consider relief work as
"congruent with their own orderings" (1983:186).

Working at relief centers, instead of receiving
gratutious aid, satisfied local cultural priorities that
stressed the significance of working for one's sustenance.
The stigma of accepting gratuitous relief or cooked food was
removed by the changes in the relief operation and enabled
the people of Bijapur's villages to gradually accept
drought-relief programs and to participate in the public
works.

Yet even at the begining of the twentieth century, the
acceptance of relief was minimal. The early twentieth-
century famines, which were not widespread and prolonged,
are considered to have been less excruciating than the late
nineteenth-century ones. Charlesworth (1985) attributes
this difference to the increase in out-migration as people
sought temporary relief in areas outside the famine-affected
belts. As the Land Revenue Reports noted, the period was
witness to "emigration on a large scale... very early in the
season" and "the numbers on government works were not very
large, as people have now learnt to migrate to great centres
of labor" (Charlesworth 1985). Public relief works during
the famine of 1907 also faced the same response, and
colonial administrators associated the poor turnout with

factors such as unattractive wage rates and the general

44

dislike for construction work. The reluctance to subsist on
relief is indicated in that the Poor Houses that were opened
in Bijapur town also received little response and were
closed after four months (Bombay Famine Report 1907).

Economic and historical studies show that the success
of the relief camps and the numbers of people accepting
public relief varied with the general economic and
administrative structures (Bhatia 1969, McAlpin 1983, and
Charlesworth 1985). Changes, political and economic,
combined with the alterations of the scarcity relief
administration to enable a widespread reliance on external
relief. Yet, the acceptance of relief and a gradual
reliance on the administration to alleviate food scarcity
was induced by changes in the conditions of the village and
its political and economic structures.

The early twentieth century also saw recurring famines
in 1901 and 1904-06 and extensive stress between 1911-12
(Meti 1966). By the onset of the 1942-43 drought, relief
administration was both well organized and accepted and the
people remember the drought period as the "millet drought"
for the millet that the government had provisioned to
prevent a famine.

Bijapur's contemporary conditions of widespread
poverty, more acute than in other regions of the state, and
recurrent droughts have placed it on the low rungs of

economic evaluations. It ranks, in terms of agricultural

45
productivity, infrastructural facilities, and general social
and economic conditions, as the poorest district in the
state (Meti 1965). The Krishna River Project, funded by the
World Bank and in progress for several years (4), proposes
to construct dams in the region and a portion of the
district will soon be submerged in the back waters of the
dam. Bijapur’s marginal position, constructed in terms of
how administrative and non-local people refer to it as poor,
poverty-stricken, and perpectually in need of scarcity
relief, is in marked contrast to its history of having been
a kingdom and one that had developed and encouraged
significant works of art, religion, literature, and
architecture. The chequered history of the region, its rich
cultural complex, and the present socio-cultural upheaval
initiated by recurrent droughts, and the government efforts
to re-order the district make it a region especially worth
studying.

Given the central position that droughts occupy in the
physical, cultural, and social complex of the region,
drought situations provide an ideal window through which to
study culture-nature relations. Yet, to understand the
cultural bases in which droughts are understood, it is
important to delineate the ways in which other natural
objects and processes are understood and incorporated into

the life of the people.

CHAPTER III

LIPE IN THE BLACK LAND

This chapter elaborates on the patterns and forms in
which natural objects and processes are classified, utilized
and associated with significance in rural Bijapur. The
articulation of the natural or ecological base with culture
is observable in the ritualistic demarcation of the village
topography, the climate and agriculture based orientation of
the regional festivals, and the general attuning of social

life to the agro-climatic cycle.

LANDSCAPE AND SOCIETY

The stretches of black soil in the vast plains of
Bijapur provide the basis for the popular reference to the
area as Kauluugu or "Black Land". Embodying the richness
and the agricultural prosperity associated with black soil,
the term Kuuluudu evokes among the local people an imagery
of an ideal land--one of agricultural prosperity,
hardworking people, and an identity with a specific culture.
Descriptions of the land as black, fertile, and productive
signify idealizations of prosperity, happiness, and well-
being of the people. A reverse image of the land as dried,
parched, and bereft is invoked to signify the condition of
the people during droughts. The multiple ways in which land

is typically referred to and used indicates a "sense of

46

47
place" (Worster 1979) which people have about the land; a
sense by which people have feelings of belonging to the
land, knowing how to use it, and sharing its uniqueness.
Like the associations of the land with the people, the
regional landscape is also marked by a cultural ordering
that makes it amenable to interpretation. Since
...the so called ‘spatial-order’ in fact is a
societal order, which can be interpreted only as a
social product resulting from the complex interplay
of human perception, objectives and capacities,
institutional rules and material conditions
connected with human and physical material

substances in space.
(Van Passen 1976 in Shields 1991:16)

The interpretation of landscape highlights the societal
ordering of space and the constitution of space with
meanings and symbols. To residents of the villages, the
landscape is not merely a physical or geographic layout but
a complex of interrelated resources which they closely
understand and relate to. Following are details of the
cultural delineation of the landscape and a sketch of some
grung§l§_pgr§guu§ from one village. Madbhavi is a village
that lies thirteen kilometers away from the administrative
headquarters of Bijapur city, and provides a microcosm of
the district’s settlement patterns and social structure.

Lying in a dry tract of the region, the village of
Madbhavi relies predominantly on dry-agriculture for its

economy. From a total of 4665.07 acres the village has 3465

48
acres of unirrigated land that is cultivated. The
settlement houses about 620 households (543 households in
the 1981 census) and has a population of about five thousand
people (3066 persons in 1981) (1).

The regional caste groups of Lingayats, shepherds,
potters, stonecutters, harijans, brahmins, and carpenters
are well represented in the village. In addition, a
sizeable number of Muslims have been long term residents of
the village.

That society is reflected in its landscape is made
evident in the village settlement with its segregated caste-
based sections. Further social and economic differentiation
is observable in the housing variations. The settlement, or
ur, consisting of closely-placed houses typical of nucleated
villages, stands in contrast to the cultivated and
uncultivated fields commonly referred to as the aglug. The
panchayat room, where members of the village panchayat meet,
the village’s oldest and most sacred well, and a Hanumant
temple are also part of the inner core. As the space of the
dominant and higher castes, the inner core is also the arena
in which significant economic and political transactions
take place. The closely built white stone houses of the
families of the dominant landed caste, the Lingayats, and
the brahmin families, provide a contrast to the
predominantly thatch and mud houses of others. With the

exception of the three Brahmin families, the residents of

49
this inner core are predominantly owner-cultivators, who

cultivate their own lands with hired labor.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE
MW

Two persons, well-known in the village and
representative of their caste and economic positions, are
also residents of this inner core. Doddmane Patel is a
member of the village's erstwhile Vaugugar (hereditary
village office holders) family of Patels or village headmen.
With the abolition of the Vauauggr (2), he and his family
members do not have rights to the village headmanship, and
his status has declined considerably in the village. He
rents out his relatively large acreage of land, estimated by
others as being around seventy-four acres, and depending on
the type of land, he receives either one-third or one-half
of the shares from different tenants.

Doddmane Patel and his wife lead a comfortable life
which is rare in the village. Their agricultural income is
supplemented by remittances from urban professional sons and
their house boasts the village's only television set.
Doddmane Patel's economic transactions do not have to
consider the frequent droughts; both the large volume of
grains he usually receives and his additional source of
income assure him of a steady supply of grains. He sells a

considerable proportion of the grains in the town market. A

50
tall, thin man, Doddamane Patel deliberately distances
himself from village politics and from discussing any of the
issues related to the conditions of the village. Like a
dethroned king, he walks through the village in a hurried
manner and curtly acknowledges the greetings of the other
villagers.

Close to Doddmane Patel's house lives his distant
relative, a prominent and popular member of the village,
Basavaraj Sindgi. A landed owner-cultivator, he represents
a minority of agriculturists who are recognized by
government and development agents as ”progressive farmers"
for their use of the modern methods of agriculture.
Basavaraj Sindgi is hardworking and was recently elected
Chairman of the village Panchayat. He cultivates his
sizeable inherited and purchased lands with wage labor and
utilizes modern inputs of fertilizers, hybrid seeds, and
pesticides. With his small but well maintained garden lands
(uuuuu), he grows turmeric, plaintain, sunflower, fruits,
and vegetables for the market. He makes frequent trips to
the town of Bijapur, consulting the traders about
agricultural prices, buying agricultural supplies or
requesting subsidies from the Agricultural Extension
Service. With a considerable amount of capital and
technology he is also able to rent lands from others which

he cultivates on a half-half share basis.

51

kw

Outlining the core of the brahmin and Lingayat houses
are the residences of the service castes: the kuuuuuu
(potters), uugugu (carpenters), ugugu (washermen) and the
uyukg (barbers). Declining service and trade opportunities
have compelled most of the service caste members to take to
agricultural labor on a part-time or full-time basis. The
bulk of the small owner-cultivators (with less than eight
acres of land) and tenants are drawn from this service caste
group. They supplement their agricultural incomes by
working as wage laborers in the fields of the larger owner-
cultivators.
C' ' s 0

Three families of the village's Hullgus (Muslim
priests) are recognized as the hereditary custodians of the
village guzggn (Muslim religious centers). Maabu Mullah’s
family is one of them, and when it is her family's turn at
performing the duties related to the maintenance of the
dupguu, Maabu cleans and maintains the dargah while her son
performs the weekly rituals of worhsip. A pale, emaciated
woman, whose face and demeanor reflect pride and gentleness,
life for Maabu has been one of great privations. Her family
owns no land, and when the remunerations associated with the
931933 duties rotate to members of their extended family,
Maabu and her daughters subsist by doing domestic chores in

the homes of the richer landowners. Her eldest son works as

52

an agricultural laborer and has recently chosen to set up a
separate domestic unit with his wife. Maabu's sources of
livelihood are meagre and she and her family have grown
accustomed to consuming single meals a day and rely on
periodic black tea to alleviate their hunger.
D: A Quug; Cultivator

As an owner-cultivator, Keshapppa Kumbar is fortunate
to own a total of twelve acres of different types of land.
Using his own bullocks and employing wage workers for
seasonal and specific tasks, he supervises and cultivates
his land along with his sons. The sorghum, wheat, lentil
and groundnut produced from his lands are sufficient to
maintain his family of six. Memories of droughts and
scarcities--when the family had subsisted on single meals a
day, when their land had been mortaged to money lenders, and
when they had relied on their kin to provide for them--loom
large in the economic decisions of the family. As a result,
even when agricultural production exceeds the needs of
domestic consumption, a significant portion of sorghum and
wheat are stored in the family’s storage bin (nugl). A
generous man, Keshappa Kumbar rarely turns away those in
need. His house is a constant bustle of men and women: some
eliciting advise, others making requests for loans of
grains, and some, like me, visiting and engaging in talk

about the village.

53

A tall, well-built man, Keshappa Kumbar extols the
strength that organic grains and traditional diets provided.
Like several families whose self-sufficiency of grain
production is threatened by potential partitioning of land,
Keshappa Kumbar ponders the economic viability of
cultivating the land separately. Perhaps he should have
sent one of his sons to the town and made him a ”guukuul

uuuugug" (government man), he muses.

E: e d

The shepherds (kuuuba) enjoy a special ritual position,
and their residences lie outside that of the service caste
houses. Declining pasture lands and the non-viability of
pastoralism as a full-time livelihood have led many of the
shepherds to take to agricultural work. A few of the
shepherds own units of cultivable land and are active
members of the village political transactions. Shepherds in
general and shepherd priests (Pujaul) in particular are
renowned and respected for their knowledge of the land and
related ecological features. They are recognized for their
ability to read the weather such as noting the direction of
winds and associating it with different agricultural
purposes, the forecasting of rains from the size and shape
of clouds, and observations of faunal behaviour. The
history of the region as having been a predominantly

pastoral area and outdoor living probably accounts for the

54
recognization of shepherds as experts on the ecology. They
are also credited with possessing spiritual powers which
enable them to "call rains" (mglg_ku;lyuuuuu) and
prophesize future rains and crops.

An elderly and respected shepherd, Shivappa Pujari is a
lean and angular man, whose brisk walk belies his sixty odd
years. Pujari's own forebears were recognized as excellent
oracles, and it was his father, as an oracle, who had
predicted the coming of the 1942 drought. Shivappa Pujari
is never seen in public without his black woolen blanket
(humull), the source and symbol of KQIUQQ oracular and
divinatory powers, draped over his shoulders. For his
regular livelihood, he collects sheep from different
households and along with members of his caste herds them on
the banks of the distant Doni river. The shepherds live
along the banks of the Doni during the hot, dry summer
months and return to the village as the monsoon sets in.
Thus, it is not unusual for Shivapppa Pujari to stay on the
river banks for long stretches, when the monsoon is delayed
and signs of a drought are evident. For his task of herding
and shearing the sheep, Pujari receives grains or wool from
those who had assigned their sheep to him.

On returning to the village for the monsoon period,
Pujari assigns the sheep to collective pens just outside the
village, and joins his fellow caste members in celebrating

the month of EDIQYQDA (July-August), singing devotional

55
songs in the Kuruba temple, recounting the glory of the
KBIBDQ gods and the famed prophesying powers of his
ancestors.
F: Aguigultuual Wage Workers

Gangawwa Badigyar was widowed at age forty and has
since worked along with her son and two daughters as an
agricultural laborer. Their meagre land, yet to be cleared
of enormous boulders, brings in little produce and is
cultivated only in the summer season. Her son has learned
carpentry, his caste trade, but orders for ploughs,
cartwheels, and house frames are few and far between and he
often resorts to joining his family for agricultural wage
work. It is a rare day when Gangawwa Badigyar and her
daughters do not work. Up before sunrise, they see to the
domestic chores, prepare their noon-meal and join the other
workers to walk long distances to the agricultural fields.
Gangawwa rues these "money eating days" (rgkg tugnuvu gluu);
daughters no longer bring in money at their marriages as she
did, and instead must have dowries.

”Making ends meet is itself so hard, why are there
these new customs (nusa_ugga§nl)?" she asks. She constantly
urges her son to seek help from the prosperous garden
owners, suggesting that perhaps with some assistance and
guidance they too can turn their dry land into a garden.

Ever optimistic, she ponders, "Wouldn't that be better?"

56

In the periphery and markedly separated from the u; are
the residences of the lower castes, the muduus (leather
workers), and the hulgyu (untouchables/ Harijans). Few of
harijans own any land, though with recent government
allocations they have received rock strewn plots that are at
a considerable distance from the settlement. The peripheral
settlement, as kgrl, is significantly different from the ur,
and, as the space of the lower castes, it also houses the
deities considered lower in the ritual hierarchy.

Like most members of his caste, the leather workers,
Gurappa Madha and his family of five live in a cluster of
huts separated from the main village (ug) of Madbhavi. At
age fifty-five, Gurappa Madha and his family depend solely
on agricultural work for their sustenance. While his wife
and daughter also do agricultural work, they receive half
the wages of men. Gurappa Madha remembers the "millet
drought" (Sujjl_Buug) of 1942, when his parents and older
siblings had worked on the public relief program. As a
teenager, he had worked as a jugunu, when his labor for a
fixed period of years was tied to serving a landed
household. For performing a wide variety of agricultural
and domestic tasks, he had received three daily meals and an
annual sum of money or grains.

Agrestic servitude(4) of this kind has subsequently
waned, from a combination of greater availability of wage

work and an awareness by landless low caste members of the

57
exploitation inherent in such relationships. Though Gurappa
Madha and his family work all seasons, they find it
difficult to make ends meet. During the recurring droughts,
they have frequently subsisted on borrowed money, decreased
their daily consumption to one meal a day, and even turned
to wild foods for their subsistence.

A third cluster of settlements that is fast gaining
prominence in the rural landscape of Bijapur is the tngngya,
the residential unit of the lgubgni. As tribals (5), the
lgmbgul are culturally distinct from and fall outside the
caste and religion based ordering of the u;. As an
increasingly visible group, the lumuuul are active
agricultural workers whose perserverance and political
activism are enabling more of them to be owner-cultivators.
MW

In contrast to the settlement (u;), the ugly; contains
the agricultural and pastoral lands of the village that
define the way of agricultural life and form the backbone of
the village economy. Like the marking of the settlement in
caste terms, the ugly; is also marked by the caste-based
appropriation of the cultivable lands. Lands that are more
fertile and closer to the village are owned largely by
members of the dominant and higher castes (Lingayats and
brahmins), who either rent out or own and cultivate the
lands, using the labor of the lower castes and the Lambadis.

Though members of the flglgya (Untouchable), Madha

58
(Leatherworker), and Egdda (Stone cutter) castes are
predominantly agricultural laborers, there are a few
families who own patches of less fertile and far-flung lands
that the government has distributed to them. Medium-sized
cultivators, drawn mostly from the Kuzuhu (shepherd),
Kumpuzu (potter), Budlgg (carpenter) and other service caste
groups cultivate their lands with family labor and depend on
exchange labor called muyg to cultivate their fields. When
cultivators, who cannot afford to hire wage workers, require
assistance to sow or harvest their fields they call upon
their fellow caste persons or kin to help out. The
assistance is reciprocated and relations between the
families are considered to be strengthened.

Containing both the ugly; and the u;, and marking the
inside from the outside, is the boundary (sung) that is
marked with sacrosanct stones (Seug_§allu) in the four
cardinal points. As ethnographies of South Indian villages
(Gurumurthy 1982; Whitehead 1921; Daniel 1984) have
elaborated, the boundary stone is subject to annual ritual
propitiations aimed at warding off evil and maintaining the
sanctity of the village. Similarly in Bijapur the boundary
is considered the point at which afflictions (pgfig) enter
the village community, and hence the boundary (sung) and the
boundary deity (Duuguuug or ngg_ngyl) are objects of
periodic propitiations. The rituals and propitiations seek

to keep the ugyl (goddess) satiated, so that the village and

59
the cultivating lands are free from afflictions of epidemics

and droughts.

THE CULTURAL APPROPRIATION OP NATURE

Like the close delineation of the immediate landscape
and settlement into various sections and the attribution of
different uses and ritualized significance to them, the
winds, the rains, flora, and land are also closely
integrated into the cultural corpus of agrarian Bijapur. The
embrication of these ecological objects and processes with
human activities is evident not only in the syncronization
of social activities to agro-climatic cycles, but also in
the metaphors of everyday language. A mean person is
likened to the thorny acacia tree (julll), while a cruel
person is referred to as being like the bitter neem tree
([Aguuglzgcuta Iudica Jgss]). Several other metaphors,
especially those from agriculture, point to the pervasive
coinciding of natural processes, objects, and features with
social actions and characteristics. A poem that refers to

the conduct of social life does so with the metaphors of

agriculture:

Same damme annu Plow with the two bullocks

erada yetha hudu of tolerance and morality,

kirathi antha beeja Tie the seeds of brilliance
katu vudiyalli in your pack,

niratha nodi beeja See straight and sow the

bidu mandiyalli seeds

60

The close relationship between social-natural
categories is reflected in the appropriation of natural
objects to refer to social conditions and actions. In
addition, natural objects are also seen through culturally
specific eyes. As agriculturists in Bijapur look at the
early morning sky, they see the pleiades constellation as
their seed-drill, the khurige.

Various studies of rural Karnataka have noted the
importance of ecology (Beals 1974; Gurumurthy 1980) in the
agricultural and cultural complex of the region. Srinivas
(1971) and MacLachlan (1983) have also elaborated on the
ways in which cultural orientations prescribe agro-
ecological activities. But despite these important links--
the syncronization of rural life to climatic and celestial
cycles, and the significance assigned to the natural
environment--there is no single regional word that
corresponds to that of "nature" or "ecology".
Agriculturists and other residents of the villages do not
have a term that refers to or represents nature as a
separate and distinct category. The sanskrit term ngkuti,
often used to refer to Hindu conceptualizations of nature
(Shiva 1988), is not commonly used by the people. Instead,
the various natural elements, processes, flora, fauna etc
are closely observed, understood, and integrated into the
cultural corpus of agrarian Bijapur. Meaning and cultural

significance are ascribed to biological, botanical, and

61
climatic processes in the manner and purpose to which they
are utilized. Sorghum, the primary staple in the diet of
people, is accorded symbolic significance and is
incorporated into the ritual corpus of the people.
Similarly the rains of ELDEi and uufiuu, that are important
sowing rains, occupy a central position in the songs and
proverbs of the region.

The rhythm of rural life is structured by the climatic
cycle which influences the closely related agricultural and
ritual cycles of the region. Based on the monsoon cycle,
two agricultural periods can be distinguished in Bijapur
(See Figure II). The mungari ("front") agricultural period
starts with the onset of the South-west monsoons and
stretches from June to October. The period corresponds to
the kuuulf or summer agricultural period identified for
other parts of India. Lands that are of red soils and are
not moisture retentive are.cultivated in this period with
crops of millets, maize, pulses, groundnuts, and chillies.
The second period is that of alugurl ("back") and starts
with the onset of the retreating South-west monsoon showers
in September and stretches till March. The period
corresponds to the rug; or winter agricultural period
identified for India in general. Black soil lands that are
moisture retentive are cultivated in this period with crops
of sorghum, sunflower, wheat, gram, safflower, and sometimes

cotton.

62

FIGURE:II
CLIMATE AND AGRICULTURAL
CYCLES

 

 

 

 

63

The period in between these seasons is that of ugglgg
or summer from April-May when the temperature reaches an
average of forty degrees celsus. This is also the fallow
period for all the unirrigated lands, and agriculturists
take the opportunity to conduct social activities like
weddings and pilgrimages.

Agriculturists (IAiEDALQ) and shepherds (kuzupuuu)
appropriate and utilize the regional ecology through a
spatial and temporal variation that is oriented to the
region's ecological specificity and which entails specific
social transactions and cultural recognition. While
agriculturists cultivate different land types at different
seasons, the shepherds vary the movements of their flocks of
sheep. During the hot, dry summer months, communal flocks
of sheep are allowed to graze on the moist banks of the
rivers and they return to the village pen as the first
monsoon sets in. As fields are being prepared for ploughing
at this time, agriculturists invite shepherds to graze their
sheep on their agricultural plots for a day or so.1 Meals
and some grains are offered to the shepherds for the manure

that their sheep leave on the fields.

CLASSIPICATION AND SIGNIPICANCE OP RAINS
Like the demarcation of the two different climatic

periods, the rains are also delineated and understood as

64
corresponding to different agricultural and social
activities. As in most parts of India, the popular
calendars, village priests, and elderly agriculturists of
Bijapur identify twenty seven types of rains. In doing so
they follow the classical model in which the names of the
rains are derived from the astral (ugkgnuuzg) position. This
astral position is calculated in terms of the position of
the sun in particular zodiacs and the twenty seven stars.
While most agriculturists, especially the elderly, are
familiar with the names of all the twenty seven names of the
rains (see Appendix D), it is the first sixteen rains
identified as the "agriculturists rains" (ygkkgllguug
‘mulggglu) that most agriculturists recognize and correlate
to their agricultural activities. Each of these rains are
associated with specific agricultural functions (See Figure

III).

Ac

Se

De

Thl

act

of

NAME OP RAIN

Ashvini
Barani
Kruthika
Roni

Mrga
Aridra
Punarvasu
Pushya

Ashlesha
Magha
Hubbi
Uthri
Hasta
Chitta
Sathi
Vishaka

65

PIGURE: III

AGRICULTURISTS’ RAINS

PERIOD

April 11-April 25
April 26-May 9
May 10-May 23

May 24-June 6
June 7-June 20
June 21-July 4
July S-Aug 18
July 19-Aug 1

Aug 2-Aug 15
Aug 16-Aug 29
Aug 30-Sept 11
Sept 12-Sept 25
Sept 26-Oct 8
Oct 9-Oct 22
Oct 23-Nov 4
Nov S-Nov 17

AGRICULTURAL FUNCTION

SUMMER CROPS

Pre-sowing rains
Pre-sowing rains
Pre-sowing rains
Sowing rains

Sowing rains

Cover rains-for growth
Cover rains

Cover rains

WINTER CROPS

Sowing rains-cotton
Sowing rains-cotton
Sowing rains-staples
Sowing rains-staples
Sowing rains-staples
Cover rains

increases crop disease
removes disease

With the onset of the pre-sowing rains, the usuulul and

the Quuuul, the lands are tilled and prepared for sowing.

Actual sowing is conducted only after the sowing rains have

set in for either the summer or winter crops. Rains such as

puuauvasu, uushya, and chltta are associated with the growth

periods of the crops and are called ugl_uulg or cover rains.

Though the svatui or saghi and the visakha rains are rarely

active in the region they are associated with the functions

of increasing crop diseases and removing the diseases,

respectively.

66

Several proverbs make note of the links between
specific rains to agriculture and hence to the life of
agriculturists. The cover rains that are expected between
June 21 and July 4 are vital for the growth of the summer
crops and their importance is noted in the proverb, ”Come
the urlgug rains and there will be no poverty (gnuzlgru)".
Likewise, the sowing of summer crops is dependent on the
£231 rains and the people consider that, ”If ruui comes, the
streets are full of grain". The unpredictable gasp; rain,
important for all the winter crops and especially the staple
crop, sorghum, is linked to the condition of the
agriculturists, "The ugguu should arrive, if not the
agriculturist gets desperate".

As these proverbs indicate, the observation of the
agriculture-related characteristic of the rains, especially
the important "agriculturists' rains", and the knowledge of
these characteristics is encoded in proverbs. Similarly,
the lack of rain or the absence of rain is also addressed in
a wide variety of songs and poems which are recited and sung
by the people as they perform agricultural work, as women
grind grains, and during the collective village-level
festivals. Rain lore in Bijapur notes the importance of
rain to the maintenance, continuity, and well-being of the
land and people.

Poems and songs beseech the rains to arrive and

associate the non-presence of rain with social

characterisitics. Delayed rains are addressed as a "money-

lender" or as a "step mother".

such sentiments.

Baraghala, Baraghala,
Baraghala nadare
Yavage Daiva Tarughalo
Maleraja

Hagalella namana marebyada
Maleraja, Mala thaye chale
chaluvallo

Maleraja Naka hanni

Challu bhoomige

Male ella didare
yenanthe jagadage

Male beeku thama
Yellaku thinaku
Beleyaka beku bhoothaye

Ara yethanavana erali
Ara baravana erali
Karabara maduva magana
erali Yellaku male beka

AGRO-RITUAL CYCLE

The following song embodies

Drought, drought

when a drought sets in
when will you have
mercy, Oh King of Rains?

Don't forget us

King of rains

behaving like a step-mother
is not good. Send four drops
of rain to the earth.

What will happen to the
universe without rain?

One needs rain for
everything. To eat, to grow,
for mother earth.

Even if one has

six bullocks, or the
strength of six persons

even if one can rule

one needs four drops of rain

Though the regional festivals, both local and pan-

Indian, are located in the full (fiuulug) and new (Amuugge)

phases of the lunar cycles (see Appendix D), the names of

the local festivals are derived from either the names of

regional flora or mark specific climatic and agricultural

phases. These festivals are distinct from life cycle

rituals, and as they are based on a correspondence between

the climatic cycles, agricultural conditions, and social

activities, I refer to them as agro-rituals.

68

The Ugadi (from Yuga or era) festival is celebrated in
the month of ppalpua (March-April) and marks the end of the
winter harvest and the beginning of a new year. June-July,
sees the heralding of the monsoons with the Ka;_puplpa (from
”kar" the wetting of soil) or the "full moon of Kar", the
celebration of "mud bullocks" (Mupyapplpa_§uaua§a) or "New
Moon of the bullocks" , followed by the Nagaua ("cobra")
Auavase or "New Moon of the Cobra”.

The centrality of the regional flora in the festivals
of North Karnataka has also been pointed out by Biradar
(1984). As he elaborates, several of the regional festivals
are celebrations of the plants of the region and indicate
the importance of botanical items in the lives of the
people. A series of festivals incorporate the regional
flora associated with particular agro-climatic periods.
Festivals that are named for and coincide with the growth of
regional botanical items are the avatara (beans) auauase
(New moon of the beans) in uagpa (January-February), the
Kagllgau (pulses) huniue (Full moon of the pulses) in the
month of aspada (June-July), and the Banada (from papa or
orchard) punime (Full moon of the orchard) that is
celebrated in the month of pushya (December-January).

Two other festivals that mark important agricultural
phases are the aaga (from the sege or Acacia Concinna bush)
puplpa (Full moon of the papa) and yall (from yall or

sesame) apavase (New moon of the sesame) festivals that are

69
land fertility rites for the summer and winter crops (these
will be discussed in detail in the next chapter). These
festivals mark the seasons through specific botanical items
and synchronize climatic cycles and agricultural activities
to an agrarian social and ritual life.

What is striking about the overall pattern of Bijapur's
climate-agriculture-culture complex is the extent to which
astrological, climatic, agricultural, and social phases and
actions coincide and interrelate to each other. The ecology
of the region is then understood and interacted with not as
a mere background, but, as one that is integrated into the
matrix of human actions and interactions in a substantive
and essential way. Noting the importance and significance
of the regional natural setting and processes in the life of
the people, it will not be out of place to say that it was
not only "vedic Hindus (who) see their society as based
directly upon understanding nature" (Marriott 1989). In
Bijapur, as elsewhere in rural India, nature as represented
by the climatic cycles, the regional topography, the flora,
and the fauna continues to define and circumscribe life for
agriculturists.

The close understanding of the regional ecology, finite
categorization and cultural significance assigned to the
lands, weather lore of the rains and winds, and utilization
of the flora earmark a complex where "culture is enclosed in

nature and nature is reworked in culture" (Ramanujan

70
1989:50). This articulation of the natural with the social,
and more specifically the cultural appropriation of land and
its use, will be made explicit in the next chapter. The
cultural frameworks through which agriculture is conducted
and the forms in which droughts are understood and addressed

in the domain of agriculture will be elaborated.

CHAPTER IV

SEEING APPROPRIATENESS

This chapter elaborates on and analyzes the local
agricultural precepts of Bijapur which highlight a
culturally specific ”appropriation of nature". The general
cultural framework through which society-nature relations
are understood is addressed. In addition, the analysis
indicates the framework through which droughts are
contextualized as recurrent phenomena in the agricultural
complex of Bijapur.

Though Bijapur's agricultural practices are based on
the recognition of the ecological specificity of the region,
they emanate from a set of cultural precepts (1). Such
precepts, I indicate, underscore the working and importance
of an ethos of substantialism, which denotes the continuum

between natural and cultural categories, and social contexts

and actions.

THREE AGRARIAN PRECEPTS OP BIJAPUR
Agriculture and its practice highlight the regional

cnxltural complex. Bijapur’s agriculture and the agrarian

71

72
landscape contain evidence of the influences imposed by
various regimes on the land and its people. The terms of
measuring the land and produce (2) are remnants of the
Mahratta revenue system, while the marking of each
cultivation unit with boundary markers, the contour bunds,
and acacia trees are markers of the British administration.
Yet, despite these overt influences, agriculture in Bijapur
is conducted through cultural categories that take into
account the ecological specificity of the region.
Agriculturists consider land to be a subset of the larger
ecology and extend their knowledge of the climatic cycles,
flora, and fauna to the utilization of land. The knowledge
of agriculture includes an exhaustive and extensive
inventory of various land types, crop viabilities, and
relevant cultivation practices.

Agriculture in Bijapur continues to be practiced in its
essential and original sense as yyauaaaya or ”endeavour,
strenous effort, diligence, industry and perseverance"
(Kittel 1988 [1894]). As cultivators reiterate, agriculture
for them is "' evana", "life" itself, whose rhythms and
conditions tie in closely with the social life of the
agriculturists. Metaphors from agriculture and the social
context are used interchangeably by agriculturists.
Irrigating the lands is called plzu_yupuauuugu (to feed
‘water), agricultural lands that are low lying and are

‘therefore more fertile and productive are called magi, a

in
in
Ii

du

Ay;

Pal
Ra:

and
ills

SOC

Tex),

73
term reserved for auspicious objects and persons, and
propitiatory rites performed at the fields are called
ahapppl_paguyugu (making peace). Like significant social
activities and transactions, agricultural work is also
subject to the prescriptions of auspicious and inauspicious

times. The period of pappnka_(a five-day celestial position

when the stars of Mists. shatatara. W.
uupa;a_ppaguapaga, and pauapl are overhead), is considered

inauspicious for the inaugural of any social or agricultural
activity. Sowing and ploughing are specifically not
initiated during a pappka period. As the following song
indicates harvesting was typically conducted like a social
ritual, complete with priests and auspicious women, and

during an auspicious time.

Ayanaru karesare The priests have been

Panchanga tegesyare called, the almanac has been
Panch muthediru karasyare read, Five auspicious

Raitharu dina nodi women have been called

guda murusyare the agriculturists have fixed a

day to start the threshing.

Ideas, values, and meanings relevant to social contexts
and actions are extrapolated into the agricultural domain
just as agricultural metaphors are incorporated into the
social context.

In its localized form, uninfluenced by modern green
revolution methods, agriculture in Bijapur is a complex of

knowledge and practices that reflects an intermeshing of

74
cultural precepts and ecological understandings. Three
major precepts which enable a cultural "appropriation of
nature" (Ingold 1987) are articulated in the meaningful
practice of agriculture in Bijapur. Bhumi-guna, (essence or
characteristics of soil), paga (appropriateness), and
pullga (bestowed abundance) are precepts derived from the
larger social and cultural complex and used in a wide
variety of contexts. In the context of agriculture, these
precepts constitute the overarching framework, markers, and
orientation through which people conduct agriculture. The
articulation of these precepts in the practice of
agriculture also enables the agriculturists to consider

droughts as a constantly plausible phenomenon.

HUM -G 3 LAND CHARACTERISTICS
Based on a precept of bhuml-guna (land
characteristics), agriculturists identify three main types

of lands--ye;e, maddi, and thota--and assign the cultivation

 

 

of these lands to different climatic periods. The term guua
is drawn from the classical Hindu religious and
jphilosophical exigesis in which the universe and all its
Jbeings are categorized as falling into either of the three
panama: sattyip or "quiescent goodness", pajaa or "restless
activity", and pamaa or "lethargic darkness" (Inden 1990) .
When people identify either humans, lands, or other objects

cm) the basis of its guna, the term is used to mean

It

pa

IE

ex
ri
pr

an

em
the
an:
res

the

75
component or essential characteristics. The use of the term
pupa to categorize the land types and the ascribing of
qualities to them is representative of what Mary Douglas has
observed to be the ”imprinting upon naure of the rules and
categories which are dominant in social life" (1975: 290).

In categorizing land on the basis of pupa, different
types of land are considered to have certain essential
characteristics. Agriculturists recognize these
characteristics and match crops and seasons to them. In
this context the precept of ppupl3gupa forms the basis for
the variations in land-use, selection of crops, and tenurial
patterns. Three major types of land are identified in the
region.

The yaua is the black soil belt and comprises the
extensive black-soil lands on the river banks. With its
rich, loamy soil the yaua contains high moisture conserving
properties and is able to withstand short-term droughts. As
an area utilized mostly for cultivating the staple food,
.jalla (Spugpup_yulga;a), the yapa lands are not only
economically valued, but the possession of them increases
‘the status of a cultivator. For persons like Doddmane Patel
land.Basavaraj Sindgi, investing in more yaza lands enhances
:resource positions; and for persons like Keshappa Kumbar,
‘uhe yaza provides an assured source of sustenance.
Possession of yam lands is considered so important for

successful farming and for sustenance that farmers from

 

"I
”I
nc
as

C11

so
pe
Ili‘
wi‘

iii:

are

So j

W

041.

76
interior villages travel long distances to their yaua lands
and often set up temporary residential units there during
the period of yaza cultivation. Queries about bride-grooms
and assessments of the wealth and position of farmers are
often centered on the ownership of yaza lands.

Xaza lands that form the banks of the Doni river are
upheld as the most reliant providers and a popular saying,
"when the Doni grows who will not eat, when the Doni does
not grow who will eat?", summarizes the reliance on the yaua
as the sustenance belt of the region. These lands are
cultivated only in the hlpgazl ("back" or post-monsoon
period) or winter season (October-February), and crops of
sorghum, wheat, safflower, and cotton are grown on a
periodic rotation basis. These crops are also intercropped
with small amounts of legumes and cucumbers, which, together
with sorghum and wheat, form the basis of the staple diet in
the area.

Lands classified as paggi are also rain-dependent but
are different in that the mixture of black, red, and white
soil with various amounts and types of stones has the
potential of containing ground water. Crops of groundnuts,
pulses, and millets (£applaapuu_uillap) are grown during the
uupgaui ( June-September-"front" or season following the
onset of the North-west monsoons) season. The rotation
cultivation of lands and assigning different periods of

cultivation to them enables the agriculturists to maximize

it
Pl
re
an
th.
ha:
59:
the

77
the moisture available at different periods for the
different types of lands. The magal lands which are of the
drier type and unable to retain moisture as well as the yapa
lands are cultivated immediately at the onset of the
monsoons. As one farmer explained to me, cultivation of
different fields at different seasons ensures that the
anakau (strength) of the land is not absorbed away. Actual
determination of what crops are grown in which plot is based
on a more intricate classification of the soil-type and
stones in the yaya and paagl lands and the qualities and
capacities attributed to them.

The third type of land is that of the appaa or garden
lands. These are lands that are cultivated with water, made
available by wells or tube-wells, and are significantly
different from the yara and pagul in their production and
cultivation patterns. Unlike the other two land-types, the
apapa lands are all owner-cultivated, usually by members of
the dominant landed caste, the Lingayats, and utilized
throughout the year for growing fast-maturing crops.
Plantains, turmeric, sugarcane, wheat, vegetables, and,
recently, grapes and pomegranates, are common appaa crops
and are mostly cultivated for marketing purposes. As units
that are based on water-intensive cultivation, appaa lands
have been subject to the prescriptions of modern
agricultural techniques and knowledge. The capacity of

these lands to produce crops of marketable value makes them

Hrs
C)
n

0n

re]
Che
Gas
rec
Chi

typ

78
targets of modern agricultural methods. A diagrammatic
representation of the way in which pnunl;gupa classifies,
links, and associates soil types to seasons and crops and

the resulting agricultural complex can be made as follows.

PIGUREzIV
.— UN 0

Classifies Links soil Associates

land on basis types to seasons different

of soil crops to

characteristics soil types

' and

seasons

1. Yere --------- Winter (Oct-Feb) ----------- Sorghum,cotton
wheat,oilseeds

2. Maddi --------- Summer (June-Sept) --------- Millet,pulses,
groundnuts

3. Thota --------- Continous production ------- Vegetables,
fruits,oil-
seeds,wheat

Just as the decisions of which crops to grow are based
on linking soil characteristics to seasons, so also are the
rental amounts based on recognizing the variations in soil
characteristics and hence of variations in fertility. In
cases where lands are rented for cultivation, the
recognition of each land type as having its own gupa ("self
characteristic or quality") also determines the amount or

type of rent paid. In pagal lands where production is

t]

 

 

 

79
considered to be far less than that of the yaua, the rents
are usually on a one-fourth to three-quarter basis, the
tenant keeping three quarters of the produce for himself. In
the case of yaua lands, the rents are usually on a half-half
share basis or on that of "condition", in which the tenant
must pay a specific sum to the owner which is fixed prior to
the cultivation of the lands. The EAQQI lands, whether
owned or rented, are usually cultivated with family labor.
Extra hired labor, if any, is often paid in kind. In
addition to the payment, at the end of the day workers get
to take home the roots, discarded plants, and stalks as
fodder, and some firewood.

Just as different soils are associated with different
qualities, agriculturists ascribe differing qualities to
crops, the wet or dry basis of their cultivation being a
predominant assessing factor. Crops from local seeds that
are grown without artificial irrigation are called jayaul
(local or organic) and are considered to be more tasty and
strengthening than the crops grown with water. "Those who
eat rice are like birds, those who eat sorghum are like
wolves"(3) is a popular saying that connotes folk
associations between food choice and strength. My inability
to work for long periods in the agricultural fields, helping
women pick vegetables or lentils, was attributed to my

”weaking rice" (uhakat thegeduva bapa) diet.
Typically, a low but assured production of food grains

'1‘

Hi
Zi
as

Sui

80
compels farmers to choose the drought-resisting crops of
sorghum and millets over market-oriented crops of safflower
and sunflower. Agriculturists prefer pearl millet and
sorghum as their staple food, pointing out that they are
strengthening and enable them to be strong and hard working.
Sorghum is an ecologically suitable crop since it grows with
little rain or moisture and is significantly drought-
resistant. In addition, since sorghum is an economically
viable and a culturally preferred food grain, it is highly
valued and is incorporated into the ritual corpus. During
life cycle rituals a stalk of sorghum is placed in the
sacred kalaaa (a metal water container used during rituals)
instead of the traditional bettle leaf, connoting the
significance of sorghum in the life of the people.

This categorization of land types and crops, and the
ascription of humoral correspondence, where crops acquire
specific characteristics from the soil which are then
transferred to the consumers, has been found to be
applicable in the practice of agronomy (Kurin 1983), the
classical health science of ayuryaga (Zimmermann 1987), and
in folk therapeutics in India (Nichter 1986). Such
conceptions tie in with the substantialism associated with
Hindu categories and processes, which, following Bachelard,
Zimmermann (1987:8) notes is one in which "life deeply
assimiliates qualities, it firmly links them with

substance". Substantialism (4), as the basis of agrarian

H.

pi

an

re

to

ar

an

an

do.

ma.

re

19.

Co:

SII'

Co:

St)

ie

81
practices, is a continuum of the general epistemology that
Marriott (1976) and others recognize as the non-dualism and
particularism of Hinduism and of social practices in the
South Asian context.

As Marriott notes, substantialism is in
contradistinction to western dualistic conceptualization and
is based on the notion that "natural matter, actions, words
and thoughts are all substances and all imbued with
relational properties” (1989:2). Human actions are thought
to derive their "substance" from the context in which they
are acted, thereby firmly linking the variations of actions
and actors to contexts. (give egs) Actions, interactions,
and conditions in the natural, cultural, and supernatural
domains are understood to be interrelated in a symbiotic
manner and actions from one domain are considered to be
reflected in another (Smith 1989; Gubbanavar 1989; Ramanujan
1989; Murton 1981).

I extend this concept of substantialism, the linking of
contexts to actions and actors to substances, to an ethos of
substantialism. I identify this ethos of substantialism to
be the framework through which the people of Bijapur
conceptualize the interlinks of the domains of the
supernatural, social, and natural. In doing so I use the
term in a manner that is vastly different from that of the
"substantialism" that Marriott has propounded. Marriott

(1989) relies on substantialism as a paradigm and an

82
exhaustive explanatory model to understand all Hindu
actions, interactions and culture in general. In my view
such a model does not adequately account for the historical
conditioning of cultural patterns or the ecological,
political, and economic forces which contribute to
constituting cultures. As criticisms such as Moffat’s
(1990) have pointed out, Marriott's model does not account
for the plurality of India's culture's and is often not
empirically viable. Moreover substantialism as part of the
ethnosociology school privileges a classic (versus a folk
model), male, urban perspective in its paradigm.

An ethos of substantialism in the context of Bijapur's
agriculture links the substance of the soil to the
cultivated produce and then to the consumers. Agriculture
is conducted within this larger, non-dualistic epistemology
and upholds a non-dualism between biological and geographic
categories and those of humans. Just as various qualities
(pupa) are attributed to humans and this attribution serves
as a framework for assigning roles and occupations, here
gupa (qualities and characteristics) acts as a framework for
categorizing and then assigning use and cultural

significance to the various types of lands.

HADA: APPROPRIATENESS
If the precept of gupa or essence is the framework

through which people associate different types of lands and

83

crops with different types of qualities, then the actual
sequences of agricultural work are conducted through a
precept of paga. As ”the proper condition, properness or
tempered state" (Kittel 1989 [1894]), paga, in the
agricultural context, refers to the state of the field or
crops which, in relation to different factors or situations,
are in the "right time/phase/condition" for conducting
different agricultural tasks. Hada as appropriateness in
this context of agrarian life is similar to the principle of
aaamya (appropriateness) that Zimmermann (1980) considers to
be the essential basis of Ayurvedic practice; and that of
applzupa or "appropriate form” in the conduct of vedic
rituals (Smith 1989). The principle of aapuya, as
Zimmermann notes, is the foundation of ayurvedic
therapeutics which links the specific seasonal condition to
the particular constitution of an ailing person. aphlpupa
in the context of performing vedic rituals acts as a
framework to perform specific rites for specific purposes.
Similarly, naaa in the context of agriculture in Bijapur is
conducted by "appropriately" correlating the guua (quality)
of the soils to that of a particular season and then
conducting the necessary agricultural activities.

fiaga as a condition is a marker in the various
agricultural conditions which agriculturists must learn to

recognize. The time and stage in which the fields are in

just the "appropriate" state to be cleared, or when the

 

84

weeding or the harvesting of specific crops has to be
conducted, reflect various recognizable conditions which
differ from field to field and from crop to crop. flaaa as a
marker in the context of agriculture is similar to ayurvedic
prescriptions (Zimmermann 1980), where a particular therapy
is based on correlating the patient's constitution to the
season and to the illness. A diagrammatic representation of

the schema will highlight the ways in which hada acts as a

 

marker in agricultural activities.

FIGURE: V

HADA: APPROPRIATENESS

 

HADA
Clearing Sowing Harvesting
and
Ploughing

Are based on

 

 

 

 

Rain type Size of
and timing stalks
Condition Color of
of fields crops

Type of crops
to be grown
In the case of clearing and sowing of fields, the rains
themselves have to be of the appropriate type. As paua_pala
(appropriate rain), they must be on right time and in the
right quantities for farmers to start work. By correlating

the quantity, type and timing of the rain, different fields

 

'F‘

 

85
attain the state of hada at different times. For example,
sowing is initiated only after a succession of gentle but
continous rains. When the rains are scanty, farmers with
low-lying fields (i.e., those that retain moisture and
receive run-off water from the surrounding areas) start work
earlier than the others. But if the initial rains are
heavy, then the low-lying fields are allowed to dry, and
farmers with fields that are of the drier variety or on flat
stretches initiate work earlier than those with low-lying
fields.

The adage "DQQ§_EQH1_D§I§QNI beda_n2di_betu" (See the
appropriateness and clear, see the season and sow) contains
a caveat to agriculturists against investing their time and
energy in lands that might, through droughts or excess
moisture, lead to great crop losses. Clearing and sowing
are never undertaken if there are no rains, and
agriculturists wait anxiously for the right amount of
rainfall to start work.

When the important sowing rains do not set in on time
or when the cover rains are either delayed or insufficient,
agriculturists consider the possibility of a drought setting
in. If for the summer cultivation, the sowing rains of Lani
(June) and nuga (July) do not arrive and the cover rains

(aridra. sunscreen. ensure) have also failed. then the maddi
lands are allowed to be lie fallow for the period. Then if

the winter sowing rains (pupal, uauzi, uaaaa) are

86
successful, the mafia; lands are cultivated along with the
yaza lands in the pipgaul or winter period.

A complete disruption of agriculture is considered to
set in if all the "agriculturists rains" fail during both
the winter and summer agricultural seasons. While short
periods of dryness, such as the cessation of rain during the
rainy season, are referred to as papa or dryness, the term
that best corresponds to the English term of drought with
its implications of prolonged periods of rain deficit is
that of panagpala. The term is also synonymous with that of
food scarcity and famines, and typically agriculturists use
it only when the rains had failed during both the
agricultural periods.

When conditions such as the complete failure of all
rains in both periods prevail, cultivators consider several
factors before undertaking agricultural operations: the
family's stock of grains from previous harvests, the market-
rates of various crops, and the drought-resistance capacity
of different grains. A complete stoppage of all
agricultural work is one of the options that a complete lack
of rains compels. "Appropriate" agriculture works through a
series of interlinks. The appropriateness of the season and
the soil are linked to the appropriateness of growing
specific crops in specific fields. Haaa works with the
prescriptions of ppuulgguua to fine tune agricultural

activities. These variegated practices indicate an

87

elaborately worked out agricultural complex that, unlike
modern scientific practices, does not have uniformity as its
basis. As Jodha (1991) argues, traditional agricultural
systems contain in-built drought-management strategies which
correlate and maximize natural ecological conditions.

Appropriateness in the context of agriculture is an
extension of a general cultural tradition that prioritizes
appropriateness in various domains. A range of actions from
that of domestic activities to social interactions are
premised and judged on being "appropriate”. Persons are
upbraided and scolded when they are without "paQa" or when
they have forgotten hada. Even activities like cooking
require people to make a note of the ”paga” of each item
that is being cooked. Both persons and rains deviating from
their expected roles or timing are called pauagpagaka, or
spoilers of appropriateness. This metaphoric reference
reflects the importance of social and natural actions and
processes to being "appropriate” to their assigned and

expected roles and characteristics.

HULIGE: BESTOIED ABUNDANCE

The overriding concern with "appropriateness" in this
agricultural complex does not preclude agriculture from
having a cultural or economic impetus to "productivity" as
increase in output. Though indigenous and non-modern

agriculture, especially agriculture that is monsoon

O

88
dependent, is often considered to be ”subsistence-oriented"
(5), the agricultural complex of Bijapur contains multiple,
culturally coded messages of an orientation and an impetus
to ”productivity”. Grain stores and houses are inscribed
with the words of anup_laph (Lit: auspicious profit) and
several songs contain pleas ”to bless our village farmers
with abundance"(6). More strikingly, agricultural rites in
Bijapur conjoin ritual propitiations for abundance with the
social and cultural propensity for increases in crops.

The bi-annual apa;lga_apaluyugu (to spread or spill a
meal) rites are agricultural fertility rites and explicitly
connote a strong cultural propensity towards production.
Just prior to the harvesting of both the yana and papal
crops, the festivals of aaga_hunlna and yall_anayaaa take

place when the anazlga_ahaluyuuu rites are performed.
The Yall_apayaaa festival falls on a new moon day and

marks the maturing of the important winter crops. Celebrated
in a more full-bodied way than the aaga_puulma, the yall
anayaaa festival usually occurs in the period of puapya
(December-January) and is a celebration of family and
agricultural fertility and strength. It is a time when
married daughters are called to their natal home and urban-
based sons return to the family fold.

Members of the cultivating family prepare special food
on the day and, accompanied by workers (or in the case of

tenants, by owners of the land), perform the rites at the

89
fields that are standing with fully mature crops. A member
of the family first propitiates Lagapul, a goddess of
prosperity, usually represented.here with a stone decorated
with vermilion and placed in the center of the field or
under a pappl [Acacia Eeuzugpaa] tree where the food is
offered to her. Then, small amounts of food are sprinkled
at the four corners of the fields and the words "pul_pullga,
pul_pullgal" (increase, increase!) are uttered. The group
then partakes of the meal on the field and returns home at
sundown.

Saga_fluplpa is similar to that of yall_apayaaa and
falls on a full moon day. It marks the mature and ripening
stage of the summer crops. Usually celebrated in the month
of aapylp (September-October), the festival takes its name
from a goddess associated with land fertility. Since the
festival occurs within the cycle of the summer crops the
fertility rites are conducted on magal fields that are
standing with fully mature crops of groundnut, millet, and
wheat. On the day of the festival, those with maaal lands
(7) prepare special food and go to their respective lands.
They propitiate the land with food and prayers and utter the
words puly_pullgal. The family usually partakes of some of
the food on the field itself and then returns home.

In comparison to the yell apavasa rites, the aaga
puplma rites are less grandly celebrated and many families

do not perform the ritual. This difference in the ritual

90
treatment of the lands was explained to me as being due to a
difference in the importance accorded to crops. Since the
important staple crops of sorghum and wheat were grown on
the yapa lands and production in the yaua lands is more
reliable than in the pagul lands, the fertility rite for
these lands was given more importance. These pre-harvesting
rituals are important in the agro-ritual cycle and their
performance is considered vital for the well-being of the
lands and for the unity of the family and community. The
feast of yall auavasa is considered so important that those
without yaza lands are often invited to the feast at the
fields by others and a popular saying, "who remains
uninvited for the yell apayasa feast?"(8) underscores its
social importance.

The word ‘pulige’ is derived from that of pullau and
means "to increase in bulk, to thrive, grow rich" (Kittel
1989[1894]). This incantation is invoked in a wide variety
of contexts: in annual fertility rites for sheep, in packing
meals, storing grains, and as a good wish in general. As an
integral part of the vocabulary of Bijapur's agriculturists,
‘pullga refers to the recognition of the beneficience and
advantages of having an increase in output or of being
granted large quantities of anything.

Agriculturists also personify the ritualistic chants
for productivity by making a pullgya idol (9) at the

‘threshing yard. A lump of cowdung, usually from that of the

91
cultivator's cattle itself, is fashioned into a conical
structure and a sprig of grass is fixed into it. Huligya,
as a male god of abundance, is worshipped in a complementary
status to that of Laxpi, the goddess of prosperity. People
fill their baskets and sacks with grains and are expected to
utter ”pul_pullgal_pul_pullga", words that are both
propitiations and expectations. The incantations for
production--"for increase"--in this context envelop a wider
audience as it is here that members of the village service
castes wait to receive their aya, or annual share of grains.
Productivity as expressed in this context encompasses both
the economic support that it will mean for persons
associated with the land (as cultivator and owner, as tenant
or as workers) and the wider village-level provisioning that
was normatively associated with agricultural production.
fiullga rites signify the culturally recognized source of
production and, in propitiating the earth (soil),
productivity is the abundance that the earth (as the source
of production) bestows. As bestowed abundance, pullga is
different from a purely economic orientation to productivity
as "worked output" and encompasses the notion that
productivity is sacredly mediated and tied to social
obligations. As Ludden points out, in its indigenous

cultural orientation and in the pre-British context,

92
"productivity (I search in vain for an equivalent
in a South Asian language) was probably conceived
in terms of prosperity, wealth, and auspiciousness;
like rice, children, water, mosques and temples,
festivals, as well as bountiful, magnificient
rulers" (1984:59).

Production in this culturally mediated and expressed
sense is a socially encompassing dimension with the moral
obligations to share and donate (Greenough 1983) being part
of its orientation.

However, a generalized, culturally and religiously
embedded notion of productivity does not preclude an
economic impetus towards productivity as increase in output.
As Bourdieu has indicated practices that combine symbolic
and productive activities tend to ”prevent the economy from
being grasped as an economy, i.e., as a system governed by
the laws of interested calculation, competition and
exploitation” (1977:172). The larger socio-cultural
complex, the various ritualistic and cultural idioms, and
the social transactions in which traditional agriculture is
conducted may divert attention from or camouflage any
"production" orientation that may be integral to such
complexes. Hullga rites must be seen as incorporating both
the symbolic and instrumental dimensions of ritual which
form part of a larger "world-ordering" complex of rituals
(Inden:1990). These rites indicate both the recognized

source of production (the soil) and the social orientation

(to meet economic needs and social obligations) of such

 

 

93
production.

Life in the black land is integrally related to the
conditions of the land. As the agriculturists reiterate,
what they make of the land reflects on what they are as
persons. For those who have access to land, it is their
duty to cultivate the land well. A man who does not
cultivate his lands or who does not produce the best of what
is considered to be its capacity is seen as a dependent, one
who "weighs on the land" (bhumi uele thuka) and on the
village (10). It is not uncommon to hear landless workers
castigate and take the landed to task for neglecting the
cultivation or supervision of their lands. Agriculture is
both an art and an enterprise and combining both are what
makes agriculture a way of life and a source of living.

To eat grains from one's own land is considered to be a
sign of independence, a fruition of fortunate endowment,
hardwork, and co-operation with fellow agriculturists. A
close identity with the land, with the particular culture
that the village and the land engender, were the reasons
that many a hard-pressed migrant returned. As reflected in
the many poems and songs which eulogise the close human-land
relationship, the land and humans do not exist as separate
and autonomous categories. The being of the land becomes
the being of the people.

Agriculture in Bijapur is therefore more than a set of

instrumental practices. The cultural basis of conducting

94
agriculture and its ability to take into account the
ecological specificity of the region must be recognized.
Simkins, an early observer of the agronomic practices of the
Bombay Deccan, recognized the complexity and intricacies of
this regional agriculture and called it the "production
association”, which enables agriculturists to "interpret the
soil and climatic factors in the region, and on this
interpretation is based the life of the land" (1926:160).
In Bijapur, this interpretation is based on the precepts of
ppuml;guna, paaa, and puliga that are derived from the
larger cultural tradition and are given an ecological
grounding in the context of agriculture. The same precepts,
when utilized for a different ecological setting, result in
variations of agricultural practices. For example, the
notions of hada and ppup13gupa are also used in the
agricultural practices of the southern wet belt but are
linked to the ecological specificity of that region. Thus,
the actual agricultural cycle, the crops grown, and the
methods of cultivation vary from that of the Northern dry
belt, though the cultural basis of their utilization is the
same.

Haga and ppuplzguna, that are precepts drawn from the
larger cultural corpus interlink land quality, crops, and
seasons. In doing so they correspond to what Murton (1980)
identified as the "webs of association" in Indian

agriculture. They incorporate the temporal and spatial

95

aspects of the ecology and are oriented toward maintaining
the ecological sustainability of the region. The resulting
agricultural practices of multicrop cultivation, rotation of
crops, and fallowing of land are similiar to those of other
semi-arid areas in India and of the North-west regions in
Africa (11). Locating and addressing droughts as constantly
plausible phenomenon, the agricultural complex of Bijapur is
evidence that "man’s [sic] ability to deal with droughts is
largely determined by his culture and social system as they
influence farming" (Worster 1979:242).

The manner in which droughts are contextualized within
agriculture, and the conduct of agriculture within the
framework of larger cultural terms highlights a specific
society-nature relationship. Both human and "natural"
objects are categorized and interacted with through the same
precepts (gupa and paaa). Prescriptions from the cultural
order inform the conduct of both agriculture and social
actions. Hence, as several studies have elaborated in the
context of South Asia, society and nature are in this
culture placed in a non-dictomized, non-deterministic, and
non-hierarchical relationship. Worked in within this
framework is the ethos of substantialism in which natural
objects and humans are ascribed with specific
characteristics and interlinked in a significant way.

The next chapter will further elaborate on the integral

associations made between natural conditions and social

96
actions. The cultural conceptualization of drought, its
etiologies, and the forms in which it is understood and come

to terms with will be elaborated.

CHAPTER V

CALLING THE RAINS

In this chapter I attempt to discern the specific
cultural etiologies through which droughts are understood. I
detail the myriad ways in which droughts are ritually
addressed and then analyze the ideological bases and results
of such conceptualizations. I note that the forms and
patterns through which droughts are understood reflect the
larger cosmological structures within which the regional
culture contextualizes society-nature relations. In
addition I argue for noting the importance of changed social
structures in the context of the ability of cosmological
conceptualizations to be effective mechanisms to contain
resource scarcity.

Local culture locates droughts within a cosmological
configuration in which the divine, the natural, and human
are interlinked. Understanding the multiple rituals and
discourses through which the people collectively comprehend,
lapprehend, and attempt to come to terms with droughts
indicates that droughts are understood by the people as more
'than.physio-geographic phenomenon. A range of rituals in

which deities are appeased and efforts to reorder the cosmic

97

98
order are made indicates the association of collective human
moral onus for the production of droughts. In analyzing
these rain rituals I attempt to locate the cosmological
terms within which droughts are understood. I link the
significance of changed social contexts to the meaning and
articulation of these rain rituals and hence to the
importance of changed social contexts to understanding
culture-nature relations.

Recurrent droughts and famines in the region of North
Karnataka have left an indelible mark on the collective
conscience of the people. Droughts are addressed not only
in the agricultural domain but also through a plethora of
rituals in which the people locate the probability of rains,
their quantity, timing, and viability for the successful
production of different crops. As was noted in Chapter
Three, detailed knowledge of the various rains and their
characteristics are encoded in the everyday language of
agriculturists and in the numerous proverbs pertaining to
rains (1). Regional popular calendars that guide people's
actions in accordance to prescriptions of the almanac also
contain predictions for the year's rain and crops. Various
rituals, from those contextualized in the regular agro-
ritual cycle to those that are initiated at the onset of a
Idrought, seek either to prophesy or divine the future rain-
crops (pala;pala_pallka) or dispel the onset of droughts by

jpropdtiating appropriate deities and agents of rain. The

99

multiple modes, times, places, and situations in which
"rain-crop" divinatory and oracular rites are performed
indicate (see Figure VI) the importance accorded to the
rains and to the collective apprehension of droughts.

Anthropologists have observed and recorded the multiple
corpus of rituals by which various societies have addressed
recurring droughts (Krige and Krige 1947, Munn 1973,
Comaroff 1983, Frierman 1990). In Bijapur, a range of rain
rituals at both the village and regional level locate and
address the etiology and alleviation of droughts (see Figure
VI). Both major pan-Indian festivals such as Dlyall_in
Kazppifi (October-November) and Hall in Qpalpza (March-
April), and local regional festivals are occasions in which
"rain-crop" divinations and rain propitiation rituals are
conducted. A "rain-complex" consisting of rites and ritual
specialists who relate to rain, its prophesying and its
inducement, are pervasive in the cultural fabric of the
region. At the level of the village the rain-complex
consists of "rain-crop“ prophesies (Mala;pala_pallka) which
are an integral part of the annual agro-ritual cycle, and
rain-inducing rites, in which several rain deities are
propitiated at specific periods. In addition, itinerant
ritual specialists traverse the rural landscape, singing
paeans to deities of rain such as the Dung;uu:gayya (a
female deity associated with the land and human fertility)

and asking people to propitiate the deities for rain and

100

FIGURE:V|
RAIN RITUALS IN
THE AGRO-RITUAL CYCLE

2

d
~I A n M
e05H AGHA

     
 
  

  

 

APR

 

 

 

 

1. Village Level Rituals

2. Regional Level Rituals

3. Rituals at Onset of Drought

101
good crops. At the onset of a drought, village-level
rituals propitiate specific deities and conduct collective
fasts and penances for rain.

At the regional level, agriculturists from various
villages of the dry belt gather at recognized temples and
gaugapa to witness "rain-crop” prophesies. Two puppa
(religious centers) of hereditary rain-men (Malayappa) also
conduct "rain-crop" prophesies for the coming agricultural
season. The rain-rituals, like the agricultural rites, are
located within the agro-climatic cycle. Rituals such as the
prophesying of rain and crops for the forthcoming season are
held just prior to the start of the winter and summer sowing
seasons. When droughts are prolonged agriculturists compel
the rain-men to meditate for rain.

Rain rituals are not only discourses on the relations
between nature and society. In their content and aim, these
ritualized performances also seek to address inter-human
relations, reinstate the moral order of the community, and
dispel the hardships that droughts portend. The wide array
of rain rituals that are situated within the agro-ritual
cycle and those that are invoked at the onset of a drought
are indicative of a culture's attempt to integrate a geo-
physical setting and the climatic processes into its own
corpus and to understand it in its own terms.

My analyses of rain-rituals first pertains to

understanding the local conceptualization of droughts. That

102

is, how do people understand droughts and come to terms with
them? What contexts, actions, and conditions do people
consider to produce droughts? From an overview of multiple
etiologies associated with droughts, and the rituals through
which the people attempt to collectively alleviate droughts,
I delineate the cosmological configuration in which droughts
are located, understood, and come to terms with. Continuing
from these delineations I link the ideological basis of
these cosmological constructions to their implications for

scarcity alleviation in the villages.

COSMOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTIONS OP DROUGHTS

In Bijapur, people often construct droughts to be the
result of karma: "Why will it rain when we people are full
of Karma," "Aren't these times of Karma, how will it rain?"
"What Karma have we done, a drought is impending?" In
associating droughts with Karmic states of being, of having
performed inappropriate moral and social actions, what is
invoked is not an individual's state of karma, but the
collective karma of a village. The doctrine of karma as a
central motif for causal thinking (Keyes and Daniel 1983)
provides a range of deterministic frameworks in which
individual and collective liability, and vicarious cause-
effect relations and conditions are explained and understood
among Hindus (Torry 1986b). The karmic framework links not

only past actions to present conditions but is also used to

103
explain a range of social actions, incidents, and phenomena.

Yet such an ascription of causation should not be read
as indicative of a fatalistic attitude or as the invoking of
the doctrine of karma which emphasizes an absolute
submission cf human conditions to a divine will. As Babb
(1983) observed, "to apply the karmic frame of reference to
life's problems is to relate them to a higher order of moral
responsibility. By grounding destiny in the moral awareness
of the individual, karmic theory links the experience of the
individual to the general principles of gpazma..."
(1983:179).

Likewise, a drought is culturally constructed as a
comment on the loss or lack of dharmic or morally valuable
actions and conditions in the village. Far from being a
denial of human responsibility in the production of drought,
the association of droughts with cosmological links
indicates the larger morally reflexive manner in which
droughts are constructed. Droughts are therefore not
considered as being above and beyond human onus and
accountability. The cosmological construction of droughts
places human actions, natural conditions, and divine
ordination in a homological and analogical paradigm. People
consider actions that have transpired in one domain to have
implications in another. For example human actions that
negate or defy moral values and codes are considered to

entail divine retribution. Similarly, droughts that are

104

most observable in the physio-geographic domain are also
associated with social actions and divine retribution.

Crises such as droughts with their implications of
production loss, food shortage, sustenance stress,
dislocation, and disturbance are understood as signifying
more than a physio-geographic disorder. Just as the
classical Hindu texts stipulated a fundamental association
between rain and law--"Rain and order go together as do
disorder and drought” (Zimmermann 1989)--agrarian cultural
constructions see a nexus between droughts and the ethical
life of the community. Various ethnographies from India
have noted this tendency among agriculturists to make
homologous links between the natural and moral order,
especially with reference to locating the etiology of
drought (Bharara 1982; Srinivas 1971; Desai 1963). In
Karnataka, a survey by Caldwell, Reddy, and Caldwell (1988)
on peoples' perceptions of droughts found that forty-three
percent of those interviewed considered droughts to be a
result of god's wrath and a form of chastisement to them.

This reflexive stance in which human actions are held
as being responsible for the production of droughts is
emphasized in the manner by which changes in human actions
and cultural preferences are integrated into the causative
framework for understanding droughts. A particular case in
hand is Eshwarappa's (1984) report that the residents of a

North Karnataka village linked the decline in rainfall to

105 .
trends in human birth control: "we cut off at two children,
that's why God cuts off with less rain." The "cut off" on
the part of humans referred to the family planning methods
of vasectomy and tubectomy--practices that are promoted
widely by the government and which have met with resistance
or hesitant acceptance by the people. Here the shifts from
a normative prescribed cultural value, that of having
children, to that of ”cutting off at two" is upheld as a
sign of a disturbed order.

This example serves not so.much as evidence of the
continuity of a fatalistic paradigm in which droughts are
understood, but, rather the ability of a culture to
incorporate changed contexts and actions into its repertoire
of causative factors. Causal associations such as these
underscore the continuity of an ethos of substantialism in
rural India.‘ Actions and orientations conducted in one
domain have implications and effects on other domains. Here
the nexus between the physiological condition of the people
and the condition of the ecology are tied to the
cosmological implications of their actions. Such cultural
constructions epitomize the culture's ability to integrate
geographical conditions into a moral and social context.

A range of rain rituals performed in villages and at
regional centers (see Figure VII) in Bijapur represent the
multiple forms in which droughts are collectively addressed.

The rain rituals directly relate.to attempts to (1)

106

FIGURE:VII
RAIN—CROP PROPHESYING CENTERS

 

   
 

BIJAPUR DISTRICT

 

RICT

\
I .
of.” . e .

SINDGI

     
 

‘I’ Khaja Ameen

BIJAPUR CO)

(\I '

  
  

.:/'-\.
x...»
GULBARGA DIST

c—nn.’

i.

 

TIMurnaI.-"'." .
,' ....... ./

 

‘L- ...... .
’c I ,:..............-..BAGALKOT.: \
f .K I ‘. 'eeeee.. "1.. n
. .J' .“
‘9 Huucuuo )
I BADAMI (“\N \ K J. \F'
. h. C O 0‘
~\ ’ “u 06““
‘ ' \c
DHARWA ‘_. 'V.J “A
I Temple 3 DISTRICT

 

T Dergan

 

 

107
anticipate, through prophesying and divination rituals, the
probability and quantity of rain-crops for the forthcoming
season (2) appease the rain deities for rain and (3)
collectively address the moral and cosmic disorder that is

considered to be the cause of drought.

RAIN-CROP PROPHESYING

Several rain-crop prophesying rituals are
contextualized within the annual agro-ritual cycle. The
most important divinatory and prophesying rites are located
just prior to the two sowing seasons. Most villages in the
district have a single deity, often from the pantheon of
pastoral deities, as their village deity (2). The temple
associated with the village deity is maintained collectively
by all members of the village. Annual collections of grains
and money contribute to the maintenance of the temple and to
the conduct of annual festivals in the honor of these
deities. As in the village of Madbhavi and Mundugnur, the
.important "rain-crop” prophesies are conducted during the
annual festival of their respective village deities.
irillages with a sizeable Muslim population and which have a
diargap also perform "rain-crop" prophesies during such
fEestivals as nupazram (3).

Regionally recognized temples and gargapa also conduct

"raain-crop" prophesying rituals which attract a sizeable

crowd from both neighbouring and distant villages. Two

108
other regionally well-known religous centers in Bijapur are
the Murnal.amd Gadankere muppa (religous centers) where
hereditary "rainmen" (Malayappa) conduct annual "rain-crop"
(mala;pala_pallga) prophesying. The manner in which these
rain-crop prophesies and divinations are conducted and their
ability to address the exigent needs of the agriculturists
is provided in the following description.'

The puppa (religous center) of Murnal Maleyappa
(Rainman), a recognized hereditary rainman, is located in
the village of Murnal in Bagalgot taluq of Bijapur district.
Its history dates back to the medieval period and is
recorded as having been established by an Adil Shahi ruler,
who was so impressed by the powers of the rainman's ancestor
that he granted him land and a building in which his
descendants continue to live and perform rain-related
rituals (4). The center itself embodies the Hindu and
Muslim syncretism of region. The architecture of the center
is Islamic and the burial vaults of the Rainmen occupy a
central place. But the rain-crop prophesying ritesand the
invoking of the gods are conducted in terms of popular
Hinduism. During the annual Hall festival (March-April),
the residents of the village of Murnal gather together, and
collect grain donations from all the households. On the day
of Hall, the rainman (Malayappa) performs a puia at the
local river and five young unmarried girls between the ages

of twelve and eighteen are chosen to carry five mud pots

109
filled with water. Each pot is associated and marked with a
particular set of "agriculturists rains" which are important
for the region's agriculture (see Appendix C).

Figure VIII : RAIN POTS

NAMES OP RAINS ASSOCIATED-PUNCTION

1. Roni, Mrga summer sowing
2. Aridhra, Punarvasu summer cover
Pushya rains
3. Ashlesha, Magha winter sowing
4. Hubbi, Uthri,Hasta sowing sorghum in winter
5. Sathi, Vishaka winter cover rains

As the rain-man (Malayappa) leads the procession,
followed by the girls and accompanied by the village
musicians, the audience, drawn from the vicinity and from
other villages, watch the pots labelled with the names for
the five sets of "farmers rains" (yppkallgaua_pala). Leaks
in any of the pots is understood as signifying the specific
rain which will be successful. A complete lack of any leaks
is considered to portend a drought.

The ritual ends with a commensal meal and
agriculturists return to their respective villages,
discussing the divination-and what agricultural strategies
they would undertake. For agriculturists the divination
provides guidelines for making decisions relating to the
choice of crops and sowing. This acts as a directive for
agricultural decisions and practices and is vital in the

context of predicting crop loss and-hence preventing

110
wasteful sowing and investment. For example, if there are
no leaks in the first pct then agriculturists understand
this as signifying the probable lack of the summer sowing
rains, the Lani and pupa. Decisions to sow seeds for the
usual summer crops of wheat, groundnut, millets, maize, and
pulses can then be made. If there are no leaks in the first
pot, but the second pot representing the summer cover rains
(aridra, punazyaau, and puapya) leaks, then agriculturists
can decide to sow those seeds which require less rain to
sprout but which can benefit from and be successful with the
cover rains. similiar decisions can be made with reference
to the winter crops and the leaks or lack of leaks in the
pots that represent the rains for winter.

To what extent these predictions or divinations are
taken at face value and followed is largely a circumstantial
matter. Agriculturists who were interviewed spoke of these
directives as information that they would keep in their
minds. Decisions as to sow or not, which seeds to choose,
etc. would be based on actual climatic conditions. An
agriculturist from a nearby village who said that he always
came to these rain-crop prophecies indicated how he made his
agricultural decisions:

”I keep these divinations (palika) in mind.

Must I put wheat and pulses or millet and pulses
...this I will decide only when the rains come or
do not come. The pallka is to be prepared.
Sometimes it (the divination) comes true, sometimes

it does not...but, we have to look for the rains all
the same".

111

In addition to the "rain-crop" divination and
prophesying rituals that are conducted during the annual
festivals and are part of the agro-ritual cycle, there are
several rituals in which rain deities are appeased for rain.
One such ritual that is also part of the annual agro-ritual
cycle is that of "Jokumara".

This ritual is conducted in the month of ppadxapad
(August-September) and immediately follows the celebrations
of the Ganesh festival. In the village of Madbhavi, the
Jokumara ("one who brings joy") idol is made of clay by one
of the potters. Members of the ppalya; (menial servants)
caste take the clay idol with its enlarged mouth and bulging
eyes and place it in a basket. Neem (Aaapglgaappa_lndiaa
luaa) leaves are placed behind the idol and the mouth is
smeared with butter. Placing the bitter neem leaves behind
the Jokumara signifies; according to the people, the placing
of their difficulties behind him and requesting only the
softness of butter for life.

Two apalya; women then go around the village singing a
song that asks the people to appeaSe the Jokumara for rains
and happiness.' The people propitiate the idol and offer
grains or money to the carriers. After three days of
parading the idol in the village, the apalyaza take the idol
and leave it with the,harijans. They in turn take the idol
to a nearby field and beat it. The way in which the idol

falls is supposed to portend the rains for the coming

112
season. Falling on its face implies that Pjokumara is
waiting for the rains"_and hence the rains for the season
may not be successful. Falling on its back implies that the
"farmers will rub their faces in the ground for want of
rains." Only if the idol falls on its side can the
agriculturists expect good and successful rains.

The ambiguity seen in the Jokumara rite where the idol
is propitiated for rain and yet treated harshly by village
residents (who "beat and kill" his image) is explained by a
myth that was narrated to me.

When Ganesha, Jokumara's brother, visited the earth
the people propitiated and pampered him. Having
received the generosity of the people, Ganesha
reported back to his parents, Shiva and Parvati,
that all was well on earth and the people were
-happy. The people were enraged at Ganesh's
oversight of their problems and so when Jokumara
visited the earth, they paraded a list of their
problems, including the demand for rain, in front of
him and ill treated him.

The Jokumara rite which is part of the annual ritual
cycle in the villages is a well-known ritual in the North
Karnataka region. Chidanandamurthy (1977) has elaborated on
the differences between the classical and folk versions of
Jokumara but emphasizes the importance acceded to Jokumara
as a harbinger of rains. He records several village songs
which beseech Jokumara to bring rains:

The sown crops are drying,

the mother will give us flour,
call the Uthri rains

He's climbed his horse

my Jokumara" '

He'll swing his shawl and
call the,rains,

113

The Jokumara ritual Can also be seen as a ritualistic
enactment of the deprivation and disadvantages that the
lower castes face perenially and which are_heightened during
droughts.. Carrying the Jokumara to the households of the
landlords, the lower castes, represented by the menial
servants, make known to the others, through their song, the
problems that they face. Their needs and requirements are
represented as Jokumara's needs. The song emphasizes that
”Jokumara ... cries for food, give him food" and goes on to
narrate the idol's requirements of food, the crying for
food, and beseeches the people to come and feed the Jokumara
(5). Food scarcity that is perennial for the lower castes,
who also form the bulk of the indigent, is ritually enacted
wherein the institutionalized structural inequities,
especially the lack of food security, gets expressed through
a ritual. The landed members of the village who are called
on to recognize the hunger of the idol and feed him are to
recognize the hunger of the poor and to feed them.

The appeasing of a range of minor, rain-related deities
drawn from the local, popular culture adds to the ritual
repertoire of the region. At the initial onset of a
drought, itinerant ritual specialists such as the Konji-
Korava traverse the rural areas (6). Carrying an idol of
the goddess Durg-Murgawwa (the same goddess, Mari,

associated with afflicting the villages with droughts,

114
plagues, small-pox and other human and cattle diseases), a
Konji-Korava woman goes door to door singing paeans and
invoking the goddess to: I
Fill the wells, lakes, and tanks

...bring the {gal and nga rains

The mi (mini) and use (smegma) rains are

important sowing rains for the summer crops. Village
residents propitiate the deity and offer grains or money to
the carrier. Similiarly, at the onset of a drought the
members of the :palyaz caste enconse a frog in mud and fix a
sprig of grass on it. A little boy is made to carry the
frog in a basket, and he goes from house to house, singing
to the Gurji to send the rains. The people pour a pot of
water over the Gurji and place a handful of grains in the
basket.. . '

People refer to the propitiation of these rain deities
as the ”begging” (pagu) or the requesting for rains from
deities. As specialized deities they mediate between humans
and the natural elements and the bringing of rain is a
specially vital one. The frog, the symbol of rain, is
incorporated into the pantheon of local popular deities.
Like the other local rain deities, Mari and Jokumara, the
frog has become an idol called Gurji. These deities and the
functions ascribed to them underscore the articulation of

the divinity-nature-society continuum. They are the

_ 115 '
ritualized harbingers of rain who are capable of dispelling
the disorder that droughts signify and portend.

The existence and working of a multiplicity of
divinatory and prophesying rituals highlight a society's
attempt to strengthen its ”own powers of comprehension, and
to cultivate the potent influences of evil spirits,
celestial bodies and other occult forces" (Pugh 1988:294).
The need to apprehend the unpredictable rains indicates the
importance that the rains have for the livelihood and life
of the people. As the Murnal Maleyappa, the "rainman of
Murnal”, put it, "the need for rain is a universal need"
(lpkpzayag) and a culture seeks multiple ways in which to
satiate this need.

Both the etiology and the location of droughts within a
cosmological configuration are far from being embedded
within a purely fatalistic framework of causality. Located
as they are within a paradigm of cosmological configuration,
these rituals take into account the close nexus between the
moral, social, and physical orders. The range of rituals
and etiologies in which the causes of drought are located
and understood accede a cultural recognition of the human
onus for the productiOn of droughts. As vicarious and
distant as the moral and social responsibility for the
production of drOughts may seem, what is underscored is the
rejection of purely naturalistic explanations and etiologies

of droughts. In addition, droughts are understood as more

116
than threats to agricultural preduction. Rain rituals
address not only questions relating to rains and crops for
the forthcoming seasons but also attempt to address the
moral order of the community. ‘One such ritual is conducted
in villages at the onset of a drought and highlights the
cultural conceptualizations of drought as moral and cosmic

disorder.

DROUGHTS AS APPLICTION

Like epidemics of smallpox and plaque (Nicholas 1981,
Marglin 1990) in the Indian countryside, droughts in Bijapur
are also constructed as afflictions of punishment from
higher order beings. As the word connotes, affliction is
contructed and understood as imposed harm, danger, and
threat from an external agency or source. All forms of
epidemics, such as plagues, smallpox, cattle diseases, and
droughts are considered to be afflictions that are threats
to the life of the village, to its agriculture, to humans
and cattle. Like epidemics, droughts are seen as the I
manifestations of divine and supernatural anger. Heat,
disturbance, death, and destruction.are seen as
characterizing both epidemics and droughts and as being
symptoms of the anger of specific deities.

As paga (affliction), the people consider droughts to
be ordained as punishment by divine and supernatural forces

for recalcitrant human action. Inappropriate actions, lack

117 .
of proper conduct, falling short of ascribed duties, being
venal, and failing in moral and social onligations are all
considered to be reasons which make a community vulnerable
to afflictions{ Such afflictions are then either warded-off
or removed by the performance of certain rituals.

Affliction is seen as the dislocation of orders: the
physical order in which agricultural production and hence
the domain of the aglya (agricultural and grazing lands) is
threatened; the social order of the u; (settlement) in which
the peole's actions and interactions are curtailed and lives
threatened; and the cosmological order in which harmony
between humans and divine beings is disturbed. Village-
level rituals then seek to alleviate such disorders that
"affliction" portends. ~As a drought or an epidemic of
cattle or human diseases sets in, the people in villages
conduct rites that seek to dispell the affliction and
reinstate the order of the village and cosmos.

In the village of Honutgi, a ritual that seeks at the
onset of droughts and epidemics to alleviate the
”affliction" is called the mala_ya:a or "rain fast." An
elderlwaoman in the village described the ritual to me as
follows:

When the rains have delayed (aalaau) or when the
cattle get afflicted (papa), then the elders of the
village get together and decide that the village
people must undertake a fast (yaxa). On Tuesdays
and Fridays, which are Mari's (the goddess
associated with afflictions) days, we can eat only

steamed cereals. No zppi (flattened sorghum
bread) is.to be made.‘ The gridle is not to be used

118
on these days. On the last.day of the fast, the
yound boys.of the village pour a pot over
themselves. Then they go to all the abodes (gugl)
and temples of the village and pour a pot of water
over the gods and goddesses. We do this for five
weeks. On the last days of the fast, special food

is offered to all the deities in the temples and
abodes. .

There are several symbolic dimensions to this ritual.
yaza or fasts (graph in sanskrit and Hindi) as penance seek
to alter existing conditions which are disruptive and
threatening to life. 'yaua is essentially a transformational
ritual that seeks to alter destiny or existing conditions
through religious vows and fasts (Wadley 1983). By
appeasing deities, attempts are made to eliminate misfortune
and in this case the misfortune and distress that an
onsetting drought portends.

Emanating from a conceptualization of drought as
affliction, the prescribed regimen of a particular fast
seeks to alleviate the distress of drought in a manner akin
to the treatment of disease. Like the prescription of diets
meant to heal disease, the prescribed ritual fast seeks to
alleviate the moral and social disease of the community.
Examples of such social transgression seen as disturbing the
moral and cosmic order are that of the non-performance of
particular rituals, the ill-treatment of particular groups
of people or the reneging on promises. If the annual
festival to the village deity was not conducted due to

factions in the village then an onsetting drought is

119

associated with this failure to have retained and maintained
cosmic‘harmonyu

A case of a village leader reneging on promises to a
village festival was highlighted'during the Muharram
festival in Madbhavi. During the Muhaxram "rain-crop"
prophesying rite, the oracle stopped in the midst of the
ritual and then leaving the crowd started walking to the
house ofoone of the richer landowners. The oracle stood at
the door of the man's house and demanded that the man come
out. When the man came to the door, the oracle led him by
the hand to the ritual ground. There the oracle proceeded
to castigate the man for not keeping his promise of giving a
gift of Rs. 500 to the dargah if his wife conceived a child.
The man promised to do so, reiterating that the promised
gift would be given by the next full moon day (puplma).

Similarly, the fast, during the droughts, that
prescribes collective ritualistic actions underscores the
attempt to re-instate a collective order to the community.
Droughts constructed as resulting from a lack of social
unity or lack of moral propriety in the village become
occasions for the ritualistic re-instating of village unity
and moral propriety. I

The cooling of the deity is an attempt to cool both the
heat of the deity's anger and the heat of the drought and
hence to dispel the drought. As Marglin (1990) notes in

reference to the ritualistic healing of small-pox, the

120
conjoining of the metaphorical (the heat of the deities
anger) with the literal (heat of the epidemic or a drought)
highlights the non-dualistic conceptualization of such
phenomena. Droughts, like diseases, are considered to be
symptoms of both physical and moral disorder and the modes
to alleviate them are conducted in a manner that addresses
both domains.

Addressing and dispelling the heat from one domain,
that of the divine, is an attempt to dispel the physical
heat of the drought. The cooling of the deity parallels the
"healing" of afflictions which is concerned with
reconstituting the physical, social, and spiritual order.
What is underscored in this ritual, and the I
conceptualizations associated with it, is the ethos of
substantialism and the coinciding of the domains of
divinity, nature, and society.- Actions in one domain are
understood and constructed as being reflected in the other,
linking the three domains of divinity, nature, and society
in a circular and integral manner.

If an ethos of substantialism forms the basis for the
conceptualization of droughts, and for the ritualistic forms
in which they are addressed, the question of the results of
such conceptualizations and the ideology behind such

conceptualizations remain.

121
COSMOLOGY AS IDEOLOGY

If this cosmological construction and the ritualized
addressing of droughts were linked to actual strategies of
alleviating drought-related scarcities, one will note a
discrepancy between the two. For the ritualistic addressing
of droughts in which the rich and poor gather together
irrespective of caste differences to collectively alleviate
drought is not extended to strategies to alleviate drought-
related food scarcities. Drought and its effects of loss of
crops, unemployment, and lack of sustenance resources
implies a stress for all. Yet, there are no strategies for
collective provisioning. Instead, as it will be detailed in
the next chapter, the people undertake separate strategies
at the household level to sustain-themselves.

That scarcity alleviation strategies are conducted at
the household level and do not incorporate any collective
measures to alleviate distress is highlighted in the cases
of the different provisioning strategies undertaken by
residents of Madbhavi village.' Households with considerable
amounts of land like those of Doddamane Patel and Basavaraj
Sindgi have sufficient resources, either in the form of
stored grains or capital to tide over the decline in
production initiated by a drought. The medium and small
cultivators like Gangawwa Badigyar and others resort to the
sale of assets to subsist through the crisis. The landless

workers and the indigent, such as Gurappa Madha and his

122

fellow caste members must resort to either migration or
incur debts to survive the loss of employment brought on by
droughts. I

This disjunction between the symbolic collective
liability for the production of droughts and independent
survival strategies makes it worthwhile to compare Bijapur's
cosmological constructions of drought to cosmologies of
other societies in which nature-society relations are also
encoded. Reichel-Dolmatoff (1976) notes that the cosmology
of the Tukano of the Colombian Amazon contains a blueprint
for ecological adaptation. The use of the forest resources,
both the flora and fauna, is regulated by their cosmology
which stipulates that overhunting causes illness. This
cosmology also regulates sex and food habits and thereby
maintains a balance between biotic resources and human
population. The encoding of close nature-society relations
is then linked to specific strategies in which the
stipulates of the cosmology are actively played out.

Similarly, in her study of the Tshidi of Southern
Africa, Comaroff (1980) elaborates that the Tshidi construct
disease as cosmological disorder. Fractious relations
between persons and betweeen the social group and the
physical and social cosmos are considered to be the causes
of cosmological disorder. Healing rituals then provide
therapies in which the cosmic order and hence the health of

the person are reinstated.

123

Unlike these cosmologies, which are embedded in
societies that are relatively egalitarian, the cosmological
construction of drought in Bijapur is embedded within a
society_that has hierarchy and inequality as its hallmark.
Though there is a constant emphasis and reiteration of the
continuity and identity between nature and society and the
need for the collective addressing of the larger cosmic
order, drought-related stress, especially food scarcity, is
experienced on a non-collective basis. This is evident from
the different household-based strategies undertaken by the
residents of Madbhavi village.

In addition the cosmological constructions of droughts
that locate the responsibility for the production of
droughts in the collective moral domain may act as a basis
for negating the responsibility of the landed rich to
provision the poor. The recognition of collective liability
diffuses and removes the recognition of the social relations
of production. Since droughts are understood as caused by
moral impropriety, falling short of caste duties, or social
disunity in the village, the onus for alleviating food
scarcity is also not placed on any specific person.

At the onset of a drought, and at its peak of severe
food deprivation, the rich provision only themselves, and
overlook the needs of the landless. Land owners who own and
cultivate sizeable shares of land do not face the absolute

deprivation and threat to life that the landless and other

124
indigent members of-a village face. Yet the differential
resource positions goes unquestioned; the poor eke out a
living or starve, and the life of the rich goes relatively

undisturbed.

cosxoroe! m omens socm. srnuc'rms

The legitimation of resource differences and the
diffusion of liability provided by the cosmological
conceptualizations of drought are enhanced by an increasing
schizm between cosmological conceptualizations and the
changing village social structures. This is observable in
situations in which rituals identify some specific person,
such as the village headman, as being responsible for
drought conditions and imposes an onus of alleviating
scarcity on him. But, changed social structures and social
conditions, do not enable the articulation of such dictums.
In describing one such ritual, I will indicate the manner in
which the disjunction between the cosmological understanding
of drought and changed social structures also negate the
ability of these rituals to generate scarcity alleviation
mechanisms.

The village of Mundugnur is one among the several
regionally well-known centers for rain-crop prophesying and
lies in a dry tract of Bijapur district. It is here that
the temple of Mallpga, a pastoral deity, hosts an annual

"rain-crop" prophecy (Mala;pala_pallka) ritual on the eve of

125

dlyall (Kaupplk October-November).. Well-known for its
prophecies, the temple attracts five to six hundred farmers
from around the region, who come to hear the prophecies and
propitiate the deity for a bountiful harvest. The ritual is
typical of the annual rain-crop rituals held in most
villages during the festivals of the village's main deities.

On the morning of the ritual, the shepherds (kuyupagu),
of Mundugnur who are the custodians of the temple, go around
the village and collect grains from its residents. In the
evening, the custodians of the temple bear the well-
decorated deities of Mallnga and his associate Biza in
palanquins and take them on a procession. They move from
the temple to the site of the Hanumant temple, which is also
the village's collective meeting area. The carriers of the
deities perform a prolonged dance to a crowd awed by the
display of wealth and power of the deities. The palanquins
are set down on the parapet of the temple grounds. Loud and
rhythmic drumming continues for another hour or so.
Meanwhile, the shepherd oracle goes into a trance and the
ritual Officiant showers the audience with turmeric powder.
When the oracle rises.and walks to the center of the
audience, the drummming subsides and the crowd falls into an
expectant silence.

Dressed in regular farmer's clothes but covered from
his head to knees in the coarse woolen blanket (Kaupll) that

is considered to be the symbol of the shepherds and the

126
source of their oracular power, the oracle sits down. He
unfolds a cloth in front of him and a mud pot of water is
placed in front of him. He slowly places handfuls of
grains, wheat, sorghum, and millet in separate piles on the
cloth. As his trance deepens, he sways and starts handing
out various amounts of the grains to the audience. The
'quantities and type of grains he hands out are considered to
be a prophesy of the grains that will be successful for the
coming season.

After handing out the grains, the oracle walks over and
kicks the pot. As the pot breaks and water spills out, the
audience crane their necks and they understand from the size
of the potsherds and the water that is retained in them the
probability and quantity of future rains. A sizeable
potsherd with water in it is considered to signify a
successful rain-crop season. On the other hand, multiple
pieces without any water signifies potential drought.

Meanwhile the oracle walks a little ahead and is met by
the village headman, who queries,

"Now, tell us, what is it?".

”Ah payaaa_uala (illusionary rains)" the oracle replies.
At this the headman's voice rises and he continues: "But
why? Have we not served you? Why is there no rain?" The
Oracle shakes his head further and the headman continues:
”We need rain, how can we get some rain?" The oracle then

replies, ”There may be rain but it will be out of your

127
devotion (ppakai)".

The words used by the oracle are ambiguous and typical
of “rain-crop" prophecies. "nayaga" or illusionary rains can
be read both ways--rains that may come at an unexpected time
or moisture-laden weather conditions that will still enable
the crops to grow. By prophesying unpredictable rains, the
oracle was perhaps influenced by the fact that the season
had been particularly dry and the chances of getting
sufficient rains were remote.

As the ritual concludes, the palanquins are raised by
the bearers and taken on a final circumabulation of the
ritual site. Visitors from other villages donate grains and
along with the residents of the village start to disperse,
discussing the rain prophecies, the probability of rain, and
the crops that will be successful. Having discerned for
themselves the prophecies of rain and crops in the grains
handed out and in the potsherds, agriculturists have the
option of basing their agricultural decisions on these
prophecies.

Ethnographies of Karnataka, such as those by Beals
(1974) and Gurumurthy (1982), have indicated that collective
Village rituals seek to reinstate a prescribed social order.
Rain rituals in particular are “related to reinstating the
Gollective unity and order of the village since droughts are
Often culturally constructed to be the results of a lack of

Social unity. Ideal and typical constructs of social order

128
are based on stressing the performance of ascribed caste-
based duties, leading lives of moral propriety (apazma), and
upholding cultural norms and values (nlppl and hada). Faults
in social conduct, shifts from prescribed and expected
normative orders are held as causative factors in the
production of distress conditions such as droughts, plagues,
epidemics of smallpox, and other life-threatening
conditions. This ritual, like other rain rituals, also
includes the collective addressing of the moral and cosmic
order, but here the responsiblity to alleviate the drought
is placed on the leader of the village.

The particular organization of such rituals which
places the headman in the center of discerning the cause of
the drought also imposes on him the responsiblity to
alleviate drought-related stress. Such an organizational
structure may have emanated from past social and political
organization of the village, when the leadership of the
village was hereditary and it was the duty of the leader(s)

to provide sustenance to the indigent in times of distress.

DHARMAXARYA: AXIOM OP MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

At the level of Bijapur's villages, an axiom of moral
responsibility refered to as QDAIEAKQIYA had worked to keep
the elite responsible for maintaining the village's tanks,
lakes and wells. As moral (gpazpa) duty (kaxya), such an

axiom was activated during the exigencies of a drought or

129
under conditions of food scarcity, when the elite landed
members of the village were compelled by moral injunction
and social pressure to construct tanks, lakes, and wells in
the village for use by the general public. As Shivanna
(1973) details for medieval Karnataka, and Srinivas (1971)
for South Karnataka, the construction of public utility
resources such as wells, tanks, rest houses, and temples was
considered to be an act of charity which accrued merit for
the donors and raised their social standing.

Narratives and folk songs (9) from the region note the
important role that apazmakaxya played in alleviating
drought-related stress and in generally maintaining the
vital natural resources of villages. A regionally well-
known ballad, Sanp_§paa_ppagl;appi (10), eulogises the role
of a village headman who, in order to mitigate the
privations of a drought, orders the building of a lake
which, despite persistent and prolonged labor, fails to be
filled with water. An Oracle advises him to sacrifice his
youngest daughter-in-law as a propitiating.offer, and, after
the sorrowing headman performs the sacrifice, the lake is
filled with water. ”The ballad emphasizes not a belief that
human sacrifices can create miracles but the expectation
that a good village leader must be capable of great
sacrifice. The contribution of village elites and leaders
to the building and maintenance of public resources is

evident in that village lakes and tanks in the district bear

130
names of persons who financed and supervised them.

The social and moral responsibility for the welfare of
the village as a whole was assigned to and associated with
the leader. Droughts, like other calamities and conditions
of deprivation and collective stress, were then associated
with a state of disorder in the community, the onus of which
fell on the leader. At the performance of rituals the
leader himself may have been castigated for lack of
responsibility to the community, or even taken to task
(verbally) for any of his actions that were construed as a
misdeed. In attempting to provide ameliorative guidelines,
the ritual would have included directives like the
performance of collective penances, or stipulated acts
through which the social order of the community would be
restored. pparmakazya (axiom of moral responsibility)
through whiCh the rich landowners would have provisioned for
the poor during droughts may have been initiated during
these rituals.

ppazpakazya as a cultural axiom of elite responsibility
for village resources during exigencies mathave enhanced
the bonding of the landless workers to the landed and the
powerful. By catering to the needs of the landless when
agricultural work was unavailable and the people's ability
to sustain themselves was weakened, the landowners also

benefitted themselves.

131

That patriarchal forms of organization and idioms of
moral economy couch terms of exploitation have been made
explicit in the works of Bourdieu (1977) and Scott (1976).
Pre-capitalist agrarian formations were especially disposed
to maintaining these complex relationships in which economic
transactions were tied to social relationships and moral
obligations. Similarly, the axiom of gpazmakazya provided a
veneer in which the occasional doling of resources during
peiodic scarcity was used to couch long term exploitation.
The construction of public utility resources provided a
means of livelihood for the indigent and retained labor
within the villages. At the same time, this strategy
strengthened the position of the village elite as concerned
and responsible leaders of the village. Moreover, in
periods prior to the 19203 (when the population of.the
region was sparse [Guha 1985]), rich land owners may have
needed to provision and retain the general labor and service
population in the village itself during crises so as to be
assured of labor. ,

But the axiom of ppagmakagya_, and the minimal survival
insurance that it provided, has declined since the turn of
the twentieth century. Significant reorganization of the
region's villages, by the British colonial policies and the
shifts in the regional economy, negated the necessity for
village-level strategies to contain the effects of droughts.

In addition, increasing population (Choksey 1955,

132
Charlesworth 1985, Rangasami 1985) increased the
availability of labor and made cultural strategies such as
dpazmakazya redundant.

In addition, contemporary changes in the social
structure and organization of the village do not provide
grounds for the practice of such dictums even if they
continue to be embodied in or articulated in some rituals.
Under conditions where the village leaders are elected, the
responsibilities of civic and political duties are not
stretched to include the moral responsibility for the
conditions of the village. Even in cases of the election
and establishment of traditional elites into new positions
of power and leadership, the changes in the social structure
do not carry the weight of moral onus to provision the poor.
In the case of the ritual at Mundugnur, though an attempt is
made to place the onus for the production of the-drought on
the village, and the concomitant measures to alleviate
distress on a specific person, the changes in the social
organization of the village lead to the loss of significance
of the ritual. Like the lack of necessity to provision the
people during fluctuations in agricultural production, the
strategies to initiate drought-related scarcity alleviation
measures are also negated.‘

The declining importance accorded to rain-crop
prophecies testifies to the loss of symbolism and social

relevance of the rain-rituals. Rain-crop oracles and

133
divinations that once played a central role in the agrarian
life of Bijapur are today considered by its residents to be
less "truthful" (ulia), and their directives of what crops
to grow and which rains will be successful are viewed as
less reliable.

Not all agriculturists take the oracle's word at face
value, and importance (if any) is acceded to a general
comment on the rain-crops for the season. Older residents
consider the inability of the oracles to be "pure" (i.e., to
lead life-styles considered appropriate to their special
ritual status and to be above all corruption) as being a
reason for oracles to lack authenticity and accuracy. Older
agriculturists cite times when the words of the oracles were
regarded as absolute truths, and speak of times when oracles
had led whole villages to sowing despite a lack of rain and
had later "called rains" to make the season a successful
one.

I asked Mr. Manigyappa Biradar, the narrator of the
1942 oraculur rites, why rain-crop prophecies were no longer
considered to be as accurate as they were once before. His
reply: "How can prophecies be right these days? How? The
shepherds, even the Pujaris are no longer followers of their
dharma. They must be pure (apugg) in mind. Only then can
they make correct prophecies." An oracle's ability to make
accurate prophecies is related to his adherence to a

prescribed and expected norm of actions. The veracity and

134
accuracy of the oracles, prophecies, and divinations are
themselves associated with the state of people's moral and
social propriety. Such shifts are themselves aspects of the
shifts in the social and cultural order and they heighten
and explain the disjuntion between the cosmological
constructions and the social structure.

The conjoining of social, moral, and natural categories
in the cosmological construction of droughts embodies dual
facets.) On the one hand, such cosmological constructions
locate and stress the recognition of collective human onus
for the production of droughts. This construction then
becomes the ideological basis in which droughts and the
attending lack of resource and food redistributive
mechanisms go unquestioned. As a result,_the variations in
the experiences of food scarcities is accepted and managed
on an independent household basis.

In the domain of provisioning transactions it is not
the ecology or the specific drought condition that gets
recognized, but, rather, that of the social relations of
production and service relations. On the other hand, in the
domain bf rituals, that is in the cosmological addressing of
droughts, it is the relationship between humans as a
collectivity and the natural forces that is played out.
Rain-rituals are closely related to a specific past socio-
cultural, economic, and political order in which'the

differing social relations between persons, and the broader

135
society-nature relationship were played out. Drought itself
is not recognized as a purely natural phenomenon, but, as a
symptom of cosmic disorder and is addressed in relation to a
reordering of the cosmos. I

In analyzing the cosmological conceptualizations of
droughts in terms of their implications for the alleviation
of food scarcity, I emphasize the need to scrutinize and
analyze indigenous, non-western cultural conceptualizations
of society-nature relations in a critical manner.
Conceptualizations such as the ones observed in Bijapur,
wherein society-nature relations are represented as being
closely interlinked, have been, with reference to India
especially, unrelated to the actual conditions in which they
are played out. Hence, such conceptualizations have been
upheld as frameworks or ideological constructs which
provided the basis for effective resource management and
scarcity alleviation. Gadgil and Guha's (1992) work, "This
Fissured Land", in which a regional caste system is
presented as providing an efficacious organization for
natural resource management, comes to mind.

Societies in which provisioning mechanisms have not
been effective in alleviating resource scarcity have been
seen as results of changes introduced by colonialism or by
the intrusion of capitalism. Disruptive and devastating as
the forces of colonialism and capitalism have been to the

working of village societies and their scarcity alleviation

136
strategies they have been compounded by local cultural
conceptualizations-and social structures which legitimize,
and sanction differences in resources and scarcity
management.

This chapter has elaborated on rain rituals as
representing a specific culture's understanding of society-
nature relations. The analyses indicates that society-
nature relations are conceptualized within a continuum. The
condition of nature is considered to be reflective of human
actions. Despite the recognition (in moral and cosmological
terms) of such a close nexus between the conditions of
nature and society, the substantialism evident in the
rituals is not linked to strategies to alleviate drought-
related crises. The observation of this contradiction
emphasizes the need to take into consideration the effect of
changed social orders and living conditions in establishing
or noting cultural influences of society-nature relations.

The next chapter reviews village-level provisioning
transactions and analyzes them in terms of social mechanisms

that address drought-related scarcities of food.

CHAPTER VI

AN ENEMY LIKE THE STOMACH

The previous chapters noted the contextualization and
management of drought in agricultural practice, and the
etiologies of droughts in the ritual repertoire of the
region. In this chapter I focus on village-level
transactions of food and grain and relate these to the
region’s agro-climatic cycle and the resource positions of
the people. I review the ability of these provisioning
transactions to address drought-related food scarcity and
hence the ability of the society and culture to take into
consideration the ecological specificities of the region.
The tensions between the articulation of cultural
expressions of society-nature relations and the shifts in
the social and economic structures are addressed.

The celestial cycle (reckoned by the movement of stars
and planets) and the climatic cycle (marked predominantly by
the rains) bind the agricultural cycle of Bijapur. As in
other parts of India, the celestial and climatic cycles also
conjoin to organize social and ritual activities, and mark
various periods in terms of being auspicious or inauspicious

for different sets of activities (Pugh 1983). Various

137

138
rituals mark significant agricultural transitions: the end
of the major winter harvest is heralded as the new year (the
pgagl festical in apalppa [March-AprilJ), fertility rites
conducted to propitiate the fields are occasions for family
get-togethers, and the slack season between the winter
harvest and the summer sowing frees agriculturists for their
other social activities. As in other agrarian societies
where "the structure of ritual practice is articulated
within the structure of farming activities" (Bourdieu
1979:132), life in Bijapur is also entrenched within the
agricultural cycle.

While rituals mark the various agricultural stages,
agriculture in turn predicates the resource position of
different households. The end of the harvest for a well-
endowed agriculturist means a rest from agricultural
overseeing if not actual work. The slack season is also the
period that sees a spurt of social activities: visiting
relatives, going on pilgrimages, attending weddings, and
conducting political and economic transactions. But, for
the landless agriculturists, the slack season spells a long
period of unemployment or sporadic employment, making it
difficult to meet the requirements of daily sustenance.
Households subject to the pinch of unemployment and its
consequences of sharp dips in food availability resort to
various measures to meet their needs. A flurry of everyday

transactions of borrowing, lending, and exchanging

139
accompanies resource fluctuations. Households that have
extra grains sell locally--housewives taking it on
themselves to make these small-scale transactions.
Neighbours, fellow caste members, and kin borrow from each
other and exchange milk for grains, grains for vegetables,
or fuelwood for grains.

In 1989, the post-harvest months of April and May were
typical of a slack season. In Gurappa Madha's household,
only he and his sons found employment--cutting thistle brush
in some distant fields. His wife and his daughters stayed
home, listless for employment. Physically, it was
comfortable for them to stay home from the scorching heat
(when temperatures could reach a maximum of forty degress
celsus), but providing for the sustenance needs of the
family required great economizing and innovative skills.
They stretched their food rations, the women consumed only
one full meal a day, and they made requests to borrow grains
from a landed family. Like them, several other families
were subject to the cycle of food scarcity and resorted to
various strategies to sustain themselves. Hunger is thus a
recurring threat that faces a large proportion of the
village residents. As the people reiterate "there is no
enemy like the stomach"(1), as hunger humbles the proud, and

makes the already poor destitute.

140

INSTITUTIONALIZED PROVISIONING TRANSACTIONS

A series of ritualized provisioning transactions are
conducted at the village level and are situated within the
agricultural cycle (see Figure IX). Grains, money, and
cooked food move from different households in various
amounts and ways to collectively and independently provision
members of the service castes and the indigent of the
village. In Bijapur, three forms of institutionalized
resource transactions are popularly operative: gaaapa, or
commensal provisioning; aya or transactions between the
landed, and service and ritual specialists; and gapa, or

donation.

DASOHA: COMMUNITY SHARING

Emanating from the religio-philosophical tradition of
Virashaivism, gasoha (dasa [servant]+aham [I]) means the
submission of an individual to a god (Kittel 1988 [1894];
Kalburgi 1983). As a religious and culturally valued norm,
gaaapa refers to acts of charitable giving, feeding others,
and sharing the fruits of one's efforts (Ishwaran 1983). For
adherents of Virashaivism, dasopa is indicative of being
responsible and generous members of the sect. pasopa is an
expression of devotion, where one's search for god and guru
can be realized through conducting aaaoha. "No charity

ranks higher than that of feeding others" is a saying that

141

FIGURE: Ix
AGRO-RITUAL CYCLE
AND PROVISIONING TRANSACTIONS

JAN

‘I A MA
905“ CH4

 

 

 

 

 

1. Winter Agricultural Cycle

2. Summer Agricultural Cycle
3. Resource Position it Landless

4. Provisioning Transactions

142
exhorts an ethos of collective sharing and provisioning. In
emphasizing the importance of collective sharing,
Virashaivism attempted to address the hierarchical economic
and social structures of medieval North Karnataka (Narayan
1983, Ishwaran 1983).

In the context of the village, dasoha is the commensal
partaking of a meal during festivals of the village deities.
Collective provisioning in the form of a commensal meal
takes place in the village of Madbhavi during two major
festivals and a series of smaller festivals for caste
deities. The festival of Apokshidda is held in apalpua
(March-April), when the winter harvest is complete and the
village takes a respite from a long agricultural season.
Appkspldda is a pastoral deity who is also regarded as the
main village deity and the shepherds are regarded as the
custodians of the temple. As the harvested crops are
brought to the village to be stored, the custodians of the
temple go around the village collecting wheat, jaggery or
cash from all the households. Those who grow wheat and
those who have prayed for special favors donate larger
amounts of wheat. Landless households which do not have
sufficient grains donate money in sums that are within their
means.

On the day of the festival, the deity is paraded around
the village, after which it retires to the temple. People

gather around to witness its last circumambulation and the

143
prophesying of the forthcoming rains and crops (malagpala
pallka). The collected wheat and jaggery (molasses) is
cooked to make a sweet dish which is collectively eaten at
the site of the temple. While the women of the higher
castes, the brahmins and the Lingayats, do not partake of
the ritual meal, men of all castes except the brahmins are
compelled to be present. The poor get a meal at the temple
and are also allowed to take home any of the left-overs from
the meal. Gurappa Madha and his family, along with their
fellow caste members and their neighbours, the palaya, and
the poor Muslims partake of the ritual commensal meal, and
are permitted to take a bowl each of the sweet gruel to
their homes.

Similar commensal provisioning takes place once every
week in the month of appayapa (July-August, a period of
listening, from the root word auaya, or ear). This is a
time of respite from agricultural work when the fields are
in a production phase, and the lack of work permits the men
to listen to the praises of God. During this period,
separate festivals (jaaaa) for each caste deity are held
every week. Each of the caste deities (2), such as the
Mani for the Madhas (Leather workers), the alga for the
shepherds, and anpayya for the carpenters are assigned a
week of worship. During this week the deity is dressed and
propitiated with devotional songs and music. Custodians of

the deity go around the village and collect grains or cash,

144

and at the end of the week, a commensal meal is prepared
from the collections. Members of the lower castes and the
indigent partake of the meal in the vicinity of the temple.

The ppaluapa (menial servants) of Madbhavi village
celebrated the festival of their caste deity, puugayua, in
the fourth week of spuavana (July-August). Like the other
caste groups they went around the village and collected
money or wheat from the houses of the landed agriculturists
and small sums of money from the other service caste and
landless households. The deity was decorated and worshipped
every morning and evening. The thalwa; men collected at the
temple site in the evenings and sang the do in ada or
drum songs, which they, and the shepherds, are famous for.
The songs extolled the virtues of legendary shepherd oracles
who had called rains and saved the village from famine, and
of rich, benevolent men who had built lakes during droughts
and provided sustenance to the indigent. At the end of the
week of worship, a sweet gruel was made from the collected
wheat. Members from castes such as the untouchables,
leather workers, and the stone cutters partook of the meal.

Unlike dana, or donations that emanate from and

 

reinforce a hierarchical relationship between giver and
receiver, dasoha transactions are centrifugal. The grains
and money collected are not associated with any one
particular donor and the meal made from collections

emphasizes the notion of community and collectivity. It is

145
in an atmosphere of community commensality that dasopa meals
are conducted. pasopa commensality "involves the principle
that the individual should share spontaneously with the
community a part of the earnings from his honest social

labor (Kayaka)" (Ishwaran 1983:62).

51;: INSTITUTIONALIEED SERVICE PAYMENTS

The institution of aya, well established in the north
Karnataka belt, consists of a series of transactions between
members of the service and ritual specialist castes who have
hereditary rights to receive a fee in the form of land,
grains, and food, from members of the landed families.
Meaning "a fee" or "unmeasured payment" (Ishwaran 1963), aya
transactions connote a link between agriculturists and some
service caste households in a village. The aya system, like
the baluteda: (3) system in Maharashtra, ensured that
village artisans and service persons received a portion of
the agricultural produce of the village (McAlpin 1983).

Unlike the jajmanl system, aya transactions do not
entail a specific patron-client network or relationship, and
consist instead of the collective remuneration that certain
service and ritual caste households receive from all
agriculturists within a village. Fuller (1989), one of the
few to emphasize the differences between the jajuapl and aya
systems, notes that the receivers of aya payments have

positions as servants of the village as a whole, and the

146
onus of provisioning them falls collectively on the village.

Land owners, who are endowed with relatively larger
portions of land and who produce more, are recognized as the
ayagauula, or families who give aya. In the village of
Madbhavi, Keshappa Kumbar, Basavaraj Sindgi, and Doddmane
Patel are ayagakula families and are obligated to provide
grains, food, and meals to the various households that are
entitled to aya receipts.

On the other side are households that are entitled to
receive aya shares and are referred to as ayagpaggu or
receivers of aya. Receivers of aya shares are usually
service and ritual caste housholds such as barbers,
carpenters, blacksmiths, washermen, menial servants, basket
makers and leather workers (Ishwaran 1963). Not all
households of these castes are entitled to receiving aya.
Only a few households, based on a recognition of hereditary
rights, are entitled to receive different amounts of aya.
Like their counterparts, the balutedar in Maharashtra, the
ayagpappu households in Bijapur district vary from village
to village but the most representative ones are from the
service castes and the ritual specialists.

In the village of Madbhavi, households representing the
Lingayat priest (Ayagplu), the Muslim priests (Mullap), the
flower sellers (pugau), the shepherds (Kurubaru) as
custodians of the main village deity, and the menial

servants (Thalwar) are entitled to aya shares. These shares

147
are different in quantity and period for each of the ritual
and service groups and are rotated among the households
recognized as hereditary ayagpaggu.

The ayagalu is the ritual priest of the Lingayats and
provides services of officiating and conducting the rituals
and rites of passage for Lingayat households. Hereditary
aya shares.for the ayagolu are rotated annually among five
different households and when a person gets his turn, he and
his family are entitled to cultivate a khuuige (four acres)
of land and retain the produce for their consumption and
use. In addition, the ayagalu receives a handful of wheat
or sorghum flour every day from each of the landed
households and receives the special meals cooked for
festivities. At the harvest yard, a share of grains,
usually a basketful, is set aside for the ayagalu.

For their custodial duties relating to three temples in
the village and for providing flowers for various rituals,.
three Hugau, or flower maker households, are entitled to
receive one khurige of land which they can cultivate for a
year each. The service of the tpalwap, or domestic helpers,
is called upon during ceremonies both in the households of
the landed and during collective village festivals. Washing
dishes, cleaning grains, clearing out sites for and after
feasts are duties assigned to the phalwar. For this and
other menial odd jobs, twelve families of tpalwa; are

entitled to aya payments which they rotate among themselves

148
for:a year each. On receiving their share of aya, a thalvar
family is compelled to perform the work assigned to them
and, in turn, receive a single sorghum :apl (bread) everyday
from each of the landed households. They also receive gifts
of money or clothes for work done during weddings and other
rites of passage.

1 The mullah (Muslim priests and Officiants of the
gaxgap, the religious burial sites) families, of whom Maabu
and her family are representatives, are caretakers of the
village gapgap and are also considered as ayagpazuu, or
receivers of aya. For the maintenance of the village gazgap
and for officiating at its weekly worship and the annual
festival, the three mullah families receive, in annual
rotation, the right to collect grains from all the harvest
grounds. In addition, on Thursdays, the day of worship at
the dazgap, a representative of the ayagpazpu family
receives a single pap; (sorghum bread) and light a lamp at
the Dargah with a few spoons of oil‘from every landed
household.

Other ritual specialists who are entitled to aya
transactions are three families of Kurubas (shepherds), who
are recognised as hereditary custodians of the village
deity, the Apakaplgapa (4). Like the pupa; (flower sellers)
and ayagalu (the Lingayat priests), these shepherd families
rotate among themselves the right to cultivate an assigned

piece of land for one year and to receive grains at the

149
harvest grounds.
For households that receive aya shares, there is a
significant increase in the level of their domestic
resources and conversely a sharp decline in resources when

the aya shares rotate to another household.

QLNA: CHARITABLE GIVING

Apart from aya and dasoha transactions, grains that are
given to members of the lower castes, the maapaa (leather
workers) and the holeyas (the harijans) are not considered
as part of aya transactions and are instead thought to be a
charitable act. Linked to the notion of accruing merit and

of performing one's moral duties (dpapua), dana is not

 

enforceable through any collective action. As personal
charity, it is incumbent on land owners and the well endowed
to donate grains to the needy.

In the context of grain donations, aapa is restricted
to harvest periods: The threshing yard is the site of these
donations. Typically, after threshing the pyramidal grain
heap was divided into three shares. The top share was
called ppale rasi, or head pile, and a proportion of the
grains from this was kept aside for the temples and the
priest (ayagplu). The second share was called pagu gas; or
middle pile, and it was from this pile that the aya shares
to the other service caste groups, such as blacksmiths,

carpenter, and barber, were given. The last and bottom part

150

of the heap was called kadl pasi, or last pile, and it was a
portion of the grains from this pile that was given as gapa,
or donation, to members of the lower and untounchable
castes. 1

However, harvesting is no longer conducted with such
ritualistic rigor and the transactions of aya and gapa are
made without the attending rituals. As threshing and
winnowing activities are conducted, a few members of the
lower caste mill around the harvest ground waiting for aya
shares to be distributed. After the shares of the ayagpargu
are transacted, the grains from the lowest layer of the
grain heap are donated to the waiting lower caste members.
As the term "kadi as’", or ”last heap", implies, grains
from this level are full of sand, chaff and straw, and it is
this that is donated to the lower castes. Unlike aya
shares, the agriculturist is not under any enforceable
compunction to donate to the lower castes and it is not rare
to see the women and children who wait for gapa be turned
away from the harvest ground. Once I had accompanied an
landowning family to their harvest grounds. Though members
of the aya families received a share from the grain heaps,
two groups of harijan women and children were refused any
donation of grains.

Transactions of grains on the threshing floor have been
considered the locus classsicus of village level

redistribution and hence a microscopic display of rural

151
social structural relations for India. Studies have also
elaborated on the caste-based dynamics and the symbolic
meaning and values of such prestations and transactions
(Fuller 1989, Raheja 1989). My analysis of these gain
transactions and commensality focuses on the matrix on which
they are worked, and their functions and effectiveness in
relation to provisioning. Correlating these grain and food
transactions to periods of scarcity, I evaluate their
effectiveness as mechanisms of provisioning.

Several questions are raised in assessing these
provisioning transactions: are these transactions related to
the ecological particularities of the region, especially
droughts, and are they therefore expressions of a cultural
attempt to address the geo-physical specificity of the
region? Are they articulations of cultural and religious
precepts? Do the transactions coincide with periods of
agricultural unemployment and food shortage and hence do
they fulfill sustenance requirements of the indigent? In
general, the question of these provisioning methods as being
exemplary of "moral economy" transactions is raised.

An interesting feature of the aya and gapa payments is
that they are made during harvests which are not periods of
resource stress. The harvest season is in and of itself a
period of high employment and even the poor of the village
are able to sustain themselves. Therefore, aya and dana

transactions do not cater to exigent needs arising out of

152
seasonal fluctuations or differences in resource positions.

As they are located in the regular agro-ritual cycle,
these transactions are payments for services rendered to the
village as a collective. Occuring at the ends of the
harvest season, aya transactions enhance the resource
positions of the selected aya households only. To indicate
the extent to which these transactions impact on the
resource level, I detail the resource position and the
contribution of these aya_ payments to the households that
are entitled to them in the village of Madbhavi.

In Madbhavi only a select number of families _
representing the service castes of the priests, the
shepherds, the flower sellers, the menial servants, and the
Muslim priests are entitled to aya payments every year. The
extent to which aya transactions impact on the household
resource and sustenance level is observable in the case of
the five different households that received aya payments for
the agricultural period of 1990-91. Their resource position

was evaluated after the summer harvest in November 1990.

HOUSEHOLD 1: MAABU MULLAH

In early 1989, the resource position of Maabu and her
family had been very low. She and her daughters subsisted
primarily on the daily meal provided by the family they
worked for. Money, if any, came from the occasional sale of

a goat or from doing agricultural work in the peak season.

153
They were hard-pressed to make ends meet and recurring
illness compounded to their problems. Occasionally a
relative from the town send them packets of flour or
vegetables. But in 1990, the'aya shares had rotated to
Maabu and her family, making a significant change in their
daily consumption pattern. During the summer harvest they
received a total of four sacks (5) of groundnuts, about
twenty kilograms of wheat, and one sack of millet. Maabu
was able to sell three sacks of the groundnuts, disperse old
debts, and pay for pressing medical requirements of the

family.

HOUS 'OLD 2 : H . MUTTAPATHY .

I Another household which received aya payments in 1990
was that of H. Muttapathy, one of the families of the
ayagalu, the ritual priests of the Lingayats. The
Muttapathy household was entitled to one khupiga (four
acres) of land, which they cultivated themselves. In
addition the male head of the household, as the Lingayat's
ritual priest, received the special meals prepared during
the festivals and religious ceremonies of Lingayat
households. H. Muttapathy made daily rounds of the village
and received a handful of sorghum flour everyday from all
the landed Lingayat households. During.the summer harvests
the family received wheat, groundnuts, and millet from the

harvest grounds. While this household is able to subsist on

154
its own lands and income from urban workers, the aya shares
enhanced their resource position. Their household of six
members was able to sell the sorghum that was grown on their
land and used the aya sorghum flour for their daily

consumption.

HOUSEHOLD 3: MARIANIA THALNAR

Mariawwa Thalwar, one of the tpalwar, or menial
domestic servant castes, also received aya payments in the
form of a single piece of sorghum bread everyday from all
the landed households. The sorghum bread that they received
as their aya shares met only their daily bread requirements.
To meet their other expenses Mariawwa and her family of five
continued to work as agricultural laborers during the period
of aya payments. As part of their service duty the family
was called to wash dishes and clean the grounds during
festivals and feasts celebrated by the landed Lingayat

families or during collective village feasts.

HOUSEHOLD 4: B. PUJARI

In Shivappa Pujari’s household, 1990 meant a cessation
of aya payments and a significant dip in their level of
consumption. The assigned aya land that Shivappa had sublet
for cultivation the previous year had rotated to another
household, and his domestic stock of grains was sharply

depleted. He continued to collect sheep for herding them in

155
the yaua, and received small payments of grains or wool in
return. The aya for the shepherds had rotated to Shivappa
Pujari's cousin, B. Pujari, who cultivated the alloted land
and grew groundnuts and millets. B. Pujari's economic
position improved as a result of being a recipient of aya
land. His wife told me that their consumption had improved
since then. They were able to eat wheat bread more
regularly than sorghum bread, consumption of sweets had
increased, and she planned to sell the lentils that they had

grown on the alloted land.

HOUSEHOLD 5: LAXMANNA HUGAR

One of the three pupa; (flower seller) families that is
entitled to receive aya, Laxmawwa Hugar's household
cultivated their share of four acres of paggl land. For the
summer season they grew groundnuts, sunflower, and lentils.
The sunflower crops failed completely (due to the rust
disease) but they harvested the groundnuts and the lentils.
Apart from the aya lands that they received for the year,
the Hugar family also had their own lands which they
cultivated in the winter and owned several cows and
buffaloes. The produce from the lands and the income from
the sale of milk kept the family in a comfortable position.
The produce and income from the aya land only supplemented
their savings and did not directly impact on their daily

consumption patterns.

156

Having detailed the impact of aya payments for the
families who received them, the question of the ability of
these aya payments to be effective village-level
provisioning mechanisms can be assessed. These five
households that are entitled to aya payments-are a small
proportion of the total village population and do not cover
a significant portion of the village indigent. With an
average household size of about six persons each, these five
households account for less than one percent of the total
village population (approximately five thousand in 1990)
that receives provisioning through aya. Hence aya
transactions cannot be considered to be effective mechanisms
that stave-off periodic hunger or structural inequities of
resources. I I

The effectiveness of these transactions can also be
assessed in relation to the time or period in which they are
transacted. The periods when the indigent and the landless
face food scarcity are when employment levels are low during
the production periods of July-August and November to
January, and during the summer fallow period of March-May
(6). There are no aya and gapa transactions of grains or
food during these periods. In addition these transactions
are not invoked during actual periods of resource stress,
when droughts actually set in, when crops have failed or

during the slack season when the landless are unemployed.

157

Qaaapa, rituals of community sharing, which are
conducted during the slack season in the agricultural cycle
(appayapa, July-August), directly relate to a period of food
scarcity. This is the production period for the summer
crops and many of the landless are unemployed and the stock
of food grains is low in many households. By being single
meals, held about once a week for five weeks, gaaapa
transactions alleviate the sense of prolonged hunger among
the unemployed and the indigent. Conducted in an atmosphere
of worship, commensality, and co-operation, the meals are
effective in dispelling a sense of deprivation among the
poor. Many of the poor, especially those from the lower
castes who do not face any caste-based restriction on
receiving food from other castes, look forward to the weekly
gaappa of the village festivals. Whole colonies of the
harijans, the uadhas (leather workers), and the thalwars
turned up for the gasoha meals served during the month of
azayapa celebrations that I witnessed in 1989 and 1990.

Alan Beals, who observed similar rituals of public
feeding in a North Karnataka village, considered these
feasts to function "...not so much to regulate the economic
system as to provide a flexible set of options that can
compensate for problems arising in the operation of regional
ecological and social systems" (1974:56). Yet a correlation
between actual periods of scarcity and the conduct of such

transactions will show them to be provisioning mechanisms

158
that relate to the specific socio-cultural order rather than
being tied to the ecological specificity of the region.

.Unlike agricultural practices which contain mechanisms
that address droughts as a constantly plausible phenomenon
and then contour their actions to suit this, the social
provisioning transactions of aya and aaaapa do not directly
address the fluctuations in food and sustenance levels as
fluctuations arising from the climatic cycles. Rather,
these transactions of grains and food relate to the
enactment of culturally and morally coded idioms that link
the landed, service, ritual, and indigent caste members of a
village in relationships of differential resource
allocation, skills, power, and status.

Aya transactions make it incumbent on the landowning
families and households, especially the dominant caste
households of the plugayaaa whose forefathers were the
headmen and leaders of the village, to provision members of
the service castes. Such transactions then relate to a
specific socio-economic ordering of the village where the
service castes provide common service to the landed of the
village and in turn receive grains collectively from the
landed households and land from the village corporate body.

Transactions of gapa, on the other hand, are subject to
the whims of the donors, and donations are effected only at
a successful harvest. Since such transactions are not

incumbent on the performance of any specific service, but

159

are charitable acts, they are more liable to be broken than
the others. The chances of being turned away are high, and
gapa transactions are few and far between; the ones I
observed consisted of two fistfuls of grains to the first
few poor who had come to the threshing yard to receive
grains. papa transactions are then largely symbolic, and as
the link term, gana-ghanpa (donation-merit) connotes, giving
to the indigent is seen as adhering to a moral code and
receiving merit in return.

The co-existence of morally and religiously coded
resource transactions, and widespread and persistent poverty
and deprivation, requires that these transactions be

analysed in terms of their purpose.

A MORAL ECONOMY OP PROVISIONING 7

Pre-capitalistic agrarian formations are considered to
encompass provisioning transactions and mechanisms that are
based on an ethos of morally induced transfers of resources
from the rich to the poor. Studying agrarian transactions
and unrest in the context of South East Asia, Scott (1976)
observed such "moral economy" transactions to be mechanisms
in which ecologically induced risks of agricultural
production and a "subsistence ethic" (the emphasis on
meeting the household's consumption needs over that of
risking production for profit) were addressed. But, as

Greenough (1983) argues for South Asia in general and for

160
India in particular, such transactions or the working of a
moral economy are not hinged on the recognition of risks
emanating from the ecology or from a subsistence ethic.
Rather, these transactions are premised on cultural codes,
in which it is morally imperative for the landed to
provision the poor.

In Bijapur, only dana and dasoha transactions-can be

 

read as being aspects of a moral economy, while aya
transactions are remunerations for services rendered. Though
not linked.to riskealleviations that arise from a particular

ecology, dasoha and dana are provisiOning transactions that

 

are conducted through moral and religious idioms and entail
the expected and normative transfer of sustenance resources
between the landed and the indigent of the village. Hence,
these transactions can be considered to be a regional
variant of a moral economy of provisioning.

Yet these transactions must be reviewed in terms of
their capacities to provision the indigent of the village
and as cultural strategies to address the ecological
specificities of the region. This is pertinent in the face
of social science literature portraying non-capitalist,
traditional provisioning mechanisms as effective mechanisms
in which a minimum subsistence was assured to all residents
at all times (7). In times of sustenance crises triggered
by droughts, famines, and floods, the invocation of

traditional norms of provisioning is considered to have been

161 .
effective in provisioning the indigent of the societies
concerned. In the case of India, the jajmani system, in
which landed households as patrons provision their own
service-caste households, has been upheld as an effective
traditional provisioning mechanism.

Torry (1987), however, questions the ability of such a
social institution to have been an effective mechanism of
provisioning. Evaluating the capacity of jajmani
transactions to have provisioned the poor, Torry notes that
their foundations of being based on unequal grounds, and as
unequal partners make it problematic for them to be
mechanisms that assure a constant source of sustenance.
Redistributions of agricultural production and donations of
grains are not at the cost of the provisioners themselves.
When faced with threats of sustenance, the rich will also
withdraw such transactions and retain the food resources for
themselves. The cessation of gang transactions follows a
similiar line of thinking, and agriculturists as land owners
place their own security above the moral prescriptions of
provisioning others.

Torry (1986b, 1987) reiterates that the idioms and
norms of sharing and provisioning associated with non-
capitalistic agrarian formations are limited in their
ability to effectively provision the indigent. He notes
cases from several ethnographies where the withdrawal of

customary payments is the norm rather than the exception.

162
Moreover, the ineffectiveness of the socially prescribed and
morally induced provisioning transactions is enhanced by the
very structures of the society in which differential
allocation of resources is institutionalized. In the
context of India in general, structural inequities enhance
and legitimize periodic crises of sustenance. As Torry
summarizes:
"Special about the Indian case is the skewed
distribution of food supplies built into the
structure of reciprocities. Only a fraction of
village households have the land to feed themselves
during good years. They remunerate dependent
service and labor-caste families with a portion of
their harvests but retain much larger shares for
themselves. The structure of food sharing is such
that a significant proportion of households in many
villages normally survives with the tiniest margin
of food security. Thus subsistence risks follow
caste divisions "(1986b:144).

Institutionalized resource inequities drawn primarily
on caste lines account for the persistent scarcity and
deprivation in the rural areas. In the case of Bijapur, the
higher castes led by the dominant caste group, the
Lingayats, own the largest proportion of agricultural lands
in the district as a whole. This is also relevant at the
level of most villages. The lower castes have by and large
been retained for menial and agricultural tasks without the
rights to own land. These institutionalized p0sitions and
relations will not generate provisioning transactions at the

onset of food scarcities triggered by droughts or other

sustenance threatening phenomena.

163

In the context of recurring droughts in Bijapur, the
capacity of the social structure to address drought-related
resource scarcity is neglible. Not only are the
transactions not correlated to actual periods of scarcity,
(see Figure IX) but the probability of them being withdrawn
during droughts is high. Interviews with the residents of
Madbhavi and Nagral villages showed that not a single
landless household that had worked for a particular family
for several years had received any kind of gratuitous relief
during periods of severe food scarcity. Loans of either
money or grains were made to them, but the workers were
largely left to sustain themselves.

That drought-related food scarcity does not initiate
provisioning from the landed to the landless workers was
made clear by a harijan woman:'

"Each one must look after one's own stomach (note).
No owner is going to give us or any others free
grains...that's how it is...we look after our own
stomachs. -

Moreover, even the minimal provisioning ordained in
moral and religious terms is increasingly distanced and
negated by changing socio-economic relations. As scholars
have observed for other societies, increasing wage labor
relations, capitalist and commercial agriculture, and market
interventions have posed threats to traditional rights of
the poor to receive sustenance and the obligations of the

rich to provision the poor (Scott 1976; Wolf 1969; Epstein

164
1967).

Similarly, in the context of Bijapur, these.
provisioning transactions are now faced with several changes
which further weaken the flow of village level provisioning.
Increasing population in the village makes labor easily
available, and the number of indigent has also increased.
gang, transactions as both the donors and donees explain,
are now largely defunct. Donors stress that there are too
many poor people: according to one landed agriculturist for
instance, "giving to a few will mean calling all the others
and just how many can an agriculturist give to? We need to
think of all our own expenses." '

In addition, land-owners-do not find it necessary to
make donations as the large pool of labor does not
neccessitate any ritualized or symbolic binding to retain
labor. Increasing agricultural commercialization has also
led to the development of wage-labor which compels breaks
from traditional and customary payments, fracturing ties and
bonds between provisioner and receiver. The introduction
of mechanized threshing machines in the region further
weakens the conduct of provisioning transactions at the
threshing yard. Though there are only a few threshing
machines, these are rented out to agriculturists who use
them for short periods. Soon after the harvest, the stalks
with grains are fed into the machine and the grains are

immediately collected into sacks. This procedure prevents

165
the performance of harvest rituals with the pyradimical

grain piles and the transactions of aya and dana. Further,

 

the speed in which they are conducted precludes the poor and
the ritual specialists from being able to go to several
threshing yards to collect grains. An elderly magng widow

who had been collecting dana since several years pointed

 

out:

"With these machines I cannot collect much grains.
Threshing is done at the same time in many of the
fields.... The machines do the work quickly. While
I go to one field to collect grains, many others

complete theirs. The sacks are filled and tied.
How can I get anything?"

Hunger among the poor is persistent and endemic given
the lack of resources, low wages and remunerations, seasonal
unemployment, and the high cost of food. Droughts double
the pressure on the sustenance capacity of the poor
households, reduce food intake, and threaten the populace
with starvation. As in Gurappa Madha’s household, many of
the landless, service caste, and small owner-cultivators
face food scarcity not only during droughts but also during
seasonal unemployment. .

Wage labor relations negatethe need to bond workers
through assurances of sustenance during food crisis. The
decline in aya payments testify to this trend. In the pre-
1920 period of low population and problems of labor
availability, both aya and gang transactions may have been

effective mechanisms of retaining the services of the non-

166
landed in the villages. Increasing population and the easy
availability of labor defy the necessity to use crisis
insurance mechanisms to retain labor.

In addition the fissioning of families of joint
houSeholds into separate households increases the number of
households that are entitled to aya payments and negates the
capacity of aya payments to be substantial sources of
sustenance. Moreover, only a small proportion of the
village population is entitled to aya payments, while a
larger proportion of the landless and indigent from all
castes fall outside the purview of any morally or I
religiously coded receipts of grains and sustenance.
Consequently, a large proportion of the village indigent
remain without the protection of any sources of
provisioning.

It is a truism that provisioning transactions in pre-
capitalistic agrarian societies are morally and culturally
coded and induced. Yet, these transactions are not devoid
of the "special logics” by which economic interests are
enveloped in religious and moral categories and terms
(Perlin 1988). Like huligg rites in which the instrumental
and symbolic dimensions of agricultural production are
embricated, here the instrumental and the substantive (the
ideological, idealized, and the normative) are conjoined.
The need to camouflage the exploitation inherent in such

institutions of patronage (cf Breman 1974) is doubly

167
enhanced in situations where the relationship between the
dominant and dominated are direct. One harijan elder, who
used to be a jeetha (bonded worker), spoke to me at length

about the treatment that he used to receive from his master.

He was like a father. We had that respect for him.
He enquired after us. He scolded us if we did
wrong. He made sure we ate well. ' -

Exploitation in such situations is disguised by a "veil
of enchanted relationships" (Bourdieu 1976:191) in which
economic relationships then become affective and emotive,
enveloped in terms of moral rights and religious
compunction. To see these transactions as either a purely
"moral economy" or "political economy" (Popkin 1980) would
be to overlook the complexities in which these transactions
are embedded. Such transactions and institutions should
also be seen through lens that give recognition to the fact
that dispensations of food, grains, and money that result
from a moral economy seek goals larger than the ascription
of benevolence, status, and goodness to the dispenser. They
become instrumental.in strengthening the economic position
of the dispenser and enhance the bondage and the assigned
low social position of the receivers. '

It is not for nothing that the decline of aya
transactions in Bijapur is a double-sided process. On one

level the commercialization of agriculture, market

168

relations, and the increasing availability of labor weaken
and negate the need for land owners to provision the poor
during food crises. On the other hand the receivers who are
ascribed menial and ritually impure tasks now deliberately
seek to break away from these institutionalized mechanisms.
Recognizing the stigma associated with the receipt of such
payments and the performance of the work and service
attached to them, the lower castes such as the thalwars
(menial servants) of Madbhavi village choose to opt out of
aya payments and their incumbent duties of providing menial
service. Many of the men spoke of the freedom associated
with doing wage-work in agriculture or in towns rather than
being at the bid and call of the landed households.

"We have left our aya payments. It came to us every

twelve years and that is not enough to feed us all.

....Who is to stay in the village for just that?

Wage work is not enough either but we are free
to go where we want to and work only when we can".

As stated, Village level transactions of provisioning
are not directly correlated to seasonal or climatic
fluctuations in production. They are thus not insurance
mechanisms to contain scarcities that arise from ecological
conditions. Instead aya, dasoha, and gang are religiously
coded transactions which within the context of their origins
embody both economic and moral dimensions. These
transactions are gradually eroding under changing conditions

of increasing population, agricultural commercialization,

169
reorganization of the village political and economic
structure, and changing social relations.

Droughts are recognized as recurrent phenomena and as
ecologically specific features in the domain of agricultural
practices. Yet, in the domain of resource transactions the
specificity of the ecology or the presence and probability
of droughts are not taken into consideration. Overlooking
the subsistence risks that emanate from climatic
fluctuations, the cultural transactions of provisioning
attempt to address differences in the social and economic
allocation of resources and the articulation of relations of
production, power, and exchange. Hence in the context of
understanding society-nature relations it is imperative to
take into consideration the ways in which ecOnomic and
political structures mediate such relations. In addition to
being predicated on a culturally specific format, society-
nature relations are also conditioned by structures and ,
relations of power and production.

The next chapter notes how conditions of wideSpread
poverty and recurring food scarcity have led to the
intervention of external agencies in the region. The
implications of such intervention for society-nature
relations and for the cultural complex of the region are

addressed.

CHAPTER VII

BECOMING SYSTEM

This chapter details the development and spread of a
new agricultural agenda in the district--an agenda which
contravenes the local agrarian values and the existing
human-land constructs. It notes the ways in which modern
agriculture is a hegemonic discourse through which dominant
values, preferences, and schemes are introduced, promoted,
and made acceptable to a subordinated community. The
chapter goes on to highlight the effects of this hegemonic
discourse which lead to the displacement of local
agricultural knowledge, the resignification of symbols, and
the defiance of the ecological specificity of the region.

Recurring droughts, general conditions of mass poverty,
lack of regional industrialization, the overall reproduction
of marginalization, and mass deprivation spiral together to
make Bijapur one of the poorest districts in Karnataka
state. In comparison to a state average of thirteen percent
of irrigated land under cultivation, Bijapur has only six
percent of its land under irrigation. Agricultural yield
per acre is 503 kilograms compared to the state average of
939 kilograms per acre (Puttaswamiah 1981). Though tenancy

is marginal in the district fifty two percent of the

170

171

agricultural workers are landless, a proportion higher than
the state average of forty two percent (Nadkarni 1985). In
addition, Bijapur is the most drought-prone area in the
state and is recorded as having the highest frequency of
drought-related famines (Meti 1966; see Appendix A).

Bijapur's agriculture, locally and traditionally
premised on cultural precepts and ecologically specific, is
subject to re-ordering. Scientists and administrators in
general uphold high productivity (assessed by output per
acre) or what agronomists call "yield-oriented" strategies
to be the best indicator of successful agriculture.
Agricultural policies and practices follow this ideology and
attempt to change local agricultural practices. The "wet
cultivation" bias of the disciplines of agro-economics and
agricultural sciences has encouraged policies and programs
that promote water-intensive, inorganic, and capital-based
agriculture. The Agricultural Extension Service bureaucracy
and scientists associate vgng besaya, or dry agriculture,
with negative connotations; they seen it as unsystematic,
essentially low in productivity, and risk aversive (1).
Extension Service Agents, who are trained by agricultural
scientists and bureucracts, learn and extend these
conceptualizations and definitions of local, dry agriculture
to the agriculturists with whom they interact. I
accompanied an Extension Service Agent on his field trip to

a village assigned to him for agricultural supervision.

172
While he constantly praised the benefits of wet, modern
cultivation, he spoke disparagingly of local agricultural
practice and of those who continued to practice it. Pointing
to a plot in which millet, groundnuts, and lentils were

being grown, he commented:

"See, See. Here's dry agriculture (yana_bg§§yg) for
you. Patches of crops...all crying while they
grow. What's this dry agriculture? They
(agriculturists) plant after the rains, then they
sit waiting for the next five months. Where's the

profit (payedgg)?"

Comments such as these are pervasive and persuasive.
They make a schizm between local, dry agricultural practices
and modern agriculture: the former as unproductive and
unprofitable, and the latter as a means to solve all
problems. Hence, in attempting to introduce changes by
which agricultural production can be enhanced and the region
"drought-proofed", both goverment policies and commercial
agro-industries strive to increase the absolute productive
capacities of the lands by orienting local agriculturists to

new ideologies of production.

R C ENCOUNT RS
In Bijapur, as in several parts of the nation, the
Agricultural Extension Service and agribusinesss agencies
promote the modern agricultural package of hybrid seeds,

fertilisers, and pesticides. The package is made attractive

173
to agriculturists primarily on the basis of its high-
yielding capacity that contrasts with the lower-yielding
capacity of the organic seeds.

Qtpati, as it is used and promoted by the Agricultural
Extension Service and the agribusiness, refers to the
increase in agricultural production that hybrid seeds,
fertilizers, and pesticides enable. Contextualized within
the whole "high-yielding", "improved varieties", ideology in
which modern agriculture is promoted, utpagi seeks to dispel
the "traditional", "low productive" orientation associated
with local agricultural practices. Utpati focuses on
production for market in contrast to local practices that
are oriented first to domestic consumption and then
production for market.

The ideology of high-yield requires no great coercion
on the part of the government or the agri-business agencies.
The fast-growing (three months as opposed to the local five
months) hybrid seeds, and the increased production that
provides a marketable surplus are in and of themselves
incentives that make the modern agricultural package
attractive. As the people themselves adopt the fast-
growing, bounteous hybrid seeds, and the other accoutrements

that go with modern agriculture, they legitimise their

acceptance of utpati. As one dynamic and innovative woman
agriculturist put it: "when hybrid means growing two for

one and four for two, why would we not take to it?"

174

For the land and capital-rich the new agricultural
package and its practice enhance capital and grain
resources. Their evaluations of the new agricultural
package and its results closely parallel the opinions of the
Agricultural Extension Service bureaucracy. Dundappa
Hosamane, an owner-cultivator who had put his twelve acres
of land under the new agricultural package, highlighted what
for him were the contributions of the new agriculture:

" What did we have before? There was land. But, we

planted in the season, waited for five months--
.didn’t put any fertilizers, and got a little grain

(Walsh NOW. we put Wm
(inorganic fertilizers), when there are insects
and diseases (kheda, rgga), we put pesticides
(aushad-yene). Now we get more. This agriculture
is better".

There is a general consensus among the owner-
cultivators and those who have benefitted from the sale of
marketable crops that the modern agricultural package is far
better than the local one in terms of increased ‘
productivity. For the landless labourers, the modern
agricultural package means more employment opportunities as
the cultivation of hybrids requires more weeding and other
production-related work. The people's consent to modern
agriculture and its results (despite the problems associated
with it) underscores Gramsci's observation that hegemony is

also "the spontaneous consent given by the great masses of

175
the population to the general direction imposed on social
life by the dominant fundamental group" (1971:12).

The application of the precepts of gtpgti are sharply
evident in the LhQLQ units (garden land). With their access
to perennial water, thgta lands are more compatible with the
requirements of modern agricultural techniques, know-how,
and practices than the other two land types. Plantains,
turmeric, and vegetables are grown specifically to be
marketed in urban areas; and grapes, pomegranates, and
sunflower are increasingly popular cash crops.
Monocultivation of these crops is based on the prescriptions
of the Extension Agent and worked with large doses of petro-
chemical fertilizers and pesticides. There is little regard
for matching the soil quality to the quality and
requirements of the crops. As the agent tells the
agriculturalists, different fertilizers will make the land
”hada” (appropriate), but they must work in a "system" way
to increase production.

As the following conversation between two
agriculturalists and an Agricultural Extension Agent shows,
the dissemination of modern agricultural methods implies the
inscribing of a whole complex of new meanings to human-land
relations and human-human relations. The conversation
involves the krshi;§gyakg, (an agricultural helper [Agent],
employed by the District Agricultural Extension Service) as

he watches two brothers transplanting tomato seedlings into

176

an irrigated plot that is part of a newly made thgta land.

AA: Agricultural Agent

AG: Agriculturist

After preliminary greetings, the Agricultural Agent

says

AA:

AG:

AA:

Onlooker:

That's not the way to plant seedlings in an
irrigated field. Look at the distance between
the saplings, some are less and some are more.
Be sistam (for system in English). Plant them in
measured and fixed distances. Don’t plant the
way you do in dry agriculture. Be sistam,

sistam !

(Laughs) Whatever! Tell me what yen; (‘oil' for
insecticide) should I use for these tomatoes?

Yehh! I'm saying something --he's asking for
something!

Listen to him. Be gigtgm. Look at the amount
of water he's let in. Don’t you think its too
much?

It may be. You must be accurate--too much water
will spoil the crops. They'll rot just as crops
without water dry up. Be accurate!

Look at my crop of onions, don't you think that
they are doing well?

They only look good now, but growing onions and
brinjals together won't provide good yields. In
wet lands, don't practice mixed agriculture.
Keep that for dry lands. The brinjals are
undersized--mixed cultivation-Ah!"

Maybe some urea will help?

Urea? Use some NPK (English abbreviation and
name of a nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous
based fertilizer). NPK! remember that? As in

gang, a u, 195;. Some NPK may help.

177
(Here the agricultural helper uses a mnemonic devise by

alliterating rhythmic Kannada words [meaning rice, curry and
bread] to register the English names of the fertilizer)

AG: ' NPK or 19:19? (then looks at me and says) I’m
just learning the ”A B C" (in English) of thota
making. Just the "A B C".

The Extension Agent dispenses agricultural know-how
based on a set of information that he has been schooled in.
His tone is deprecating of local agricultural practices, and
he dispenses advice in a pedantic manner. As initiates into
the new, modern agriculture, the agriculturists are docile
and respectful of the Extension Agent’s knowledge and advice
(2).

The agricultural encounters between the agriculturists
and the Extension Service Agents work on a shift from the
primacy of "appropriateness" to that of "system". System
means uniformity and adherence to strict rules, and it aims
at the maximum production of crops. While "appropriateness"
hinges on combining ecological specificity to cultural
requirements, "system" demands an orientation to a new set
of goals and methods. With increased productivity as the
new goal, the uniform practices of modern agriculture are
promoted by the Extension Service and learned by the
agriculturists.

During a week-long Agricultural Training Camp (3) for
women, I participated in and observed the training of

several women who were active owner-cultivators and

178

decision-makers of their agricultural plots. During the
training period, the women enthusiastically learned the
methods of new tillage, producing manure, and using
pesticides an hybrid seeds. The women trainees’ evaluations
and comparison of the two types of agriculture resonated
with the evaluations of the Agricultural Extension Service
agents and those of the Training Center's staff. They spoke
of their agriculture as being "without system” (gigtgm
ella), the new agriculture as producing more, and of the
better life that modern agriculture promised. Evaluations
such as these embody the shifts that are occuring in the
precepts of agriculture. A

Just as the wider, socially emcompassing notion of
hgligg (bestowed abundance) is narrowed to its purely
instrumental and income-oriented aspect of gtpati (increase
in production), the "seeing" dimension of agricultural
appropriateness is displaced by a set of prescriptions for
"being" systematic. The "seeing" of appropriateness
required close observation and knowledge of the land,
seasons and crops. More emphatically, as ”seeing",
agricultural knowledge enabled each agriculturist to be his
or her own decision maker and guide. In contrast to this,
the ”being" dimension of the modern agriculture promotes an
imitative and externally induced set of actions and ’
decisions on the agriculturist. For new initiates into the

modern methods and ideologies, "being system" implies

179
relying on the knowledge and advice of the Agricultural

Agent.

BECOMING SYSTEM

The re-ordering and re-arranging of local agrarian
practices are also reflected in the changes that people
attempt to make in their personal lives. The analogy
between the learning of modern agriculture with that of
learning "A B C", indicates how formative and essential the
new agrarianism has become. Modern agriculture is
associated with the idea of systematicity and the importance
attached to English. rLike learning English, modern
agriculture is associated with advancement and prosperity.
As new sets of precepts, utpgti and gigtgm are not confined
to the domain of agriculture. "Sistam" is also extended to
compare a range of activities and life styles.

Villagers refer to the need to be "sistam" and show
appreciation for things that are "sistam". Homes of
educated persons are "sistam", urban people are more
"sistam" than villagers, and grooms from urban and educated
homes will bring "sistam" to their rural lives.‘ These
directed shifts in agriculture have initiated changes in the
social and cultural fabric which are as significant as they
are pervasive.

That the ideas of sistam and utpati and their

implications were more integral than I had first noted was

180

sharply brought home to me during a conversation with a
mother. Kabadige Shankarawwa of Madbhavi village discussed
the grooms that she and her family were considering for her
oldest daughter. She was considering an offer from a family
whose son was studying to be an engineer but was demanding a
dowry of fifty thousand rupees, and asked me what I thought
of the offer. Even before I could think of the practicality
of marrying her illiterate but extremely nice daughter to an
educated, but unknown urbanite, Shankarawwa went on to point
out the importance of this alliance.

”They are town people (pgtg_mangi).'They know how to

live. It’s with system (gigtgm). It's better than
our lives. The one without any system." '

Self definitions and descriptions of themselves and
their culture as "without system” are pervasive in the
villages. The portrayal of their lives as without system
underscores the impact that the new agricultural package and
its urban orientation have introduced. Reference to being
"sistam" clearly connotes its origin as a set of externally-
induced and urban-oriented precepts. Relegating the local
agrarian life, the new ideology of "sistam" privileges the
new agricultural package which then generates changes in
multiple ways in the society.

"Sistam" and ideas of "being sistam" take hold both in
the context of interactions between agriculturists and

external agents such as the Agricultural Agent, visiting

181
Agricultural Officers, traders,and commercial agribusiness
salesmen, and from agriculturists to other village
residents. The term "sistam", or system is used by urban
residents of Bijapur in much the same way as "system" is
used in Western contexts--to refer to institutional
structures and rules that are over and above that of
individual actions. Yet the way in which the term has been
used in the context of introducing new agricultural
patterns, as the antithesis of all that is rural-traditonal-
outdated, forms the basis of its impact and appropriation by
rural residents. As a referential term "sistam" has made
inroads into the culture of Bijapur. It forms the basis of
a model which agriculturists see as worthy of following. It
is from the importance placed on "sistam" as a model and as
a referential term that a culture of being "sistam" has set
in.

That the modern agricultural agenda is a hegemonic
force is observable in the extent to which it has displaced
old order values and precepts and imposed its own. In
altering the foundationalprecepts of rural Bijapur, modern
agriculture as hegemonic force bears out Gramsci's
observation that hegemony is not only an economic force but
can also impact on cultural, religious, philosophical, and
moral domains (Bocock 1986). As Bocock paraphrases Gramsci,

"Hegemony, in its most complete form is defined as
occuring when the intellectual, moral, and

philosophical leadership provided by the class or
alliances of classes and.class factions which is

182
ruling, s c s c e ' s b'e 've

pagviding tha fuadamental outlook for tha whole
saaie y" (Bocock 1986: 63,Italics mine).

SHIFTS IN THE LANDSCAPE AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE

The shifts in the precepts of agriculture have
initiated shifts in the landscape: pockets of verdant EDQEQ
lands dot the otherwise semi-barren land and the new insular
"homesteads" on the garden lands stand in stark contrast to
the traditional nucleated villages. There is an increasing
schism between the thata lands as the "wet and modern"
cultivating units, and the ”dry and traditional" units of
the magai and the yang.

Thata lands, which utilize modern production
techniques, wage labor relations, and have an accumulation
of surplus from cash crops and perennial production, exhibit
features of capitalist units found generally in the Indian
agricultural economy (Rudra 1978). Agricultural work is
conducted with more non-domestic labor, work relations are
less patrimonial, and payments are often made in cash. Work
and agrarian relations on Basavaraj Singi's thota unit
follows all these lines. Daily wage-workers are paid in
cash and they work for fixed time periods. Unlike this,
Keshappa Kumbar requests his neighbours or some young men
from his caste group to help him out during harvest. They
are paid in cash and allowed to take home some straw for

their cattle. Work continues until the immediate task is

183
complete or till dusk.

Contrasts between the different land-types and their
variation in cultivation is extended to the spheres of
agrarian relations and the cultural evaluation of them. The
increasing importance given to thata (garden lands) as
prized units of cultivation is fast displacing the cultural
value of Yang (Black soil) lands. Traditional pride of
being yara owners is giving way to the desire to be
thataghara (garden-owner). Like Gangawwa Badigyar, who
presses her son to learn the ropes of garden cultivation,
there are others who speak of the possibility of
transforming their mafia; lands into thata lands.

In place of the cyclical production pattern of local
agriculture, where seasonal cultivation of different lands
is hinged on an agro-climatic cycle, agricultural production
in the modern taaaa units is based on a linear production
pattern. Continous water supply, short-term maturing crops,
and horticulture enable the thata lands to be cultivated
throughout the year. Different crops are cultivated and
marketed in succession without a period of fallow.
Agricultural Extension Agents promote hybrid seeds for
sunflower, grapes, pomegranates, sorghum, and wheat with
little regard for their "appropriateness" to the soil or
climatic conditions. As marketable crops that fetch far
higher rates than the regular food crops, the agriculturists

take to the cultivation of these crops without regarding to

184 .
either the ecological degradation that they portend or the
risks related to fluctuations in market prices.

In 1989, several of the villages near Bijapur added the
cultivation of eggplant (brinjal) to their summer crops. The
prices had been good the previous years and the Agricultural
Agency was promoting the growing of marketable vegetables.
By August the town market was flooded with egg-plants and
the prices fell drastically. One farmer told me that the
prices did not even make up for the transportation costs,
and so he sold the egg plants for grains in the village
itself.‘ In the towns, the prices had collapsed to fifty
paise per kilogram and when anyone asked to buy less than a
kilogram, they were asked to take it for charity (ghagma).

Shifts to the modern agricultural methods also pose
problems in the conduct of rituals. Rituals which are
typically based on the lunar cycle and contextualized within
the agro-climatic cycle are faced with a problem of
synchronization. Traditional rituals such as the
agricultural fertility rites of sege hunime and yellamavase
were tied to the lunar cycle and to specific agricultural
phases. These fertility rites were meant to be conducted on
fields with mature crops, but hybrid seeds mature faster
than local varieties and do not coincide with the lunar
cycle on which the festivals are celebrated. Fertility
rituals ’for plots in which hybrids were grown is sometimes

to a field which is being harvested or to one that has

185
already been harvested. Conducting the ritual to an empty
field defies the meaning of the ritual itself.

The changes in the agricultural patterns have initiated
shifts in the social structure. As in other parts of the
state and in the country generally, the increasing
separation of indigenous dry agriculture from modern wet
agriculture distinguishes the adherents of the modern
methods who successfully produce for the market from those
who practice traditional methods. Adherents of modern
methods are identified and labelled as "progressive
farmers", making distinctions between agriculturists who are
otherwise differentiated on the basis of caste and wealth.
Such progressive farmers are those who produce commercial
cash crops and are often from the core of the traditional
village elite. The Lingayats in the region are well
represented in this category of "progressive farmers".
Technology, capital, and water availability enable them to
be not only owners and owner-cultivators of large and prime
units of land but to also rent-in land from others.

As new owner-tenants, the Lingayats compete with the
smaller, less resource-endowed tenants for land to rent-in.
For example, Basavaraj Sindgi of Madbhavi village is able to
compete successfully against smaller tenants and rents-in
land from households that are unable to cultivate on their
own. Unlike typical tenants whose bargaining powers against

landlords were virtually little or non-existent, the

186
bargaining powers of the new owner-tenants are high. They
retain about one-third to half of the shares that they
produce. Land owners from the potter, carpenter, and
shepherd castes who own smaller plots (between two acres to
six acres) of land are unable to compete with the capital
and technology (especially the ownership of tractors, and
threshing machines) of the larger landowners and are
increasingly unable to rent-in additional land.

The landless laborers continue to be drawn from the
lower caste groups'such as the leather workers, stone-
cutters, and the harijans. But the production conditions
and new relations of production have largely done away with
the intra-caste and kin reliance. And wage-labor has
largely replaced maya (exchange-labor) relations. As many
agriculturists complain, they can no longer rely on kin
assistance and caste-based interdependence to perform their

agricultural tasks.

DISPLACEMENT OF LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

The dissemination of modern agriculture has
implications for the continuity and identity of local
agricultural knowledge and know-how. This trend of
rendering local agricultural knowledge and practices as
obsolete is observable,in Bijapur. Agricultural knowledge
and know-how are increasingly seen as having to come from

outside the domains of the commmunity. Just as

187
hybridization necessitates the purchase of new seeds from
commercial agencies, so also must agricultural knowledge and
expertise come from "trained agents". Local agriculture
had been able to contain the absolute loss of crops from
droughts by the practices of mixed cropping, rotation
cultivation, and the focus on growing dry cereal and pulses.
But when a drought sets in now, the District Agricultural
Office disseminates information that provides advice to ,
salvage crops.

As modern agriculture gains ground, it displaces the
local knowledge and autonomy of the agriculturalists and
replaces local knowledge andqpractices with the uniform and
market-oriented prescriptions of the bureaucracy. In the
context of Maharashtra, Appadurai (1989, 1990), observes
that the adoption and practice of modern agriculture leads
to increasing differenciation in the knowledge base of
agriculturists, creating a schizm between subsistence and
commercial agriculturists. He goes on to note the other
implications and results of such agricultural encounters
wherby:

"The emergence of an agronomic episteme, divorced
from a wider agrarian discourse, represents just
such a separation of knowledge from context, in the
process of which the corresponding techne is
rendered obsolete. .In this process, the very
epistemological fabric of the community is also
rendered absolescent and survives only in the
diminished form (1990:188)”.

Agriculturists are increasingly reluctant to use their

local, time-tested knowledge for conducting various

188
agricultural activities, and there is a spreading loss of
confidence in the local agricultural methods. The advice
and directions of the Agricultural Assistant are eagerly
awaited and agricultural tasks postponed when the Assistant
is unavailable.

The "secularization of agriculture" (Busch, Lacy, and
Burkhardt 1987) associated with agricultural modernization
is constituted in an ambiguous and partial manner in Bijapur
district. The older reverence and sanctitijith which
organic grains, (especially food crops), were treated, is
not accorded to the crops and grains grown with hybrid
seeds. An educated agriculturist, who produces considerable
amounts of sunflower and rape-seed for the market, explained
to me why the hybrid, market crops were not treated with
reverence.

"These (oil-seeds) are for the market. I make them
grow with fertilizers, pesticides and bought seeds.
Apart from my labour, it is all bought. When prices
are good, I make money. My family and I live in
content. But can I rely on these? Who knows the
market? But the grains of sorghum, and wheat, these
are the ones that fill my stomach always. Market or
no market, if I produce grains for myself, I can
live. To produce food grains, my hard

work counts, I need the help of the earth (guani-
aaaaya). We treat these organic (javari) grains with

respect (maaa). It comes from god, the earth and we
subsist on them". '

Despite the adoption of the new agricultural methods
and the attempts to align their lives to the new ideologies

that modern agriculture promotes, there is an awareness of

189
the drawbacks of modern agriculture. More than noting the
unreliability of the market, the commentary underscores the
widespread practice that denies the new hybrid seeds any
sacred‘value. Unlike organic seeds, especially the seeds of
food crops that were used in worship and encoded with
symbolic value, the hybrid seeds are not incorporated into
the ritual corpus. Bhattacharya (1976) notes a similiar
trend in Bengal where agriculturists did not use hybrid
grains for rituals, relegating them as yigi§i_gnan (foreign
grain). What is emphatic here is the loss of the symbolic
value of grains.

Yet, instead of a complete cessation of agricultural
propitiation there has been a shift in the object of
propitiation. In place of the bi-annual fertility rites
directed at the earth, owners of garden-lands propitiate
their wells and pump-sets.‘ Not only are samples of the
first produce from the garden-lands offered to the well, but
every amayaaa (new moon) day sees the owner offering home-
cooked specialities and conducting paia (worship) to the
pump sets at the garden-lands. This incorporation of pumps
and wells into the ritual corpus is not unusual in a culture
that accords ritual status to all implements and objects of
production. Ploughs, seed-drills, axes, potters wheels, the
spinning wheel, and many other sources of production are
worshipped during festivals such as aivali (4). But, what

is of marked significance in the worship of pumps and wells

190
is the shift from the worship of soil or the earth to
machines. This displacement in the object of worship from
that of the earth to a machine reflects a new order of
production priorities and concerns. It is no longer the
earth that is held to be the source of sustenance, which
must be propitiated and worshipped; instead the pumps or
wells are the objects of propitiation, thereby confirming

their status as new sources of production.

THE METAPMOR OP MYSRIDS

The integral shifts in social structure and social
relations, in the changing material practices and cultural
orientations, have led to the production of a critical
discourse among the people. The discourse comments on the
changing life conditions and meanings, and the implications
of these changes. For most residents, irrespective of their
caste, gender and economic position, the new agriculture has
meant changes. Even those landed owner-cultivators who
positively appraise the modern agricultural package.for its
increased productivity comment on the loss of quality of
grains and also on the shifts in social relations and
cultural values. The owner-cultivator of a large and
prosperous garden unit (ahgta) elaborated on what for him
were the losses that result from the shift to modern.

agriculture:

191
"With this new agriculture we fill sacks. But, the
strength (thakat) of the grains has
gone. Look at the older generation, they are tall
and fine. Look at the new generation from the same
household, see, see how small and weak they are.
You think they can do the same kind of work as the

older generation. No, they are nyp;1_. They need
more care.

Landless laborers, on the other hand, bemoan the
patriarchal assurance that the old agricultural system
provided and the payment of grains that they had received.
An ethos of substantialism, where the links between
ecological objects and processes and human activities, and
context and actions are strongest, continues to provide a
basis for the cultural construction-and understanding of
such shifts and realignments. Folk categorization that
delineates objects and places on the basis of substances and
then correlates these to their use and to actors, assesses
changes in the same terms. Just as the Vellalas of Kallapur
correlated the Kaaam (essence) of the soil to that of the
pagni (character) of persons (Daniel 1987), in Bijapur the
essence of the soil, and in the case of modern agriculture,
that of hybrid seeds, is considered to be transferred to
that of persons. To the people hybridization means not only
the transformation of agrarian practices and substances, but
also the transformation of people who produce and consume
them. Just as associations were made between strength and
dry or organic grains, and between weakness and wet grains,

the evaluation of hybrid seeds is extended to both the

192
physical and moral effects of consuming them. Noting that
hybrid seeds are delicate, susceptible to disease, and need
expensive inputs, village residents, especially those of the
older generation refer, to the current period as that of
nypzagakala (hybrid period) and to themselves as hybzed
maagi (hybrid people). Unlike the sturdy jagazi (organic)
seeds, they are like the hybrid seeds that they now sow--
"saksame (delicate), diseased and needing constant
attention", as one woman put it (5). '

Local commentary increasingly contrasts the aampazna
(wholeness) of the organic produce with that of the hybrid
produce. An elderly woman described the changes:

"What...they used to grow some wheat, red
sorghum,...plant a few tubers, chilli
plants,...cotton. Now, there's only niagig
(hybrid)...where’s the iayagi (organic/local)?
Hybrid seeds, hybrid crops...even the children are
hybrid. Hybrid seeds are sown on the earth...the
children become hybrid".

Hybrid seeds and the essences attributed and associated
with them epitomize the entire gamut of agricultural changes
(6). For owner-cultivators, tenants, and landless laborers
alike the new agricultural complex forms the matrix through
which social and cultural changes are understood. A set of

new popular songs and literature bemoan the changes linked

to hybridization. As a popular song goes (7):

Hybrid jolla bantu Hybrid sorghum is here,
roga ragitha hechayethu Disease and destruction
niti dharma aledu hoyethu have increased

punyada kelasa nintu hoyethu Duties and tradition are
...hybrid jolla bantu erased

193

Charitable works have ended
...hybrid sorghum is here.

In using hybrid seeds as a metaphorical comment on
themselves, Bijapur’s agriculturalists denote the
significant shift that has occured in their lives. The
development and spread of the new agricultural agenda can be
seen as a hegemonic discourse in which dominant cultural
values, preferences, and schemes are introduced, promoted
and made acceptable to a subordinate community. As modern
agriculture and its methods take priority, they form the
basis of a new cultural orientation. The new set of values
and ideologies of utpati and system are displacing the old
agrarian precepts of aaga and haliga. As new metaphors that
indicate new realities (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), they also
enhance the creation and working of new realities, and the
metaphor of contemporary people and life as hybrid
summarizes the changes in reality. The imagery reflects the

change from one that people consider to have prioritized

iaxari (organic and quality). exantna (autonomy). and fhakat

(strength), to one that is oriented towards quantity,
dependency, and weakness.

The commentary envelopes more than an indicator of the
continuity of the ethos of substantialism. It provides a
reflexive mode in which people construct and comment on the
changes in their lives. Hybrid seeds are then invoked

metaphors which as Fernandez noted in context of contested

194
ideologies "...come to be invested with the tensions of
significant differences, with the on going negotiation of
human relatedness in that milieu. They (become) ... an
expression of that context" (1990: 124).

The articulation of new economic forces with the local
cultural forms has led to the generation of a new cultural
commentary. Shifts in the re-ordering of the region, and
the new ideologies disseminated by modern agricultural
practices have implications for the cultural identity of the
society and the region. The new cultural constructions
mirror the changing life conditions and values, and
constitute the people’s actions and relations within it. In
the case of local agriculture, the ecological specificity of
the area is contextualized and prioritized through cultural
prescriptions. .

In contrast, modern agriculture that is premised on
exogenous principles and which dispenses a culture of its
own, works to establish a complewahose methods disregard
the ecological specificity of the region and which attempts
to constitute new meanings and transactions into the
cultural complex of the region. In attempting to being
"system", the essential being of the land, the integral
human-land continuum, is weakened. These changed values,
ideas, and meanings are located and understood within a pre-
existing framework of significance. The ethos of

substantialism links the new contexts to new actions and

195-

provides the basis for a commentary on the state of the
people and the land.

Though local culture is able to critically comment on
the new ideologies introduced into its fabric, it is not a
form of resistance to the hegemony of modern agriculture.
There is little or no organized or conscious attempt to
avoid modern agriculture. Compounded by the way in which
it is promoted by the agricultural extension service and the
agribusiness agencies, modern agriculture, and the life
style that it portends when it is successful, are sufficient
reasons for most people to adapt it. Both the entrenchment
of the idioms and precepts of modern agriculture and its
popularity among the people make it a agency of change
rather than a force to be reckoned with. Despite the
evocation of counter-pastoral voices against it, modern
agriculture is upheld as a model to be emulated. The extent
to which modern agriculture is a hegemonic force is to be
observed in the manner in which it has reconstructed and
reconstituted a culture-~giving the dominant worldview scope
for expansion. It is the extent of this dominance of—modern
agriculture and its impact on the other facets of the
society, such as the cultural conceptualizations of drought
and human-land relations, that will be addressed in the next

chapter.

CHAPTER VIII

A HYBRID DROUGHT TO COME

This chapter, like the previous one, elaborates on the
forms by which administrative definitions of the region and
policies constitute a hegemonic force and by which local
human-land relations are reconstituted. The chapter details
the addressing of droughts by the administrative regime and
the effects of such administrative intervention on the
people's conceptualizations of droughts and their ability to
cope with it. Prior to noting-such trends and effects I
describe the conditions of the district during the onset of
a drought in 1990.

Oracular "rain-crop" prophesies for the 1990-91
agricultural season did not augur favourable conditions.

During the Muharram or Alaab festival(1) in August at the

 

village of Madbhavi, the oracle prophesied "sweets for some,
sorghum balls for others". As the possibility of receiving
the important returning South-west monsoon dimmed, the
villagers discussed this prophesy. Why would it rain only
for some, why would others just subsist? Yes, there may not
be a complete drought, most people would be able to harvest
some crops. Some discussed the weather; it was humid and
there was moisture still in the soils and therefore the crop
production would still be successful for some. Perhaps it

196

197
would rain, but what use were delayed rains? At the Khaja
Ameen Dargah in Bijapur town, the oracle prophesied a
similiar scenario; only the agaai and the aaaga rains would
be succesful. In the Lingayat Mutt at Babladi, the annual
kala;jaaaa (2) reading prophesied five parts of rain but
seven parts of crops. The Basaveshwara calendar, noted for
its prophecies of rain-crops, prices, and world conditions,
spoke of turmoil in the country, impending wars among
nations, and a success ratio of two in ten and eight in ten

for the forthcoming summer and winter crops(3).

A DROUGHT SETS IN

In the middle of August, agriculturists who had crops
of groundnut, wheat, and safflower in the aaagi lands waited
impatiently for the cover rains. As crops wilted, many
people discussed the problems that a failure of crops
spelled for them. "What will we eat?" was a repeated
question among the small and marginal owner-cultivators,
tenants, and wage-workers. Those with previous loans
pondered not only sustaining themselves and their families
but also losing their land and assets. Some agriculturists
pondered the folly of having planted oil seeds in their
fields. A popular story of a rich man, who, when approached
by his fellow villagers for fodder during a drought had
served them the stalks of sorghum instead of food made its

rounds. The moral of the story: just as people suffer when

198
they do not get their appropriate food, cattle too suffer
when greedy agriculturists plant not staple crops but oil
seeds.

An epidemic struck cattle in the district and as news
of the disease and the death toll of cattle from
neighbouring villages spread, the village of Madbhavi
prepared for a collective yaga (fast) to ward-off the paga
(epidemic). The Lingayat and Pujari elders decided on the
need for the whole village to undertake a ritual fast.
Beating his drum and standing in the center of each lane,
the village crier announced that for the next five weeks no
household should make sorghum bread (gagi) or grind flour on
Tuesdays and Fridays. Only steamed cereal should be eaten
on these days. Irrespective of religous and caste
differences, the villagers followed this prescription
accordingly for the next five weeks. On every Tuesday and
Friday, the young boys of the village poured a pot of water
on themselves and then poured another pot of water on all
the deities of the village. On the final and concluding day
of the fast, each household that could afford it made a
special dish of either rice or wheat and offered it to the
village deities.

By the end of September the important "agriculturists
rains" (vokkaligara male) had failed to arrive in most parts
of the district and in the few places where they did appear

they had been sporadic and out of sequence (adda male).

199
Those who had sown their yaza lands saw some sprouting of
sorghum but the oil seeds of sunflower and safflower
stubbornly stayed inside the ground. Talk among
agriculturists focused on the possible causes for the
drought. While some considered the recurring and impending
droughts to be due to their sins (paapa) and the lack of
moral propriety (dharmada aaga) among the people, others
spoke of the changing weather conditions and the lack of
tree cover as being possible reasons for droughts.

The District Agricultural Office discussed the drought
situation at its regular fortnightly meeting. As the
Extension Service Agents reported the conditions of the
various villages, the information was gathered by the
officers to assess the drought condition of the district in
formulaic terms. Statistical data related to the percentage
area sown, conditions of seed sprouting, and water
availability in the district were collected to assess and
report the degree of resource stress in the region. The
Agricultural Office was to forward this information to the
Distict Collector, who in turn was to forward it to the
state capital. Declaring the region as "drought-hit" would
be contingent on meeting the statistical formula and the
political will.

But the official reports and the formulaic assessment
of the region's conditions did not take note of the actual

social effects, the sub-regional variations, and the

200
differential effect of even the initial onset of a drought.
Instead, the Agricultural Department attempted a salvage
approach to the impending loss of crops and food shortage in
the district. They distributed flyers (4) to the
agriculturists in the district detailing how crops could be
saved, suggesting changes in cropping pattern, and
recommending drought-resistant crops.

As the fields stood with crops in semi-dead conditions,
labor employment gradually decreased and then completely
stopped in some agricultural units. Some agriculturists
chose to dispense hired labor, and used family labor to
weed, spray and fertilize the crops. As unemployment
increased in the villages, the stress was evident in the
settlements and towns. Carts filled with fodder made their
way slowly to market centers and the villages emptied their
most impoverished and unemployed families. In the towns,
buses and trains going towards Maharashtra and the southern
wet belts were packed with people migrating in search of
jobs.

In Madbhavi village Gurappa Madha's sons joined a crew
of workmen who were freshly recruited for stonecutting and
prepared to leave the village. The recruiter paid for their
travel expenses and as they, along with several others from
their colony prepared to leave, the whole colony gathered
together to see them go on "aaaha". The term "gaaaa means

”country" but is often used as "going on desha" It refers

201
to out-migration from the villages when people go in search
of employment. The colonies of the lower castes that housed
the agricultural wage laborers were largely empty; a few
full families and elderly grandparents and young
grandchildren stayed behind. Mabbu Mullah's oldest son and
daughter-in-law also joined the steady stream of out-
migrants as did the other service caste men and the Holeya
workers.

As land owners withdrew labor from the fields, the
resource crunch was felt in the households of the wage
laborers. Meals consisted largely of sorghum bread eaten
with ground onions and chillies and in some families the
adults consumed only one meal a day. A flurry of borrowing,
lending, and exchanging transactions took place. Though
Doddmane Patel did not seem too perturbed by the onsetting
drought, he did speculate that his agricultural income would

be reduced for the coming year. In the thota lands of

 

Basavaraj Sindgi, the water level in the well was sharply
reduced and he made several trips to the town to request a
geologist to check the possibility of locating another well
on his land.

As I visited several villages, I heard a constant
refrain from agriculturists. What is the Government doing?
Are people not suffering? So what if there are some
standing crops in the fields, are there jobs and therefore

food for the working people? Why didn't I tell the

202

Government? The government will not listen to me, then what
use is there in doing this work, this mayethe
(understanding) of their lives and the region? Even the
usually acquiesing and polite agriculturists seemed
beligerent in their demand for government relief. They
needed jobs and demanded to know when the government would
give them relief work. The more well endowed ones wanted
fodder for their cattle. They could eat but what about
their speechless and helpless associates (mukha baaghu), the
cattle?

In Honutgi village unemployed men sat on the parapet of

the bus stop and spoke about their problems:

Ag 1: There's no rain. No crops. Fodder is a problem.

Ag 2: There was a little well water. Even that is
drying.

I : Have people started migrating?

Ag 2: The coolie (wage workers) people have. That too,
those without cattle. Those with cattle, how can
they leave them and go? Others are going to
Maharashtra. To earn there.

Ag 3: Every year, by this time my crops would be knee-
high. This year there's nothing. Even if I clear
the dry stalks, I’ll get only four sacks of hay.
So, that's why I’m thinking of migrating.

Ag 1: We were just discussing this. I was telling this
elderly man here that I must go somewhere, work
somewhere. The women and children will have
to stay here.

Ag 3: There’s no work here. Nothing at all.

Ag 2: Who's to employ us? There's no rain and the crops
are drying.

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As signs and hopes of the Government establishing
relief centers diminished, people resorted to the last and
most desperate measure to subsist; they started migrating in
large numbers. A poem (5) about the drought made its
circuit, emphasizing this time not how they could live or
appeals to divine intervention, but focussing on migration

and the despondency of the people.

Viketa Raitharu without hopes the cultivators
Vokata Hontare, are leaving together,

Vol antha thamma emptying their homes and

hole Manne their lands,

Horanadige thamma to fill their stomachs

Hote horeyake in other lands

ADMINISTRATIVE HEGEMONY

As Bijapur continues to be subject to recurring
droughts and food scarcity conditions it has become the
focus of government-directed interventionist programs.
Administrative discourse labels the district "backward" and
"drought-prone", and considers it a perennial scarcity area
which relies on emergency food relief during periods of
droughts. Several government-directed policies and programs
are aimed at changing the "backward" conditions of the
district, thereby re-ordering the ecology and hence the
socio-cultural order of the region.

The evaluation of the region in terms of relative
economic criteria makes the ecology and agriculture of the
district subject to prescriptions of change. Positivistic

approaches to droughts and the bureaucratic apparatus

204
identify and locate the semi-arid ecology as being the cause
for the district’s general conditions of poverty and drought
proclivity. By naturalizing and objectifying droughts, the
administrative apparatus deflects attention away from the
the social conditions that produce droughts and drought-
related stress. The distribution of resources, production
relations, forms of production, and the general conditions
of poverty and marginalization that produce and exacerbate
drought-related stress are overlooked. The administrative
definition of drought for India as a whole is defiency of
rainfall by twenty five percent or more from a region’s
average annual rainfall (Singh 1978). As critics have often
pointed out (Tiwari 1979; Singh 1978)-a point with which
agriculturists in Bijapur also concur-is that it is not the
quantity alone of rainfall that affects agricultural
production. For instance, the timing of the rain in
relation to the agro-climatic cycle of the region is
important. Excessively heavy rains just prior to sowing and
then a complete lack of rains during the production phase
devastate the crops as much as absolute lack of rains.

The naturalistic premise which is the foundation of
administrative constructions of droughts then deviates from
recognizing the social conditions of production and the
larger regional social and economic problems that droughts
are embedded in. Baudrillard’s observation that, "under the

objective stamp of science, technology, and production,

205
nature becomes the great signified, the great referrent. It
is ideally charged with ‘reality', it becomes the reality”
(1975:54), is particularly relevant here. As an identified
causative object of problems, the ecology becomes the object
which must be changed. Following this are a range of
programs that seek to “drought-proof" the region and hence
alleviate the conditions of poverty and recurring starvation
and famine in the region.

Like the local delineation of the landscape that
constituted and associated the region with particular
cultural markers, the administrative re—ordering of
Bijapur’s landscape carries with it a corpus of values and
ideologies which re—define and re-constitute the physical
and cultural dimensions of the society. This is exemplified
in the program to "drought-proof” the region.

Such programs to "drought-proof" the region seek to
re-order the ecology and thereby address problems of chronic
poverty and food scarcity in the area. The program's aim of
reconstructing the ecology is conducted by works such as the
restoration of ecological balance, developing irrigation,
soil and moisture conservation, restructuring cropping
patterns and pasture development, changing agronomic
practices, livestock development, and provisioning of
drinking water (Singh 1978). The re-alignment of space, the
new orientations based on the hegemony of technology, and

human intervention is representative of what Bauman

206
recognizes as the technological defiance of naturalness
where ”nothing is more artificial than naturalness, nothing
less natural than abiding by laws of nature" (1990:165).
Government programs and policies focus on reordering what
they consider to be a naturally defined and constituted
phenomenon. The problems of the region, of recurring food
scarcity and widespread poverty and deprivation, are
associated with natural factors.

While programs, such as "drought-proofing" the region
have been instituted as attempts to provide permanent
solutions to recurring droughts, at the onset of droughts it
is the agricultural production of the region that gets
addressed first. At the onset of a drought, the District
Agricultural Office initiates measures and provides advice
to first salvage the agricultural production of the
district. A flyer distributed in September 1990 summarises
the administrative focus on maintaining agricultural
production as successful drought alleviation (6):

.Sowing for the winter season should be completed
by the first week of October. Otherwise sow sorghum
(M-35-1) by October 15th as this sorghum has
greater drought-resisting capacities.
.From now on decrease the area under sorghum
cultivation and sow horgegram and safflower in

4:2 or 2:1 proportion. This way there will

be greater economic benefits.
.Sorghum, sunflower, safflower, wheat, and horsegram
seeds should first be soaked in water for atleast
eight to ten hours, dried in the shade and then

sown . ‘

.Sunflower should not be sown after October 7th.

207

Where they are sown their yields have decreased due
to the rust disease.

.Wheat and sorghum seeds can be soaked for about
eight to ten hours in either a chloride, calcium
chloride or thin calcium mix, dried in the shade
and then sown. This way the seeds will sprout
faster and the roots will go deeper and will not
die due to the moist conditions.

.There must be sufficient gap between rows as the
seeds are sown.

a. sorghum 2 to 2.5 feet
b. sunflower 2 to 2.5 feet
c. safflower 2 to 3 feet

d. horsegram 1.5 to 2.5 feet
. If there are no rains after sowing and the

saplings are about thirty days old, then remove
about 30 saplings from every row.

Approaches such as this indicate not only the top-down
focus that is dominant in rural development schemes but also
the relegation of local knowledge and practices. The advice
and methods given by the Agricultural Office presumes that
agriculturists lack the knowledge and that there are no
local methods to salvage crops at the onset of a drought. By
stipulating a uniform crop salvage method the administration
also overlooks the multiple variations in agricultural
units. Moreover, in the eyes of the administration droughts

are primarily a problem of productivity.

DROUGHTS AS A PROBLEM OF PRODUCTIVITY
Administrative efforts to contain food scarcity
portended by an onsetting drought consist mainly of attempts

to salvage the agricultural production of the region. The

208
primacy of agricultural production indicates the
administration’s priority and its major orientation towards
droughts. Droughts are perceived and addressed in the
narrow and immediate triology of droughts-scarcity-famine
(Ahmed 1978), all of which can be resolved by first
salvaging crop production and then providing direct
sustenance or relief. What is overlooked is that drought is
a synergistic process where skewed distribution of resources
(land and water), agricultural practices, cropping patterns
linked to the introduction of cash crops, ecological
degradation, and marginalization make a region more
' susceptible to conditions of food scarcity, dependency,
migration and dislocation. Much like efforts to "drought-
proof” the region, the onset of a drought is met with
measures that seek to determine the severity of the drought

in a purely administrative manner.

DECLARING DROUGHTS

At the onset of a drought and under conditions of food
scarcity, the administration attempts to provision the
people. Yet the terms under which the provisioning is made
is dependent on the "declaration of drought" which then
leads to the establishment of drought-relief centers. Based
on a linkage of information from village-district-state
headquarters on drought-related stress, the "declaration of

droughts" is hinged on satisfying statistical indicators

209

that purport to measure distress. In Karnataka the
administrative rules to declaring droughts are based on the
following organization. To "declare” a region as "drought-
afflicted" the District Agricultural Office is assigned the
task of collecting statistics pertaining to:

a. Quantity of rainfall

b. The percentage area sown

c. Sprouting conditions of the seeds

d. Fodder availability

e. Drinking Water availability

Distress in the distict is then assessed on the basis
of these statistics. Rainfall is considered to be deficit
when it is less than 150 millimeters during the winter
(ragi) season and if the rainfall varies twenty percent or
more from its annual average during each crop growth period.

The gathering of data and frequent visits of village
leaders and representatives to the administrative
headquarters form the basis for new rituals. 'Though
administrative procedures make it incumbent on the District
Agricultural Office to collect data to report on the
conditions of the village, drought-related distress is not
brought to the notice of the officials immediately. Much
like the appeasing of rain deities, the administrative
procedures and processes require agriculturists to plead

with government bureaucrats, representatives, and workers

210
for drought relief. Concerned leaders of the village
panchayat and leading agriculturists report the conditions
of the village to the District Agricultural Agent or to the
Administrative Officer himself. The Agricultural Office
then relays this information to the District Collector, who
then relays it to the State headquarters and awaits
directions from them. The final decision to "declare" the
district as ”drought-hit" is based on political will rather
than on the actual conditions of the district.

The region itself is not assessed in terms of
percentage people unemployed, the migration trends, or sale
of assets. The focus is on the trilogy of drought-scarcity-
famine (Ahmed 1978) in which administrative intervention is
initiated at the development of extreme stress. Neglected
are the larger and more pervasive issues of the regional
political economy where the lack of access to land and water
exacerbate drought-related stress.

Since the 1960’s administrative measures such as that
of the Emergency Relief Program and Food for Work schemes
have eliminated famines in India (Torry 1986a). Yet the
relief program suffers due to bureaucratic amd political
delays in recognizing the various forms of drought-induced
stress. Often, far before the relief is actually
sanctioned, the distress associated with droughts, sale of
assets, and starvation has already set in. That the

administrative measures miss the essential needs of the

211
region is evident when one notes that the poorest people
resort to out-migration well before the relief works are
established.

Like the cosmological constructions of droughts which
do not recognize or initiate collective strategies to
alleviate drought-related stress, the administrative
constructions provide a top-down scheme that enhances the
fragmentation of drought alleviation strategies. As many
agriculturists and landless laborers point out, initiating
the relief program after a prolonged period of drought does
not aid the indigent and impoverished. 5 A landless laborer
in the village of Toravi, who in 1987 had had to get a loan
to migrate to Pune for construction work, was vociferous in
critiquing the relief-program: .

"When the rains have not come for a period then we
immediately loose our agricultural work (dhagada).
To stay in the village without work means getting a
loan. Now, who'll repay these loans? How can we
pay it all back? We, the poorest must go on

migration work (desha). Those who stay here are
not the ones who worry about an empty stomach".

For the poorest and most indigent, drought remains an
immediate problem of sustenance. Some landed agriculturists
subsist on stored grains, or loans, or the sale of their
assets. For others the drought-relief works provide
temporary sustenance. Yet the perennial poverty of the
region or the scarcities associated with droughts are not

alleviated. Reviewing the current administrative attempts

212

to solve the district's chronic drought and food scarcity
conditions, Simpi Linganna, Bijapur’s most noted literateur,
posed, "can ghee (clarified butter) quench one's thirst?"
Relief is then seen as occasional doses that do not solve a
more vital and pervasive problem of meeting real needs.

Locating drought as a purely natural phenomenon,
administrative discourse and actions are sharply at variance
with the local cultural construction of drought as a
socially and morally produced condition. Though local
social structures in their pre-capitalistic formations were
not fully capable of containing long term scarcities or
addressing variations in the distribution of resources,
droughts were occasions for collectively addressing the
social and moral order. Droughts also meant a reduction of
resources for all. Agricultural production without deep
tube-wells forced all cultivating units to be effected by
droughts. Hence a loss or decline in agricultural
production, even if of different degrees, was felt by all
members of the village community. Changes induced by
commercial agriculture induce shifts in the economic and
social relations of the community and in cultural
priorities. For practitioners of modern agriculture who
rely on technology and have access to water, drought is
either minimally experienced or is often an opportunity to

exploit cheap labor. With no moral, social, or economic

impetus to provision the indigent, the village elite are

213
removed from bearing the responsibilities for alleviating
drought-related distress. In the present changed socio-
economic and cultural environment, drought does not mean a
reduction in crop production for all and hence a stress on
(though of varying degrees) resources that is generally
experienced. The Oracle in Madbhavi succinctly indicated
this in its 1990 prophesy: "there would be sweets for some,
sorghum balls for others". "Sweets for some" refers to the
profit that some (the rich and the landed) would reap, while
"sorghum balls for others" refers to the bare existence that
the others would have to eke out.

This shift in the institutional organization of drought
management and the cultural conceptualizations of droughts
provides a basis for a disengagement of collective culture
from nature. No longer are there collectively held and
expressed notions of what causes droughts: some still assert
the significance of recalcitrant human actins for the
production of droughts; others repeat bureaucratic
perspectives, "this is a drought-prone region, that's why we
have droughts"; still others point to the degraded ecology.
Coterminus with these differenciated perspectives of
droughts are the different strategies that each household
undertakes to sustain itself in the face of a drought. The
implications of these shifts are multiple for

conceptualizations of human-nature relations in the region.

214
I delineate these changes and the implications of these
changes in the following three dimensions: (1) the shifts in
human-land relationships and hence the changes in society-
nature relations, (2) the generation of new symbolic forms
in the regional culture, and (3) the effect of

institutionalized drought-relief on the village community.

THE REGION AS "DROUGHT-APPLICTED”

The traditional cultural identity of the region as
"Kariaaga", or the "black land", which invoked idyllic
images of agricultural prosperity and a sense of pride, is
increasingly displaced by reference to the region as
"pa;agha1a_paai§ha_aaaha" (drought-afflicted region). The
region as "afflicted" with droughts contrasts with the local
cultural construction of the community and village as
subject to "affliction". The local cultural construction of
droughts as paaa or affliction reflected the recognition of
social and moral onus for the production of droughts. On
the other hand, administrative constructions of the region
as drought-afflicted (pazagnala-peditha) connotes an
asocial, given proclivity to droughts that constructs -
droughts as inevitable and naturally produced. Though
local, collective rituals did not and do not encode
effective means and mechanisms of containing drought-
related scarcities and distress, they were occasions for the

collective apprehension of drought-related stress and for

215
the addressing of the moral and social order. In contrast,
the region as "afflicted" connotes a naturalistic,
deterministic base in the production of droughts.

The bureaucratic labelling of the region as "drought-
prone", and "drought-afflicted" has, since the 1972 drought
(when large scale relief works and drought-proofing programs
were further entrenched), been appropriated by the residents
of the region. People refer to the region as baraghala
aaana (land of droughts) and as baga gesha (land of poverty/
poor region). Constructions such as these form the basis
for new images of the region, of people themselves, and of
their relationship and identity to the land. The shifting
constructions that have resulted from bureaucratic labelling
of the region confirms Shields ’observation that labels
affixed to specific geo-cultural regions produce "a potent
connotative kick which alludes to the emotional importance
of entire systems of spatial images which function as
frameworks of cultural orders" (Shields 1991:30). In
Bijapur, the shift in the cultural image of the land is
coterminus with the shift in identity and culture of the
people.

I Instead of the specific knowledge, skills, and
organization that had been developed over the years, there
is a nascent submission to the bureaucratic administration
of the region and the people's lives. Like the trend

towards the replacement of local agricultural knowledge and

216
methods by modern agricultural practices, drought is
increasingly seen as having to be managed by the
administration. This is most telling in the loss of naming
droughts. Droughts are no longer recalled by the names of
crops that helped sustain the people who survived the
droughts; nor do droughts have any locally bound
significance. The drought of 1972, considered the worst in
the century, is remembered not by any specific name of crop
or person but as the "1972 drought" (yepath yeradara para).
Further, the widespread distress experienced by the people
is embodied in a poem, which unlike older poems on droughts
does not appease or castigate gods and goddesses, but which

castigates administrators and politicians:

Thapa thale lare ura Unable to bear the distress
bityare, the cultivators have left

Chinti maduthatare the land, .
Chaini leader Inconsiderate leaders

"Nima chinti namage bale tell us "leave your troubles to
ella us"

Halige thiruguthare Travelling in the

Minister, Navu maduthave villages the minister reiterates
parihara "we’ll solve your problem"

Similarly, despite the stress of unemployment, food
shortage, loss of crops and fodder during the 1990 drought,
people did not attach any particular name to the drought.
The decline in significance of droughts as cultural markers
in the life-world of the people does not imply a decrease in

the deprivation, marginalization, and suffering that

217

droughts compound. Rather, the most distressed people are
no longer in the region. Migrations, both temporary and
permanent, have become regular features in the lives of the
poor. The urban areas, large construction sites and the wet
agricultural belts provide employment opportunities.
However, as a regular migrant commented:

"What life does a construction site offer? Sometimes

we don't know the language. We work, work, work.

It’s all for the stomach-~we buy food, eat and work

again. What sort of a life can that be? We'd like

to be here--our families are here, our relatives are

here.... We fall ill, there’s no one to care. There
are accidents. Who's to talk for us?"

Migration and temporary urban work, if available,
provide basic sustenance. But they are not without hazards
to social and physical life. As is evident by the
residential sections of the landless and lower caste groups,
work migration means that women and children are left to eke
out a living for themselves with promises of monetary
support from the urban-based men. The section of the
village in which Gurappa Madha and his fellow caste members
live was largely empty after the onset of the 1990 drought.
Only a few households with older women and their
grandchildren were left, while the men and younder women had
immigrated to the cities for work. For those village
residents who manage to pull through on their own during the
initial drought-period, government administered relief has

become the only viable alternative source of sustenance

218
during prolonged periods of droughts. This is valid for
households like that of Gangawwa Badigyar and even for those
like Keshappa Kumbar. While their regular incomes and
wages sustain them during non-drought periods, they must
seek alternative sources of income during droughts.

The contemporary trend of demanding and expecting
government relief to help mitigate drought-induced problems
is a far cry from the hesitancy and rejection which met
administered relief in the nineteenth century. Where
droughts had previously been occasions to culturally and
ritually address the moral-social order of the community,
they are now occasions during which administrative rituals
contain the bargaining over village autonomy and village
dependency. I

So pervasive has the need for relief become in the
region that relief centers are now the new symbols of life
sustenance. As an elderly man put it to me, "In the old
days, we looked for clouds during a drought, now we look for
the government jeep." His comment summed up not only the
presence of the government apparatus in the region, but also
the agriculturists' acceptance of relief and their reliance
on the government as provider. That such trends are not
restricted to this area or cultural belt alone is well
brought out in Subramaniam’s (1975) report on the success of
government administered drought-relief during the 1970-73

drought in Maharashtra. After appraising the tremendous

219

success in alleviating famine and distress in the region,

Subramaniam quotes a newpaper reporter who had interviewed

receipients of relief: -
When Padgaonkar interviewed Namdeo Kokani of
Balapudi about the drought relief schemes sponsored
by the state government, Laxmibai, his wife, had
the following to say: "what is the use of Gods and
Goddesses when they have let us down? Why waste
money on flowers, on haldi (turmeric), and Kumkum
(red ochre powder) on them?" She said her ‘Mai-
Baap’ now was the ‘Sarkar'. It had helped them
survive. Namdeo said, "Sarkar meant the Overseer,
the Tahsildar, the Prant Officer, the Collector and
the Gandhi caps." (Subramaniam 1975:502)

The success of the administrative efforts to prevent
mass famine in the region is coterminus with the extent to
which government relief has become acceptable to the people.
The situation is a far cry from the rejection of
institutionalized relief or the general hesitancy that most
people had previosly had about subsisting on non-
agricultural menial work. Typically, the strong cultural
orientation of agrarianism would have emphasized the value
of agricultural work, cultivating one’s land, and being
independent in general. Instead, the work centers
organized to bring relief from the drought-induced hardships

are seen as an alternative and acceptable form of

employment.

220

DEVELOPMENT AND DISARRAY

There are visible signs of "development" in the region:
there are more tar-topped roads (built as relief works
during droughts); there are more tube-wells within the
settlements; and the Agricultural Assistants and other
agents of the government are periodic visitors and
dispensers of a new cultural orientation. Yet for the
poorest residents these very changes do not provide long-
term employment security or timely food security. Feeding
into the disarray in community relations and the inability
to locally contain and address droughts are trends that
negatively impact on the already deteriorating agrarian
life.

Agriculture, once the cornerstone of Bijapur’s rural
life and culture, is increasingly disregarded as a viable
economic option or as a Culturally preferred way of life.
With people's exposure to urban life and non-agrarian job
opportunities, agriculture is increasingly viewed as a
losing game where "crops die and grow" (bele sattu
balayayadu), where agriculturists must beat their "heads
against the rocks" (kallu male thale vodeyuyadu) to make
ends meet, and, where despite their hard work and
perserverance they are still in the quagmire of "poverty"
(DQQQLBQDQ) and "dirt" (kalaana). Many agriculturists

encourage their sons to take up non-agricultural

221

occupations, hoping that urban jobs will save them from the
perennial problems of poverty, deprivation, and stress.

Like the shifts in the cultural conceptualizations of
droughts, the shift in the cultural evaluation of land
indicates a disengagement of land from the divinity-nature-
society continuum. If droughts are becoming purely
naturally occuring phenomena then land is being delineated
as a purely economic unit, an object and source of
livelihood without the attending cultural importance
attached to it. ‘

These shifts are expressed in a cultural commentary
that links the new symbols in the region to the new
landscape and the new social and cultural order in which the

people live in.

A HYBRID DROUGHT TO COME

I met Mr. Lingadahalli on a trip to Banhatti, a small
weaving town in Bijapur. A local science teacher and
literateur, his concern for the deteriorating conditions of
the region ranged from the ecological problems of the region
to the cultural and social upheaval experienced by its
residents. Concluding his observations, he suddenly pointed
out to the patches of parthenium weeds in the outlying
fields and said, "There will be a drought one of these days

and it will be called a hybrid drought (hybrig baaa)".

222

The parthenium weeds he pointed to are new entrants
into the agricultural landscape. The fast spreading weeds
are considered a nuisance in the agricultural fields, since
they not only threaten the crops but also impose more work.
Spreading from the fields into the village settlements, the
weeds pose health hazards in the form of allergies and
chronic eczema. Their origins are linked to the modern
agricultural package and in the villages they were called
sarkari kasa (government weeds). For their ability to turn
milk bitter, when consumed by cows, the weeds were referred
to as kahi kasa (bitter weeds).

Mr. Lingadahalli's comment, linking the weeds to a
futuristic drought, didn't at first suggest to me anything
more than a cultural inclination to prophesy and forecast
the future. Later, reading Donald Worster's (1976) study of
the Great Drought in the Southern United States I realized
the implications of Lingadahalli’s observations. The
erosion of the indigenous grasses of the southern arid belts
had lead to the dust bowl and to the tremendous dislocation,
stress, and migration of the 1930's. In that setting, an
astute naturalist, Paul Sears, had observed the spread of
the dreaded tumbleweeds, and had pointed out that "weeds
like red-eyed anarchists, are the symptoms, not the cause of
a disturbed order" (in Worster 1976:208). Though Sears’
allegory expressed his disdain for socialist arguments, his

comment linked weeds to the denouement of a disturbed order.

223

Perhaps it was Mr. Lingadahalli's perception of a
similar scenario for Bijapur that now draws my attention to
his words. He had astutely observed the ecological
degradation, signified by the presence of unweildy and
dangerous weeds, to portend a devastating ecological
catastrophe. He had appropriated the symbol of the
discontents of modern agriculture and was using the weeds as
a new symbol to prophesize the future. He was not alone in
his thoughts, for soon I found that several agriculturists
also considered the new weeds to portend an imminent
disaster.

A hybrid drought would be one caused not by a lack of
rain, as were most droughts, but by the introduction of a
wholly inappropriate complex of agriculture. The ecological
denudation of the region would be concommitant with the
destruction of the society and the cultural complex of the
region. Modern agriculture is then linked to the social and
cultural conditions of the people. Just as local culture
constructs and understands droughts as symptoms of
cosmological disorder, the parthenium weeds are seen as
representative and symptomatic of a persistent and
significant social and cultural disorder.

Though the partenium weeds, like the hybrid seeds, are
incorporated into the local symbolic order they are linked

through the ethos of substantialism to reinforce an older

224
and continuing framework of significance. This framework
of significance is the relationship between the land and the
people-where changes in one are considered to constitute

changes in the other.

CHAPTER IX

CONCLUSION

Subject to recurring droughts and famines, the region
of Bijapur has provided a window through which to study
culture-nature relations. The close alignment of culture-
nature relations was expressed in: the aligning of social
activities to agro-climatic cycles; the appropriation of
nature, especially land, in accordance with culturally
specific precepts; and in the ways in which conditions of
nature are considered to reflect the moral conditions of the
society. By focusing on droughts to delineate a specific
culture's conceptualizations of society-nature relations,
this study has highlighted the importance of frameworks of
meaning in understanding a society and its relationship to
droughts.

This study has indicated how particular cultural
foundations influence the ways in which droughts are
understood and come to terms with. Such a perspective can
be extended to understanding various other society-nature
relationships. More especially, the study may benefit the
understanding of societies that are subject to recurring
floods, earthquakes, tornadoes and other phenomena often
constructed as natural hazards. The culturally specific

ways in which these phenomena are understood may throw light

225

226
on the modes in which people adapt, adjust, and manage their

lives in relation to natural disasters.

CULTURE AND NATURE

In the context of describing the forms and ways in
which a particular culture conceptualizes and contextualizes
society-nature relations, this study has provided two
perspectives. First it largely validates recent
anthropological and Indianist perspectives which note that
non-Western, non-industrial conceptualizations of society-
nature relations are based on a non-dichotomized
relationship between the two. Society and nature, in such
cultures, are understood to be linked in moral, affective,
subjective, and integral ways. This is the case in the
context of Bijapur wherein the lack of a separate word for
nature, the interchangeable use of words for both
agricultural and social contexts, and the association of
drought conditions to moral conditions indicate the mutually
interactive paradigm within which the domains of divinity,
nature, and society are conceptualized.

In terms of Bijapur's local culture, droughts are
constructed to reflect a coinciding of cosmological,
ecological, and community orientations. Locating droughts
through a cosmological dimension emphasizes the none
separateness of society from nature. Natural categories

such as climatic processes, and hence droughts also, are

227
linked to the condition of the society. The three domains
of divinity, nature, and society are linked in an integral
manner where actions in one are considered to be reflected
in the other.

Such an interlinking-of the domains of the natural,
divine, and the social-is representative of an ethos of
substantialism which has been observed for other practices,
such as ayurveda, folk medicine, and rituals in South Asia.
An ethos of substantialism is seen as constituting a
framework of significance in the domain of local
agricultural practices, in the conduct of rain rituals, and
in the context of understanding modern agriculture and the
social changes that have resulted from it.

While postulating the importance of an ethos of
substantialism this study does not propose an ethos of
substantialism to be a framework of analysis or a conceptual
apparatus through which all actions and interactions in the
context of South Asia can be understood. An ethos of
substantialism is particularly useful in understanding such
local explanatory models such as: the linking of droughts to
divine wrath and hence as reflecting the moral conditions of
the people; ideas that ascribe specific characteristics to
soils, plants and people; and the continuity of associating
conditions of the land to conditions of the people.

The second perspective that this study provides, in the

context of cultural conceptualizations of society-nature

228
relations, is to discern the ideological basis of cultural
conceptualizations of society-nature relations. As this
study has indicated, despite the portrayal and expressions
of the close identity and reflexive relationship between
society and nature, the results of the articulation of
society-nature relations in the context of crises must also
be considered. Cultural conceptualizations of society-
nature relations may themselves form an ideological basis
through which exploitation is legitimized and made
acceptable. This was observable in the cosmological
conceptualizations of drought which, despite expressions of
collective human moral onus for the production of droughts,
were not linked with specific strategies to alleviate
drought-related food scarcities. Instead, the stress on
collective human moral onus, observable in local beliefs and
rituals, prevented the recognition of the unequal
distribution of resources and a development of
redistributive mechanisms.

Hence caveats must be added to portrayals of non-
western, non-capitalistic cultures as being based on a
”oneness" with nature, in which perfect adaptation to the
external environment has been achieved. Instead of arcadian
views of society-nature relations in the context of non-
western cultures, the ideological basis of these
articulations must be recognized. Cosmological

conceptualizations of nature must also be related to the

229
multiple ways in which the social structures of a society,
especially the differential resource and power positions,
accentuate specific culture-nature relations. While non-
western conceptualizations of society-nature relations are
different from western conceptualizations they do not
necessarily inhere a completely non-exploitative structure
in them. As in the case of Bijapur, like much of rural
India, hierarchical social structures such as caste
structures and inequitable distribution of resources define
actual resource use and relations.

Such a perspective I believe is especially relevant in
the context of recent proliferation of studies that focus on
cultural orientations to nature. Juxtaposed to critiques of
the capitalist structuring of human-nature relations several
studies are finding in non-western, non-capitalist cultures
an alternative, non-hierarchical and non- exploitative
construction of society-nature relations. Popularization of
non-western cultures as representing benign, non-intrusive,
non-destructive human-nature relationships belie the
complexity of society-nature constructions and deflect
attention from the pressing problems that such societies .
face. This point needs to be reinforced Since arguments for
reinstituting "traditional", human-nature relations presumed
to be non-hierachical and non-explotiative are finding their

way into new agendas for the environment.

230

The above caveats about focusing only on cultural
conceptualizations of society-nature relations call
attention to the forms in which livelihood patterns, and
power relations also attend on society-nature relations.
Such structures and forces were observable in Bijapur where
local provisioning transactions of aya (institutionalized
provisioning), gaaana (communal sharing), and gana (charity)
were not effectively capable of addressing nature-related
resources fluctuations. In the context of research which
seek to enhance local, culturally specific provisioning and
entitlement strategies, it is vital to bear in mind that
provisioning transactions even if conducted in moral,
cultural terms do not effectively cover a large proportion
of people who are indigent.

The inability of rural social institutions, especially
under conditions of significant changes, to address and
contain recurring scarcity has led to the intervention of
external bureaucratic apparatii to address problems of
periodic resource scarcity. Noting such trends this study
calls attention to the fact that societies that face
sustenance crises are more vulnerable to the reordering of
their ecology and their culture. Under the regime of
administrative definitions of drought and changing socio—
economic structures, the local cultural conceptualization of
drought and hence of society-nature relations takes

different forms. Administrative constructions identify

231

droughts as naturally produced phenomena. Accordingly, the
administration engenders programs and strategies which
construct the problem of Bijapur--its conditions of general
impoverishment, marginalization, and recurring threats of
famine-~as problems emanating from its particular ecology or
natural condition. Programs then address these problems as
natural problems only--identified as semi-aridity,low
production, and drought proclivity. Drought within such
administrative constructions is essentially a problem of
productivity. An agricultural regime that incorporates the
plausibility of droughts into its practices is seen as
falling below an expected productive capacity. Drought
alleviation then becomes a program to solve problems of
agricultural production and immediate food security.
Programs and policies then key in to re-order the ecology of
the region. The focus of such attention is the local
agricultural complex which becomes subject to changes that
aim at increasing its productivity. These administrative
policies and programs overlook the social bases of the
production of scarcity and enhance those very social
relations under which deprivation and poverty are made
persistent for a significant number of people.

By noting the social and cultural problems that such
administrative intervention creates in the region the study
observes the ironic situation in which the agencies that

seek to alleviate drought-related distress generate upheaval

232
and stress in the society. The implications of social
disarray, and the compounding of problems, can be extended
to other areas of the world in which "disaster management"
is conducted through bureaucratic measures.

Administrative definitions of droughts and the re-
ordering of the society and its ecology form a hegemonic
discourse which induce significant shifts in society-nature
relations. The precepts of haga (appropriateness) and
huliga (bestowed abundance) which once privileged the ways
in which people related to and utilized the land are giving
way to that of sistam (system) and agpagi (productivity).
Such changes engender shifts from local, autonomous, and
heterogenous forms of agriculture and human-nature relations
to forms that are externally directed, imitative, .
homogenous, and dependent. Modern agriculture, the way in
which it is promoted and its results, is hegemonic to the
extent to which it has reconstituted local cultural forms of
utilizing land, the ways in which the people have
incorporated its principles into their cultural corpus, and
the degree to which it is also accepted by the people.

The result of such hegemonic intervention is the
generation of new symbolic forms and changed cultural
priorities. Accompanying such changes are the new symbols of
pumpsets, hybrid seeds, insular homesteads, and drought-
relief centers which represent and embody the cultural and

social changes in the region. The development and

233
establishment of new symbolic forms in Bijapur validates
Comaroff's (1982) and Ohnuki-Tierney's (1990) observations
on the results of the articulation of local cultural forms
with larger political-economic forces. Comaroff (1982) notes
that the results of such articulations lead to the
establishment of pluralistic cultural forms rather than to a
shift from a variety of indigenous forms to that of a
uniform modern culture. As Ohnuki-Tierney (1990)
emphasizes, when non-modern cultural forms shift into a
modern context they do not loose all symbolic forms and
capacities. Instead, new symbolic forms are generated which
take into account the new context and meanings.

Such a process is observable in the context of Bijapur
wherein pumpsets are incorporated into the ritual corpus and
the metaphor of hybrid seeds is used to refer to changes in
social identities and relationships. While the I
incorporation of pump sets into the ritual corpus is
indicative of the new sources of production, the metaphor of
hybrid seeds draws on an ethos of substantialism to comment
on the new human-land and human-human relationships. These
new configurations embody and represent changes,
amalgamations, and discontinuities of life conditions,
social relations, and meanings.

It is this reconstitution of cultures in the face of
being directed by external cultures and in the context of

the reordering of nature that needs to be further addressed.

234
In the face of widespread environmental crises in the world
it will not be out of place to say that the state of an
environment represents the state of a society. Contemporary
Somalia, with its double tragedy of famine and mayhem,
testifies to this. At the same time there are several areas
which, like Bijapur, are being reconstituted in their
natural and social conditions. Just as arguments have been
made for recognizing the cultural basis of society-nature
relations it may be imperative for anthropologists to
recognize and read shifting conceptualizations of nature in
order to understand the changing contents of culture.

I would like to conclude this study on culture-nature
relations and conceptualizations with the words of Dr. M.N
Wali, another local scholar and literateur in Bijapur. I
had asked him about local conceptualizations of "nature" and
what was happening to Bijapur in the context of the
significant changes that it was experiencing. His reply
summarized what many agriculturists express, but without the

same literary expressions.

Nature, or paakggi is all that is given by

God. Culture, as sa sk uti; is when human actions
are aligned to prakrti. But, when human actions are
not aligned to prakrti, then one can have only
vkrti, the distorted forms of both DIQKIEi and
mm.

Aya

Ayadakula

Ayagharru

Ayagolu
Bara
Baraghala
Bhumi-guna
Dana

Dargah

Dasoha
Desha

Dharmakarya

Hada

Hibred
Holeya

Hosa Besaya
Hudi

Hulige

Javari

Jeetha

235
GLOSSARY
Grains and other shares given to certain

service and ritual caste households

Landed families that provide grains to
specific service and ritual households

Specific households from service and
ritual castes that are entitled to
aya shares

Lingayat priest

Dryness, cessation of rain

Drought

Characteristics of land

Charitable donation of grains or food

Muslim religous sites founded around
burial sites of sufis

Commensal meals
Employment migration

Construction of public utility resources
by the rich

Appropriateness
Hybrid
Untouchables/Harijans
New Agriculture

Grain storage bins

Ritual incantation meaning bestowed
abundance

Organic and locally grown crops/ refers
to all products that are recognised
as local

Person in agrestic servitude

Jolla

Kahi Kasa

Kala-Jnana

Karinadu

Kuruba

Lambani

Madi
Maddi

Madha

Male-bele Helike

Mullah
Mutta
Muye
Peda

Roti

Samskruti

Sampurna
Satmya
Sistam

Sege Hunime
Sukshme
Swantha

Thalwar

236
Sorghum Vulgare

Bitter weed-to refer to the parthenium
weed

Prophesying conducted at some Lingayat
centers

Black Land -to refer to the region of
Bijapur and its geographic environs

Shepherds

Once nomadic salt sellers and baggage
carriers, now settled

Auspicious objects

Reddish brown agricultural land

Leather workers

Rain-crop prophesying

Muslim priests

Lingayat religous centers

Reciprocity- to refer to exchange labor
Affliction

Flat leavened bread, usually of sorghum
in this region

"culture"-more often used in by literate
people

Wholeness

Appropriateness in Ayurveda

System

Fertility rites for fields (summer)
Delicate

Own/ autonomy

Menial servants

Thakat
Thota
Thotaghara
Thandya
Utpati
Vkruti

Yell Amavase

237
- Strength
- Garden lands
- Garden land owners
- Settlement sites of the Lambani
- Increased production
-distorted state or condition

- Fertility rites for fields (winter)

APPENDICES

238

APPENDIX A: MAJOR FAMINES IN BIJAPUR

YEAR

1396
1422
1460
1472-73
1629-30
1685
1716
1790-92
1814-18
1824-25
1833
1863-64
1866-67
1876-79

1923-24
1926-27
1937-38
1942-43

1951-54
1955-56
1959-60
1961-62
1972-73

1976-77
1984-85
1987

1990-91

CAUSES AND EFFECTS

Twelve years of drought and famine

Two years of drought related famine
Also drought-related famine

Drought, large-scale emigration

Severe famine

Severe famine

Thousands of deaths

Innumerable deaths,"Skull Famine"

Many parts of the district affected
Droughts widespread

Drought, First relief works started
Severe famine

Drought prolonged onset of famine

Large scale emigration, high mortality of
humans and cattle,"Padi Drought" 1911-12
Famine in large parts of the district
Famine

Famine

Famine

1090 villages out of 1174 villages
affected,"millet drought"

69% of villages affected, relief by Government
Droughts reported in 52% of villages

605 villages affected

94% of villages affected

Severe drought, largest post-independence
relief works set-up.

Drought in some areas

Drought in some areas

Severe water shortage, loss of crops
Loss of winter crops, relief late

[Compiled with data from Bijapur District Gazetteer, Meti
1966, Horakere 1987, Deshpande 1987]

239

APPENDIX B: HINDU-ENGLISH MONTHS

Local Kannada Sanskrit Corresponding English
Names Names Months

Magha Magha January-February
Phalgun Phalguna February-March
Chaitra Caitra March-April
Vishakha Vaishaka April-May

Jeysta Jyestha May-June

Ashada Asadha June-July
Shravana Sravana July-August
Bhadrapad Bhadrapada August—September
Ashvin Asvina September-October
Karthik Karttika October-November
Mrga Margasirsa November-December

Pushya Pausa December-January

APPENDIX C:

CLASSIFICATION OP RAINS

The following list corresponds to the classical names of
the rains derived from the astral (nakshatra) positions.
Though the first sixteen of these rains are called Sambaya
(possible) or kala_Ma;agala or timely rains), it is the
vokkaligara malegalu' or "agriculturists rains" that are

rains most closely observed.

The rest (17-27) are referred

to as asambava (improbable) or avakala malegalu or untimely
rains and are those that do not occur in the region
regularly. Pronounciations in Bijapur sometimes vary from
standard Kannada pronunciations, some rains such as the
rohini are called roni, or the svathi is called the sathi.

KANNADA
NAME

1. Ashvini

2. Bharani

3. Kruthika

4. Rohini

5. Mrgasira

6. Aridra

7. Punarvasu

8. Pushya

9. Ashlesha
10.Magha
11.Hubbi
12.Uthara
13.Hasta
14.Chitta
15.Svathi
16.Vishaka
17.Anuradha
18.Jyesta
19.Mula
20.Purva Ashada
21.Utharashada
22.Shravana
23.Dhanista
24.Shatatara
25.Purva Bhadrapada
26.Uthara Bhadarapad
27.Revati

APPROXIMATE ENGLISH DATE

April 11-April 25
April 26-May 9

May 10-May 23

May 24-June 6

June 7-June 20

June 21-July 4

July 5-July 18

July 19-August 1
August 2-August 15
August 16-August 29
August 30-September 11
September 12-September 25
September 26-October 8
October 9-October 22
October 23-November 4
November 5-November 17
November 18-November 30
December 1-December 14
December 15-December 27
December 28-January 9
January 10-January 22
January 23-February 4
February 5-February 17
February 18-March 2
March 3-March 15

March 16-March 27

March 28-April 10

241

APPENDIX D: AGRO-RITUALS IN BIJAPUR

Most festivals both local and pan-Indian, are located during
the full (Hunime) and new moon (Amavase) phases of the lunar
cycle. Since these festivals mark the agro-climatic cycle,
I refer to them and the activities they mark as agro-rituals
which are distinct from life-cycle rituals. The fortnightly
festivals are as follows:

HINDU MONTH ENGLISH MONTH FESTIVALS

1. Chaitra Mar-Apr 1. Ugadi Amavase
2. Havanada Hunime

2. Vishaka Apr-May 1. Akhiti Amavase
2. Aggi Hunime

3. Jeysta May-June 1. Badami Amavase
2. Kar Hunime

4. Ashada June-July 1. Munyethena Amavase
2. Kadligar Hunime

5. Shravana July-Aug 1. Nagara Amavase
2. Nula Hunime

6. Bhadrapad Aug-Sept 1. Ganachauthi Amavase
2. Ananta Hunime

7. Ashvin Sept—Oct 1. Mahanavami Amavase
2. Sege Hunime

8. Karthik Oct-Nov 1. Dipavali Amavase
2. Gauri Hunime

9. Mrga Nov-Dec 1. Chatti Amavase
2. Hasta Hunime

10.Pushya Dec-Jan 1. Yell Amavase
2. Banada Hunime

11.Magha Jan-Feb 1. Avatara Amavase
2. Bharat Hunime

12.Phalgun Feb-Mar 1. Shivarathri Amavase
2. H011 Hunime

NOTES

242

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

1.

See Raymond Williams (1980) for an excellent overview of the
concepts of ‘nature' and their various implications.

CHAPTER II: BIJAPUR

1.

The western ghats (Lit: "steps" for the way in which.they rise
from the coastal belt) are the western mountain ranges that
separate the west coast of India from the inland plains and
plateau.

In 1818 Bijapur was acceded to the British and, along with the
areas directly adjacent to the Bijapur sultanate, the district
of Bijapur was formed in 1885.

The fear of being attached to labor pools was reported
for many areas of colonial India (cf.Marglin 1990).

The Krishna River Project was initiated in 1960 and work on
the dam and the canals has been intermittent. The incompletion
of the dam and the lack of political will to complete the
project is often.pointed out by the local people as an example
of the marginal position that Bijapur occupies.

CHAPTER III: LIPE IN THE BLACK LAND

1.

The 1981 population was 3066 and the electoral roll for the
1989 general elections listed a total of 1412 eligible persons
(above the age of eighteen). With a 2.4 percent average
annual population growth (as per estimates for India as a
whole) and the increase in the size of households and number
of households, I estimate a total of approximately 5000
persons for the village as a whole.

In 1950 the state of Karnataka passed the Abolition of
Vatandar Act (1950) which removed hereditary positions at the
village level. Elections for the positions of the newly re-
organized Panchayat System were made mandatory.

One khurige is equal to four acres.

5.

243

Agrestic servitude in the district as in many parts of the
state is called jeetha and was based on annual payment of
fixed sums of money or grains to persons who» did domestic and
agricultural work for a particular sum. The 1981 Bijapur
District Gazetteer refers to such work as "annual servants"
missing the element of servitude and bondage associated with
these employment relations.

The Lambani are classified as tribals in the state of
Karnataka.

CHAPTER IV: SEEING APPROPRIATENESS

1.

I deliberately denote these practices and knowledge systems as
"precepts" to emphasize the integration of conceptual
categorization and actions. An exhaustive definition of
precept has recently been made by Brackette Williams (1991):
"Precepts are rules and standards often expressed in
principles, maxims, or proverbs, that declare the world to be
of a certain composition and to work in a certain way" (174).

Land measurements are made in terms of khariga, one khurige
being equal to four acres. Measurements of grains by weight
are not popular, and domestic and village level transactions
are conducted in terms of volume of grains. One saliga of
wheat and sorghum is equal to two kilograms. One gheela
(sack) of grains usually holds about sixty kilograms of
sorghum or wheat.

"Akki thindavaru hakki. Jola thindavaru thola."

The differences between substantialism and substantivism must
be noted. Barnett and Silverman (1979) note the importance
acceded to natural substances in some cultures and consider
them to be instances of substantialized symbolism, where
substances that are significant to people are thought to be
internal to or‘continous with their being; ,Perlin (1988) uses
the term "substantivism" to refer to those ideologies or
orders where the cultural and material are coeval in the same
setting. As differing from "substantialism" where the
emphasis is on the contextual and non-dualistic significance
of actions and actors, substantivism as used by Perlin is the
alter side of ideologies and orders that are purely
instrumental.

Literature that refers to non-modern, dry agriculture as
"subsistence-oriented" and "risk-aversive" are represented by
studies such as those by Ryan (1977).

"Nam ura raithana bele hulisu" is the saying.

7.

10.

11.

244

Mada; lands are not considered as important as the yara and
the crops grown on the ya;_. Hence the fertility rites for
the mafia; lands are not celebrated very grandly.

”Yell amavasege yaru karedidavaru ella?"

Huligya is a local deity whose function is confined to grain
yards. Kalburgi (1988) classifies Huligya as one of the
local, popular deities of the North Karnataka belt.

Men who are considered to be lazy or wayward are also refered
to as such.

Literature on agriculture in the arid and semi-arid.regions in
Africa documents the efficiency of local dry cultivation.
Some of these studies have been those by Frank and Chasin

(1980), Watts (1983), Richards and Heathcote (1983).

CHAPTER V : CALLING THE RAINS

1.

Rainlore in the district, as in many of the agricultural
regions of India, is rich with details of associating
different seasons with different rains, their
characteristics pertaining to agricultural use, and to
human moods and conditions. See Desai (1963) for
details on rainlore in Gujarat.

The pantheon of pastoral deities in the region closely
co-incides with that found in western India in general.
Each deity is associated with specific characteristics,-
focusing on functions such as ability to bring rains,
maintain fertility of land and humans etc (Sontheimer
1989).

Muharram, the Islamic festival that celebrates the
martrydom of Ali, is a popular festival in Bijapur with
its significant number of Muslims. Based on the Islamic
lunar calendar, the festival occurs at different times of
the year. Inspite of this variation in its occurence, a
"rain-crop" prophesy is held in villages that have a
dargah and a good proportion of Muslims. These festivals
are excellent examples of religous syncretism.

According to the rainman Sri. Mahapurusha Maleyappa, the
rain center at Murnal is supposed to have been built
by the Adil Shahi King in the 14th or early 15th century.

7.

8.

245

In appealing for food the Jokumara song contains phrases
such as "Begging for coconut, he screams my Jokumara]
Give my Jokumara a coconut/ Begging for butter, he cries
my Jokumara,/Give my Jokumara butter/ begging for roti
(bread) he beats his stomach/ Give my Jokumar bread".

The konji-korava are a nomadic group of people who are
recognized as hunters, fortune-tellers, and basket
makers. They are credited with the ability to divine
the future and the word korava is considered to be
derived from Lara which means to divine (Nanjundayya and
Iyer 1928).

For details of these "agriculturists rains" and their
associated characteristics see Appendix C.

Thurston (1912) writes of reports from Tamil Nadu in
which an effigy of the King was burned during droughts.

Several songs, including the "drumsongs" (dolliaa pada)
of the shepherds are about men who had provided
sustenance during crises such as plaques and droughts.

10.The village and the person refered to in this song were

supposed to have existed in Bijapur.

11.See Choksey (1966) for an analysis and description of

the collapse of village public resources in the
Bombay,Deccan.

CHAPTER VI: AN ENEMY LIKE THE STOMACH

The saying in Kannada is "Hote antha vairi ella".

Each caste group has its own deity that corresponds to
the functions that the caste performs.

The palaga system in Maharashtra is siliar to that of the
aya system and may have evolved from similiar conditions.
Like the aya system, the paluta (grain payments) system
consists of grain transactions from all the landed
households to certain members of the artisan, service,
and ritual specialist castes in the village (Kulkarni
1967).

Amokshiddha is a pastoral deity and is the main deity in
the village of Madbhavi.

One sack is equal to about 60 kilograms of grains.

6.

7.

246

The summer agricultural cycle does not create a demand
for labor as the aagQi lands are mostly owner cultivated
and do not require much labor. Hence the July-August is
a particularly stressful period.

See for example Epstein (1967), Greenough (1982), and
Spitz (1980).

CHAPTER VII: BECOMING SYSTEM

1.

5.

For literature on the risk-aversive attitudes and low
productivity of dry agriculture see Binswanger (1978),
Ryan (1977).

The deference that Bijapur's agriculturists accord to
Agricultural Assistants cannot be generalised to India.
Dr. Charles Morrison (personal communication) points out
that in the Punjab, agriculturists often ridiculed the
Extension Service Agents. I have observed this in other
wet belts of India where agricultural productivity is
higher and agriculturists are not under the dictats of
the Extension Service. This confirms my observation that
productivity is the most significant basis of regional
evaluations.

The Farmers Training Center (FTC) for Bijapur district is
located in the town of Jamkhandi. Ten-day agricultural
training sessions are held at the center for men and
women from different villages in the district. The
training is conducted separately for men and women, who
also receive free food and boarding in the center during
the training. I joined one of these sessions in the month
of September in 1990 and was able to interview many of
the women trainees and the officers in charge of the
training.

The worship of all implements and in fact of all objects
of production is elaborated and heightened during ayuga
puja, which is associated with an ancient tradition of
worshipping weapons.

Agriculturists' and village residents' descriptions of
hybrid seeds as weak, delicate, and unhealthy
correspond to agronomic research that indicates hybrids
to be less drought resistant, dependent on inputs like
inorganic fertilizers, and of lower nutritional value
than organic grains.

Laboratory-based studies that criticize hybridization
policies for having led to the depletion
of the protein content of organic grains contributed to

247

what has been labelled as the "protein gap" theory and
continue to be polemical. Lipton and Longhurst (1985)
contest such criticisms and advocate the use and
promotion of these high yeilding hybrid varieties as they
claim them to provide more calories by being cheaper and
available in more quantities to people.

This song is from Karadi's (1989) collection of songs
and poems from and about the region.

CHAPTER VIII : A HYBRID DROUGHT TO COME

1.

2.

Alaab is the kannada syncopation for Ali ya habba,

meaning Ali's festival, and refers to Muharram.

Kala-jnaaa literally means "knowledge of the time" and
refers to the prophesying conducted by certain Magga in
the districts of Gulbarga and Bijapur.

This method of assessing crops and rainfall in terms of
ratios is the Annavagi system. Estimates of crop

yields are made by visual assessment in terms of the
value of crops in annas, a part of the old currency. The
maximum is usually ten annas.and the same assessment is
used in the prophesying of rains and crops.

This flyer was produced and distributed by the District
Agricultural Office, Bijapur.

This poem was sent to me by Hanumant Halangalli, who had
assisted me in the field during the period of July to
December 1990.

The flyer was distributed in the villages by the
Agricultural Assistants.

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