THE ECONOMIC WEEKLY
September 10, 1 9 6 0
The Myth of Self-Sufficiency
Of the I n d i a n Village
M N Srinivas and A M Shah
THE
idea of the isolation and selfsufficiency of the I n d i a n village
was first propounded by Sir Charles
Metcalfe in 1830, and 'since then it
has had distinguished
supporters,
scholars as well as politicians. Sir
Henry M a i n e and K a r l M a r x supported the idea, and in recent times,
M a h a t m a Gandhi and his followers
not only stated that I n d i a n village
was t r a d i t i o n a l l y self-sufficient but
also wanted a p o l i t i c a l p r o g r a m m e
w h i c h would restore to these villages
their pristine self-sufficiency.
We
make no apology for g i v i n g below a
lengthy quotation from Sir Charles
Metcalfe's w r i t i n g in which he propounds his famous theory of the selfsufficiency and v i t a l i t y of the I n d i a n
village:
"The village communities are little
republics, having nearly everything
that they want w i t h i n themselves, and
almost independent of any f o r e i g n
relations. They seem to last where
nothing else lasts.
Dynasty after
dynasty tumbles d o w n ; revolution
succeeds to r e v o l u t i o n ;
Hindoo.
Pathan. M o g h u l . Mahratta. S i k h ,
English. are all masters in t u r n , but
the village communities remain the
same. In times of trouble they a r m
and fortify themselves: a hostile
a r m y passes
through the c o u n t r y :
the village communities collect their
cattle w i t h i n their walls and let the
enemy pass unprovoked. If plunder
and devastation he directed against
themselves, and the force employed
be irresistible, they flee to friendly
villages at a distance; but when the
storm has passed over, they return
and resume their occupations. If a
country remain for a series of years
the scene of continued pillage and
massacre, so that the villages cannot
be inhabited, the scattered villagers
nevertheless return
whenever the
power of peaceable possession revives. A generation may pass away,
but the succeeding generation w i l l
return.
The sons w i l l take the
places of their fathers; the same site
for the village, the same positions
for the houses, the same lands, w i l l
be reoccupied by the descendants of
those who were d r i v e n out when the
village was depopulated; and it is
not a t r i f l i n g matter that w i l l drive
them out, for they w i l l often maintain their post through times of dis-
turbance and convulsion, and acquire
strength sufficient to resist pillage
and oppression w i t h success".
MAINE, TO MARX
About forty years later. Sir Henry
Maine revived the idea of the self
sufficiency of the I n d i a n village:
"For
the most part, the I n d i a n
village communities have always
submitted without resistance to oppression by monarchs surrounded
by mercenary armies . . . .
I. have
several times spoken of them as organised and self-acting. They, in
fact. include a nearly complete
establishment of
occupations and
trades for enabling them to continue
their collective life without assistance f r o m any person or body externa) to them"2
K a r l M a r x , from whom one could
have expected a departure f r o m the
conventional view, also popularised
the concept of village self-sufficiency:
" U n d e r this form of m u n i c i p a l
government, the inhabitants of the
country have lived f r o m time immem o r i a l . The boundaries of the village have been but seldom altered,
and though the villages themselves
have been sometimes i n j u r e d and
even desolated by war. famine and
disease, the same name, the same
limits, the same interests, and even
the same families have contributed
for ages.
The inhabitants gave
themselves no trouble about the
breaking up and the d i v i s i o n of
k i n g d o m s ; while the village remains
entire, they care not to what power
it is transferred or to what sovereign
it devolves: its internal economy
remains
unchanged."
sociologists have
made
intensive
studies of village communities in
different: parts of I n d i a and in some
areas they have been lucky enough
to come across historical data. The
picture that emerges f r o m these data
is that while roads, especially intervillage roads, were very poorly developed, while monelization of the
rural economy was m i n i m a l , and
w h i l e the locally dominant caste
could lay down the law on many
matters, the village was always a
part of a wider economic, p o l i t i c a l
and religious system. The appearance of isolation, autonomy and selfsufficiency was only an illusion.
In some parts of the country like
coastal
Kerala. Coorg. highland
Gujarat
and elsewhere nucleated
villages do not exist. The "village'
in these areas consists of a number
of distinct farms w i t h every owner
of a farm or his representative l i v i n g
on his f a r m . The dispersed village is
not a clear, architectural entity like
the nucleated village. There, is no
clear boundary between one village
and another.
The members l i v i n g
in it are served by artisan and serv i c i n g castes f r o m several dispersed
villages. That is. each artisan caste
serves a distinct group of villages,
and the village may be represented
by a series of partially overlapping
circles"
The administrative and 'social'
villages are not always identical
even in areas w i t h nucleated settlements.
An administrative village
occasionally includes more than one
social village while a social v i l l a g e
is more rarely d i v i d e d into more
than one administrative village.
AGNATES DISPERSED
PART OF WIDER SYSTEM
When an idea is over a hundred
years old and is advocated by thinkers as diverse as Maine and M a r x it
nearly acquires the status of a
dogma. Unti recently, most writers
on rural India look for granted the
idea of village autonomy and autark y . This has resulted in f a l s i f y i n g
the true nature of the I n d i a n village
' c o m m u n i t y , and has provided a
basis for revivalists' and Utopians"
programme of political action.
It
is o n l y in the last twenty years or
so that trained anthropologists and
1375
A village is a vertical unit coin
posed of sections of various castew h i l e a caste is a horizontal unit
made up of different sections l i v i n g
in several neighbouring villages.
The members of a caste l i v i n g in a
village are bound by ties of kinship,
marriage, economic obligations, and
membership of caste
panchavat
w i t h their caste-fellows in other
villages.
Even
in south
India
where cross-cousin and crossmneleniece marriages are preferred, the
marriage field for a rural caste ineludes at least twenty to t h i r t y v i l -
September
THE ECONOMIC WEEKLY
10, 1960
lages. The field is much bigger in
n o r t h I n d i a where relatives are not
preferred for marriage.
I n addit i o n , there is village exogamy and
occasionally,
village
hypergamy.
That is. a man may not m a r r y a
g i r l of his own village, and he is
not permitted to give his sister or
daughter in marriage to the village
f r o m w h i c h he has obtained a wife.
The marriage circle in the north i n cludes two or three hundred villages.
The members of an agnatic clan
are often found dispersed in several
villages. T h i s is specially true of
some" parts of north I n d i a where
members of the locally dominant
caste residing in several neighbouri n g villages are agnatieally related
to each other. Close ties exist between such groups. S i m i l a r l y , dose
ties also exist between those members of a caste who live in towns and
others who live in villages.
This
is specially true of the 'twice born
castes.
The fact that villages are usually
multicaste in composition is point
ed out as evidence of self-suflieienev
of villages. But even big villages,
villages w i t h over a thousand people, do not contain all the necessary
castes whereas nearly two thirds of
India's villages have a strength of
less than five hundred each.
WEEKLY
MARKETS
There are also single-caste M i lages.
Where these villages are of
artisans, they sell their goods in
nearby towns, or more frequently,
in the weekly markets. The latter
are an eloquent testimony to the
Indian village's lack of self-sufficiency. They also imply a certain
amount of monetizalion of the economy which in t u r n means that the
village was part of a wider politicoeconomic system.
Weekly markets again vary in
their range.
Some are patronised
by people l i v i n g in a few neighbouring villages while others are patronised by people spread over a wide
area. Occasionally, there is also a
certain amount of specialisation in
weekly markets: one
market is
famous for trade in cattle, another
in sheep and p o u l t r y , a t h i r d in
woollen blankets, and so on. P i l g r i mages also take the villager beyond
the village, and occasionally into a
different language area. The periodical festival of a deity attracts devotee.- and others from nearby vil
lages,
and a bazaar springs up
around the temples. The prospect
of b u y i n g and selling at the festival
is as strong an attraction as the religious one. There are fairs w h i c h
are famous for the sale of cattle,
and nowadays, cattle are moved by
l o r r y a distance of two or three
hundred miles to reach a fair. Such
fairs occur all over the country and
they reveal the fact that the peasant s social and economic universe
is very much wider than his village.
PATTERN OF LAND OWNERSHIP
The pattern of land-ownership,
tenancy and labour frequently cuts
across the village. The land w h i c h
is included w i t h i n the boundary of
an official or administrative village
is not always owned by those resident in it. Some of the land is usua l l y owned by people in neighbouri n g villages or towns. D u r i n g the
last hundred years or more, there
has come into existence a class of
absentee landowners, of people who
reside in towns but own land in
villages.
Again, members of a village are
c o m m o n l y found to own some land
in n e i g h b o u r i n g villages. Even tenants and labourers are occasionally
found c u l t i v a t i n g land l y i n g in another village.
fn some i r r i g a t e d
areas where the density of population is high, it is not unknown for a
tenant to cultivate land l y i n g six
or seven miles from where he is
staying.
canopies, carpets and cotton tape,
w h i c h were manufactured mostly by
u r b a n artisans but the raw materials;
for w h i c h were supplied by v i l l a g ers; secondly; goods such as precious stones w h i c h were manufactured
by urban artisans f r o m indigenous
minerals; and t h i r d l y , goods such
as silk cloth and objects of metal
and i v o r y w h i c h were manufactured
by urban artisans f r o m i m p o r t e d
raw materials."
INTER-REGIONAL
TRADE
The inter-regional trade of the
country also included the exchange
of a g r i c u l t u r a l and forest produce.
Gujarat, for instance, received a
considerable quantity of wheat and
o p i u m f r o m M a l w a , rice and coconuts from the K o n k a n , sugar f r o m
Bengal,
and groceries
and drugs
f r o m the H i m a l a y a n regions. 6 W i t h i n
Gujarat itself there was local specialisation in the matter of crops,
and there was m u c h exchange of
a g r i c u l t u r a l produce between different areas. W h i l e indigo and tobacco were grown in central Gujarat,
sugarcane was g r o w n in south Gujarat. The local produce was transported over land as well as water.
There was a great deal of trade
along the coast of Gujarat. Saurashtra and K u l c h . 7 Finally, even in the
same locality villages supplied severaI consumption goods to towns.
It is often assumed that trade and
commerce d i d not touch villages in
I n d i a . This assumption was perhaps true only of villages in the
t r i b a l areas. In the non-tribal areas,
however, village economy has for a
long time been integrated in varyi n g degree w i t h regional, national
and even
international trade and
commerce, in certain regions, such
as Gujarat, and the Kerala and
Coromandel coasts, there was a h i g h
degree of integration of village economy w i t h the economy of the wider
world.
These
coastal areas had
m a r i t i m e commerce with overseas
countries since at least the beginn i n g of the Christian' era.
In brief, most villages in Plains
Gujarat sent out some c o m m o d i t y or
other to the wider market.
They
received in return various goods
such as salt, spices, groceries, certain kinds of cloth, metals, metab
objects, household goods, and ornaments. The dependence of the v i l lager on the outside w o r l d was visible p a r t i c u l a r l y d u r i n g the rites des
passage, the periodical festivals and
other ritual occasions. The villager
purchased the goods he wanted f r o m
the village shopkeeper, f r o m the
peripatetic trader or artisan, and at
fairs and weekly markets. According to available records there was
at least one shopkeeper in every
village w i t h a population of 500 or
more in central Gujarat at the beg i n n i n g of the nineteenth century.'
The exports of Gujarat included,
for instance, a g r i c u l t u r a l and forest
produce as well as finished goods.
In the former category may be mentioned indigo, cotton, wheat, rice,
tobacco, edible o i l , ghee, honev, lac.
hides, dried ginger and myrobalan.
In the latter category there were
goods of three k i n d s : firstly, goods
such as cotton cloth, yarn, cushions.
The villagers also depended upon
towns for certain specialized services. Whenever they wanted to b u i l d
a brick-and-mortar structure, whether it was a d w e l l i n g house, a well
a hospice (dharmasala). a village
meeting house
( chavadi).
or
a
pigeon-tower ( c h a b u t u r i ) . they had
EXTERNAL
TRADE
1376
DEPENDENCE ON
TOWNS
THE ECONOMIC WEEKLY
September 10, 1960
t o call i n brick-layers and limeworkers f r o m nearby towns. T h e y
also get their g o l d and silver ornaments made by a town s m i t h .
T h o u g h m u d pots and pans were
p o p u l a r in the house, the few metal
vessels w h i c h were in use, and the
immense metal utensils for cooking
c o m m u n i t y dinners, were bought
and repaired in the town.
The florist, the t a i l o r , the washerman, the
vahivancha (genealogist)
and the
grain
parcher were all to be
f o u n d o n l y in the towns and very
large villages.
T h e lower-level a u t h o r i t y acknowledged the supremacy of the higher
a u t h o r i t y when he paid t r i b u t e , and
declared his independence f r o m the
latter when he stopped payment.
There was a c o n t i n u u m of power
relations f r o m the lowest to the
highest levels, and changes at each
level were followed by changes at
the other levels. In 'orthodox' histories changes at the h i g h e r levels
are said to be the cause of change
at lower levels, but not the other
way about,
In this connection, it is necessary
to stress the importance of regional
economic history, a field w h i c h is as
i m p o r t a n t as it is neglected.
The
study of economic history on a regional basis w i l l tell us how the v i l lage was related to the w i d e r econ o m y — n a t i o n a l as well as internat i o n a l — i n different parts o f I n d i a .
F o r instance, the A m e r i c a n C i v i l
W a r resulted in the stoppage of the
supply of raw cotton to the factories
in Lancashire, and this resulted in
India's b e c o m i n g an exporter of raw
cotton to B r i t a i n . Cotton b r o u g h t
prosperity to peasants in Gujarat
and in the f o r m e r Central P r o v i n ces, w h i c h in t u r n led to several
changes in the social and economic
life of the people.
Some peasants
in the Central Provinces used silver
in their ploughs and bullock-carts
to tell their friends they had
"arrived'.
Before the conquest of Gujarat by
the M u s l i m s i n thirteenth century,
the Rajputs were a d o m i n a n t caste
over the entire region and R a j p u t
chieftains were to be found everywhere. 1 0 W h e n the M u s l i m conquerors removed the sovereign k i n g of
Gujarat a l l the lower chieftains
fought the M u s l i m s .
The Persian
chronicles,
Mirat - i - Sikandari,11
Mirat'i-Ahmadi12 and
Ferista1
bear
eloquent testimony to the relentless
fight put up by the local R a j p u t
chieftains (called Girasiyas) and
their allies, the K o l i chieftains, for
over 400 years.
It was o n l y in
central Gujarat, in the region around
the capital city of A h m e d a b a d , the
centre of M u s l i m power, that the
Muslims were able to control the
Rajputs. Three-fourths of the landed estate of each Rajput was confiscated and turned i n t o khalsa or
c r o w n land. T h i s marked the beginn i n g of change in the position of
Patidars. the. great peasant caste of
central Gujarat, vis-a-vis the Rajputs.
P O L I T I C A L STRUCTURE
The assumption that the I n d i a n
village c o m m u n i t y was not i n f l u enced by, and d i d not in t u r n i n f l u ence, the w i d e r p o l i t i c a l structure, is
also facile.
T h i s assumption is a
result of l o o k i n g only at the top and
not at the base of the p o l i t i c a l structure, a result of concentrating on
the history of k i n g s and generals and
not of the people.
At the village
or slightly higher level, there was
usually the d o m i n a n t
caste, the
members of w h i c h owned a good
deal of the available arable l a n d ,
and also wielded p o l i t i c a l power in
a d d i t i o n . Each
such caste had a
leader whose position was further
strengthened by ties of k i n s h i p and
affinity, and by his capacity to confer favours on his clients.
Such
chieftains stood at the base of the
p o l i t i c a l p y r a m i d everywhere i n
India.
A b o v e them was the Raja
or k i n g , the viceroy of an Emperor,
and the E m p e r o r himself, in ascendi n g order o f importance.
RAJPUTS AND M U S L I M S
The
decline in the
power and
wealth of the Rajputs was marked
by the rise to wealth of the Patidars. They exported i n d i g o , cotton
and other a g r i c u l t u r a l commodities,
and p r o v i d e d raw materials to urban
artisans for the manufacture of such
articles as cotton textiles. In course
of t i m e the Patidars acquired political power also.
It is interesting
to note that the Patidars were the
p r i n c i p a l supporters of the Marathas
d u r i n g the latters'
campaign in
Gujarat. 1 4 A n d g r a d u a l l y the Patidars asserted their r i t u a l superiority
to Rajputs. At the present moment,
Patidars do not accept water or
cooked food f r o m Rajputs.
W I N D S FROM W I T H O U T
We have already mentioned how
pilgrimages and festivals took the
villager to places beyond his o w n
village.
A p a r t f r o m this, his reli1377
g i o n embraced the whole of I n d i a ,
and at least the more knowledgeable villager had heard of Benaras,
the Ganges and the Himalayas. The
B r a h m i n priest was the visible representative of a l l - I n d i a or Sanskritic H i n d u i s m .
The i n s t i t u t i o n o f
Harikatha in w h i c h the priest read
and explained a religious story
f r o m the Ramayana or Mahabharata
or Bhagavata to the villagers enabled the latter to absorb a l l - I n d i a
H i n d u i s m . T h i s helped in the gradual Sanskritisation of the lower
castes and in m a k i n g villagers everywhere an effective p a r t of a l l - I n d i a
Hinduism.
T h e I n d i a n v i l l a g e was thus always a part of a w i d e r entity, subject to the winds w h i c h blew f r o m
w i t h o u t . The i n c r e d i b l y bad roads,
the heavy monsoon, the g r o w i n g of
food crops and vegetables, the existence of barter and the p o w e r f u l
sense of membership of the village
c o m m u n i t y have all given students
an i l l u s i o n of self-sufficiency and of
isolation. Rut it is only an i l l u s i o n
and the reality is quite different.
It is, of course, true that villages in
different parts of I n d i a were integrated in different degree w i t h the
w i d e r p o l i t i c a l , economic, k i n s h i p ,
religious and ethical structure, and
this is an i m p o r t a n t field for comparative research.
Further, it is a
field in w h i c h sociologists and historians have to cooperate.
N o t e s a n d References
2
3
4
6
Appendix to the
Report
from
the
Select
Committee
of
the
House of Commons on the Affairs of the East-India Company,
III— Revenue, ( L o n d o n , 1833),
p 470.
Village
Communities
in
the
East
and
West,
(London.
1 8 9 0 ) , pp 124-25.
Letters on India, ed B P L Bedi
and
Freda
Bedi.
(Lahore.
1 0 3 7 ) , pp 6-7,
See E r i e M i l l e r . "Caste and
T e r r i t o r y in M a l a b a r " , American Anthropologist, 56, ( 1 9 5 4 ) .
pp 410-20.
W H Schoff. translated and and
notated by. The Periplus of the
Erythraean
Sea,
(New
York.
1912), pp 39-42;
Gazetteer of
the
Bombay
Presidency,
Vol
VI (Bombay. 1880K pp 1879 8 ; Ral K r i s h n a ,
Commercial
Relations
between
India
and
England,
(London,
1924),
pp
12-17; W H M o r e l a n d India
at the Death of Akhar, ( L o n don. 1 9 2 0 ) , pp 196-245; id.
THE ECONOMIC WEEKLY
September 10, 1 9 6 0
From
Akbar
to
Auraflgzeb,
( L o n d o n , 1 9 2 3 ) , p p 52-136.
6
W H Moreland„
India at the
Death of Akbar , p 2 4 4 ; Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency,
V o l V I , p p 187-98.
7
See
chapters on " T r a d e and
M a n u f a c t u r e " and
"Places of
Interest"
in
Gazetteer of
the
Bombay
Presidency,
Vol
II
(Bombay,
1877);
Vol
III,
(Bombay,
1879);
Vol
IV,
(Bombay.
1879);
Vol
VI,
(Bombay,
1880);
Vol
VII,
(Bombay,
1883);
Vol
VIII,
(Bombay. 1884).
An import
ant source f o r the s t u d y of history o f local trade i n G u j a r a t
are account books and commercial
correspondence
preserved
b y merchant f a m i l i e s .
8
For a d e s c r i p t i o n of the records,
see A M Shah, " S o c i a l A n t h r o pology a n d the S t u d y of H i s t o rical Societies",
The
Economic
Weekly, Special
Number, July
1959, pp 953-62.
9
Seth
Leacock
and
David C
Mandelbaum.
"A
Nineteenth
Century Development Project in
I n d i a : the Cotton I m p r o v e m e n t
Program".
Economic
Developmerit and Cultural Change,
Vol
I I I , No 4, (July 1955), p 349;
Hiralal
Tribhuvandas Parekh,
Arvachin
Gujaratnun
Rekhadarshan.
Vol
II,
(Ahmedabad,
1 9 3 6 ) , p p 68-74.
10
A M Shah, " T h e V a h i v a n c h a
Barots of G u j a r a t ; a Caste of
Genealogists and
Mythographers"
in
Traditional India: Structure
and
Change,
ed
Milton
Singer,
(Philadelphia,
1959),
pp 52-58.
11
Sikandar ibn Muhammad,, translated
by Fazlullah
Lutfullah
F a r i d i , (Bombay, n.d.), p 239.
12
Ali Muhammad
K h a n , MiraUAhmadi:
Supplement,
translated by Syed N a w a b A l i and
Charles N o r m a n Sedon, ( B a r o da, 1 9 2 8 ) . p p 193-94.
13
M a h o m e d Kasirn F e r i s h t a
History of the Rise of the
MaHOmedan Power in India, translate d b y John B r i g g s , V o l I V ,
(Calcutta and L o n d o n . 1 9 1 0 ) ,
p 18.
14
Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, V o l V I I , p p 1 6 9 - 7 1 , 174,
1 8 7 ; C V Joshi, " T h e A m i n s of
Vaso",
Indian
Historical
Records
Commission,
Proceedings
of the
Meeting
of tlie
Silver
Jubilee
Session,
Vol
XXV,
Part I I . ( D e l h i , 1 9 4 9 ) , p p 17779.
Sleepers f o r I n d i a n R a i l w a y s
THE
i n i t i a l t r i a l s at the Sleeper
Plant o f D u r g a p u r Steelworks
were successfully c a r r i e d out last
week w h e n the sleepers were p r o duced f o r the first t i m e at the p l a n t
site.
T h i s p l a n t is designed to p r o duce sleepers f o r both b r o a d gauge
1378
a n d m e t r e gauge r a i l w a y s .
Sleeper bars are p r o d u c e d
in
the Continuous B i l l e t and Sleeper
B a r M i l l a n d cut t o length i n the
Sleeper P l a n t . A f t e r r e h e a t i n g , the
bars are shaped a n d p u n c h e d in a
250-ton press.
The
sleepers are
then descaled and cooled.