Land, labour and migrations: understanding Kerala’s economic modernity

Abstract

This paper seeks to map out the historical trajectory leading to a series of migrations in and from the erstwhile princely state of Travancore during 1900-70 in order to acquire and bring land under cultivation. It argues that these migrations undertaken with a moralistic and paternal mission of reclaiming ‘empty’ spaces into productive locations were a result of a specific form of economic modernity in Kerala as beckoned by colonialism and appropriated by a resolute local agency through a process of translation. The attempt is to disentangle the intertwining history of colonialism, capital and ‘native’ agency and thereby to capture the complex circumstances that unleashed a new discourse of development with land and hard work at the centre of its scheme. The transition was facilitated by a conforming social imaginary that not only dissented radically with the idea of leaving landscape empty and being idle but also advocated passionately the idea of using the opulent natural resources for the development of the self and the nation. Leading the transition the Syrian Christians were successful in wielding a new subjectivity of development with a specific authority over the modernity of Kerala as purogamana karshakar (forward-looking peasants).