The binaries that once undergirded classical agrarian questions – between the urban and the rural, capitalist and non-capitalist, peasant and proletariat – have become destabilized with market liberalization, peasant differentiation, semi-proletarianization, and “footloose” migrant labouring, among other processes. The climate crisis, feminisms and Dalit movements also demand that we consider ecology, patriarchy and casteism as central to agrarian questions in South Asia.

But old and new issues are occasionally converging in contemporary rural contestations. Struggles against land grabs, privatization and market expansion are being coupled with movements pushing for food sovereignty, the rights of agrarian labour, the conservation of agro-ecologies, and an end to gender and caste-based forms of violence. 

In collaboration with the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI)–South Asia, Jamhoor presents a special issue on crisis and contestation in rural South Asia. Bringing together scholars, journalists and activists, we examine shifting agrarian dynamics, as well as current struggles around land, gender, caste, and markets, in order to ask: what might rural emancipation look like in South Asia?

India’s farmers’ protests has re-centered the countryside in global headlines. Yet much of the attention has focused on spectacular aspects of the protests – the speeches, the tractor rallies, the assemblies, the storming of Delhi’s Red Fort and so forth. Photojournalist Varinder Maddoke gives recognition to the mundane and everyday infrastructures built by the movement. He captures the homes, the offices, the libraries, and the communal kitchens that constituted the almost 13 kilometer “city of protest” erected on the borders of Delhi. We also publish a translation of an essay by Pavel Kussa, editor of the Punjabi Marxist magazine Surkh Leeh and coordinator of the Bharatiya Kissan Union (Ekta Ugrahan), a leading organization in the protests. Following the repeal of the farm laws, Kussa reflects on the victory and its implications, both for the Modi regime and the farmers’ movement. 

Agrarian crises are variably entrenching and altering gendered relations of production and reproduction in the region. Yathursha Ulakentheran, Suganya Kandeepan and Shafiya Rafaithu analyze how rural women navigate class, caste, gender, and religious discrimination to access land and livelihoods amidst the reconstruction of post-war Northern Sri Lanka. We then move to Indian Punjab, where Monica Sabharwal and Jatinder Singh discuss how women and Dalits have asserted their interests in the largely Jat and male-led Indian farmers’ movement. This invites a reflection on the gendered and caste contradictions of agrarian protest in South Asia more broadly. 

Land struggles have been central to rural politics in South Asia for decades, though their dynamics, forms and orientations have changed. Noaman Ali reflects on the lessons of this history for contemporary land struggles in Pakistan, especially those confronting real-estatization in peri-urban parts of the country. By juxtaposing communist-led land-to-the-tiller struggles in 1970s Pakistan with current movements against the Ravi Urban Development Authority, Ali explores the prospects and limits of redistributive land politics. Reflecting on recent land conflicts in Northern Sri Lanka, Mahendran Thiruvarangan, an activist with the People's Alliance for Land Rights, argues that caste, ethnicity, class and gender are key to understanding the fault-lines of these contestations. Moreover, he shows how militarization and archeology have combined to justify land grabs under the garb of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism.

The issue also features in-depth interviews with two veteran rural activists. Menaha Kandaswamy, the first woman to serve as President and General Secretary of the Ceylon Plantation Workers’ Union, speaks to Hashim bin Rashid and Shafiya Rafaithu about the challenges of doing politics in and around Sri Lanka’s plantations. She discusses the history of plantations in the country, struggles around their privatization and nationalization, and the changing nature of capitalist investments in them. She also speaks about insurgent politics on plantations, including the struggles of plantation workers’ unions, the need for cultivating women’s leadership, and the importance of building a transnational movement. Sara Abraham speaks with Ranjana Padhi, a researcher and activist from Odisha. Padhi reflects on her political trajectory, including her early involvement in autonomous women’s movements in Delhi, research and activism among debt-stricken farmers in Punjab, and recent engagements with anti-dispossession struggles in Odisha.

Our issue closes by considering the prospects for an emancipatory rural politics in South Asia. Hashim bin Rashid identifies four key axes of agrarian agitation today: over markets, land, labour and ecology. He also considers how various differences – of class, gender, caste, party and ideological affiliation – must be navigated to generate those rural solidarities necessary for emancipation.

There remain, of course, many more facets to agrarian change in South Asia to discuss, understand, and challenge – a task we remain committed to. We hope you enjoy reading the issue and look forward to your feedback.

In solidarity, 

Jamhoor and ERPI-South Asia

Art by @junaina_muhammed of Young Socialist Artists.

Issue VI: Crisis and Contestation in Rural South Asia