all of this: for the last three years, they have been stopping every job-stealing tractor in its tracks, standing in front of it, screaming their choicest abuses. Thelandlords punish these shrill-voiced women by stripping them almost naked and tying them to trees and whipping them in front of the whole village. The police punish them by making them kneel and walk a few miles on their knees until they have no choice but to crawl. These blows do not break them. They are bold beyond the bruised skin and the bleeding knee.
Since the stage is set, the stuntmen move in. The fear of violence makes the people of the cheri flee. The landlords lead from the front lines. They take turns in their attacks, a code of honour that allows them to swap and circulate their rowdies and create uniform dread. They select the poorest cheri s under their spheres of influence and pillage them. When they are on the rampage, they see no shame in looting from their own servants. They take away the goats and chickens and the brass vessels and all the small scraps of paper money that the women have carefully hidden inside. They steal all the stores of paddy. Sometimes, just out of spite, they burn roofs and clothes and they even spill the little salt they find. When the people of the cheri return, they are forced to start all over again.
When such things happen, the knee-jerk reaction of the people of the cheri is to go to the police. But they know that the policemen also practise untouchability: they haveseen how the police have filed false cases against them, how the police are nothing but a private army on the payroll of the landlords, how the police are waiting for their own revenge. The police, as puppets of the ruling classes, will not make the law work for the poor. So the people go to the party. Depending on the grievousness of the situation, the party sends out petitions, pastes posters, organizes public meetings and stages protests.
Police raids on the cheri are timed affairs. Pre-dawn heist, operation high-noon, or the late-night show: when the people are unprepared and can be swooped down upon and stashed into police trucks. Today the vans of the Madras Special Police come and pick up all the able-bodied men in this cheri . They will be able to return home three months later. Today, the Kisan Deputy Superindent of Police at Tanjore decides to send policemen to stand guard to the imported labourers anywhere in the district. Today, the local police handcuff the local Communist leader and drag him through the village as if he were an animal, as if this would frighten the people away from the red flag. This keeps the people away from the police. This draws them closer to the party.
How not to expect militancy from men who wake up before sunrise, wear nothing more than a loincloth, walk in lineevery daybreak, wash their faces from any puddle of water, brush their teeth with red brick and are the colour of the earth they work? How not to expect anger from women whose friendliest banter involves swearing to cut off each otherâs cunts? How long will a people hold their patience when they earn their daily meal after sunset and have to hurry home to drop the handfuls of paddy into smouldering ash, wait for its wetness to waft away and then pound the grains and cook the dehusked rice into a formless congee that is never enough to douse their endless hunger? How can there be satisfaction, contentment, pleasure or the pursuit of happiness when women have to wake up every morning with a prayer that there is some tamarind, some dried chilli and half an onion in the home, anything to make the burning, red-hot chutney that can be licked from their fingers to let them tolerate the tastelessness of the leftover rice? Could the sight of a copper coin every week soften these womenâs curses? Just because they are paid kallukkaasu , a regular ration for drinking arrack, would their men give up on anger? In a land where the bullock walks of its own
Since the stage is set, the stuntmen move in. The fear of violence makes the people of the cheri flee. The landlords lead from the front lines. They take turns in their attacks, a code of honour that allows them to swap and circulate their rowdies and create uniform dread. They select the poorest cheri s under their spheres of influence and pillage them. When they are on the rampage, they see no shame in looting from their own servants. They take away the goats and chickens and the brass vessels and all the small scraps of paper money that the women have carefully hidden inside. They steal all the stores of paddy. Sometimes, just out of spite, they burn roofs and clothes and they even spill the little salt they find. When the people of the cheri return, they are forced to start all over again.
When such things happen, the knee-jerk reaction of the people of the cheri is to go to the police. But they know that the policemen also practise untouchability: they haveseen how the police have filed false cases against them, how the police are nothing but a private army on the payroll of the landlords, how the police are waiting for their own revenge. The police, as puppets of the ruling classes, will not make the law work for the poor. So the people go to the party. Depending on the grievousness of the situation, the party sends out petitions, pastes posters, organizes public meetings and stages protests.
Police raids on the cheri are timed affairs. Pre-dawn heist, operation high-noon, or the late-night show: when the people are unprepared and can be swooped down upon and stashed into police trucks. Today the vans of the Madras Special Police come and pick up all the able-bodied men in this cheri . They will be able to return home three months later. Today, the Kisan Deputy Superindent of Police at Tanjore decides to send policemen to stand guard to the imported labourers anywhere in the district. Today, the local police handcuff the local Communist leader and drag him through the village as if he were an animal, as if this would frighten the people away from the red flag. This keeps the people away from the police. This draws them closer to the party.
How not to expect militancy from men who wake up before sunrise, wear nothing more than a loincloth, walk in lineevery daybreak, wash their faces from any puddle of water, brush their teeth with red brick and are the colour of the earth they work? How not to expect anger from women whose friendliest banter involves swearing to cut off each otherâs cunts? How long will a people hold their patience when they earn their daily meal after sunset and have to hurry home to drop the handfuls of paddy into smouldering ash, wait for its wetness to waft away and then pound the grains and cook the dehusked rice into a formless congee that is never enough to douse their endless hunger? How can there be satisfaction, contentment, pleasure or the pursuit of happiness when women have to wake up every morning with a prayer that there is some tamarind, some dried chilli and half an onion in the home, anything to make the burning, red-hot chutney that can be licked from their fingers to let them tolerate the tastelessness of the leftover rice? Could the sight of a copper coin every week soften these womenâs curses? Just because they are paid kallukkaasu , a regular ration for drinking arrack, would their men give up on anger? In a land where the bullock walks of its own
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