Shetkaryaca Asud (The Whipcord of the Cultivators)

“Without education wisdom was lost; without wisdom morals were lost; without morals development was lost; without development wealth was lost; without wealth the Shudras were ruined; so much has happened through lack of education” – says the Introduction to Shetkaryaca Asud, a book by Jotirao Phule, published in Marathi in 1881. This is an English translation by Gail Omvedt (scholar, sociologist and activist) and Bharat Patankar (writer and activist).Phule was a social reformer who fought against untouchability and the exploitation of landless labourers. He was born on April 11, 1827, in Khatgun villiage in Maharashtra’s Satara district, and belonged to the Mali community – now officially listed as an Other Backward Class in Maharashtra. He founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, the ‘Truthseekers society’, in 1875.This is one of Phule’s three books – the others are Gulamgiri or Slavery and Sarvajanik Satya Dharm Pustak or the Book of the Universal Religion of Truth.In Shetkaryaca Asud, Phule writes about the ritualistic and bureaucratic mechanisms developed by Brahmins and the colonial bureaucracy to oppress the Shudra peasantry, how ‘Arya Brahmans’ migrated from Iran, and the condition of farmers and agriculture. He mainly refers to three cultivator caste groups – Malis, Kunbis and Dhangars (each of these is now listed as an OBC). And he makes recommendations to the colonial government.In Chapter 1 of five chapters, the author explores the social and economic exploitation of Shudra farmers by the ‘Bhat Brahmans’ through their ‘crafty’ religious rituals. Spanning menstruation, marriage, death and various other events, these rituals divert the farmers’ resources towards the ‘Brahmans’ and their attention away from their own impoverishment. Phule writes: “The farmers who have been kept ignorant for generations are so much exploited of their time and wealth by the Bhat-Brahmans that they have no vigor left to send their small children to school.”Phule discusses the role of the colonial government in allowing the Shudras to be impoverished in Chapter 2...