Conclusion

K.S. Madhavan Primary producing groups in early and early medieval Kerala:
Production process and historical roots of transition to castes (300-1300 CE)
Thesis. Department of History , University of Calicut, 2012
 Conclusion

As noted in the beginning of this study, l have tried to discuss in the previous
chapters the various aspects of the historical process of the formation of
primary producing groups in the early and early medieval Kerala. For this
purpose, I have problematised certain issues which have more historical
significance in the larger process of social formation in general and the
process of social stratification and the formation of hierarchy in particular.
The basic problem is related to the various forms of spatiality in which the
material production had taken place and on which the entire relation of human
beings with the animate nature developed. This is conceptualized as the
multiple economies in the study consisting of the life activities of hunting
gathering, punam cultivation, parambu and the wetland cultivation along with
the subsistence forms related to collection of forest produce, pasture lands,
and also coastal and marine resources. This has shown the incongruity of the
centrality of one economy, which is the wetland paddy economy, in the
sustenance of a material culture, in which multiple forms of life activities
developed to generate various forms of resources for the survival of
comparatively a sizable number of populations whose material existence and
life world unevenly developed.

Two historical contingent spatial and settlement entities that exited in

the early and early medieval period are the kuti and the r. Kutis must have
been developed from long historical past as settlement and occupational
entities. The kutimkkal of various clan groups engaged themselves in various
life activities in different micro-eco zones. Mullai Kurinchi region was
characterized by the practice of hunting gathering and shifting cultivation.
The fishing and salt manufacturing were confined to the littoral tracts. The
productive life activities were stepped up in chirukutis where the inhabitants

487
were engaged in hunting and gathering and the women were the gatherers
responsible for the instigation of agriculture practice. Women themselves
transformed from the gatherers to the cultivators. The cattle rearing and
punam cultivation, especially varaku, cultivation gave way to the agro-
pastoralism in which mother sex had important role in a pastoral cum
subsistence agriculture economy. Women became the active agents of
material production and they did almost all agriculture operations, especially
the cultivation of varaku and vegetables. They also made impetus to the
fusion of clan relations leading to clan exogamy by which the women helped
to include the other kinship descent groups.

The introduction of cattle drawn agriculture and hoe cultivation in the

punam cultivation enabled the men to dominate the multi crop cultivation and
the exchange of milk products helped them to control women. The gendered
division of labour and the gender relations represented the role and positions
assumed by both women and men in the period of classical Tamil texts. The
kalavu form of male and female relations was part of the clan exogamy in
which women had considerable power and position in the case of productive
life activities at their own disposal when they enjoyed the autonomy of their
biological reproduction. When the men assumed power over the material
production and the exchanges they also began to control women through the
practice of conjugal fidelity and the form of marriage called karpu which led
to the subordination of women and the clan endogamy became a form of
ideological mechanism which got institutionalized so as to practice the clan
endogamy in extended households as well.

The gendered division of labour that characterized the life world of the
kutis which became the base of the socio-economic and cultural life of the
people of the Mullai- Kurinchi region. Kinship determined the nature of life
activities in the kutis. The extended kin groups were divided on senior and

488
junior line and familial kin labour was the principal form of labour which
organized the production operations and the labour process. Cluster of the kuti
settlements constituted the r which was the most archaic settlement entity.
When the wealthy households appeared and patrilineal relations developed,
the senior male members also appeared to control the affairs of households.
Though the matrilocal settlements that had existed with kalavu form of male
and female relations receded, still the structure of matrilocality continued to
exist. The gender relations and the possession of material wealth in these
households began to be controlled by the elder male members. The matrilocal
extended households began to function to protect the male dominance through
female lines of succession and the patrilocality, which also institutionalized
the karpu form of marriage and male dominance.

The exchange and trade that developed the chiefs from the r
settlements and kutis were the resource base of the Vl chiefs who developed
from the chiefs. The Vl chiefs also developed from the kin groups in the kutis
and they made use of the physical power of the Marava / Mazhuva group who
were also living as kinship descent groups that developed from the process of
warfare between the r settlements on cattle lifting and booty capturing or
plunder raids. This feuds and conflicts between the Vl chiefs resulted in the
destruction and capturing of r settlements. This was one of the prime
reasons, in addition to natural calamities, for the migration of people to the
river valleys. The people who lived in the chirukutis and practiced the
shifting cultivation in the Mullai- Kurinchi areas migrated to the river valleys
and riparian region in the midlands involving the human movements and
development of communication networks. It resulted in the creation of
settlements near water sources and the formation of extensive cultivation area
in the major river valleys. The migrant settlers began to clear and reclaim the
biomass deposited and silted areas in the river valleys and the estuarine plains
leading to the formation of river valley agriculture and the mixed crop

489
cultivation in the laterite parambus indicating the trans- tinai nature of
settlements and cultivation process.

The productive land spaces for wetland agriculture came to be called

kazhani and vayal and organized form of paddy cultivation required efficient
water management and systematic preparation of land. Use of extensive water
management devices and efficient ground preparations made these lands
specific for wet land production operations. The people who subsisted on
cultivation in the lands so reclaimed / created were called rin vzhnar or
Uzhavar, people subsisted on plough agriculture. A number of water
harvesting structures and water management devices developed along with
the appropriation of nature for wetland agriculture. Cultivation of paddy,
sugarcane and other multi culture produces spread across the wetland area.
Multi culture operations in padappai and parambu made possible the further
spread of r settlements in the midland. The spread of mono crops and multi
culture cultivations resulted in the development of auxiliary occupations like
craft and metalwork and exchange of produces including the spices and forest
produces collected. A number of settlements or kuti formed part of an r
which was the most archaic and basic geographic unit in the Samgam age in
this region. The r is a locality where different lived spaces of various clans
are embedded. The r was subjected to transition in production of subsistence
and surplus and its re /distribution in each eco zone. A number of rs around
hills constituted a ntu within the forest or kdu, but there was no clear
distinction between ntu and kdu as the former remained subsumed by the
latter.

There developed social division of labour as the production process

involved the socially necessary labour and the people engaged in the
ploughing and harvesting activities came to be called Kalamar and Thozhuvar
or Arinar respectively. Labour activities in agricultural operations are

490
indicated by vinai, thozhil and chey and the people engaged in such activities
came to be called Vinainjar indicating the importance of socially necessary
labour. The expansion of agriculture and development of exchange made
possible the growth of people who engaged in the auxiliary activities to
agriculture production like craft and metal working who came to be known as
Thozhuvar. Women did planting the paddy, weeding, harvesting, husking the
paddy and fishing in the inland water. Certain groups engaged in the
protection of paddy field called Kvalar. The different modes of resource use
existed in multiple economies in which the productive land spaces, forest,
pasture lands, sea, flora and fauna, and aqua biotic marine species became
the object of the labour of the inhabitants in each eco- zone.

The early migrant settlers were the original settlers who created the
productive spaces and settlements in midland. Their settlements had been
raided and plundered by the predatory chiefs. Those who were dispossessed
of the material resources gradually became part of the labouring clans in the
agrarian operations in the r settlements and began to become the permanent
groups of labourers and came to be called kutis having degraded status or low
born origin. The formation of a group called izhichinan was important
indicating their low social and cultural status and they were treated as
izhipirapplan, clans of low born origin. They were denied possession of
productive lands and remained landless as many of their original settlements
and productive lands were lost in plunder raids of the war chiefs and their
kinsmen. Those who possessed the productive lands and other material
resources came to be called uyardr / mlr, the high born and they lived in
manai.

The agrarian localities became the base of the political territories of the
chiefs called Kizhr, Vlir [hill chieftains] and Vntar. The chiefdom of ys
in the south, Chras in the middle region who centered on the trade

491
settlements like Thondi, Muziris and Nannan was in the north on the zhi hill,
pointing to the process of the domination of the chiefs over the production
localities and cultivating kutis in both wet land and parambu areas. This
process of political formation was corresponded to the development various
forms of resource appropriations in multiple economies consisted of hunting
,food gathering - shifting cultivation economy hilly backwoods region and
food producing surplus generating economy of wetland agriculture in river
valleys and water-laden areas, and the multi culture mixed crops cultivation
economy in laterite parambus.

Expansion of both wetland agriculture in the riparian region and the

cultivation of multiple crops in the parambu areas made certain changes in the
production process and labour realization. It incorporated the punam
cultivators, hunting gatherers and other primordial non-cultivating labour
groups in to the wetland and parambu cultivation as labouring groups. When
these groups were incorporated to the process of wetland and multi crop
cultivation in the parambus as labouring groups they became part of the
primary producing groups in the social form that came in to being. The notion
of distinction developed on the basis of birth and kinship in the social milieu
in which the labouring populations were treated with the identity of low born
or low status as izhipirapplan and izhichinan.

Significant transformation is the formation of households of settler

cultivators and the kutis of the cultivating groups and occupational and
service groups in agriculture production. They were kinship groups who
retained their kinship ties when they developed in relation to the expansion of
agriculture in both alluvial and lateirte regions. The surplus production in
wetland paddy cultivation and multi culture crops in the parambu cultivation
area enabled the development of the wealthy households called manai which
were patrilineal households controlled by the ran and karpu form of

492
marriage and gender relations developed in these households. Though there
developed the matrilocal households the line of succession to the material
possession and control of such households rested on senior male members on
female line.

The social divisions that occurred in the context of the expansion of

multiple economies represented the cultivating kutis and the labouring groups
as kataisiyar, zhuvar, izhichinan etc belong to Kzhr / Izhainthr ,the low
born devoid of knowledge, as opposed to Uyarnthr / Mlor, the high born
having knowledge. The people mentioned as Kadasiyar,Thyavar, Kzhr,
Iravalar, Izhichinan etc engaged primarily in the process of the production of
subsistence and surplus and they were attributed the status of izhipiraplan,
the low born and ignorant mainly because they did not possess the knowledge
of the condition of their existence.

Development of settler cultivators and the cultivating kutis along with

the primary producers are embedded in the epigraphical material from the
ninth century C E which suggest the emergence of a social form based on the
multiple economies. The expansion of both parambu and wetland agriculture
evolved the instituted process of labour realization in which the Nttutyavar
emerged from the households of the settler cultivators and the tribal chiefs
and their retinue, and the households of the settler cultivators had dominant
role. This made the spread of cultivation in both laterite and alluvial areas in
the hinter land and to the parambu areas on the one hand and to the estuarine
lands and the coastal plains on the other. Proliferation of r settlements of the
cultivating kutis and the settler cultivators in both parambu and wetland areas
made these settlements the production localities in which the agrarian
resources was generated by the cultivating kutis and the primary producers
and the latter are referred to l /Atiyr/ Pulayar /Parayar in number of
epigraphical documents. The occupational and spatial meaning of kuti began

493
to be transformed when the land holding households and the chiefs exerted
the overlordship over these cultivating settlements.

The production process and the division of labour became more

complex and diversified in which the cultivating kutis, the kutis of the
auxiliary occupants like craftsmen and metal workers and the menial laboring
population began to be consolidated and their settlements appeared to be
proliferated in the production localities. This resulted in the occupational and
spatial division in which the people who followed different livelihood forms
and settled in the r settlements began to be identified either with their
location in the labour process and the instrument they used or with their
settlement localities. It led to the development of the dispersed settlement
localities and habitation sites. The people who associated with the material
production could have retained certain clan identity and they followed distinct
notions of kinship and life world of their own.

The group of servile laboring population had been employed in the

reclaim activities in waterlogged and marshy areas near the river valleys.
Draining water from the water-laden areas for cultivation and construction of
water channels, check dams and anai [dams] were done by this group. Land
spaces were reclaimed from heavy vegetation by cutting down trees and
burning them for cultivation. The agriculture operations in the more water
logging areas like the kari lands in estuarine areas became important. The
labour process involved in sowing seeds, planting the seedlings in the wetland
fields, tending and harvesting crops were done by these servile labourers.
Growth of accessory occupants like carpenter, blacksmith, potter, bamboo
worker etc developed in the r settlements and many of them settled as kutis
of occupational groups and they also contributed to the generation of agrarian
surplus.

494
 The production process began to be expanded and consolidated when
the overlordships over the cultivating settlements developed which brought
the cultivating kutis and the kutis of craft groups and metal workers and the
primary producers under the dominance of the Nttutayavar and dominant
households. The Nttutatyavar and the dominant households received the
obligatory payment called katamai from these production localities. They
donated a share of the produce they received as obligatory payment from the
cultivating kutis to the temples to meet their offerings in the structural temples
built in the settlements of the Brahmans.

The early Brahman settlements did not originally produce any

documents. In fact, the documents were produced when the members of the
ruling families and private individuals made grants of the share of the produce
and, sometimes, certain attippr grants of lands mostly to meet the expenses
of their offerings in these temples. These documents mention the activities of
Brahman settlements and the temples. However, the attippr grants, exempted
all the rights the donors had possessed the lands, donated to the temples and
Brahmans are only very few in numbers and the lion share of the donations to
the temples and Brahmans were donations of the share of the produce from
the lands cultivated by the cultivating kutis rather than the lands itself. What
was actually granted was a share of the produce from the lands cultivated by
the cultivating kutis not the land itself, but the grantees claimed tenurial right
over the land as a major socio-economic force. When the Brahmans were
given the productive lands in the river valleys from the early historical period,
the cultivating kutis who already settled such lands had become the subject
population in these Brahman settlements. However, majority of the
settlements in the region located outside the brahman settlements and these
settlements functioned as the production localities of the settler cultivators
and the cultivating kutis. Individual brahman households called mangalams
began to be developed outside the Brahman villages. The process of

495
proliferation of Brahman settlements was propped up by the expansion of
cultivation in river valleys and estuarine areas on the one hand, and the
development of ndu formation in the midland regions and consolidation of
political authority of the Nttudayavar over the production localities on the
other. The Brahmans were in need of the political and the physical protection
of the Nttudayavars and the latter sought the ritual and ideological
legitimacy from the temples and Brahmans. The land holding households of
the settler cultivators were also in need of the cultural resources of the
Brahmans and the ideological legitimacy of the temples. This made the
temples and Brahmans to develop control over the production localities of the
cultivating groups by way of the tenurial dominance over the lands from
where the produce reached the temples in the form of donations and thereby
temples and its functionaries became the parasitic institutional entities.

The tenurial dominance of the temples and Brahmans made the

cultivating kutis and labouring population subservient groups to the non
producing class, in addition to the dominance made by functionaries of the
temples, the Nttutayavar, their retinue and members of dominant
households; sometimes, to the Chra Perumls and their functionaries, to
whom the cultivating kutis had to pay the katamai or vram. The
Nttutayavar made control over the cultivating kutis and labouring
populations when over lordship over these cultivating settlements was made
by the former. This brought new groups of people into the production process
and they engaged in reclaim the productive lands and in labour activities in
cultivation operations. This must have increased the number of labouring
population in the agrarian production as servile labouring groups under
various overlords.

The labour of the primary producers was realized in number of ways

by the overlords including the households of the settler cultivators to increase

496
the surplus production in both wetland and parambu areas. The punam
cultivators and non-agricultural groups were also brought to be part of these
labouring groups in course of time and they became the permanent labour
collectives in the production localities. The labour of the primary producers
must have been used to reclaim the water laden and vegetated areas for
cultivation and settlements in addition to laterite parambu cultivation. They
were also used for water management in the flood plains and irrigation
activities in the cultivation of wetland areas. Knowledge of the season and
environ like rain, flora etc preserved by the settler cultivators including the
Brahmans were effectively used to realise the labour of these groups for
reclaiming land spaces and cultivation activities. The resource requirements
of various overlords also necessitated to ensure the labour of the primary
producers that resulted in the exchange and transaction of migrant laboring
population who hitherto were not part of the settled agriculture in both
alluvial and laterite areas. Certain people who were part of the non-
agricultural groups, forest dwellers, punam cultivators, primordial settler
clans and others had increasingly become part of the direct labouring groups
in the settled agriculture in both alluvial and laterite areas. Some people who
were part of the hunting gathering and shifting cultivation activities in the
midland region also became part of the agrarian process of the area and they
were integrated to the ntus of the respective Nttudayavar and thus became
the subjugated groups and others continued their livelihood forms in the
hinterlands. They were attached to the lands controlled by the households of
the settler cultivators, the Brahman rs and the temples and also the chrikkal
lands of the Nttutayavar and the Peruml. They were also attached to the
jvitham and virutti lands held by the retinue and functionaries of the
Nttutayavar and the Peruml and the temple functionaries.

The surplus generated by the producing class, the cultivating kutis,

primary producers called l /Adiyr/ Pulayar and the auxiliary occupational

497
kutis, was appropriated and re/distributed among a number of non-producing
groups. The Nttuayavars , their retinue and functionaries comprised of
Vzhkai, Pathi, Ntu, Pani, Nttuvar, etc and the Chra Peruml, his
Ahikrar, Pathavramkkal, ttaikolvr etc, constituted a stratified
assemblage of agrarian hierarchy who became the ruling class in the agrarian
order. The familial households in the Brahman rs, the structural temples and
its functionaries were part of the ruling class who appropriated the surplus
produced by the producing class. The dominance of the polity of
Nttudayavar and Chra Peruml was mediated upon the cultivating kutis
and servile labouring population through a number of functionaries like
Vzhkai , Pathi, Ntu, Pani, Nttuvar, etc, in which Nttuvar functioned as
the most powerful agency who suppressed the producing groups.
The political dominance of the Nttutayavar and the Peruml and their
retinue, and the tenurial control and ritual authority of the temples changed
the condition of actual cultivators of kutis to the tenant cultivators and the
occupational and laboring population became subservient groups. This
process also made the primary producers into the condition of servility and
bondage. However, kutis controlled the lands they cultivated and gave a share
of the produce to the overlords as kudimai. The overlords received the kutimai
as payment for allowing the kutis to stay in the lands. This indicates the
transformation of the kutis as the actual producers and controllers of the
means of production into producers who were vested with the right over the
lands in lieu of payment of the surplus produce to the over lord
The migrant settlers who settled in the midland region developed the
households with the cultural features of both matrilocality and patriliny and
maintained the clan endogamy and control of material resources within the
clan groups. The restriction imposed upon the movement of women in
particular kutis in the early medieval period was intended to prevent them
making mating relation with men of other clans and thereby control the

498
members of particular kuti within clan endogamy. The cohesiveness among
the cultivating groups was maintained when endogamous marriage relations
developed within the kutis. The head of the extended family in the kutis not
only controlled the junior members in the family by dominating over the
subsistence and the resources, but also by restricting the movement of women
and by controlling their sexuality. The maintenance of the authority of the
elders requires that marriage be prohibited within the clan groups. The
authority of the elder members of the kutis rested on the power to prohibit the
exterior relation in the case of marriage, which provides each kuti the capacity
for endogamous reproduction of the kuti, although endogamy never becomes
the rule in an agriculture community. The clan groups required to hold the
material possession collectively within the clans and to protect their clan
identity as a well-knit kinship group. This was achieved through both the
matrilineal and matrilocal households controlling women by conjugal fidelity
and this was institutionalized through endogamous marriages.

The extended familial households controlled the collective possession

of material resources within the clan and clan endogamy was maintained by
the elder male members in the households. The kinship descent structure
developed in the kutis and the solidarity maintained under the extended
households must have maintained the kutis as organic unit both economically
and biologically. The agriculture operations done by the members in kutis and
the kinship descent structures of the kutis constituted certain dependence
relations between the senior and junior members in the kutis. It is also used
for the domination and exploitation of juniors by the senior members, the
characteristic of descent groups called mttr and iaiyr, and controlling the
sexuality of women binding the rule of endogamy. It created a lifelong
relationship between members of the cultivating kutis. Thus, kuti became a
well-defined social cell functioning as an economic unit with kinship descent

499
structure. There continued the simultaneous process of reproduction of kuti as
an economic unit and reproduction of kinship descent structure as a biological
unit. The production operations in agriculture and the producing groups
engaged in the production operations are reproduced. Kutis of kammla
groups like potters and craft groups who were moving groups engaged in
specialized occupations and crafts developed as endogamous collective
maintaining their professional skill and knowledge as cohesive unit of
professional groups.

The structure of various forms of avaksams / rights held by the kutis

over the resources available to them and the right to settle in a production
locality was developed due to the expansion of agriculture and the
proliferation of settlements in both parambu and wetland areas. The material
life activities and exchange forms developed along with this process made
gradation of rights. Kutis of cultivating and occupational groups were more
economic units than the structured units of individual families. The rights
called avaksams of the kutis who did cultivation and the auxiliary occupation
to agriculture were maintained through generations, thalamura, by which the
rights over the resources and the skill and knowledge of the life activities they
followed were sustained and protected. The rights assumed by the kutis as a
kinship and descent groups is meant that the technics and skill of a kuti who
followed a specific life activity in a particular production locality with distinct
socio-cultural life had been protected through generations. Therefore, kuti was
entitled to maintain its rights and to protect the skill and knowledge of a
particular occupation.

There are two stages in the development of the primary producers and
those people who were brought by detaching their clan ties and kinship
relations and were settled in the lands where they had to render their labour
services. Therefore, they were attached to the lands they did their labour as

500
instruments of production. This generic group of population of scattered
labouring groups were employed in the labour activities in cultivation
operations, predominantly in wet lands, came to be called Pulayar. The people
who had settled in chirukutis and endowed with skill and knowledge of
punam cultivation as chirukutimkkal and those who were brought from such
chirukuti settlements to employ in both wetland and parambu lands as
labourers came to be known as cherumakkal. The large mass of the producing
groups consisted of various kutis and Adiyr / l were incorporated into the
production process with their kinship and descent structures and distinct life
worlds. Primary producers engaged in the production of agrarian surplus in
multiple economies and various overlords subjugated them. The primary
producing groups were tied to the lands on which they did their labour as
instrument of production. They were transferred along with the land they
attached and were subjugated by the dominant groups consisting of land
holding households that developed from the settler cultivators, the
Nttutayavar , their militia and the retinue, temples and Brahmans, the
Perumls and their associates.

This process was more or less developed by the ninth century when the
agrarian expansion and proliferation of settlements began to be consolidated.
The expansion of ntus and political authority of the Nttutayavar over the
production localities in the ntus were made possible because of the
development of over lordship that was established over the cultivating
settlements by the nttutayavar. This was achieved through the retinue like
Nizhal, Pani, Adhikri etc, the kin of the Nttutayavar called chrnavar and
the militia called Nttuvar. Number of other groups like Pati, Vzhkai etc
who were developed from the cultivating kutis was also used by the
Nttutayavar to dominate the cultivating groups. The ntus thus became the
resource regions and administrative territories of the Nttutayavar where the
agrarian resource was generated by kutis of occupational groups and

501
cultivating communities. The primary producers engaged in the labour
activities for the production of surplus in the production localities comprised
of both wetlands and parambu areas. Forested spaces and punam cultivating
areas also part of the natus in the mid land and in the hilly areas. Kinship and
clan ties of these scattered labour collectives had already been lost when they
were brought and settled the lands they did their labour and they became part
of the primary producers whose condition of existence is evidently attached to
the lands as represented as l / Adiyr / Pulayar.

There developed the gradual process of formation of kinship descent

structure among primary producers like Pulayar that resulted in developing
them as an endogamous collective of servile labourers. It enabled them to
possess the skill and knowledge they historically accumulated through labour
process and retain certain right over their knowledge and skill. They were
settled in particular areas attached to the lands and became endogamous
groups with distinct cultural features and kinship structures, and gradually
became kutis in later period. The rights developed among them to possess and
transmit their skill, knowledge and cultural features through generations.
They were incorporated with their kinship structures and the skills they
possessed into the structures of power as endogamous groups of servile
labourers who were engaged in specific labour activities with particular
cultural features. This integration took place at a time when various overlords
subjugated them into the agrarian order as the instruments of production.
Nttutayavar, temples and Brahmans and a number of non-producing groups
subjugated the primary producers. This process was mediated by the groups
consisting of militia and functionaries of the Nttutayavar, temple servants
and other local magnates like Patis and Vzhkai.

The Pulayar were a generic group of labouring population consisting of

a mass of scattered labouring population attached to the cultivating lands

502
without having the genealogy of clear kinship descent ties as many of them
were settled, detaching their kin relations and descent structures. They
developed more as inclusive exogamous groups rather than discrete labour
units. It enabled to increase their population to meet the labour requirements
as part of the development of over lords and expansion of cultivable areas for
surplus production. The historical contingency was to increase the surplus
production by increasing the population of primary producers. The labour
intensive form production did not necessarily incorporate the inventions in the
field of iron processing especially in the making of efficient tools and
implements into the field of agriculture. This state of agriculture technology
especially in the case of implements of production was compensated with the
labour of the primary producers, predominantly by the Pulayar. The situation
became complex when over lords and a number of non-producing groups who
participated in the appropriation of the surplus by one way or the other. This
situation resulted in keeping the primary producers below the subsistence and
in increasing the surplus production at an optimum level using the labour of
the latter. The increase in the volume of the surplus was materialised only
through increasing the number of the primary producers keeping them below
subsistence. It was this surplus appropriation mechanism which confined the
primary producers in servitude and bondage on which the entire edifice of the
agrarian order and its political structure rested.

The property form that evolved within the households in relation to the
clan endogamy corresponded to the emergence of the stratified agrarian order
and the social relations involved in it. The households and kuti settlements
that developed in both wetland and mixed crop areas constituted the extended
households on matrilineal and patrilineal line which retained the right on
landed possession collectively. The collective form of right retained over the
resources including the landed wealth by the households of the settler
cultivators and the cultivating kutis was succeeded to the next generation

503
through a system called thalamura without breaking the structure of the
households and the kutis. It passed through either male or female line
indicating the existence of both matrilineal and patrilineal extended
households. Even though there developed the matrilineal households, the
system of property developed within these households made the senior male
members control the property on mother line and manage the everyday life
affairs.

The property forms that developed among the Brahmans called

brahmasvam and the temple called dvasvam are found to have developed as
the collective form of property developed in the brahman rs and corporate
nature of the property under the temples respectively. They were also known
as thvam. The virui and jvitham holdings were collective form of rights
possessed over the landed wealth by the functionaries of the temples and the
Nttutayavar and the Chra Peruml. The intermediary tenure holders called
Iaiyar also held rights over lands collectively. The property form that
developed among the ruling lineages of the Trippapr seems to have
developed in line with individual form of rights.

This is not an exclusive study on the caste system in Kerala rather it is

an attempt to understand the labour process, the relation between the human
beings and the labour process and the way in which a stratified system
developed. Kuti became biological unit reproducing the kinship descent
structure through endogamy and kuti also developed as a production unit of a
particular occupational group that sustained the rights over the resources,
knowledge, and skill through junior generation. It also enabled to develop the
occupation hereditarily. The hereditary occupation and endogamous
marriages continued as a mechanism for the biological and social
reproduction of kutis. The process of biological and social reproduction also
developed among the primary producers and they were subjugated under

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various overlords as endogamous groups. A number of functionaries under
the temples and the Nttutayavar and the Peruml developed as social groups
of endogamous collectives retaining their rights over the resources through
the structure of households and integrated to the system of power. Jti
formation can also be seen in relation to the process of realization of labour
and subordination of producing groups to a number of overlords in an
exploitation system of agrarian hierarchy. Number of functionaries and
service groups formed due to the development of the polity of the
Nttutayavar and the Peruml and the institutional structure of the temples
were incorporated as endogamous groups making their service and
occupations hereditary. The occupational and service hierarchies were
incorporated into the structure of property and the household system. The
process of consolidation of occupational and service hierarchies along with
the structure of endogamous households and the forms of collective property
that transformed occupational and service hierarchies into varna jti system.
Collective form of enjoyment of resources and livelihood pattern gave way to
a property system in which the changes in positions and dispositions of
endogamous groups who followed specific occupation formed themselves
particular jtis. This was materialised through the process of incorporation
and mediation in which brahmanic ideology and dharmasstra norms played
crucial role.

In the light of the analysis and findings certain issues remains to be

addressed and the following aspects have to be studied in the future
researches. The condition of servitude and bondage of Atiyr / l / Pulayar
/Parayar which denied them to have access to the material resources and the
opportunities to accumulate such resources while kutis of cultivating and
occupational groups accumulated it in the form of rights. Atiyr / l / Pulayar
/Parayar were being tied to the lands without having the rights to occupation
and settlement. It also shows the fact that those social groups who had been

505
positioned above the primary producers in caste hierarchy including the
cultivating kutis and the kutis of craft groups and metal workers could have
held rights over the material and cultural resources. It shows that social
grouping among the producing class was being made in accordance with the
different positions assumed by various kutis in relation to the uneven ways the
rights held over the material and cultural resources. The hierarchy also
implies the gradation of rights possessed over the resources by various social
groups and the multiple ways the manifold forms of power had been assumed
and deployed. It also make sense of the ways in which the positions assumed
by the various social groups on account of the production and distribution of
material and cultural resources. Caste formation and consolidation is also
involved the process of the subjugation of the laboring body by way of
detaching them from possessing the rights over the material resources and to
reproduce that body to be attached to the lands to be employed as untouchable
labourer. This shows the relation of caste subordination to the process of
labour. It also reveals that those who had assumed the ascribed status in the
caste hierarchy did not participate in the production of material resources and
they became part of the appropriation of resources and accumulated it in
various forms. The formation of property rights and its forms of possession
had developed in relation to the process of appropriation of the surplus
generated by the producing groups as well as the consolidation of caste
hierarchy and the subjugation of primary producing castes. This is also
related to the way in which the collective form of property that had developed
and retained within the households. It indicates the historical relation that had
evolved due to the process of various forms of resources, including the
symbolic form, must have developed in relation to development of various
households as dominant form of power structure. It shows the need to
problematise the relations that developed in connection with the households,
castes, labour and the practice of untouchability.

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 The primary producing groups called Atiyr/ l / Pulayar/Parayar had
been dehumanized because of the experience of bondage and servitude due to
their attachment to the lands as instruments of production and the practice of
untouchability. The practice of untouchability and the historical experience of
social suffering are embedded in the social memory of the primary producers
whose oral tradition and ritual acts can be treated as the repository of the
historical past of these groups. The analysis of the historical experiences of
subjugation and bondage of these groups also involve the process of invoking
the symbolic and cultural forms of protest that had existed in the pre-modern
history of Kerala. The social imagery inscribed in the consciousness of the
primary producers can reveal the material and the cultural dimension of
subjugation and exploitation. The social and cultural experiences of the
laboring population is inbuilt in the practice of untochability and caste
subordination, one has to look into the complex relations that had existed
among the caste and labour and practice of untouchability. The culture of
labour practice indispensably related to the life world of the primary
producing castes and the working class culture historically developed from
the experiences of the caste subordination and servitude indicating intrinsic
nature of the relation that developed between the caste and labour. Attempt
should be made to understand the marginalization of culture of Atiyr / l /
Pulayar /Parayar which was part of their subjugation and exploitation and it
was through this culture that they continued to maintain a consciousness in
which their social imagery of protest and dissent was inscribed.

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