Affirming Self and Space: The Question of Caste, Land and Resilience in Chengara Samaravum Ente Jeevithavum

Abstract

This paper attempts to contextualise the inextricable link between caste and land in Kerala by analysing Chengara land agitation in the district of Pathanamthitta as informed by the life narrative of Seleena Prakkanam. Chengara Samaravum Ente Jeevithavum (Chengara Land Struggle and My Life) emerges as a useful socio-political document providing a clear vantage point to a particular socio-cultural situation in Kerala in specific spatio-temporal contexts.  The constitutive relationship between land and caste is analysed in this study to assert how the narratorial subject has undergone structural oppression in terms of land and caste. Seleena Prakkanam’s life narrative promulgates that land is a socially reproduced entity whereby socio-political power is administered and social hierarchies are maintained. It also points to a very pertinent question: why are the actual tillers deprived of the land where they work their fingers to the bone?