[Reader-list] Feudalism (2)

Thu Aug 6 14:58:47 IST 2009

Well analysed Kshemedra, good analysis.
Regards,
 Rajen.

On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Lalit Ambardar <lalitambardar at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
>
>
>
>
> Well analysed article. It
> should not be difficult to draw parallels with what still exists in India.
> Kshemendra
> had brought out some of its oddness earlier.
>
>
>
> Regards all
>
> LA
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> > Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 01:48:17 -0700
> > From: kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com
> > To: reader-list at sarai.net; asad_abbasi at hotmail.com
> > Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Feudalism (2)
> >
> > Dear Asad
> >
> > Thank you for posting the Ishtiaq Ahmed piece.
> >
> > In a 19/04/09 posting on this List (in a different context) I had written
> on "feudalism" in India. It is reproduced below.
> >
> > Going through it again (and after reading Ishtiaq Ahmed's piece) I
> realised, that shockingly, I had shockingly left out "Feudalism of Castes"
> and "Feudalism of the Elite (remanants of monarchy and its liege).
> >
> > Kshmendra
> >
> >
> > """""""""""""
> > Dear Shuddha
> >
> > Allow me to share some simplistic thoughts on this.
> >
> > What we see reflected in such instances from educational institutions is
> the feudalism and fiefdomism that is rooted in almost every aspect of our
> lives in India.  They are in myriad forms but still have all the
> exploitative aspects that existed a few hundred years back.
> >
> > Feudalism became instutionalised and networked in India during the
> colonial rule. It admirably served the purpose of both Rule and Revenue.
> >
> > Post 1947, attempts were made to erase out Agricultural Feudalism. There
> was some success but it continued to some extent through the Benami system.
> >
> > At the same time Feudalism and Fiefdomism saw itself cloned and being
> employed in various spheres and utilised for purposes of exercising control
> or exacting monies outside legal domains.
> >
> > Educational Institutions are just one such area.
> >
> > Post 1947, the economic policies that allowed Private Enterprise but gave
> them some protection against competition led in due course to Feudalism of
> Business Houses.
> >
> > At the same time, the economic policies of Licence Raj created the
> Feudalism of the Bureaucracy
> >
> > Ironically, the adoption of Free  Market Economy policies in recent
> years, without appropriate protection for small businesses has again
> resulted in the Feudalism of Business Houses.
> >
> > While at one time 'workers' suffered exploitative employment, ensuring of
> Labour Rights in some areas, predominantly Larger Industrial and other
> enterprises saw the emergence of the Feudalism of the Workers.
> >
> > The Feudalism of the Police continued unchecked through the decades as
> did that of the Revenue Officers. They were truly the soldiers of the
> interconnected Feudal Empires.
> >
> > Interestingly, those who should have been the rebels against such
> Feudalism themselves succumbed to it and we got the Feudalism of the
> Students.
> >
> > One could give other examples, but what is common to any such Feudalism
> and Fiefdomism is the abuse of Rights, Authority and Power in the safe
> assumption that India seriously lacks in Accountability and Environment for
> Justice and Delivery of Justice. (Will not expand on that. I am sure it is
> not needed)
> >
> > Senior students in an educational institution or the teaching faculty are
> a part of similar feudal structures in their areas of operation and
> influence. They find themselves because of their position, as being formally
> or informally vested with, not only Rights but also Power and Authority
> which they find easy to abuse in the absence of Accountability.
> >
> > My simplistic take.
> >
> > Kshmendra
> > """"""""""""""""""""
> >
> > Kshmendra
> >
> >
> >
> > --- On Thu, 8/6/09, asad abbasi <asad_abbasi at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: asad abbasi <asad_abbasi at hotmail.com>
> > Subject: [Reader-list] Feudalism (2)
> > To: reader-list at sarai.net
> > Date: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 7:35 AM
> >
> >
> >
> > Dear All,
> >
> > Ishtiaq Ahmed, in this article, rejects the view held by some that
> feudalism has never existed in South Asia. And doing so, he goes on to
> explain the historical and social aspect of this idea. And how Feudalism was
> adopted to capture the South Asian essence. How this phenomenon has
> neglected people of education, freedom and Justice. He cleverly looks beyond
> the single economic aspect of feudalism and talks about the cultural and
> social impacts on the society.
> >
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Asad
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=111680
> >
> > In a debate article in the Dawn of April 30, 2008, Haider Nizamani seeks
> to dispel the widely held view that feudalism exists in Pakistan. His
> asserts that feudalism never existed in South Asia. To consider honour
> killings and exploitation of peasants by mighty landlords as indicative of
> feudalism he finds untenable because according to him, by 1999, 88 percent
> of cultivated land in Pakistan was in farm sizes below 12.5 acres. Just over
> half the total farms were less than five acres in size. "This would hardly
> be the hallmark of a feudal society," he asserts.
> >
> > This economistic argument is a legitimate one, but too narrow, mechanical
> and formalistic, because it presupposes that if the economic base changes
> cultural and ideological changes follow suit. In reality there is never a
> perfect fit between a mode of production and cultural and ideological forms,
> otherwise the thoroughly capitalised economies of the Middle East would have
> no place for tribal norms and behaviour patterns. Marx was acutely aware of
> the far more complex relationship between the economic base and the
> superstructure. He famously observed that Christian theology remained the
> reigning ideology much after classical feudalism had disintegrated and
> dissolved.
> >
> > Classical feudalism emerged in Western Europe when the old city-based
> high cultures of the Greeks and the Romans disintegrated and the locus of
> social activity moved into local units headed by tiered nobility, which
> controlled their serfs through a range of economic and extra-economic
> coercions. The feudal vassals, in turn, rendered services to the superior
> lords, and that chain of services finally connected to the king, who was
> named as the "first among the lords." He claimed a tribute or levy from the
> lesser nobles, who also provided him with soldiers.
> >
> > The above description is, of course, an ideal one in the tradition of Max
> Weber. In reality no two feudalisms anywhere in Europe were the same, except
> in the essential sense of an agrarian economy providing much of the surplus,
> as well as the soldiers upon which the ruling classes built their leisured
> lifestyle.
> >
> > Christian theology justified social hierarchy, and people knew their
> place in society – the rule was that the superiors were chosen by God and
> obeying them was a duty and obligation. Professions and roles in society
> were inherited from father to son. Feudal society was fatalistic,
> superstitious and static in relative terms.
> >
> > Now, in the case of South Asia, striking parallels can be found in the
> power structure that prevailed during the pre-colonial period. A maharaja or
> emperor at the apex of that order received tribute from a descending but
> segmented hierarchy comprising smaller rajas and nawabs, mansabdars and
> zamindars and village headmen. They also provided him with soldiers.
> >
> > The incumbents of land grants under the mansabdari system
> (military-feudal order) held their fiefs during the pleasure of the emperor.
> Original rights to a fief were largely absent and the king could in
> principle expropriate an incumbent at any time. That is why Indian feudalism
> was more of an oriental despotism because in Western feudalism even absolute
> kings were in principle bound by the law. The mansabdars ruthlessly
> exploited the peasants and the other agrarian workforce to extract as much
> wealth as possible before their estate was taken away from them. When the
> Mogul Empire weakened and the hold of the central government loosened, the
> lesser rajas and nawabs asserted their independence, while the mansabdars
> became hereditary owners of their estates.
> >
> > The caste system and the elitist Islam of the Muslim ruling class – both
> sanctioned strict hierarchy. The Muslim ruling class, comprising descendants
> of Turkish, Afghan, Persian and Arabic origin, until the 19th century did
> not start associating with the bulk of the local converts. The threat they
> perceived from the rising Hindu middle class that had taken to education,
> trade and commerce, forced them to evolve the novel idea of a Muslim nation
> comprising all Muslims.
> >
> > The British perpetuated the dependency of princes, nawabs, rajas and so
> on, on the colonial state, but with ample latitude to continue to exploit
> the peasants, artisans and other poor working on their estates. In fact the
> British most skilfully used land grants to create landlords that would see
> to it that protests and rebellion among the people in their areas of
> influence were effectively crushed.
> >
> > At the same time, with regard to Punjab and the NWFP the landlords
> compelled their peasants to join the British Indian Army. With the exception
> of Pir Sabghatullah Pagaro and some others from Sindh, almost all other pirs
> (spiritual leaders) were solid supporters of the British Raj.
> >
> > Sindhi, Punjabi and Pakhtun Muslims lagged behind the Hindus and Sikhs
> because while the latter opened schools the Muslim landlords did not allow
> schools to be be established in their domains. Ayub Khuhro and many other
> Sindhi leaders were educated in schools established by Hindus. In the late
> 1960s, when I was associated with the Mazdoor-Kissan Party of Major Ishaq,
> some of our comrades tried to provide free literacy classes to peasants in
> the stronghold of the Mazaris and Legharis in southern Punjab. They were
> harassed out of those areas.
> >
> > The land reforms introduced by Ayub Khan and followed by a series of
> radical land reforms by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto weakened that class but did not
> abolish it. Even now in southern Punjab and interior Sindh that decadent
> class exercises considerable political clout and upholds a culture that is
> oppressive of women, and the poor in general.
> >
> > I was horrified when a landlord told me some years ago that all the young
> women that came to work on his farm had to provide him with sexual
> gratification, otherwise they would not be employed. Bonded labour still
> exists, notwithstanding a ban imposed on it by the Supreme Court.
> >
> > Feudalism in the strict Western sense may never have existed, but its
> subcontinental forms during the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial
> periods were no less harsh and oppressive. Pakistani feudalism may now be in
> its death throes, but that is no reason to exonerate it from continuing to
> wreck the lives of vast numbers of the rural poor in this region of
> peripheral capitalism.
> >
> > As a cultural and ideological system Pakistani feudalism is a bastion of
> conservative values and moribund ideas. The sooner its remaining vestiges
> are abolished and a healthy class of peasant proprietors is created, the
> better it would be for all of us. In the years ahead we would need to
> radically modernise our agricultural sector so that a smaller number of
> farmers can produce many times more the food we will need.
> >
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Windows Live Messenger: Thanks for 10 great years—enjoy free winks and
> emoticons.
> > http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/157562755/direct/01/
> > _________________________________________
> > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> > Critiques & Collaborations
> > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with
> subscribe in the subject header.
> > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list
> > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
> >
> >
> >
> > _________________________________________
> > reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> > Critiques & Collaborations
> > To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with
> subscribe in the subject header.
> > To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list
> > List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> We all see it as it is. But on MSN India, the difference lies in
> perspective.
> http://in.msn.com
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
> Critiques & Collaborations
> To subscribe: send an email to reader-list-request at sarai.net with
> subscribe in the subject header.
> To unsubscribe: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list
> List archive: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
>

-- 
Rajen.