Last year, while travelling to New Delhi, I met a young man of twenty-something on the train. He belonged to a village in Haryana and was studying at a college in Dighi, near Pune. His father was an ex-army man who had recently taken up farming. During our conversation, he mentioned several problems farmers from his village and the district faced – no guarantee for Minimum Support Price (MSP), rising costs of labour, fertilisers, and seeds, inadequate infrastructure and so on. Climate change was worsening the situation.
“Farmers are resilient; most of the time they know how to find a solution to their problems; but they tend to give up when they realise that the government does not care about them,” he said and stayed quiet for a while.
Farmers are among the most marginalised and vulnerable sectors, with them having the highest poverty incidence in the country. When we listen to farmers, we gain a genuine understanding of their perspectives and their lived experiences. Mahatma Jyotiba Phule was one of the few Indian leaders to actively engage with farmers to find a solution to their troubles.
Phule’s social revolution centred on the interests of peasants and an anti-caste outlook. His “Baliraja”, the lord of the land, was poor and survived on meagre food and clothing. He urged peasants to unite and not tolerate injustice. However, he knew that the farmer was uneducated and weighed down with loans and that he was not only afraid of the coloniser, but also scared to seek rights from the wealthy of the village.He realised that the agrifood system was affected when the farmer was burdened. He took it upon himself to fight on the farmer’s behalf.
In the early nineteenth century, Indian agriculture started undergoing some major changes owing to attempts to increase the production of commercial crops. In a country like India, where agriculture was of prime importance, agrarian problems had to be solved to get rid of poverty. Phule constantly and tirelessly campaigned with the colonial government for the improvement of Indian agriculture. He wrote several letters to demand soil conservation schemes, tanks, canals, and dams. He wanted the government to launch extensive programs to educate the peasants about animal breeding.
Farmers were reluctant to irrigate their lands with the water from canals. They were worried that if they used the water, the government would take over their lands. Some thought that the water did not have any “sattva” (soul). To allay their fears, Phule toured several villages and spoke to the farmers. He told them that the canals were a boon to them, and they should use every drop of water.
He knew that this was not enough. In the late 1870s, he bought a piece of land in the village of Manjari, near Pune.
In the book “Amhi Pahilele Phule”, compiled by the late Dr Hari Narke, Govind Ganpat Kale, who grew up in the Phule household, writes that Phule owned sixty acres of land next to his father’s farm in Manjari. Kale would frequent Phule’s farm to devour papayas, bananas, and sugarcane. The farm was managed by one Sahadu Waghule. Fifteen oxen and two or three cows were kept on the farm. Phule would visit the farm once a day if he was not travelling. He would often ride on his horse.
Phule had irrigated his farm with water from a canal. He started inviting farmers to take a tour of the farm. He would show them how the canal had benefited the crops and urged them not to turn their backs on the novel methods of irrigation.
According to Kale and Mahadu Sahadu Waghule, Phule planted “foreign” crops like cauliflower, French beans, tomato, papaya, potato, and guava on the farm. This was primarily done to educate the farmers.
Colonialism brought about a bilateral exchange of foods. The Portuguese and the Dutch brought fruits and vegetables to India for their consumption. However, the British initiated the widespread cultivation of crops like potatoes, tomatoes, papaya, and cashew nuts.
But local farmers were sceptical, even afraid, to cultivate these crops. The introduction, acceptance, and diffusion of new foods is a specific process where often a small group of people takes the lead, followed by early and late adopters, and finally the laggards. In Goa, Jesuit priests engaged with local farmers to persuade them to cultivate “foreign” crops. The Serampore Missionaries in Bengal had realised that without the help of local peasants, their experiments in the agricultural and horticultural sectors would never be successful. They rewarded those farmers and gardeners who cultivated “new” crops and made some contributions to the development of agriculture and horticulture.
In Maharashtra, Phule made the farmers understand that the introduction of new vegetables and fruits not only offered new gastronomic possibilities and a source of income but also provided a chance to reform the caste-based regulations surrounding food. After all, farmers, in a way, were agents bringing about changes in the dietary patterns of society.
Phule invited farmers from the nearby villages to the farm in Manjari every Sunday for lunch. Savitribai and their son Yashwant would arrive from Pune in the morning. Savitribai baked a heap of soft “bhakris” and carried them along in a cane basket. On the farm, she would cook vegetables harvested by Phule. While she was cooking, Phule would explain to the farmers how the “new” vegetables were beneficial to them. He would demonstrate certain novel techniques of cultivation. Later, everybody sat together in a circle and enjoyed a meal of vegetable curry, bhakri, and sugarcane molasses.
Unknown ingredients or dishes can be considered more or less familiar and more or less palatable on two continuums that go from “totally exotic” to “totally familiar” and from “totally palatable” to “totally unpalatable”. Exposure to “otherness” can cause anxiety. However, communal practices such as cooking and eating together strengthen the sense of belonging while easing the fear of food.
Several farmers would initially hesitate to eat vegetables like cauliflower, potato, and tomato. But watching Phule and Savitribai eat those, they would try a bite and get rid of the fear.
Vegetables cultivated on the farm were sent to Bombay every week since there were few customers in Pune. Phule had formed a small corporation to deal with the vegetable merchants in Bombay. He promised the farmers that he would help them sell their vegetables in the Bombay markets if they took up the cultivation of “foreign” crops.
Phule tried to create an environment of cooperation where he acted as a facilitator for learning and collaboration between farmers and the government. He built a space where the farmers could exchange ideas and innovations with others.
Phule’s dialogue with the farmers constituted an important part of the Indian Renaissance in the nineteenth century. His initiatives tell us that farmers and policymakers should work together to build sustainable food systems across the world.
Chinmay Damle is a research scientist and food enthusiast. He writes here on Pune’s food culture. He can be contacted at chinmay.damle@gmail.com
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