{"id":4200,"date":"2026-04-08T05:24:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T23:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neependra.net\/?p=4200"},"modified":"2026-04-08T05:52:52","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T00:22:52","slug":"notes-from-the-edge-of-the-mainstream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neependra.net\/index.php\/2026\/04\/08\/notes-from-the-edge-of-the-mainstream\/","title":{"rendered":"Colonised Twice – First the Land, Then the Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In November ’25 I attended a 10-day course\u2014”Nature,\u00a0Culture & Economy | \u092a\u094d\u0930\u0915\u0943\u0924\u093f, \u0938\u092e\u093e\u091c \u0914\u0930 \u0905\u0930\u094d\u0925\u0935\u094d\u092f\u0935\u0938\u094d\u0925\u093e<\/u>“<\/a>\u2014which\u00a0was offered by\u00a0Pagdandi Collective<\/u><\/a>\u00a0at the\u00a0Jeevika Ashram, Jabalpur<\/u><\/a>. It was attended by about 20 participants. The course has changed the way I look at history, understanding of village ecosystems, economics, and much more. Following are some of my learning from the course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Businesses\/Businessmen find their way to bend the rules<\/strong><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Before going India-specific, we discussed the Enclosure Movement in Europe<\/strong> (16th and 17th centuries). Before the 16th century, land in Europe wasn\u2019t privately owned. Multiple communities used the same land for different purposes\u2014one for farming, another for collecting wood, another for grazing. But then city merchants (burghers\/bourgeois) wanted to raise more sheep for the lucrative wool trade. They just put fences around common lands and declared them private property to avoid village regulations. This displaced many people who depended on common lands for their livelihoods. Merchants influenced the parliament<\/strong> to legalize enclosures and criminalized those who entered enclosed lands as \u201ctrespassers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To support all that, philosopher John Locke<\/strong> provided an intellectual justification<\/u><\/a>, arguing that land becomes private property through labor\u2014even just putting up a fence. His ideas (life, liberty, private property) became foundational to liberalism and influenced documents like the U.S. Declaration of Independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This tells us that it is not new for businesses and businessmen to find their way to influence the people in power to amend the rules for their own benefit. In the current times, we are seeing it all around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was India Ever Truly “Agricultural”?<\/strong><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A general narrative we have been listening to is that agriculture was the primary occupation for Indians for many centuries. The truth is before colonial intervention, India accounted for roughly 20% of the world\u2019s population and 25\u201330% of its international trade. It was not an agricultural backwater\u2014it was highly industrialized through village-based craft production.<\/em> To make a single plough a carpenter was required to build a wooden frame, an ironsmith for the metal blade, a leather worker for the rope, a bamboo worker for the sowing attachments, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our villages were not just a farming settlement\u2014they were a tightly woven industrial ecosystem. After catering to the village needs, the additional production was sent to export across the globe. India was a major manufacturing hub before colonization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Machinery of Erasure<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The British arrived in a country where artisan communities were the backbone of both local economies and international trade. What followed was a systematic dismantling, accomplished through law, taxation, and deliberate criminalization. They made laws criminalizing a community like the\u00a0Waddar<\/em>\u00a0community. The\u00a0Agariya<\/em>\u00a0tribe, which could produce high-quality steel by using small iron core deposits and local furnaces. But the British declared iron ore the property of the state, which made\u00a0Agariya\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0practice illegal overnight. The forests were no different; they declared them state property and extracted timbers from them after displacing the traditional forest communities who lived by a principle of usufruct\u2014take\u00a0only fruits and dead wood, never cut living trees from their roots.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Triple Rupture That Changed Everything<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The craft economy, which made India do 25-30% of the world\u2019s trade, was dismantled using three interlocking changes, which are<\/p>\n\n\n\n