Indigenous Knowledge

Although the last two years have been astonishingly productive, the reliability of seasonal rainfall in South India has diminished dramatically over the past thirty years and the overall temperature has increased noticeably. Even illiterate farmers learn that this is part of a global problem, and the workers on the Arunachala Katthu Siva Plantation grow more and more conscious of the fact that the responsibility they take beyond the call of duty is a small but powerful contribution towards an international restoration. When they go away for training and join groups engaged in plantation in other areas of south India, they will be enabled to put our own work into a more coherent national and state perspective.

"Katthu" means forest. Lord Siva is the Destroyer of Ignorance.

This small project is primarily a deliberate initiative in the direction of the revival of indigenous knowledge and capacity. The workers are all previously disempowered rural persons who are very much aware of the fact that since the time of their grandfathers and grandmothers their very sound traditional knowledge has been overwhelmed by lack of confidence in natural processes and unsustainable strategies which entice under the banner of progress. Under normal circumstances in this traditional culture, such persons are never invited to give an opinion or even to learn to have opinions on matters of civic concern. In the hierarchical structure of this society such persons are kept at coolie level and their traditional knowledge is relegated to the past.

Members of this project are seeking out information from elders in the community and others who have carried on knowledge of species and medicines, and contacting other groups in nearby areas engaged in the process of restoration. They are learning to make decisions themselves. We are a small vanguard in the return to a healthier way of life for all, consciously co-operating with the processes of nature and learning about informed ways of doing this, and respecting and conserving our resources. Since these strategies have an excellent track-record in this ancient culture, we are confident as our example is spreading within our community.

Thirty years ago when I first came to Arunachala, there was an accessible wealth of indigenous knowledge particularly noticeable in women's knowledge and use of medicinal plants and in agricultural practices. To me in the early nineteen seventies, this community presented an extraordinary contrast with the ecological insanity of the world I came from, even though the mountain was barren at that time. The villages of Vediyappanur were talismans of this sound way of life, which has been overpowered ever since then by the infiltration of the market economy, the domination of allopathic medicine and the so-called green revolution - to name just a few of the many facets of the insanity.

Nevertheless rural persons in this area even today exhibit a confidence in natural processes and a keen interest in the great variety of species. The Kadu Siva plantation workers are alive to previously unencountered varieties and concerned to rejuvenate and extend this knowledge. This requires not just the recognition of plants, but also intimate knowledge of each species' needs, capacities and useful products.

Now the time has come for members of this group to go away for training, to enhance and extend their knowledge, to be part of a group of persons from other areas, other projects, and to return with a new sense of capacity.

The people of Vediyappanur and other villages adjacent to our plantation site, in which we all live, are not tribal people, and they do not share a language different from the surrounding population, consequently the use of the term 'indigenous' with respect to their knowledge requires some qualification. . The joint family structure is more common now than the traditional extended family, and they do use money. They also have electricity and their lands have title deeds to confirm their right to live and plant there. So these people are not "indigenous" according to the most common useage of today. However their ancestors since time before mind used these lands, they are of Dravidian stock - the original inhabitants of this place. Electricity and motorized transport has only arrived within the past ten years - with consequences both detrimental as well as convenient. Until very recently, their community as well as family life was strictly joint, decisions were never made independently of other members in either case. These people exhibit a respectful relationship with their world which transcends other social boundaries and even religions (between Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Christian persons in the rural community, for instance), and which is quite dissimilar from the perspectives of townsfolk. Their festivals - irrespective of religion - provide the skeleton of their lives and the rhythms of household routines are congruent with these at all times. These people all share a particular place and a particular way of living in this place and a particular way of interacting with it, all of which is essentially indigenous.

These are a people who recognize a mutuality within the interdependence lying between theirs and the non-human communities of our world. They have the wisdom to appreciate the fact that sustainability for us all rests on human practices of restraint and prudence in the reaping of natural resources, which in turn demands a certain austerity in their way of life.

The austerity of their lives is partially imposed by poverty, this is true; it is also true that these people realize, as Gandhiji did, that our earth can provide for everyone's need, but not everyone's greed. They know this and are grateful for their capacity to live in their world in a just manner. Despite their austerity, they are an extremely generous people.