Book: White as Milk and Rice: Stories of India’s Isolated Tribes by Nidhi Dugar Kundalia, Penguin Random House, Published 2020, 241 pages, ISBN 97801432429470
By Ashwini Balu
With an academician bias, flipping through the last few pages to glance through the references has become my second interaction with a book, the first being reflecting through the blurb. Surprisingly, Nidhi Dugar Kundalia’s White as Milk and Rice: Stories of India’s Isolated Tribes (2020), though, had references, most of them were before independence, with only a handful from recent decades. This scattered chronology of pre-existing works immediately highlights the absence of scholarship on the tribal communities. A journalist by profession, Kundalia situates her second book precisely within this silence, documenting the lives of various tribes and their dynamic relationship with a social and economic environment that is transforming faster than they can adapt. The author’s core thesis is that, besides bringing the margin to the centre, what is actually needed is an understanding of their distinct value in all of their vulnerability. These values, their cultural identities, social structures and needs should be understood and acknowledged for taking steps that truly benefit them.
The book, divided into six chapters, narrates the stories of six individuals from six tribes. Through a first-hand narrative of their daily life and activities in the villages, the book presents an intriguing comment on the nuanced ways in which the rural customs, stories, and identities persist amid unfortunate marginalisation.
Sukri, from the Halakkis of Ankola, a Padmashri awardee, treasures her inherited songs that were passed on to her mother and grandmother. These songs, performed across villages and national stages in cities, become technologies of survival in rural contexts. Interwoven with her story are instances of neglect, gendered roles in their Halakki community, and their vanishing livelihoods.
Hoonkar, an ex-dacoit from the Kanjar tribe of Chambal, inherits not songs, but stigma. Believed to be Rajputs, the Kanjars have been pushed to the margins by many throughout history, their social and historical significance denied. Kundalia highlights how the several colonial acts proposed as a means to improve their lives ended up re-stigmatising them. This illustrates why a genuine understanding of their distinct identities and needs is vital, as simply shifting them to the centre risks reproducing the same hierarchies and stigmas that first displaced them. The instances of violence and ill-treatment toward tribal communities become a “common” consequence of the land acquisition process (Negi & Azeez, 2022).
While restigmatisation becomes the focus of Hoonkar’s story, another story revolves around breaking stereotypes through striving for one’s rights. After Indian Independence, the government’s environmental policies have pushed the Kurumbas of Nilgiri to the edges of the forest, where Mani, a teenager, faces bullying and exclusion from his teacher and classmates alike. Through Mani, the author brings to the light the way in which the label of being a tribe of sorcerers has isolated Kurumbas socially, accompanied by the endless perpetuation of negative stereotypes.
In a different geographical setting, but marking a similar negotiation of survival, Birsu, a Maria of Bastar, navigates her life in the backdrop of escalating tensions between the army and Naxals in her husband’s village. She often reflects on her life in her native village in Usili, and the ghotuls– a community space for youngsters where premarital sex is not a taboo, but a part of navigating through life. The ghotuls embody how rural social spaces structure cooperation, community cohesion and indigenous social order. By contrasting her native village with the militarised landscape of her husband’s, “the greenness burst here in thickets, unlike the tame trees of her hometown” (Kundalia, 2020, p.130), she highlights how rural lifescapes are not static, but sites where tradition, territory, and power intersect.
Among the six stories, the story of two sisters- Wansuk and Syrpai Rynjah, both in their 80s, belonging to the Khasi tribe of Shillong, stands out the most. In their matrilineal system, the younger sister, the khadduh, inherits the ancestral home, highlighting how property and kinship customs are tied to the rural household as a social and spatial institution within the village landscape. Nevertheless, the life of the two sisters sails through the rough seas of an estranged father, an irresponsible uncle, and a husband alienated by the custom, amid broader tensions between rising evangelism and the family’s struggle to preserve tradition.
This negotiation of identity as indigenous culture faces modernisation is the dilemma also at the foundation of the final story. City-bred Pangshong, a Konyak, returns to his village in Nagaland to visit his granduncle, who was once a headhunter. As expected, many of the practices have been abandoned under the influence of the church. Christian missionary interventions have adversely impacted the age-old practices in the rural areas, deeming any conversations on the past or war a taboo. Kundalia comments, “Christianity filled the void left by the fall of anachronistic traditions” (Kundalia, 2020, p. 201). Thus, the chapter discusses how the rural becomes a site of contestation between belief and belonging, tradition and transformation.
Kundalia’s journalistic approach, rather than an ethnographic one, sets the limitations and strengths here. This allows for an intimacy, which helps her capture the humour, pain, and the rich account of everyday life, which academic writing often presents as formal analysis and theory. There are a few recurring and significant themes in the book, such as oppression of the marginalised, the debate against changing identities, and the colonial (continuing post-independence) displacement of the tribes, deeply entwined with the rural lifescapes in which they unfold. She also puts forth uncomfortable questions, challenging the limits of government laws and policies. To simply ask, can forests be at all preserved by excluding those who have always lived in harmony with them?
Additionally, the author is to be appreciated for subtly (or perhaps not so subtly) pointing out the need for the preservation of cultural memory that is at risk of erasure. These social concerns are reflected in the power structures within the village, as in the scene where a havaldar inattentively nods while a sarpanch reports a robbery in the village. Absorbed in his kachoris, he recalls an earlier incident where a sower was whipped by the sarpanch for being slow. This captures the layered power dynamics within rural governance. The sarpanch, who wields power locally among the sowers, becomes subordinate to the indifferent officer. This vignette reveals the systemic neglect that exists in a rural context.
Notwithstanding, the author, using oral histories as primary evidence, substantiated with historical records and books, foregrounds the communities that are often pushed to the margins of mainstream historical narratives. Thus, her work makes a significant contribution to the ongoing debates on identity, displacement, and cultural erasure. Kundalia gives them a voice throughout the book, supplemented by her graphic descriptions of their everyday existence. This way of walking the readers through their life stories helps the readers relate to the characters in a sort of shared interconnectedness and, in the process, provoke empathy in them. Thus, the writing style makes the book accessible and easily comprehensible for a wider readership.
Yet, the very qualities that keep the narrative hooked mark its limits. These stories are strong as fragments with themes such as indigenous knowledge, rural life, but the structural debates, continuity versus change in rural lifescapes, tradition versus modernity, and intersections of caste, capital and religion remain implicit. Thus, bringing in the larger question: does her work democratise knowledge by reaching a wider audience, such as showing their daily life, customs, or their knowledge systems? Or is she simplifying complex histories to fit into a journalistic form, focusing on individual stories without connecting them to the broader political and social context?
White as Milk and Rice succeeds in many ways through its immersive storytelling, while keeping the agency of the protagonists intact. At the same time, the work leaves space for further exploration. The book may not be read in one sitting, as each chapter addresses different themes and possibilities. But the book compels the readers to pause and register a pang of empathy, or a lingering sense of unease at the injustice faced by the characters.
Beyond its emotional resonance, the book prompts questions about who gets to record the past and in what form it is recorded. While not attempting an overt theoretical or historical argument, Kundalia’s work remains significant for the way it brings the rural lives and marginalised voices into focus. Her work contributes to a larger discourse on representation, rural identity and the politics of visibility. Therefore, the book’s relevance lies in how it makes the complex realities accessible without its emotional truth. In a globalised world, White as Milk and Rice ultimately compels the readers to rethink what development, progress, and continuity mean for those communities whose ways of life modernity seeks to overwrite.
References:
- Negi, Dandub Palzor and Azeez, E. P. Abdul (2022) “Impacts of Development Induced Displacement on the Tribal Communities of India: An Integrative Review,” Asia-Pacific Social Science Review: Vol. 22: Iss. 2, Article 5.
- Kundalia, N. D. (2020). White as Milk and Rice: Stories of India’s Isolated Tribes. Penguin Books
Book: सौंदर्य की नदी नर्मदा by अमृतलाल वेगड़, पेंगुइन यात्रा वृतांत, Paperback, Published in 2006, 176 pages , ISBN- 0-14-309995-7, Rs.135.
Rivers have been the flowing sagas of history and repositories of ancient civilizational knowledge in India since time immemorial. As a country that derives its name from the river Indus, along the banks of which emerged one of the earliest civilisations of the world, India is dependent upon these flowing veins of water in more ways than what meets the eye. One of the many such intricate riverine relationships can be observed among the people of central India with the river Narmada. Also known as Rewa, it flows through the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat, and is often considered the lifeline of central India.
Interestingly, due to its position in a rift valley between the mountain ranges of Vindhyachal and Satpura, Narmada does not have any big cities located on its banks, making its waters and the landscapes they create comparatively more rural than the backdrop of an increasingly urbanising country. Besides being the largest west-flowing river of the country, the Narmada, in the words of Vegad himself, happens to be the only river which is subjected to a Parikrama, a religio-cultural practice of walking around the river, from its source to its mouth, which typically takes years to complete. Amritlal Vegad divides this long, perilous journey across its course into small segments of walks, giving readers glimpses from the lives of communities in the Narmada basin through his work Saundarya ki Nadi Narmada, which translates as ‘Narmada, the River of Beauty’.
The lives of the communities settled around the river, Vegad shows, are inextricably dependent on it, whether it is the Patel of Jhurki, who is worried of losing his village homeland to the backwaters of the dam being constructed on the river; the sculptors of Bangrai who rely on the Marble rocks of Bhedaghat for their livelihoods; the Bheels around Shoolpaneshwar who have been involved in the looting of the Parikrama travellers, or the boatsmen and fishermen at the delta area who row parikrama travellers to the river’s meeting point with sea. These interactions and relations, however, have been tested by the march of time and development, as the construction of dams have submerged villages and forced people to relocate; thereby significantly impacting the lives of the communities who inhabit the river basin.
Vegad keeps the rural lives of the basin at the centre, similar to classical writers like Premchand. Both of them write with the gaze of an observer, albeit in different genres of fiction and travel. Premchand wrote about the rural lives of India in a detailed and empathetic manner, with a significant emphasis on the emotions of the characters, as can be observed in his seminal works like Godan. His characters’ lives are witnessed in the frame of their village or city for a long duration of time, through an array of events, without much change being observed in the geographical position of the characters. Interestingly, the writer himself is not present in the story. Vegad, in contrast to Premchand, takes a more moving approach, typical of a traveller, to observe the lives of indigenous communities. He does not stay long enough to have an in-depth understanding of the community, its unique practices, and cyclical processes, but rather covers the entirety of communities residing on the banks of the Narmada, all the while being the central participant in the motion of the journey. The book’s chapterisation mirrors the ten journeys which the writer took between 1977 and 1987. His journey begins in the town of Jabalpur, travelling upstream towards the source of the river in Amarkantak, from where he turns downstream towards the mouth of the river in the Arabian Sea at Vimaleshwar Throughout the course of his journey, he captures different locations on the banks of this river from a traveller’s eye, observing the community’s life as a guest.The author here is bound by his travel and hence not in a position to make any intervention.
The writer’s methodology can be regarded as one of the foremost creative attempts of what in contemporary times is also known as travel vlogging. Although the traveller-author was not equipped with drones, digital or stick cameras, ring light monologues or social media platforms where these journeys could be documented in audio-visual mediums, he instead uses his skills of writing and sketching to encapsulate the rural lives around the banks of Narmada in its’ original, unfiltered and rustic form. His interactions with the communities and stays with the people of the basin are an amalgam of ethnography and travel blogging. During his Parikramas, he travels along the river, like the river. In his own words, the writer acknowledges that he is capturing the river in its wild form for the last time, before it is subjected to mass developmental projects in the form of multiple hydroelectric dams, namely Bargi, Indira Sagar, Omkareshwar and Sardar Sarovar being built across its flow.
Vegad sketches both with charcoal and words, describing the beauty of the flowing Narmada and the picturesque natural canvases that it flows through with incomparable metaphors of life philosophy. He compares its flow touching a gigantic hill with ‘Parvati sleeping in the lap of Shiv’ (p.36), and describes the moon as a ‘Ramta Jogi’, with no discipline or bounds of worldly affairs, compared to the disciplined sun, in essentially suggesting the need of discipline and detachment in balance in human lives (p. 23).
However, Vegad’s metaphoric canvases do meander back to the harsh realities of the lives of the marginalised groups staying in the basin region; it is this social awareness and sensitivity that make him distinct from a cliché naturalist. He is aware of the caste and gender dynamics prevailing in the communities and villages he stays in. Bheel tribes of the Shoolpaneshwar region were famous for looting the Parikrama walkers, and this was considered natural earlier by both the state actors and the ones going for the Parikrama. The mention of the individuals being looted by Bheel men takes place at multiple instances in different chapters, to the extent that it forms an elusive shroud around the region of Shoolpaneshwar and the Bheel tribe of the area. The writer, however, neither villainises nor sticks to any prejudice or stereotype about the tribe. He talks of tribes like Bheel and Baiga, with an ethnographic perspective, representing their practices in his work in the context of their culture, without any labelling. Like the flowing river that he is walking alongside, he keeps his thought process in motion. The only constants in his travel expeditions are the river Narmada and himself, while the consorts of his travel, be it his students or coworkers, keep on changing.
A critique of Vegad’s writing can be seen in his inability to position himself firmly concerning issues like the impact of development upon the lives of the communities of the river basin. When he discusses the impact of the dams being constructed on the river, he addresses it from a separate vantage point every time: from considering its positive effects like creation of canals and the control it can bring upon the drought bound regions to highlighting such negative consequences as the displacement of people it shall cause and the changes in the Parikrama routes as canals change the river’s original course. His position stays ambiguous; it seems as if the author is concerned more with completing the long journey than with dwelling deeply on the problems and issues faced by the riverine communities, such as large-scale developmental interventions. He places multiple philosophical one-liners to give his own perspective about the human emotions being generated in these situations, such as the worries of an uncertain future and grief of losing one’s home as a cost of development, but lacks a critical positioning on the same. Hence, while he covers an array of themes like impact of development, gender, class, caste and tribal interactions, he brings them all back to the river Narmada and his journey along it, while giving merely a sarcastic one-liner.
The epicentre of this book, however, is the motherly veneration expressed towards the river Narmada as the life-giving force, catering to the physical, geographical and cultural needs of the people living in its basin. It reflects in the attitudes of multiple individuals he meets during his journeys. By quoting individuals like the retired government officer at Maheshwar who spent his pension on caring for dogs (meaning unclear) while sitting at a tea shop staring at the river (p. 103), he reiterates the veneration and dependence which the people in the basin have towards her. Vegad draws a comparison between Ganga and Narmada, stating that the culture of India is a bestowed gift of Ganga, but in his opinion, while Ganga is the greatest, Narmada is more experienced (Shreshta Ganga Hai, Par Jayeshta Narmada Hai) (p. 7), commenting upon the enduring presence of Narmada in the Indian peninsula.
This work, in conclusion, can be regarded as a rich, metaphorical amalgam of the natural beauty of the riverine ecosystem and great observational insights into the lives of the communities of the riverine areas. The author keeps Narmada at the centre of these observations and metaphors, and weaves his words around it, which perhaps stands as his ultimate tribute to the flowing waters of Narmada for its life-giving force.
Rudali
Book: Devi, Mahasweta. Rudali. Trans. Anjum Katyal. Seagull Books, 1997.
By Ram
Rudali1 is a piece of short fiction written by Mahasweta Devi and later turned into a play by Usha Ganguli. Rudali is set in the rural landscape of Tahad and explores the caste and power dynamics of the village to reveal the themes of casteism, capitalism and commercialisation of the sacred, which plague their everyday lives. Mahasweta Devi takes inspiration from her own surroundings to exemplify the exploitation of the rural societal structure, in essence converting Tahad into a microcosm for the larger rural landscape in India. This is reflected in the following excerpt from one of her interviews:
“So all these books are rooted in the people, from what I have seen about people, what I read about them, what I learnt about them, just like that” (Agarwal, 2010).
The title ‘Rudali’ refers to women, often coming from lower classes, many being pushed into prostitution, who are hired to cry at the funerals of malik-mahajans who often have exploited them in the past, rendering their tears, symbolic of private grief, as a commodity that needs to be sold to their oppressors for their own survival. Above all, it is a story of survival in an unfair world. Mahashweta Devi herself says: ‘Rudali is about… “how to survive”… “bread and mouth.” It is very important in my story. The whole system is exposed through this’ (Devi & Ganguli, 2007, p.9).
The main protagonist of this tale is Sanichari, who, from her genesis itself, fell into misery — being born on a Saturday, she is deemed inauspicious. She is constantly reminded of this fact by her family, but the reality is that every villager belonging to the lower class is a product of this misery. All of them are subjugated by the upper class and are grief-struck and dissatisfied.
The malik-mahajans2serve as the embodiment of capitalism – they cater to their own benefits while exploiting the lives of the men who work under them. There is also an aspect of caste difference shown, as the majority of the people in the village are Ganjus and Dushads3; this showcases how class and caste work in union to create a cycle of reinforcement. The reason that these maliks are able to exert so much control over their workers is because of bonded labour; by fixing them in a debt trap, they are able to exploit them. When Sanichari convinces Ramavatar to pardon her debt, he is criticised by other jotedars4 because they feel this will incite a movement amongst the untouchable class to free themselves of their bonds.
It was not the amount that mattered—that was of less value than the dust off their shoes. What mattered was the yoke, the burden of debt that kept them labouring like cattle (Devi & Ganguli, 2007, p.58).
The reason the rich are able to chain the poor in the shackles of bonded labour is because there is a structural dependency on these malik-mahajans, as they are the employers of these people. Despite the ill-treatment from Ramavatar and his son Lachman, the workers are forced to send their sons there to work — they even have to beg for their sons to be taken in. This theme of dissatisfaction in the lower class is extremely prevalent in the text. Sanichari is dissatisfied because she is stuck in a debt trap; the daughter-in-law of Sanichari left to fulfil her desires, and Haroa leaves to reclaim agency. This dissatisfaction forces the people to attempt a breakthrough from their shackles, which the system punishes by whipping them with more exploitation. Many women are taken in by men in hopes of a better future, only to be cast out after being used, mostly becoming prostitutes later. The children of these women suffer the same fate — sold off into prostitution by their own father!
The subaltern struggle showcased in the text is reminiscent of the Marxist class struggle. The conversation between Sanichari and her grandson echoes the dynamics of control between masters and their workers. Haroa questions, just because his master pays him and feeds him a meal, does it justify complete autonomy — a treatment like a slave?
HAROA: He makes me slave all day and pays me a measly twenty rupees a month…
SANICHARI: Plus a daily meal.
HAROA: Does that mean he can hit me when he likes, abuse me as he likes…?
SANICHARI: That’s a poor man’s fate, beta—the kicks of his master. Go on, beta, go to work… (Devi & Ganguli, 2007, p.107).
As these women go to malik-mahajans’ funerals to cry, the hypocrisy of the higher class is portrayed, as they are willing to spend a lot of money for the funeral of their elders in order to put on a display of grandeur to showcase their love and respect, but when these elders are sick and on their deathbed, they receive no care — no medical treatment. For them, death means inheritance and more power. Love, another sacred emotion, is just a display mantle to them. Bhairab Singh’s eldest son murders him, Nathuni’s mother dies as she is given no treatment, and Nathuni’s middle wife plans a funeral for his father before he has even died. This raises a deeper question of dehumanisation — the subaltern class is treated as slaves anyway, but this inhumanity doesn’t stop with them; it penetrates into their own family and devours them. Capitalism is then seen as a system that feeds on the suffering of others and corrodes any empathy that a person may have in the body, leaving behind a society stripped of its humanity. This exemplifies Mahashweta Devi’s criticism of capitalism.
In Rudali, religion too is a part of the rural social architecture that treats both the classes in stark difference. For the poor, it binds them in the sets of rituals and obligations that deepen their poverty, whereas for the rich, it becomes a tool of manipulation to clean any dirt from their own social prestige. When Sanichari’s husband dies, she has to carry out multiple rituals to prevent ill omens and to appease multiple priests, which pushes her into debt. For the rich, such as Gambhir Singh, a man who exploited women and even cast his own daughter out of the house when she refused to have incestuous intercourse with her nephew, is deemed completely ‘sinless’ by pandits and astrologers, except for a childhood act of violence where he hit a pregnant cow — even sin and virtue are not above commodification.
The aspect of commodification and hypocrisy is further exemplified when we take in the idea of a funeral, where public mourning becomes a display to flaunt wealth. The malik-mahajans use the system of suppression and exploitation to make women cry to burst open their tears as a display for these men. What’s interesting is that Sanichari doesn’t have the privilege to be able to cry at the funeral for her dear ones because of her distressing condition; she needs to worry about the monetary cost a death brings and the way to resolve it. Most of the Rudalis are prostitutes too, who are sold by these men into prostitution after using them and, ironically enough, are brought back to cry at their funeral. But the rudalis must sell their grief to survive — their wailing choreographed to satisfy the male gaze that profits from their pain.
We’ll roll on the ground, and shall we beat our heads too?
Yes, beat your heads.
Our foreheads will split.
Five rupees each extra for the two of you? Money’s no problem, Sanichari. My father’s cremation and kriya will be the stuff legends are made of. Everyone will talk about it. (Devi & Ganguli, 2007, p.79)
This commodification of the emotional realm of women showcases how capitalism and patriarchy in rural architecture derive their power from women’s coerced labour.
During the climax of Rudali, the death of Gambhir Singh, a powerful malik-mahajan leads to both the symbolic representation of the exploitation Mahasweta Devi wanted to expose and also a liberating resistance for the rudalis. Even as Gambhir Singh lies dying, he is more concerned with having a grand funeral that will preserve his social prestige; it will also ensure that his nephew will not get less money from his inheritance. His nephew’s eagerness for inheritance and waiting for Gambhir Singh to die reveals how deeply the people have been removed from the plane of humanity.
Sanichari’s journey to Tohri, the red-light area, to collect women to cry at the funeral of Gambir Singh becomes a turning point for both her and the women she gathers there. Most of the prostitutes here are victims of patriarchal and economic oppression, tricked or forced into prostitution, including Gambhir Singh’s daughter. Sanichari unites these women and tells the whole Tohri, over a hundred women, to attend Gambhir Singh’s funeral as Rudalis. This act, on the surface, may seem to reinforce their subjugation: women once again selling their grief for survival. But there lies a deeper resonance in this: the very system that once enslaved them will be used by them to get back at their oppressors. When hundreds of women from the whole red-light area will perform the mourning, then the mourning will be grand and dramatic as the rich had demanded the women to do for so long, but it will lose all its trace of meaning and become just an absurd spectacle. The rich before had these women in their control and were trying to exploit their emotions by buying them as commodities. All the Rudalis now break their foreheads open, demanding payment for every drop of blood and tear, emptying the wealth of the malik-mahajan and leaving nothing for the nephew, thus subverting the system.
Mahasweta Devi constructs Rudali as an authentic portrait of rural India, one that is plagued by caste hierarchies, capitalist greed, patriarchal violence, and religious hypocrisy. Yet, the final act of the text showcases a symbolic liberation – showcasing hope at the end of the tunnel. Thus, Rudali is both a critique of the rural architecture of India and also a celebration of the women who, despite being oppressed by the harsh system, find ways to survive and reclaim dignity.
References:
Devi, M., & Ganguli, U. (2007). Rudali: From Fiction To Performance, Seagull Books.
Agarwal, M. (2010). Excerpts from the personal interview with Mahasweta Devi on 12.2. 2008. Impressions: An e-Journal of English Studies.
- Professional female mourners ↩︎
- Landlord-moneylenders ↩︎
- People from lower caste ↩︎
- Wealthy Landlords ↩︎
Book: K. L. Sharma, Caste, Social Inequality and Mobility in Rural India: Reconceptualising the Indian Village. Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2019, 400 pp., `1,195, ISBN 978-93-532-8201-1. DOI: 10.1177/00490857211015731
K. L. Sharma’s Caste, Social Inequality, and Mobility in Rural India: Reconceptualising the Indian Village provides an in-depth and insightful analysis of the changing dynamics of rural Indian society. Drawing upon six decades of research and a longitudinal revisit of six villages in Rajasthan, the book dismantles the notion of the Indian village as static, homogeneous, or bound solely by caste. Instead, it emphasises the importance of economic diversification, migration, education, the growing agency of individuals and families, and policies of the state, as essential drivers of change. The book’s structure is methodological as well as descriptive. K. L. Sharma places his work between traditional Indological methods and modern rural sociology by fusing conceptual innovation with long-term ethnographic evidence.
The book is divided into fifteen chapters, each of which skilfully blends historical context with current events. The author makes a strong case that the caste system, which was formerly seen as an “overriding and encompassing” social structure, is no longer important (Sharma, 2019, p. 1). Caste no longer governs daily life, although it still has significance in specific contexts like marriage and elections in rural India. Untouchability and ‘Jajmani’5 relations have largely vanished, and mobility across occupations and social spheres has become routine. This promising view, nevertheless, needs careful consideration. The book’s longitudinal research on six Rajasthan villages illustrates significant professional mobility and social engagement beyond caste boundaries; nonetheless, caste-based endogamy, political alignment, and daily prejudice persist. Inequality in Rajasthan villages, he argues, has shifted from ritual hierarchies to structural disparities shaped by state-led development programs like reservations, which have centralised status and power. Sharma explains that in rural India, inequality arises from the uneven distribution and control of resources, partly due to the lack of necessary capabilities among people to assert their entitlements, and partly due to the structural characteristics of resource allocation that enable established families to monopolise a disproportionate share. The dominating groups are not only from the traditional upper castes; instead, many have gained advantages via state-sponsored policies and development programs that have, over time, reinforced their influence.
A significant contribution of the book lies in its emphasis on the individual-family relations as determining the quantum of agency available. Families allow individuals to access more possibilities, exercise agency, and challenge inflexible structures such as caste-based prohibitions by pooling their resources, skills, and social networks. The author shows how strict caste-based restrictions and hereditary professions have been replaced by aspirations and practical tactics, encapsulated in Amartya Sen’s “Three R’s” (Reach, Range, Reason) (Sen, 2005). The author skilfully demonstrates how education, urban work, and migration have created new social trajectories, particularly among younger generations. However, the handling of gender in this paradigm is constrained. While the book acknowledges the rise of nuclear families and higher education for daughters, it minimises the gendered barriers that continue to limit access to wealth and mobility. Men’s migration frequently enhances economic prospects, whereas women’s mobility is hampered by patriarchal norms, salary disparities, and unequal domestic roles.
Sharma’s discussion of economic diversification and the declining centrality of agriculture captures the changing occupational landscape of rural India. More open and inclusive economic places have replaced traditional markets that were controlled by merchant castes. Rural economies have been transformed by new business enterprises and contractual agreements among rural villages. The book demonstrates how migration and the rural-urban nexus have blurred the traditional divide, producing “villages in towns” and “town-like villages” (Sharma & Gupta, 1991). Political changes, particularly democratisation and the assertion of rights by marginalised groups, further reveal new pathways to power and status. It depicts the rise of a new rural middle class across caste boundaries, the enduring power of democratic dynasties, and the paradox of growing cultural equality alongside ongoing economic and political disparities.
Sharma highlights that both the cognitive and ontological foundations of rural life have undergone profound change since Independence. Sharma also rethinks what it means to be “rural”. He does not see the village as a moral community or a decreasing residual space; instead, he sees it as an adaptive, integrated social formation. Sharma emphasises the importance of macro-level changes, such as adult franchise, land redistribution, and different state policies and programs, in allowing rural populations to access resources and opportunities. Infrastructure developments, including schools, healthcare facilities, roads, transportation, MNREGA, and empowered Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) have altered rural life, changing social dynamics and fuelling rivalry for prestige, power, and resources.
While Sharma’s empirical depth is formidable, the book could have further engaged with contemporary theoretical debates, including intersectionality and neoliberal rural restructuring. Comparative insights from other regions could also have enhanced the generalisability of his findings. Nevertheless, these omissions do not diminish the book’s scholarly significance; rather, they give point to productive avenues for future research.
K. L. Sharma, placing social mobility within the prisms of agency on the part of the individual, structural change, and intervention by the state, establishes a compelling argument to rethink the Indian village beyond stereotypical notions of caste-designed immobility. Sharma contends that caste is no longer a closed system, but rather an adaptable matrix that interacts with class, education, politics, and development, transforming the Indian village into a porous and dynamic social structure. The rural is not a simple antithesis to the urban but a continuum where tradition and modernity coexist dynamically. Moreover, he successfully disproves the colonial idea that “village republics” were autonomous, isolated communities. Rather, he contends that Indian villages have always been vibrant, with inter-village trading and rural-urban ties. At the same time, he emphasises that education, migration, and urban employment have emerged as key drivers of social mobility in rural India.
References
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (1998, July 20). Jajmani system | Characteristics & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/jajmani-system
Sen, A. (2005). The three R’s of reform. Economic and Political Weekly, 40(19), 1899–1905
Sharma, K. L., & Gupta, D. (1991a). Country-town nexus (Studies in social). Rawat Publications
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