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  "path": "/posts/index",
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  "title": "The Disenfranchisement of Paniyas in Kerala",
  "publishedAt": "2018-09-01T00:00:00.000Z",
  "textContent": "> \"When people say it has been 60 years of India’s liberation, I find it difficult to believe, for we are still slaves, working for others, picking up human excreta with our bare hands.\"\n>\n>- Kala bai Lavre, a manual scavenger\nThis literature review provides insights into various aspects of the Paniya tribe, covering topics such as population, caste names and structures in Wayanad, periods of Paniya history, inter-tribal disparity, work and employment for Adivasis, alienation through the education system, public perceptions, plantation economy, exclusion from the financial system, and health issues.\n\nPopulation\n\n1. According to the 2011 census, the scheduled tribes' population in Kerala is 4.85 lakh, which accounts for 1.45% of the general population.\n\nCaste Names, Structures in Wayanad\n\n2. Livelihood changes and health status of paniyan of Wayanad  by Vipindas, P explores the organization of the caste system in Wayanad. Pages 1–13 outline each of the tribes, their histories and how they got their names, which is interesting because of the implications it has for the phrase “What’s in a name”; pages 14–19 describe the history of Wayanad and its Adivasi populations and page 20 describes the tribe at the focus of this article- The Paniyans.\n\nPeriods of Paniya History\n\n3. Paniya history can be divided into four periods, as summarized in THE_SHRINKING_LIVELIHOOD_STRATEGIES_OF_THE_PANIYAR by Baby Francis Kulirani. These periods include an early hunter-gatherer period leading to a long period of being agrarian slaves. Then as liberated wage earners, they entered an extremely competitive market, grew dependent on state welfare as a rising sense of desperation and hopelessness set in.\n\nThe Tribal People are Not a Monolith\n\n4. TRIBAL POPULATIONS IN KERALA’S DEVELOPMENT PROCESS: AN IMPACT EVALUATION OF POLICIES AND SCHEMES highlights the inter-tribal disparities in welfare scheme benefits and socio-economic conditions. It emphasizes that different tribes have vastly different socio-economic and political lives, challenging the notion of tribes as a monolithic group.\n\n5. Health divide” between indigenous and non-indigenous populations in Kerala, India: Population based study further emphasizes the inter-tribal disparities, showcasing the significant differences within tribal groups. It also sheds light on the stark contrast between ST communities and non-tribal groups.\n\nWork and Employment for Adivasis\n\n6. SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEPRIVATION AND MALNUTRITION AMONG THE TRIBAL WOMEN: A COMPARITIVE STUDY explores the kind of work Adivasi women engage in and their average monthly earnings as of 2016. It highlights their lack of political representation, economic growth, and physical well-being.\n\nAlienation through the Education System\n\n7. The challenges faced by Paniya children in accessing education are outlined in (Inclusive Properties of School Interactional Milieu: Implicationsfor Identity Construction and Social Exclusion). The paper raises questions about the inclusivity of existing educational models. Additionally, a video (source) provides insights into an education system designed with Adivasi culture in mind.\n\nPlantation Economy\n\n10. Paniya workers primarily engaged in paddy cultivation but faced a decline in employment due to the expansion of plantations. They were not easily absorbed into the plantation labour economy. \n11. Ch 7- Socio Economic Conditions of Migrant Plantation Labourers A Study of Selected Plantations in Karnataka, \n12. An Overview of the Socio Economic Conditions of Paniya Tribal Community in Kerala\n\nExclusion from the Financial System\n\n11. The majority of the Paniya population was excluded from formal financial activities and the financial sector. (Source\n\nHealth and Caste\n\n12. The Paniya Tribe faces numerous health problems. One study focuses on malnutrition among Paniya children, highlighting their underutilization of available governmental schemes and the resulting deprivation at the community level. Another study - Women's health in a rural community in Kerala, India explores the impact of caste on the health of tribal women, with lower castes experiencing amplified vulnerabilities while upper castes enjoy protection due to an invisible caste buffer. Additionally, a study - Morbidity Pattern of Tribes in Kerala examines the occurrence of various diseases among Adivasis, including the prevalence of sickle cell anemia in Paniya communities.\n13. Access to quality healthcare is limited for tribal populations due to their remote locations. Government hospitals, community health centers, and primary health centers, though available, are insufficient to meet their needs. Mobile medical units have been introduced to cater to remote tribal areas. ASHA workers play a crucial role in responding to healthcare issues and alerting the government healthcare infrastructure. However, historical aversion to healthcare institutions among Paniyas remains a challenge. Government hospitals in Wayanad, located in Kalpetta, are often the only facilities equipped for specialized operations like deliveries, further restricting access to quality healthcare for the tribals living in remote areas.\n\nSystem Map of Issues\n\n{{< figure src=\"/assets/img/projects/Paniyas/system-map-of-issues.jpeg\" alt=\"System map of issues affecting the Paniya community\" caption=\"Credit: Author’s own (Read the legend- Take a circled issue- backtrack and see the other issues contributing to that- move to next circle)\" >}}\n\n> Decreasing Health, Alienation, Landlessness, Erosion of Cultural Pride, Anger, Lack of Wealth and a disconnected population\n\nAfter seeing the connections between Erosion of Cultural Pride and Anger, Landlessnessness and Wealthlessness and Alienation and Disconnection, this research laid the groundwork for a speculative storytelling intervention in Wayanad that explored these systemic issues through narrative.\n\n> \"Every single child labourer that I have documented comes from a highly impoverished family unit and belongs to a low-caste or minority community.\"\n>\n>- Siddharth Kara\n\nUnderstanding the History\n\nThrough the readings mentioned above as well as few current media pieces as well as stories and songs that the Paniya peoples tell about themselves.\n\nI then mapped this into the three stages of alienation _(in the footsteps of  Kulirani whose work I had mentioned in the earlier article)_\n\nA Rich Culture mixed with Centuries of Oppression\n\nCultural Artifacts and Practices\n\nStories and Songs:\n\nThrough most of their rituals and practices, the scars of slavery can be seen clearly. They call themselves the 'Ippi-mala makkal' -meaning The children of the mountain called Ippi. However, the name they are called, ‘Paniyan’ means worker. This story of oppression is also clearly evident in the story they tell of their origins:\n\n> On a hill called Ippi-mala (Mt. Ippi), there was a temple with a Brahmin priest and Jain Gounder. The priest would often observe a boy and a girl playing near the temple well. So they captured the children with help of another tribal man who worked for them. The children then worked for them, after which the gounder got them married to each other and they had five daughters and five sons. The Paniya regard them to be their first ancestors.\n\nThere are other variations of this story that warn the Paniya against manipulation from the upper castes. In that version, the Paniyas are enslaved because one of them was lured using good food that he then told the others about.\n\nRachel Santosh writes about the ceremony where the Paniya were sold to different landlords at the Valliyoorkaavu temple every year. The ritual that confirmed the transaction consisted of songs that showed how much the Paniyans suffered under their slavers. In the songs that are sung, god (padachavan) approves of their bondage and wills it so. Ironically, this temple is the biggest place of Paniyan worship now — they get special privileges at the temple as well.\n\nOther stories talk of the Paniyan afterlife- which does not constitute heaven or hell.\n\n> After death, the soul splits into twothe soul shadow (nizhelu) and the ancestral spirit (pene). God takes the nizhelu of a paniyan and puts it in the body of another paniyan that is born after him. The pene goes down to the keenadu(netherworld) where the pene will have the same occupation and work under the same master. The bondages in the present world continue in the netherworld also. This means that there is no freedom for the Paniyan even after death.\n\nDance and Music:\n\n{{< youtube b7U81Ybv4X8 >}}\n{{< youtube 8OSfyBmwKq8 >}}\n\nHistory of the Paniyans:\n\n> A tribal girl once asked me modestly, ”When we go to school, we read about Mahatma Gandhi. Did we have no heroes like that? Did we always suffer like this?”\n> Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps 1993\n\nOrigins\n\nNo one really knows about the origins of the Paniyas. Some theories state that they are the original inhabitants of India. They, themselves say that they were brought to the Wayanad region by a Malabar King but have no records of when or who that king was.\n\nThey initially lived as hunter-gatherers in the forests, sometimes straying into the farms of the landlords of the time to steal some food and then run away. Soon the landlords got tired of this behaviour and enslaved them and made them work in the fields as bonded labourers. This incident is preserved in the origin story that the Paniyans tell about themselves about their origins. However, the veracity might be dubious considering all the other stories which seem to be told by or board towards the upper castes.\n\nAs slaves that are sold with the land, they worked under the upper caste Namboothiris and Nairs or the ‘_janmis_’ _(rightful inheritors of the land)._ This caste hierarchy has had great effects on the cultural stories of the Paniyansthey called themselves the _‘kachavanmar’( lowest of the low)._ Other castes and subcastes were also cultivators but they were the tenants of the ‘janmis’. The P",
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