April Readings

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Modernity from below: localcitizenship on the south Indian coast

Ajantha Subramanian

In June 1997, Catholic fishermen from a fishing

village in the south Indian coastal district ofKanyakumari made the unprecedented move of

taking their church to court. The fishermens

decision to wield state law against their religious

leadership came in response to a clerical sanctionthat prevented village inhabitants from fishing

for a week. They had provoked the anger of theclergy by initiating an attack on local trawling

boats that ruptured a church-brokered peace on

the coast. The attack was

one in a series of confronta-tions between the artisanal,

or passive-gear, craft and

mechanised trawlers of Ka-nyakumari district and sig-

nalled the build-up of

artisanal opposition to thetrawling of inshore waters

and depletion of the marine

resource. But unlike other

occasions when religious

sanctions against violenceamong coastal Catholics

held sway, this time artisa-nal fishers accused the

church of overstepping its authority.Instead of submitting to the clerical order, they

sought justice in the courts as local citizens

opposing unconstitutional barriers to their

livelihood.

In this essay, I consider Indian statedevelopmentalism as a process of displacement

and Catholic fisher activism as a demand for the

As a force of development, the state

identified artisanal fishers as an econocommunity standing apart from the industria

ing nation. And as a secular force, it

identified them as a Catholic community sta

ing apart from the Hindu mainstream. Thtwo overlapping forms of community, e

distinguished by its difference from a poseconomic or cultural mainstream, have circu

scribed the relationship of Catholic fishers to

state and operated as lim

to full citizenship. Howeas I will illustrate, Cath

artisans have respond

not by rejecting the sand demanding cultu

autonomy, but by app

priating and reworking scategories in unexpec

ways to demand econo

justice and equal citiz

ship. They have respon

to displacement by secdevelopmentalism by ass

ing their rightful placecitizens of the Indian sta

Kanyakumaris bluerevolution

Located at the southwestern tip of the Indsubcontinent in the state of Tamilnadu,

district of Kanyakumari has a 68 kilome

Ajantha Subramanian is Assistant Pro-fessor of Social Anthropology and Social

Studies at Harvard. She received her PhD

in Cultural Anthropology from Duke

University in 2000. Since then, she has

been a postdoctoral fellow with the Uni-

versity of North Carolina, Chapel Hills

Programme in Creating the Transnational

South (200001); a visiting professor with

Cornell Universitys Department of

Anthropology (200102); and a fellow at

Yale Universitys Programme in Agrarian

Studies (2002).

Email: [email protected]


70/119

guese expansion in the sixteenth century, Cath-

olicism spread along the west coast of India,

when a sizeable section of the western coastalpopulation from Bombay to Kanyakumari were

converted through a series of pacts between the

Portuguese Crown and different native king-doms (Narchison et al. 1983, Schurhammer

1977). From that point on, the church on thesouthwestern coast has been landlord, tax

collector and religious authority an imposing

trinity that has served as the primary intermedi-

ary between the fishing community and succes-sive rulers. The social geography of the coast is

at once religious and civil: the boundaries of

fishing villages overlap with parish boundaries,and the parish priest is the moral authority of the

village council. However, this mutual implica-tion of the religious and civil is not without its

tensions. Fisher struggles for greater caste rights

within the church, or for greater lay authority on

the coast, have occurred with frequency over the

course of three centuries (Ballhatchet 1998,Kooiman 1989).

It was into this cultural context that thesecular developmental state entered in the 1950s.

Mechanisation of the Indian fishery was one

strand of the national drive towards industriali-sation that took off during the decade after

independence. The National Planning Commis-

sion proposed a radical transformation of

capture fisheries that would complement IndiasGreen Revolution in agriculture: new mechan-

ised fishing technologies would boost catches to

levels commensurate with the postulated wealthof the oceans, contribute to the economic

development of the country, and help feed its

burgeoning population. This Blue Revolution

was to be an all-India affair, promoted bythe central government and adopted with

variation in every coastal state (Somasundaram

1981, Tamilnadu State Planning Commission1972).

The Commissions recommendation ofrapid technological change for alleviating

coastal poverty, raising the Indian fishers

standard of living, and increasing levels of

production was justified by perceptions of thecoastal population as socially backward. The

Commission characterised the existing fishery

mentary, their tackle elementary, their capital

equipment slight and inefficient (Shah 1948).

There was also a cultural component to thisevaluation. The Commission determined that

the poor productivity of indigenous fishing

technologies was largely attributable to coastalculture, characterised by indolence, lack of

thrift, resistance to change, and violence, anditself a product of social isolation. The incor-

poration of the coast into a national framework

of development would help undermine those

aspects of coastal culture that were inimical tosocial progress.

At the same time, and in accordance with

Gandhian notions of the decentralised, self-governing village republic, the Commission

identified the need to sustain the organicsolidarity of the fishing village as a foundation

for development. It finally determined that

Community Development, which would retain

the fishing village as the basic unit of the

development process, would be the ideal ap-proach to ensuring the smooth transformation

of the coast. By making community the basicsocial unit of development, the Commission

hoped to mitigate the turbulence of change. In

keeping with Gandhis vision, it placed thevillage at the heart of the Community Develop-

ment agenda and promoted nation-building as a

process extending from Indias rural commu-

nities (Singh 1969).In its final incarnation, Community Devel-

opment was a peculiar blend of goals: it invoked

the village community as an organic spaceof moral economy that would provide a

foundation for the nation and it sought to

restructure the village to suit the needs of

nation-building. The programme thus had con-flicting aims of dissolving the boundaries of

traditional economies by integrating them

into a national developmental framework andproducing its beneficiaries as reworked com-

munities uniformly benefited by the develop-ment process.

How did Community Development inter-

sect with secularism? Before addressing this

question, let me offer a brief synopsis of Indianstate secularism. State secularism in India has

been founded on two overlapping dichotomies

136 Ajantha Subramanian


71/119

equal citizenship for religious minorities within a

multicultural nation, in India the practice of

state secularism has actually had the contraryeffect of ghettoising minority communities and

denying them the right to self-determination.

While its stated purpose has been to protectminority identities and cultures, the secular state

has operated on the assumption that the Hindumajority is more secular and therefore more

equipped for citizenship than the Muslim or

Christian minority. This has partly been an

outcome of state policies of religious reformimplemented in the immediate aftermath of

independence. In the name of protecting mino-

rities, the state limited its reform agenda toHindus. While the actual success of Hindu

reform is debatable, the discourse of reformcreated a perceived difference within the nation

between a secularised Hindu majority and

communitarian minorities defined by religion.

For the secular state, then, the Hindu has come

to stand for the secular citizen, while theminority Muslim or Christian is by contrast

primarily a member of a particular, religiouscommunity. However, non-intervention in min-

ority religious affairs has not meant non-

incorporation. Operating on the assumptionthat minorities identify primarily along religious

lines, the state has incorporated them into a

national framework of secularism by selecting

religious authorities as their natural leaders, apattern that has further reinforced the percep-

tion that minority communities are bounded

entities outside the secular nation (Shaikh 1989;Chatterjee 1997). State practice on the Kanya-

kumari coast also reflects this dynamic. As I will

illustrate, the Indian state has consistently

treated coastal Catholics as members, first of afaith community, and only secondarily of a

national one.

To produce consent for its developmentagenda, the state appealed to the communities

that constituted the Indian electorate. Thesewere not the village communities envisioned in

the Community Development framework but

the caste and religious entities that were the basic

units of representative democracy and of thestates secular imagination. In the context of the

Kanyakumari coast with its Catholic fisher

Catholic Church and framing Commu

Development as religious minority uplift. T

Tamilnadu Chief Minister at the time, Kamaraj, courted the Catholic Church as

natural leader of the coast, both for winn

fisher votes and for endorsing fisheries develment.

By choosing the Catholic Church asnatural authority of the coast and disrega

ing the authority of village fishing councils,

state reduced the complex cultural history

Kanyakumaris fishers to a single referentidentity easily accommodated to secular de

opmental priorities. Through the political p

cess, then, developmental and secular unstandings of community came together, cr

ing an overlap between the fisher collective ofdevelopment agenda and the religious collec

of the secular agenda.

As a part of his commitment to Cath

participation in the development proc

Chief Minister Kamaraj hand-picked Lourdmal Simon, a prominent member of Kanya

maris Catholic diocese, as State FisheMinister.1 While this choice certainly appea

to the church, local clergy were already incli

to support the programme. For many wwere themselves from elite coastal fami

modern technology signalled an end to coa

penury. Many of these priests had left fish

for the clerical life, and their theological trainin centres far from the Kanyakumari co

had given them a new perspective on their ho

one that starkly contrasted Catholic coalife with those of upwardly mobile grou

Returning to the coast as religious lead

they were an educated middle class w

were from, and no longer simply of, coast.

When the state introduced the developm

programme, these priests were quick to idenit as a much-needed catalyst for fisher integ

tion into the national economic and cultumainstream. The development programme p

mised to level older hierarchies and provide

avenue of economic and social mobility for

Catholic minority as a whole. The clergy thefore embraced the programme, spoke of

necessity from the pulpit and urged their fis

Modernity from below: local citizenship on the south Indian coast


72/119

was finally recognising the needs of poor

Catholics and their rightful place in a modernis-

ing nation.2

Minister Simon set about implementing the

mechanisation programme across Tamilnadu

with particular attention to her home districtof Kanyakumari. But even during its first years,

the priorities of the programme shifted. With thefood crisis of the late 1950s, the original goal of

extensive development through building coop-

eratives and advancing mechanisation shifted to

the intensive development of a few test villages.In Kanyakumari district, Colachel village, a

natural harbour in an otherwise turbulent

coastline, was the chosen test-case for the newtechnology. Coincidentally, it was also the

Ministers marital village, where her husband,A. M. Simon, was village council president.

During the first years of mechanisation, over

70% of subsidised craft went to Colachel,

making it the centre of mechanised fishing and

the Blue Revolutions local success story.3

The concentration of craft in one village

called into question the meaning of CommunityDevelopment. It now appeared to be more a

process of class differentiation and displacement

of the poor than one of community uplift.However, early challenges to the development

programme were stifled by the continued pro-

mise of social progress through technological

change. It was not until the prawn rush of the1960s that the polarisation of the coast was

sealed and more effective challenges to the

development project emerged.The direction and pace of fisheries devel-

opment shifted dramatically in the mid-1960s

due to the rise in demand for prawn in the

international fisheries market. In Tamilnadu,the pink gold rush signalled the displacement

of cooperative development for domestic con-

sumption by the export trade in prawn. Theearlier goals of crafting new but traditional

designs and of building cooperative institutionswere rapidly superseded by a new focus on

trawlerisation by a government hungry for

foreign exchange. Accordingly, the Tamilnadu

Fisheries Department shifted emphasis to therapid distribution of subsidised trawling boats

for prawn harvest The pink gold rush restruc-

The Tamilnadu governments prioritising

of mechanisation radically transformed the

existing code of conduct governing the accessand use of the marine resource. The pre-

mechanisation fishery was governed by a code

of common property with inbuilt barriers toaccess. Technical barriers, such as the need to

have fishery-specific skills and the need to usetechnologies acceptable to the collective of

fishers, and social barriers, such as the caste

basis of fishing, prevented free entry of capital

and persons from outside fishing communitiesinto the fishery. With the prawn rush, and in the

name of introducing laws and institutions, the

state subsidised the transformation of a commonproperty system into an open-access system that

benefited those equipped with the most efficienttechnologies of harvest (Kurien 1996).

Finally, the pink gold rush undercut the

very purpose of mechanisation, which was to

equip fishermen to travel further out to sea and

alleviate the pressure on the inshore resource.Since prawn are most abundant in shallow

waters, trawler owners equipped with thecapital-intensive technology to take them to

offshore fishing grounds now preferred to

remain in the area closest to shore to availthemselves of this valuable commodity. The

crowding of the inshore sea has led to violent

confrontations between trawler and artisanal

fishers over access and use of the coastal waters.These conflicts have increased in intensity from

the mid-1970s, after which the overcapitalisation

of the fishery and overfishing of the resourcebegan to result in a decline in total fish landings.

Artisanal fishers now found themselves compet-

ing on unequal technical terms for a depleting

resource (Bavinck 1997, 1998, Kurien 1993).On other parts of the Indian and Tamilnadu

coast, the prawn rush attracted outside entre-

preneurs to fishing and created a class of non-operating merchant capitalists, most of whom

had no previous connection to the sea. InKanyakumari, however, a different pattern

emerged. Here, the class of mechanised fishers

arose from within the Catholic fishing popula-

tion and, as a result, generated a unique culturalpolitics around access to and use of natural

resources



73/119

fishers. The disparity in earnings between the

two groups generated considerable tension. The

operations of trawling boats in the inshore areaoften caused damage to artisanal craft and gear,

as the ploughing motion of the trawl net would

accidentally rip the nets cast by artisanal fishers.With the pink gold rush, competition in the area

of sea closest to the shore where prawn groundswere found in abundance only heightened the

tensions. Clashes broke out frequently between

artisanal and mechanised crafts at sea, leading to

loss of life and livelihood.Significantly, as the violence on the Kanya-

kumari coast increased, so too did the Tamilna-

du governments reliance upon the CatholicChurchs religious authority. More and more,

government officials began to look to the clergyto translate class conflict into religious minority

uplift and to keep in sight the original promise of

Community Development. This privileging of

religious authority in mediating the conflict has

been a strictly local phenomenon. On other partsof the coastline, the Hindu or multi-faith

character of the fishing population, and theentry of non-fisher capitalists into the industry

has facilitated the formation of class-based

coalitions that negotiate terms directly with thestate. These negotiations have included local

agreements on when and where mechanised

trawlers can operate, agreements that are then

policed jointly by the state and by artisanal fisherorganisations (Bavinck 1998).

By contrast, in Kanyakumari, the fact of

the fishing population being exclusively Catholichas generated different dynamics. The state has

consistently collaborated with the church to

defuse the power of village councils to determine

access and use of the marine resource. Both stateand church have deployed the rhetoric of

community to present the upward mobility

of one section of the Catholic fishing populationas the advance of the minority community as a

whole, and to link minority community uplift inturn with national progress. Both church and

state have deployed secularist notions of reli-

gious minority solidarity and participation in the

nation to present the material advance ofColachels trawler owners as the creation of a

representative fisher middle class and to con-

In his analysis of Indias first Five Y

Plan, Richard Fox offers a harsh critique

Community Development. He opines that first post-independence government blata

hijacked the Gandhian vision to fur

policies totally incompatible with the Mahmas utopia (Fox 1989: 182). Referring to

governments first Five Year Plan, Fox stthat it envisions not the Gandhian ocea

circles of village democracy but the pyramid

centralised state power. The government wo

be so commanding, in fact, that it could eafford to subsidise its Gandhian alternati

(ibid.: 182). In Foxs opinion, the Ind

governments approach to rural developmemptied the Gandhian vision of all that

revolutionary so that it became nothing mthan an ideological weapon of the ru

Congress party.

Fox sees Community Development a

redefinition of the village in terms derived fr

the state. According to him, the village of Five Year Plans could never be Gand

decentralised village republic because its mary purpose was to fulfil a national missi

However, Community Development was

only a means ofincorporating rural villages ia national developmental framework; it was a

a way of differentiating them from a natio

mainstream. Community Development c

sisted of two steps: (1) restructuring trtional economies through the mode

development process; and (2) undercutting

tensions generated by the distribution of mern capitalist technology by soliciting

support of traditional authorities for

development process and by equating devel

ment with community uplift. Community velopment thus had conflicting goals

dissolving the boundaries of traditional eco

mies by integrating them into a national frawork of development, while producing

beneficiaries of development as distinct comunities uniformly benefiting from the de

opment process. Rather than arising from

complexities of local social and economic

community in the Community Developmframework was a strategic distillation of th

aspects of local cultural reality that were m



74/119

of its materiality, leaving in its place a culturalshell.

Fisher politics of citizenship

I maintain that this dual process of incorpora-

tion and differentiation is a form of displace-ment. The two forms of community identity

Catholic and artisanal produced through

secular developmentalism have operated intandem to circumscribe the practices and rights

of Kanyakumaris artisans, denying them access

to the state and to economic justice. Artisanalfisher grievances, even when directly addressed

to the state, are systematically referred to

the church.Significantly, Colachels trawler owners

have been far more successful in getting the

that is denied to their artisanal brethren. Notonly are Colachels mechanised fishers cognisant

of this fact, they have crafted a politics of

modernity that underscores their differencefrom the artisanal sector and their identification

with a national middle class defined by its

commitment to development. Many of Cola-

chels trawler owners have diversified theirinvestments, buying land as well as more

trawling boats. The ownership of property away

from the coast has brought them into greatercontact with agrarian and urban caste groups

and produced a new middle class affiliation.Interestingly, they have begun to describe their

own set of changing values by using the

primitivising language used by state officials to

distinguish coastal from national culture. Adisposition to save money, to foster an ethic of

cleanliness to resolve conflict through dialogue

Christian fishermen at Vizhinjam, Kerala, India. Brigitte Cavanagh/CIRIC



75/119

fishers. Their consumption practices have also

changed dramatically. Big concrete homes,

motorcycles, and cars are now a more commonsight in Colachel as are increasing rates of dowry.

These markers of civilisation have further

insulated Colachel from other artisanal villages.Most significantly, Colachels mechanised

fishers have responded to artisanal oppositionby invoking their greater contribution to the

nation. In the early 1990s, Colachels trawl boat

association began an information campaign by

distributing pamphlets defending its positionagainst the artisanal sector. Some pamphlets

highlighted the trawlers contribution to Indias

foreign exchange earnings and used scientificreasoning to invalidate the artisanal sectors

position on the unsustainability of trawling.Other pamphlets defended their position on the

basis of more traditional identities. These

denounced the un-Christian values of the

artisanal fishers who only practice violence

while the trawlers multiply the fish just as Jesusdid. In contrast to these bad fishers are the

trawler owners who contribute financially toCatholic festivals and to the upkeep of parish

churches and have given Kanyakumaris

Catholics a national name.4 Through thesepublications, Colachels mechanised fishers un-

derscored the greater contribution of trawler

than artisanal fishing to the building of both

church and nation. By rhetorically fusing sector,community, and nation, they presented their

own interest as the national interest and their

success as the success of the Catholic community.For their part, Kanyakumaris artisanal

fishers have turned to a politics that similarly

maps identity onto territory. However, in place

of the mechanised sectors turn to nation andscience, they have mapped their identity onto

locality and adopted a discourse of ecology.

With these choices, artisanal fishers have chal-lenged the terms of secular developmentalism

and crafted a demand for state accountabilityand full citizenship. In this final section, I argue

that Kanyakumaris artisans responded to their

displacement from community through the

privileging of an upwardly mobile fisher middle-class by articulating both new forms of locality

and new understandings of citizenship

collective of traditional practitioners. This n

community consciousness has three key eleme

territory, technology, and ecology. As I debelow, each of these elements has a longer hist

However, over the last two decades, artisa

fishers have redefined these elements and cbined them to create a sense of local belonging

as I call it ecological citizenship. In this section, I take up each element individually

narrate the change in meaning that contribute

the construction of an artisanal commu

consciousness. Finally, I turn back to the anecdat the beginning of this paper to look at how

new conception of community challenged

subordination of the local to the national, andoing so, recast the terms of citizenship.

The reworked understanding of territthat grounded artisanal community conscio

ness reflected a spatial shift from village to zo

Previously, fishers asserted their right to sh

space and the marine resource through

village. All those who launched their crafts frthe village shore or fished in the waters adjac

to a village had to obey the use-rules, or codcommon property, imposed by that village.

the late 1980s, however, the village was s

planted by the zone as the primary basis territorial identity. Interestingly, this shift

catalysed by a state initiative. In response

widespread artisanal attacks on trawlers, wh

swept the Tamilnadu coast in the late 1970s,Tamilnadu government instituted the 1

Marine Fisheries Regulation Act, which crea

a protected inshore zone for artisanal fishAccording to the Act, artisanal fishers wo

work the sea up to three nautical miles fr

shore while trawlers would carry out operati

only beyond this limit. The Act was macompelled by law and order concerns:

primary purpose was to separate fisher anta

nists into distinct zones to stave off conflict wcontinuing to promote development thro

mechanisation. In effect, however, the exacerbated tensions between warring fish

In Kanyakumari, artisanal fishers took

advantage of the new Act. The line in the

substituted a horizontal boundary for vertical ones separating villages and becam

territorial marker for the divisive host



76/119

large catches, but also if they transgressed the

three-mile inshore boundary. With every clash,

the three-mile zone became an even more potentsymbol of artisanal identity.

Artisanal fishers redefinition of technology

was similarly compelled by another develop-ment initiative, this time by the church. With the

expansion of the development arena in the 1970sto include non-state actors, the Catholic Church

too entered the fray. A decade after the onset of

the prawn rush and frequent clashes, a section of

the Kanyakumari clergy began to question theemancipatory potential of the states develop-

ment agenda and rethink their own role as moral

custodians of the coast. Drawing inspirationfrom Latin American liberation theology and

the Indian communist movement, they begantalking about the economic and cultural rights

of the poor and about how to extend the

churchs natural authority to fill a develop-

ment gap left by the state. The ensuing option

for the poor was manifest in a church project tomotorise artisanal crafts. The aim of the project

was to create an intermediate technology thatwould in turn create an intermediate category of

motorised fishers and help undercut the polar-

isation of artisanal and mechanised fishers. Aftermuch trial and error, a motorised canoe with a

speed equal to the trawler became operational in

1985 and by 1990 such canoes were used with

increasing regularity across the district. Insteadof undercutting sectoral tensions, however, the

spread of canoes increased the militancy of

artisanal politics. With trawling identified as theonly real enemy, the new motorised technology

was assimilated into the original antagonism

between sectors. The inclusion of motors into

the category of artisanal fisher reflected itsincreased flexibility andspecificity. Now, artisa-

nal fishers could include new forms of technol-

ogy as long as they were not trawlers. Not onlywere they assimilated, the motorised canoes also

became the policing arm of the artisanal sector.The speed of the canoes enabled head-on

confrontation with trawlers at sea and the

frequency of clashes increased sharply. In

addition, artisanal village councils whose legis-lative authority had been undermined by their

inability to restrict trawling were now revitalised

lives of artisanal fishermen have always been

marked by the unpredictability of harvest. While

seasonal variation and individual skill do con-tribute to the outcome of fishing trips, there is

also a great deal left to chance. On any given

day, two groups of fishermen operating in thesame area using the same craft and gear may be

either blessed with a full net or cursed with anempty one. Artisans often contrast the un-

fathomable nature of the sea with the farmers

mastery over land. Felix, an elderly fisherman

and village councillor, explained the integral roleplayed by Kadalamma, the goddess of the sea, in

the lives of fishers: The land can be owned and

farmers plant seeds knowing exactly what croptheyll harvest. But the sea isnt anyones

property. We never know what our Kadalammawill give us. Although it causes bitterness, divine

providence as a reason for empty nets is accom-

modated within the moral universe of artisanal

fishers. This makes it all the more unacceptable

that mere human beings should usurp this divineright by virtue of technological capability.

Artisanal outrage at such hubris on the partof the trawlers has found new expression

through the language of sustainability. Sus-

tainability as a concept entered the politicallexicon of local artisans through the mobilisa-

tion work of the National Fishworkers Forum,

an umbrella body of artisanal fisher organisa-

tions. In tune with ongoing processes ofeconomic liberalisation, the Indian government

deregulated its 200-mile Exclusive Economic

Zone in 1991, permitting the operations offoreign industrial fishing vessels. In response,

the NFF began a mobilisation campaign that

stood state developmentalism on its head by

equating trawling with destruction not produc-tion, and by identifying artisanal fishing as the

only means to a sustainable future. The Forums

initiative drew Kanyakumaris artisans into aglobal political arena that linked local struggles

against the displacement of fisher artisans bycapitalist modernisation. But even as they were

incorporated into a global politics of opposition,

artisanal fishers increasingly used the language

of fate and faith to counter trawler aggression.They began to speak of trawling not simply as an

expression of greed and unequal distribution



77/119

included the god-given skill of artisanal fishing

which made the deskilling effect of mechanised

trawling an added affront to nature and divinity.The link between artisanal fishing, divine will,

and the sustainable future of the resource

produced a new sense of religiosity that dis-placed moral authority from the church to

artisanal fishers, making them the custodiansof the sea and the moral arbiters of local conflict.

Together, territory, technology, and ecol-

ogy crystallised a new community consciousness

that challenged the displacements produced bysecular developmentalism. It did so by recon-

stituting the fisher collective to exclude trawlers

and by redrawing the boundaries of locality toexclude the church. These reworked forms of

community and place have anchored a sense oflocal belonging that stands in marked contrast to

the trawler owners claim to national citizenship.

Arif Dirlik has pointed to the centrality of

the local in contemporary political discourse.

It would seem by the early nineties, he notes,that local movements, or movements to save

and reconstruct local societies, have emerged asprimary expressions of resistance to domina-

tion (Dirlik 1996: 22). While I agree with

Dirliks emphasis on the emergence of the localas a territorial and an ethical category, I would

underscore the continued importance of the

state to local resistance. For Kanyakumaris

artisans, the claim to local identity and rightswas intimately tied to citizenship and the

exercise of state power. This was a citizenship

based not on national but on local belonging. Itwas an endorsement of so-called local identities

and priorities and a rejection of their displace-

ment by national concerns. But it was not a call

for local autonomy. Rather, artisanal fishersdemanded greater state intervention and more

effective incorporation into the framework of

the state to protect their mode of harvest. It wasthis insistence on the critical role of state power

in ensuring local rights that made artisanalpolitics one of citizenship. And it was through

the demand for state recognition on their termsthat artisanal fishers sought to combat their

displacement by secular developmentalism.To illustrate this point further, let me take

you back to the anecdote that began this paper

Peace and Development Council called

emergency session. Council directors began

session by distinguishing the actions of the tgroups. Although they acknowledged t

blame must be placed on both sides, t

asserted that there was no justification for scale of the attack and the financial loss incur

by the trawlers. The clergy concluded that wthe boat fishers had committed a kuttra(sin), the artisanal fishers had committe

maha kuttram (great sin). After days

negotiations, talks broke down and the artisafishers boycotted the Council, incurring cler

sanction against fishing for a week.

When the artisanal fishers took their chuto court against the sanction, they delibera

chose a space of state power to stage tprotest. In their petition, they called upon

state to recognise and protect their rights as lo

custodians of the sea and to reject the in

mediary role of the church. Significantly,

village councillors who drafted the petitionbehalf of thirty artisanal fishing villages mad

point of distinguishing between the district sofficials whom they encountered in their ne

tiations with trawlers, and the state as a mo

umbrella that was autonomous from the victudes of local politics. One of them, a fisherm

in his sixties who had served as a vil

councillor for 10 years, stated this distinct

most clearly and vehemently: Shame on Collector and Fisheries Director! Instead

protecting us, they have established a rule

corruption. They have betrayed the state wtheir immoral neglect of poor citizens. T

sense of the state as benefactor of the poor a

patron of the artisan placed it above its incarn

institutions and lent it higher moral authorMost importantly, by claiming a privileged l

to this moral state as locals, artisanal fish

hoped to bypass the developmental calculus national framework that placed them a

disadvantage vis-a` -vis their mechanised brren and displaced them from the full right

citizenship. In doing so, they in effect unlin

the state from the middle class nation, arti

lated a sense of local belonging, and claimtheir rightful place as citizens.

In articulating what I call ecolog



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of national belonging. Second, they contested

statist oppositions dichotomies between citizen

and community and between nation and minor-ity, which ground secular developmentalism,

without rejecting the framework of rights

altogether. And finally, they challenged their

displacement by capitalist modernisation with a

politics that incorporated developmental mean-ings into the redefinition of locality.

Notes

1. Interviews with N. Dennis,

Indian National Congress Mem-

ber of Parliament; M. C. Balan,

ex-Dravida Munnetra KazhagamMember of Legislative Assembly;

Lourdammal Simon, Minister of

Fisheries, Tamilnadu Govern-ment, 1958-1962.

2. Interviews with Fathers Jacob

Lopez, parish priest, Colachel,

Kanyakumari, 1957-1962; A.

Dionysius, parish priest, Colachel,1996; M. J. Edwin, Director, Nala

Oli Iyakkam; and A. J. Joseph,

parish priest, Kanyakumari, 1948-1955.

3. Mechanisation scheme records,

District Fisheries Department of-

fice, Nagercoil, Kanyakumari.

4. Excerpts from pamphlets dis-

tributed by the Kanyakumari

District Mechanised Boat OwnersAssociation.

References

BALLHATCHET 1998. Caste, Class,and Catholicism in India, 17891914.London: Curzon Press.

BAVINCK, M. 1997. ChangingBalance of Power at Sea:Motorization of Artisanal FishingCraft, Economic and PoliticalWeekly, February 1.

BAVINCK, M. 1998. One sea, threestakeholders: legal pluralism in the

inshore fisheries of the CoromandelCoast, India, unpublished Ph.D.dissertation, University of

Amsterdam.

CHATTERJEE, P. 1997. Religiousminorities and the secular nation-state: reflections on an Indianimpasse, Public Culture 8, 1139.

DIRLIK, A. 1996. The global in thelocal, in Wilson, R., &Dissanayake, W. (eds), Global/Local: Cultural Production and the

Transnational Imaginary. Durham,NC: Duke University Press.

KOOIMAN, D. 1989. Conversion andSocial Equality: the London

Missionary Society in South

Travancore in the NineteenthCentury. Delhi: Manohar.

KURIEN, J. 1978. Entry of bigbusiness into fishing: its impact onfish economy, Economic andPolitical Weekly Sep. 8, 15571564.

KURIEN, J. 1993. Ruining thecommons: overfishing andfishworkers actions in south India,

The Ecologist 23(1), 512.

KURIEN, J. 1996. On Developmentand Public Action: a reflection onthe Kerala experience, in Sunil andNicola Bastian (eds) AssessingParticipation: A Debate from South

Asia. Delhi: Konark Publishers.

KURIEN, J., & MATHEW, S. 1982.Technological change in fishing: its

impact on fishermen unpublishedpaper prepared for the Indian

NARCHISON, J. R., LEON, V. P.,FRANCIS, E., & WILFRED, F. 1983.Called to Serve: A Profile of the

Diocese of Kottar. Nagercoil,Tamilnadu: Assisi Press.

SCHURHAMMER, G. 1977. FrancisXavier: His Life, His Times, Vol. II.Rome: Jesuit Historical Institute.

SHAH, K. T. 1948. National PlanningCommission: Animal Husbandry,

Dairying, Fisheries and Horticulture.Bombay: Vora and Co.

SHAIKH, F. 1989. Community and

Consensus in Islam: MuslimRepresentation in Colonial India,

18601947. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

SINGH, T. 1969. Towards anIntegrated Society. Bombay: OrientLongmans.

SOMASUNDARAM, R. 1981.Mechanisation of fisheries inTamilnadu, Masters Thesis.Department of Fisheries, Madras.

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April Readings

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