When I was researching for my latest book The Shudra Rebellion I went back into ancient Indian literature to find out whether there was a philosophical school called Agriculturism around pre-Vedic and Vedic period. I did not find any written evidence about this school. I looked at the possibility of such schools existing in ancient China, Greece, Israel and Egypt. We all know that apart from India these countries are the main builders of ancient schools of thought. I found that there was a very powerful school of Agriculturism in ancient China. It thrived between 770 and 221 BCE in China. The main philosopher who propagated and wrote about agriculturism was Xu Xing (372-2389 BCE). It remained part of Chinese history.
In fact the Indian agricultural civilizational history was pre-Chinese civilization. When Indian pre-Aryans built the Harappan civilization India had very developed agrarian production whereas China did not have such an advanced agricultural civilization. China’s earliest city was Changzhou, established around 2600 BC, located in the Hunan province. Harappan civilization was much older than this and the Chinese city was much smaller without any evidence of availability of burnt brick, advanced wood craft, bronze tools and so on.
Harappan civilization had shown more mature brain work than any other ancient city civilizational work. Without a properly developed philosophy of agriculturism making advanced scientific tools is not possible. Philosophy and science are closely interrelated mental developmental processes. In pre-Vedic period India had that combined thinking process.
AGRICULTURISM AND VEDAS
After the Vedas were composed and written into texts slowly agriculturalism as philosophy was regarded as unworthy to study and write about. Quite sadly that school slowly went out of existence. That resulted in a massive stagnation of agrarian and artisanal science and production in ancient and medieval India. The fact that leather technology was treated as untouchable, along with its producers, spade and plough were never seen as symbols of civilization of India had weakened the advancement of production. That situation was waiting for somebody to come in.
The Muslim rulers came with a different philosophy, but quickly were surrounded by the Brahminic punditry that told them that in their parampara caste was divine and educating the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis was out of God’s direction.
In other words the Indian Agriculturism was much more advanced than that of China. That was the foundational philosophy of our nationalism not Vedism. Because caste culture did not allow to write about it and preserve it died. That was because the Pre-Aryan Harappans did not have developed a script and post Vedic agriculturists were declared fourth Varna as Shudra slaves, in which all Shudra caste like present Reddys, Kammas, Kapus, Marathas, Patels Jats Mudaliyars to Chakalis (Washing communities )and Mangalis (barbers) were a part. Hence they were not allowed to read and write till the British opened schools for all of them.
Even the Muslim kings like Akbar went by Brahmin pandits’ advice to keep them away from Persian education.
Even now we see the impact of that historical illiteracy on the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi masses.
The Shudra Rebellion book examines these hurdles for even financially sound Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis not getting engaged with philosophy even now. The contemporary Dwijas mostly directed by the RSS school do not engage with agrarian philosophy. They keep on telling that Vedas are the source of Indian philosophy. But in those books there is no agrarian knowledge. Nowhere in the world book is seen as a source of philosophy. Books are only a reflection of the people’s philosophy working in the fields. And the Vedas did not reflect that productive field philosophy of agriculturalism.
The Dwija thinkers do not think that Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis are capable of producing philosophical ideas even now. They built a wall between philosophy of agriculturalism and Vedism. This wall of Brahminism destroyed creativity in agrarian production; it did not allow industrial production to grow as it did in China and Europe in present times.
Is it not a fact that in village agrarian communities there are many philosophical visions about good production, land and seed relation, the nature of soil and its relationship to seeds, animals and humans. Do philosophical ideas still play a critical role in our villages or not? Yes they play. Only a generalized philosophical vision around plant, grain, fruit, earth and water of Indians produced food from fields when hunting and fishing was not feeding them enough in a given area. Even now that continuum is there.
The study of agriculturalism as philosophy now is important because the RSS/BJP intellectuals, who mostly came from non-agrarian dwija families, want the Indian children and youth to study only Vedism and mythology in schools, colleges and universities. But there is no discourse around agrarian and artisanal production in these books. The social category that is involved in production, innovation of agriculture and artisan science almost does not exist in those books. Without food producers and artisan skilled workers how did the Vedic and Puranic society exist?
ALTERNATIVE METHOD
The only alternative left to me was a careful study of the present village level agrarian masses to reconstruct the Indian philosophy of agriculturism and trace its roots back to Harappan agriculturism.
In the book mentioned above there is a chapter, Shudra Agriculturalism and Indian Civilization. This is indeed a preliminary study of our philosophy of Agriculturism in comparison with that of Chinese. It defines how agriculture operations in India have philosophical ideas linking with materialism. The Hindutva view is that only religion is linked to philosophy. In fact agriculturism is deeply embedded with spiritual philosophy much before Rigveda was composed and Ramayana and Mahabharatam were written.
By suppressing the agriculturists as Shudra slaves the Vedists also suppressed agriculturist philosophy and that anti-agriculturist philosophical bent of mind continued.
However, a lot of new studies need to be done on Indian agriculturalism. It needs to be given higher status than Vedism, Vedanta, Dwita and Adwaita because agriculturism is the life blood of human survival. Once religion as a philosophical school emerged independent of the philosophy of production and the religious philosophers dominated the knowledge system. However, we need to rediscover great schools like agriculturism and promote them in order to survive as a creative nation. Once upon a time organised religions like the ones we see now were not there and they may not be there after several centuries later.
The philosophy of production and distribution will be part of human life as long as human life exists on this earth. After coming to power in 2014 the RSS/BJP pundits are talking about the parampara of Vedism and want to hand over agriculture to a few monopoly Dwija industrialists, who see it only as a source of profit. The great rebellion of farmers against three farm laws in 2021-22 saved the nation from that danger. My book, the Shudra Rebellion, took birth in this background.
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist, author. His latest book is The Shudra Rebellion
