British India – Millennial Matriarchs

I am an unabashed and unapologetic potato-worshipper. I was therefore thrilled to learn about a competition called the Potato Photographer of the Year. The inaugural edition of the competition was held in 2020, and the results of the 2021 competition were just announced. And I could see the love and appreciation for the vegetable in the superbly imaginative prize-winning entries. Poems for the eyes!

The Potato Photographer of the Year competition has an eminent panel of judges including photography-great Martin Parr. The prizes will not make your fortune, and come to about £2000 worth of stuff, including a lens kit, camera case, backpack, coveted (by photographers) subscriptions, and a photography workshop. But the good part, apart from celebrating the potato, is that all entry fees (£5 per single entry) are donated to the Trussell Trust, a food bank charity that aims to end food poverty in the UK.

*One of the winners of the Potato Photo Competition 2021!*

Prosaically, the potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a tuber. It is an annual plant of the nightshade family. It is native to the Peruvian-Bolivian Andes and is one of the world’s main food crops. It is a great source of Vit C, protein, thiamin, and niacin.

Potatoes were domesticated and cultivated in South America by the Incas as early as 1,800 years ago. Spaniards who invaded South America transported them and introduced them into Europe during the second half of the 16^th century. By the end of the 17^th century the plant was a major crop in Ireland, and by the end of the 18^th century it was being grown in significant quantities in continental Europe, particularly Germany, and in the west of England. The Irish economy became dependent on the potato, and the disastrous failures of the Irish crops in the mid-19^th century because of late blight, and the resulting Irish Potato Famine had huge impacts in terms of human life, the economy and demographics.

The potato reached India in the late 16^th-early 17^th centuries, most likely aboard Portuguese and Dutch ships. Today, India ranks as the world’s third largest potato producing nation—with about 4.9 crore tonnes grown here in 2017. Potato is not only a staple, but a cash crop that provides significant income for farmers, through domestic sales and exports.

Though the potato reached India through the Portuguese and Dutch, it initially remained confined to the Malabar cost. It was the British who were responsible for its spread. The East India Company wanted to replace local vegetables which they thought were of low quality, with superior vegetables, viz, potato—basically because they wanted to have a reliable source for this food which had become part of their staple. So they aggressively evangelized and promoted it in every which way, including giving out the seeds and plants to farmers for free. Apart from a source to supply their own tables, the British also pushed the potato as a panacea for several ills in India. The 1838 records of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India states that through growing European-introduced crops such as the potato, “happiness till now unknown in India, will be diffused abroad.” Similarly, the East India Company records that growing potatoes would help “alleviate the Miseries” in India caused by frequent failures of rice crops. So the potato is indeed part of our troubled colonial past.

But to imagine a present without potatoes, I do not want to do!

While the Potato Photographer of the Year celebrates visual depictions of the tuber, the vegetable does not seem to have found much favour from wordsmiths. Poems eulogizing the potato are few and far between. One that I liked was Potatoes by Lucy Adkins.

But names of Indian potatoes are pretty poetic! Kufri Jawahar, Kufri Chandramukhi, Kufri Sutlej, Kufri Bahar, Kufri Anand, Kufri Ashoka, Kufri Pukhraj, Kufri Sindhuri, Kufri Jyoti, Kufri Megha, Kufri Lauvkar and Kufri Swarna are a few. (Kufri, I think must come from the place in Himachal which is a major potato growing area, and the location of Research Station of the Central Potato Research Institute).

Long live the potato, and may we find ways for all our senses to celebrate it!

–Meena

…is a book by William Crooke, first published in 1906. It fully lives up to its sub-title ‘Being Discursive Notes on Various Subjects Connected with India.’

William Crooke served in the Bengal Civil Services. He spent 25 years in active service in India.

Aside from his duties in this service, his major contribution was in research and documentation as an ethologist and folk-lorist, deeply studying traditions, practices and stories of many parts of India. His contribution to the study and documentation of ethnology and folklore is acknowledged by scholars across the world.

He published several academic papers and edited journals.

As well as this, he wrote books–a huge output including:

A Rural and Agricultural Glossary for the N.W. Provinces and Oudh.
An Ethnographic Handbook for the N.W.P. & Oudh. Allahabad.
An introduction to the popular religion and folklore of northern India.
An introduction to the popular religion and folklore of northern India, in 2 volumes
The tribes and castes of the North-western Provinces and Oudh, in 4 volumes.
The North-Western Provinces of India: their history, ethnology, and administration.
Things Indian: being discursive notes on various subjects connected with India
Natives of northern India. A Rural and Agricultural Glossary of the NW Provinces and Oudh.

I have not read any of his other works, but ‘Things Indian’ which has been on my bookshelf for many years, which I just picked up, is a testimony to his scholarship. And also, to a fairly (for the time) non-judgmental perspective on things Indian, written with understanding, empathy and appreciation.

The book covers topics as diverse as Agriculture and Bazaar, Camel and Curry, Polo and Precious stones, Wine and Wood carving.

He records such practices as: ‘When a widower marries again, his second wife wears an amulet, which she calls the ‘crown of the co-wife.’ Or the annual game of tug–of-war of the Khasis in Assam in which ‘..one side represents the village and the other a gang of demons…with the intention being that the evil spirits may lose and quit the neighbourhood.’ Or that ‘Opprobrious names are often given to a baby after its parents have lost elder children, in the belief that, when the child bears a ridiculous name, it is less liable to be attacked by the Evil Eye or other uncanny influence.’ (My grandmother suffered thus, named Picchamma (pichhai=begging in Tamil), following as she did two siblings who died at birth).

He refutes sanctioned colonial wisdom in many instances, for example when he says: ‘Much ill-informed criticism has been directed against the methods of the India farmer’, and goes on to counter many criticisms of farming methods by quoting the logic and reasons given by farmers which he agrees with. He pays respect to the weaving of India, saying ‘it is impossible to discuss the numberless products of the Indian loom’, and laments how the introduction of aniline dyes have brought down the quality of dyed products.

He notes with delight that in kathputli performances ‘..all well-known members of native society and, in particular, the Sahib and the English lady are freely satirized.’

By quoting a report on the contents of the stomach of a gharial shot at the time, which consisted of ‘About a dozen large bunches or pellets of hair, probably human; sixty-eight rounded pebbles; one large ankle-rink; twenty-four fragments of Churis or glass bangles; five bronze finger-rings; a sliver neck-charm; a gold bead; thirty small red coral beads’, he tries to dispose of the belief of the time that gharials did not prey on humans.

Eclectic in his choice of topics, the book is a delightful browse—with both solid documentation and gems of quaint information. And a tribute to a curious and meticulous mind.

Sure, Crooke was part of the colonial machinery. But to make a distinction—there were those among them who contributed in various ways, going beyond the call of duty. He was one of them.

–Meena

An allied reading is ‘Beyond the Call of Duty’, V. Raghunathan. Harper-Collins.

Tag: British India

Portrait of a Potato

‘Things Indian’