@sha[...]
2 months ago
Could the rise of communism in kerala and Bengal have some correlation to the stinking rich Brahmin-landlords in this region? Majority had no ownership of land.They only had the right to work and no right whatsoever for wages.
In China the communism dove toes with their culture and national interests.But in India the communists have always postures against national interests.This needs a clarification.Otherwise the right may not seem to be as right as is being debated.Communisms relevance needs to be put in the right place.
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@anan[...]
2 months ago
In Kerala Brahmins were.not the only landlords. And tenants were sometimes very rich and often well off. (Not the peasant tillers). While five to ten percent were wealthy, the majority of Brahmin  "landlords" earned humble lease rents say 500 to 1000 kg of raw paddy per annum with which they had to meet their expenses and obligations.
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@[...]halGucci
2 months ago
Marxist in WB reaped the benefit from millions of migrants who came from East Pakistan. The narrative of Brahmin landowners in Bengal is a gross generalisation, Bengali Brahmins dominated in education but Bengal had landowners from all varnas including sudra varna.Again, Bengal is fertile and food was plenty and had ancient communities that had flourishing rural industries in textile, pottery, handicrafts,which disappeared under the British Raj. Bengal endured man-made famine too under the British , something that was unheard of before the coming of the British. The landless ,homeless migrants of Partition, and the body of Mohammedans who stayed back, and those that have continued to come in and taken over lands forcibly with the help of Jyoti Basu's government gave the Marxist their stronghold over WB politics.
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@darkprince2490
2 months ago (edited)
"Majority had no ownership of land" is because the land cannot be owned in heathen systems - just as stated by Chief Seattle halfway across the world. The Deity or king had marginal title and grants were made directly to the village level for land worked communally. To even think of selling land was inconceivable to the ancient indian, so aggregation would have been impossible. The native state cess was always marginal, while the colonial cess was extractive. The brahmins you speak of were displaced colonial collaborators feeding into the brit jamindari (colonial reward) system that itself was a copy of the earlier mughal/nawabi mansabdari system (also, imperfectly, copied by rajputs). Later even the native middleman was removed under ryotwari, and the propaganda campaign that accompanied that was the early communist agitation. The communist served the aggregation purposes of the colonial state and later the nehruvian state, blaming the native for disposession and poverty brought about by the colonials. these days they serve western corporates. both the caricature and reality of Sethji are colonial in origin. In ancient bharata, the vaishya or cultivator had traditional rights to the land.
it is like coming across the early brahmin dominated military companies in EIC and ignoring the collaboration and foreign company aspect and talking brahmin soldiers subjugating the population!