Documenting a Caste: The Chakkiliyars in Colonial and Missionary Documents in India

Gunasekaran S

doi:10.26812/caste.v2i1.247

Abstract

This essay is an attempt to write the social history of the Chakkiliyar community of South India, often classified in the colonial records as a caste occupying the lowest position in the caste hierarchy. This paper argues that the colonial period was marked by lowering opportunities for economic and social mobility for the community. Traditionally involved in the manufacture of leather goods that were central to irrigation, the Chakkiliyars had relatively better opportunities and some even occupied the status of petty landowners. But the advent of pumpsets and the mechanization of leather processing during the colonial period severely affected their economic opportunities. Adding to this, the colonial and missionary records, inflated with the prejudices of their upper caste informers, repeatedly portrayed their low social existence. Therefore, despite certain genuine motives and formidable social reforms, the colonial and missionary documentation of the caste in fact further strengthened the existing social stereotypes and thus added yet another layer into its history of discrimination. Besides recovering the various ways in which Chakkiliyars were described in the documents of colonial officials and Christian missionaries, this paper also analyzes the recent attempts by the members of the community to produce a counter narrative to the stereotypical representations of their caste.

Highlights

Caste identities in South India were much complex than the way they were portrayed in colonial census surveys
Given the enormity of caste divisions in South India, early missionary accounts, colonial surveys, manuals and gazetteers had focused very little on the Chakkiliyars
The social construction of characterizing the Chakkiliyar as one who eats flesh of dead cattle, the holy animal of the Hindus, and associated stereotypes seriously narrowed their path to mobility

Summary

Introduction

Caste identities in South India were much complex than the way they were portrayed in colonial census surveys. Despite various cultural and social restrictions, castes migrated for better economic opportunities, adopted new caste titles, reframed their origin myths, and aspired for a respectable social identity. Given the enormity of caste divisions in South India, early missionary accounts, colonial surveys, manuals and gazetteers had focused very little on the Chakkiliyars.. Some such sakkili-nattams might have existed where the Chakkiliyars had the opportunity to own and cultivate land Otherwise, their mingling with other castes (upper) in the village was mainly because of occupational and service needs of the dominant communities. 23) in his Slave of the Soil in Southern India, records a memory, ‘the writer was once informed by the present zamindar of Avidayapuram, in the district of Tirunelvelly, that this zamindari was once under a Chackla king.’ All these opportunities benefitted a minuscule portion of the community without hardly any economic and social mobility to the caste as whole. Both are looked down upon, the Chakkili are very far below the Panisevan

A Caste Test

Findings

Conclusion