ABSTRACT
This chapter lends empirical evidence to one's thesis of pauperisation and proletarianisation and that the class-indigeneity intersection involves a variety of transitional social locations, with pauperisation being the dominant tendency. The empirical material and analysis presented in this chapter shows how the lives and livelihoods of the indigenous communities of Wayanad were impacted by the land policies and governance structures and practices of the colonial raj and the post-colonial governments of Kerala. The colonial rulers created a local ally in the form of a class of upper-caste landowners whose interests were closely linked to theirs. Indigenous people were turned into insecure tenants who had to pay their rent to the newly created landlords and taxes in cash to the colonial state. The dispossession and deprivation caused by the colonial land policy led to an uprising of the indigenous people in 1812, which was one of the earliest agrarian revolutions in the region.
