Living on the Bund: Marutham Tinai, Shared Agrarian Resources, and Class Consciousness in Randidangazhi

Abstract

Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s Randidangazhi (Two Measures of Rice, 1948) is a landmark novel on the agricultural workers of Kuttanad, a below–sea-level agrarian region in central Kerala. Situated amidst reclaimed paddy fields, backwaters, and water-logged settlements, the text documents the historical transition from feudal agrarian relations to emergent class consciousness, as landless Pulaya and Paraya labourers begin to organize for better wages and dignity. Reading the novel through the lens of Sangam Tinai poetics, especially Marutham Tinai, this article argues that Kuttanad is constructed as a fertile plainscape whose ecological and social “shared resources” become the central site of conflict, appropriation and resistance. The expansive paddy fields, flood-prone bunds, and reclaimed puncha patam not only provide the setting for class exploitation but also encode the temporality of seasons (Metam, Mithunam–Karkatakam) and everyday rhythms of labour, desire and hunger. The paper examines how successive regimes—feudal landlords, colonial and postcolonial state apparatus—have appropriated, reconfigured and commodified the shared resources, while the subaltern characters Koren, Chirutha and Chathan articulate a counter-history from below. It further situates Randidangazhi within larger debates on collective landscapes, ecological transformation and wetland governance in Kuttanad, linking literary representation with contemporary ecological crises that have converted the “rice bowl of Kerala” into a “poison bowl”.