Our historically evolved village has been defined by two distinct but interconnected groups; farmers and artisans. The farmers directly engage in farming and the artisans provide ancillary services needed for agricultural production.

In the segment of farmers we find the landed and landless, owners and tenants, petty landholders and landlords. Artisans are professional men and women such as weavers, potters, blacksmiths, carpenters, barbers and entertainers/performers etc. The village is a self-reliant and self-sufficient unit in the words of Karl Marx. Interestingly its self-reliance and self-sufficiency worked both ways; they sustained the village for thousands of years but also caused its slow stagnation. In other words village’s mainstay was its very bane. Rigid socio-economic structure of the village ensured its survival through the provision of essential economic and social services but its exclusionary nature discouraged innovation, inventiveness and creativity which underpin human evolution. It put premium on producing more of the same, it in fact glorified vegetative existence.

Village has been a paramount example of art of survival and stagnation. Despite innumerable foreign invasions, Punjab’s village maintained its insularity. Foreign invaders barring one were less developed than the society they invaded. That’s the reason they failed to trigger a process that carried within it the seeds of any meaningfully enduring change. So we witness no significant transformation of rural society from the times of Harappa to mid-19th century. It continued to produce with the same tools in a social frame work that resisted change which it treated as a kind of taboo subject. It was the advent of British colonialism that started an encompassing transformation of village structure with its welcome intrusion. Colonial administration forced by its internal dynamic irrevocably brought about a fundamental change in the mode of production; it replaced traditional mode of production with machine-based one, the most precious gift of Industrial Revolution.

First to disappear from the village life were the weavers [Julaha /Pawali] who used to provide the villagers with all kinds of cloth needed by individuals as well as community for diverse uses. Cloth imported from England and produced by the local textile mills in the colonial era sounded death knell for the weavers as it was cheaper, more refined and well-designed. Its ready availability made it more popular as it ended the traditional client’s dependence on the whims of the weavers who took long to meet the orders. Remember weavers were the people who from 12th to 15th century led an intellectual and spiritual revolt against the caste-ridden oppressive socio-economic order, the finest and most creative expression of which we find the flourishing of Bhagti Movement that produced great poets and saints. The tallest among them was the immortal Bhagat Kabir.

Potters [Kumbhar/Kumhar] were next to vanish from the village scene. Household utensils produced in urban centres started to flood the market. Their large scale production made them affordable and durability pushed their sale up further. Thus potter’s wheel, a stuff of poetry, in the village was rendered redundant.

Traditional farming mainly depended on carpenter [Darkhan/Tarkhan] and blacksmith [Lohar]. Tillage implements they made were interlinked. Carpenter made the wooden plough and blacksmith provided share. The former made the wooden grip of scythe and the latter was responsible for the blade. So was the case with axe and other tools. Carpenter also provided the community with household objects such as wooden beds, wooden stools and walkers. The duo was dislodged from its traditionally entrenched position by the introduction of tractors and other mechanical devices on a large scale in the field of agriculture in the last three decades of last century.

Barber [Naae] can hang around if he opens a sort of barber shop or so-called saloon in the village or on the village approach road. Performers and entertainers have flocked to the city centres because of dwindling employment in the changed cultural conditions where diverse forms of commercially driven cheap entertainment are easily accessible. As a result of the developments in the historical process village community stands divested of its diversity. Bulk of village residents now comprise the farmers and their dependents with few service providers. Apart from material reasons, social and cultural factors have played an important role in the migration of artisans to the urban spaces.

Artisans have always been treated by landholders, even by peasants, as low caste deserving of scant social and personal respect. They are considered on the lowest rung of social hierarchy and generally not given the recognition they amply deserve for their professional skills. Their services are taken for granted due to age-old caste-based rigid division of work. The debate still rages on as to whether caste created professions or professions turned into castes in the aftermath of uneasy Arya Dravidian interaction and intermingling.

So artisans’ migration to urban centres clearly has one positive aspect; its emancipatory nature helps a sizable segment of skilled people end their age-old unequal relationship with their oppressively traditional society. To sum up, induction of technology and spillovers created by urbanisation for the country side have on the one hand rendered some of the skills of artisans - also known by a derogatory term ‘Kammi [which literally means worker but generally applied to someone lowly and mean] - but on the other have liberated them from the bondage of servile life by making the migration to cities possible which hold prospects of new jobs regardless of caste.

A significant historical development underpinned by reason and creativity extracts a price and offers something new. It destroys the old and builds what has been potentially there but in the realm of imagination. Our village now stands denuded of its traditional diverse skills reflecting its rapid cultural and artistic impoverishment but the developmen tholds a promise of better tomorrow; it can liberate artisans from the talons of oppressive traditions and provide the urban economy with the skilled hands it needs. So there is no cause for wailing and complaining. We should rather celebrate the dying out of what is moribund in the rural society. “Enough of your rattling, Pippal tree! The old leaves have fallen and now it’s the turn for the new ones to emerge,” says an old rural adage. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2019