Angarmala by Sharad Joshi

Summary

Angarmala (literally ‘a garland of embers’) is a Marathi-language collection of autobiographical and reflective essays by Sharad Joshi, the economist-turned-activist who founded the Shetkari Sanghatana, Maharashtra’s pre-eminent farmers’ movement of the late twentieth century. First published in September 2008 by Janshakti Vachak Chalwal of Aurangabad and reissued in February 2015 in an expanded second edition (with four additional pieces, including character sketches of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh, Sanghatana ex-president Anil Gote, and Rampyaribapu Patil, plus the ‘birth-story’ of the periodical Vaarkari), the book gathers writings that had earlier appeared in Sanghatana journals such as Saptahik Vaarkari and Saamajik Dnyananaba.

The opening title essay describes Joshi’s return from Switzerland to India on 1 May 1976 with his wife Leela and daughters Shreya and Gauri, his abandonment of a comfortable international career (he had worked with multilateral agencies and spoke French, German and English) to take up dryland farming on a tract called Angarmala at Ambethan in Pune district, and the eleven landless Dalit cultivators (‘akra bhumiputra’) with whom he tried collective farming, only to confront the unforgiving arithmetic of bank loans, well-digging costs and crop prices that destroyed peasant livelihoods. From this personal failure he derives the central insight that animates the Sanghatana: rural poverty is not a problem of charity or development schemes but of systematically rigged terms of trade against agriculture.

Later essays move between memoir and movement history. ‘Mazhya brahmanyachi gatha’ is a frank reckoning with his own Brahmin upbringing and a rejection of caste pride; he recounts the Nipani agitation of March 1981 where shetkaris were shot, the onion movement of 1980, his exchanges with critics who tried to caste-label the Sanghatana leadership, and his quarrel with the temple of Chokhamela being barred to Brahmin farmers. The volume sits squarely in the Indian liberal tradition through its insistence on free markets for farm produce, its hostility to state-administered prices, and its Phule-inflected critique of urban-rural exploitation — Joshi explicitly invokes Jotiba Phule’s Shetkaryancha Asud and his own Shetkaryacha Mujra. The prose is lyrical rather than polemical, presented by the publisher Shrikant Umrikar as evidence that a mass-movement leader could also write Marathi of literary quality.

Key points

• Autobiographical essays by Sharad Joshi, founder of the Shetkari Sanghatana, gathered from his writing in the movement periodicals Saptahik Vaarkari and Saamajik Dnyananaba.
• The title essay narrates his 1 May 1976 return from Switzerland with wife Leela and daughters Shreya and Gauri, and the start of farming at Angarmala in Ambethan, Pune district.
• Describes an early experiment in collective farming with eleven landless cultivators (‘akra bhumiputra’) that failed because bank-loan repayments could not be met from any realistic crop yield.
• Recounts the Nipani agitation of 14 March 1981, when thirteen farmers were killed and twenty to twenty-five injured, and the onion movement of 1980 that brought him to national attention.
• Includes a candid essay on his Brahmin caste background (‘Mazhya brahmanyachi gatha’) rejecting caste pride and confronting attempts to caste-label the Sanghatana’s leadership.
• Carries character portraits of Chaudhary Charan Singh, Sanghatana ex-president Anil Gote, Rampyaribapu Patil, Shankarrao, Babulal and other movement figures.
• Diagnoses rural poverty as a structural problem of terms of trade rigged against agriculture, not a matter for charity, aid schemes or temple-style philanthropy.
• Second edition (24 February 2015, Aurangabad) adds four essays plus the origin story of the Vaarkari periodical; the first edition appeared on 3 September 2008.
• Invokes Jotiba Phule’s Shetkaryancha Asud and Joshi’s own Shetkaryacha Mujra as part of a Phule-inflected critique of urban exploitation of the village.