The Nail and the Measure: Asaris and the Politics of Knowing

ASARI RESISTANCE TO COLONIAL STANDARDISATIONS

Other than space and time, the method of work and training was a major area of contestation between Asaris and colonialists. The report of the industrial education conferences held in various provinces in India during 1901–02 revealed the objectives and the anxieties of colonial administrators in transforming the methods and training process of artisanal practices (Government of India 1906). The education department of the Government of India distributed a questionnaire to government officials, industrial school administrators and private businessmen as a preparation for the industrial education conferences. Through this questionnaire, the  government sought to collect information regarding the native methods of training and the possibility of the reform of the native system. The questionnaire asked the informants to provide their opinion regarding the advantages or disadvantages of the native systems of training artisans over the British system of industrial training schools, regarding the possibility of improving the native system and about the desirability of including native methods in industrial training schools.

Another question was whether the native system could be ‘influenced by outside expert suggestions, advice, or interference, and how best?’ (Government of India 1906: 3) These questions, on the one hand, expressed the intentions of the colonial state to translate and bring artisanal production activities into the field of the mapped and controlled territory of colonial governing practices.

On the other hand, the questions also showed that the government did not desire to transform artisanal production into factory production; rather the colonialists wanted to transform artisanal practices into a (modernised) traditional knowledge practice. Colonial officers in the field made these intentions clear through their answers to the questionnaire. The superintendent of the Madras School of Arts, Alfred Chatterton, submitted a detailed reply to the questionnaire. In this reply, he opined that the native system as such cannot survive without modernisation of tools and methods, especially in competition with the factory production system. He mentioned that ‘artisans are cut off from the rest of the industrial world and continue to pursue the most antiquated methods of working notwithstanding the fact that they have long been superseded everywhere else’ (Government of India 1906: 162).

According to Chatterton, the best procedure to reform artisanal practice was the method followed by the Madras School of Arts. The school, as a first step, provided to new apprentices of all trades training in drawing. Drawing is the ‘most important step in learning how to produce standard patterns’, a method about which the ‘native artisans are completely ignorant’ (Government of India 1906: 164). Chatterton underscored the learning of basic arithmetic and the English language as well because this will help Asaris in converting their trade into a business.The report contained several other colonial administrators’ suggestions regarding the reformation of artisanal practice. Most of them reflected the views of Chatterton.

These suggestions can be summarised as a proposal for the institutionalisation, standardisation and modernisation of artisanal practices. It was exactly these attempts that Asaris tried to both oppose and ignore in reforming their trade according to contemporary requirements.

The director of the PWD of the Madras government issued a directive in 1910 that engineers should exactly follow the drawings and plans initially prepared by them and approved by the authorities for all the buildings constructed by the department in various towns (Government of Madras 1910: 23–25). Preparation of drawings was already an existing practice among civil engineers, but in many cases for practical reasons the actual construction did not follow the plans or drawings. As a result, there was always an escalation in the estimated cost of construction.

It was in this context that the director issued the above directive. In a reply to this, assistant engineer of PWD at Calicut, M. J. Reed, submitted that he needed more time to implement this directive (Government of Madras 1910: 31). According to Reed, masons or carpenters were incapable of working according to a drawing or plan. It would take time to train them in reading drawings and to teach them to work according to plans. Reed observed that ‘carpenters still measure using their measuring scales which are marked in units of fingers and feet’. There were standard conversion tables converting fingers and feet into inches, but Asaris did not follow these tables. Reed stated that ‘the carpenters here are reluctant to abandon their traditional measuring practices’ because ‘they consider these practices as part of their religious belief’ (Government of Madras 1910: 32). It is obvious that what Reed named a ‘religious belief of Asaris’ was the belief in caste practices.

The issue of the use of drawings was not just a question of whether Asaris could learn to read the drawings or not; it was a question of difference between the two kinds of practices altogether. In the colonial form, knowledge represents something outside itself and is always a knowledge of something. This conception separates the object of knowledge from the knowledge about the object. The use of models and drawings are knowledge in the form of representation. Within colonial practice, it was difficult even to begin a work without this knowledge.

 In an article in the 15th issue of the Journal of Indian Art, R. C. Temple, a colonial officer, expressed his surprise over the native system of building construction that never used drawings or models. He wondered ‘like many other Englishmen, what manner of men they were who raised grand buildings, the remains of which we see in India’ (Temple 1890: 57). He observed a temple construction at Karli and reported the conversation he had with the overseer of the construction about the chief mason: ‘How long had he (the mason) been at it?’ ‘Oh a long while – many months.’ ‘How much longer would he be?’ ‘He could not say, there is no need to hurry.’ ‘Had he any plans?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘On Paper?’ ‘No, why should he have it on paper?’ ‘But how do you know what it will look like?’ ‘The master mason knew, he just gives directions to others. I will know when it finishes’ (Temple 1890: 59).

 For Temple, it was seemingly impossible to begin construction work without drawings. Even after witnessing the native method of construction, he was not convinced that the native masons or carpenters were reliable for anything other than simple works: They may be safely trusted to make good metalled roads, to bridge a small stream, or road on special circumstances with reasonable intelligence; but, unless directed, they will not make plan or estimate. There are some mistiris (contractors) who understand plans, but many, and by no means the most incompetent in the practice, when asked to explain details, gaze at them helplessly for a while and then look up wishfully saying ‘Garib Parivar (poor family)!!’ (Temple 1890: 61).

In the hierarchical series of knowledge, colonialists positioned practices significantly below theoretical/written knowledge. They believed that theoretical knowledge can always represent practice. Drawings and plans represented construction practices. For colonisers this knowledge was important to control, order, or, in short, to govern the practices of the natives. The Asaris attempted to escape from these governing practices to keep their authority over asarippani.

The above observations may force us to imagine an unchanging practice of asarippani through the centuries, which is far from reality. Asari practices, their conceptualisation and execution of work changed significantly during this period. They incorporated new materials available into asarippani, and they changed their notions of what it means to travel and what kind of time they were living in. The accommodation of new objects into existing methods of asarippani requires creativity, flexibility, and openness towards changes. The introduction of the two objects – the iron nail and clay tiles – demonstrates these features of asarippani during the first half of the 20^th century. Till the end of the 19th century, Asaris designed the wooden frames for the roof in such a way that pegs or nails had very limited application.

 Even for complex assemblies, they used lap joint, box joint or dovetail joint techniques, which limited the use of fasteners and pegs. British engineers introduced iron nails to Asaris in Malabar in the 1840s during the construction of a government guest house at Calicut. However, even in the beginning of the 20th century, as there was a very limited availability of iron nails, Asaris continued their earlier methods for making joints and couplings. 16 By the 1920s, the availability of iron increased, especially in the form of scrap from the railway workshops, and many small industrial units began manufacturing iron nails along with many other fabrication materials like bolts, nuts and screws (Ramakrishnan 1987).

The assistant engineer in the PWD at Calicut, E. W. Thomason, wrote in 1923 that the carpenters in Malabar have started using iron nails, ‘but only as an additional reinforcement for joints’. He added that the carpenters, as they were still an ‘uneducated and ignorant class’, could not fully accept ‘the significance of modern construction materials and reform their practices accordingly’ (Government of Madras 1923: 112). If this was the colonial interpretation of selective adoption and adaptation of changes, Asaris viewed themselves as flexible but cautious regarding the changes in that period. In a conversation with a chief carpenter Karuppan in 1928, P. Govinda Variyar described the attitude of Asaris towards changes in the construction field (Variyar 1928).

Karuppan considered himself as a person who was ready to experiment. According to him, Asaris always observed external conditions, including weather and time, and hence they easily sensed the pulse of the moment. Karuppan further explained how, disregarding his father’s concerns, he has started using a new form of joint using iron nails. Even his father started using it after he found it simple and convenient. For Karuppan, the criterion for accepting a new practice was that it should ‘allow the combination of proper measure and beauty’. If the measure was not proper, ‘he (an Asari) will be nailing not the wood piece, but the body of his forefather. Asaris can do only asarippani. One can do a new thing, if and only if it is asarippani’ (Variyar 1928: 40). Karuppan here assumed that all Asaris knew what asarippani was. According to him, the reference point for evaluating the propriety of a new material or method were the caste rules that defined asarippani.

The assimilation of clay tiles for roofs is another example in which Asaris incorporated changes within the norms of asarippani. By the end of the 19th century, the Basel Evangelical Mission established various industrial units all over Malabar. The Mission opened three tile factories in Malabar district at Palakkad, Calicut and Cannanore. Clay tiles brought two important changes in the methods of roof construction. A new kind of frame was required to hold the tiles properly. Asaris invented a new model of frame – a long, square wooden pole, which replaced the old round-shaped bamboo poles. The older bamboo poles were usually tied to the main frame of the roof. In the case of the new poles, Asaris started using iron nails to fix them to the frame. The new objects also forced Asaris to re-conceptualise the methods and units of measurement.

Achu Asari, a chief carpenter from Palakkad, remembered how his grandfather used to engage in arguments with his grandfather’s elder brother (most probably in the 1930s) regarding the translation of an inch into fingers. The grandfather used clay tiles from the Basel Mission Tile factory at Olavakkode as a standard for an inch (a tile was fourteen inches in length) and equated 3 inches to 5 fingers. His brother thought that it was more accurate to equate 6 inches with 10 and 1/2 fingers, in which case an inch would be slightly longer than in the former case. Even though they differed in opinion regarding the length of an inch, this difference did not create any problem for them to work together. Achu Asari’s point was that it was not a pre-calculated conversion method that determined the practice. Both his grandfather and his brother determined the width between two wooden frames that supported the tile using the tile itself as a measure.

Using the tile itself as a measure is a perfect example for understanding the difference between Asari ways of knowing and colonial methods of knowledge production. In the Asari practice, knowing and using that knowledge was a single activity. The process of measuring and understanding the unit of measure was simultaneous. Hence, the separation of representation from practice, which was one of the fundamental characteristics of colonial knowledge, was not relevant for Asari practices. In other words, by keeping the colonial separation in abeyance, Asaris avoided the intrusion of colonial knowledge into their practice. It is important to note that Asaris were not incapable of generalisation or abstraction. The muzhakkol (the wooden measuring scale Asaris used) itself was an object of abstracted measure.

 In the colonial form, the production of knowledge started from the particulars and ended in general (which is the only form of knowledge) through abstraction. In Asari practice, the movement between particular and general was a reversible action. On the one hand, an abstract measure was present in the form of muzhakkol, but an Asari learned or understood the measure through the action of measuring. The continuous movement between generalisation and particularisation constituted the practice of asarippani. In other words, Asaris avoided colonial intervention not by abstaining from the process of abstraction as such but by negating the separation of abstraction from the process of particularisation.

CONCLUSION

 The stories of the Asari world in the first half of the 20th century show the importance of different forms of knowing practices in understanding the relation between knowledge production and social forces. By the beginning of the century, for each caste community the relation to knowledge became an important parameter in their changing understandings of caste and then practices related to it. In other words, knowledge became the reference field from where communities could evaluate their present and chart out their future. However, these evaluations and future programmes were already constrained by their corresponding position in the hierarchical series of knowledge created through the dominant colonial discourse on knowledge.

The varied interaction of communities with the production of knowledge produced varied understandings of caste within each community. In the new paradigm of knowledge hierarchy the divide between mental and manual labour became more prominent and for all practical purposes, artisans were located in the realm of manual labour and hence removed from the domain of knowledge production.

In colonial policies, general education, which targeted the upper-caste population, acquired higher status and was emblematised as domain knowledge production in general or specifically the domain of theoretical knowledge production. Simultaneously, artisanal practices were relegated to the status of mere bodily practice and, in rare cases, practical knowledge. Colonial education institutions were modelled on this hierarchical series of knowledge production: universities and research institutes at the top of this hierarchy, and industrial training centres and skill training at the bottom. The postcolonial state in its educational policies continued this structure of hierarchy, and artisans continued to remain outside the domain of knowledge production. Until the 1970s, Asaris successfully avoided/actively ignored colonial forms of knowledge through various strategies and tactics. Asari interaction shows how difference-making, instead of dichotomous opposition, could be a way of creating distance from the intervention of dominant forces. It also provides examples of alternative possibilities of organising the world other than through the measure of knowledge.

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