Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c6.s1.4

c6.s1.4

The attitudes of mind and modes of thought that have grown out of these conditions have moulded the life of an Indian village community. We have referred to its political aspect in an earlier chapter. Economically speaking, the village is a self-sufficient unit with an organic and well developed economic structure, if by organic life we mean the team wrok of a community to supply the needs and to fulfil the desires of its members. In fact, if an Indian village community were isolated physically from the rest of the world (as it is psychologically, in most cases) its economic organization would remain more or less unaffected. The leading feature of an Indian village community is a harmonious co-ordination of the specialized functions of its various component groups of workers. Everyone has his special function assigned to him; in fact, he is also born and brought up to it. For instance, of the various social groups, the husbandman takes to the tilling and the harvesting of crops which provide food for all the members of a village community. The rest of the members contribute to the productive process in a subsidiary manner. The women folk lend a hand in the various forms of farm labour, and look after animals and stock. The carpenters employ themselves in making and mending ploughs and other implements, the cultivator supplying them with wood. The blacksmiths supply the iron parts of the implements and repair them when necessary. The potters supply the household utensils. The cobblers make and mend the plough harness and shoes. In fact, everyone has his contribution to make, the washerman, the barber, the cowherd, the milkman, the water-carrier, the scavenger, even the beggar, the priest, the astrologer and the popular doctor and magician. Again, the produce of the field feeds a number of rural industries for instance, the making of ropes and baskets and the manufacture of sugar, scents, oils, etc. It finds occupation for a number of crafts namely, those of weavers, leather-workers, dyers, woodworkers and calico-printers. A group of people is set apart for the exchange of village produce. In one quarter of an Indian village, one comes across a tiny market where grain, cloth, sweetmeats, and other necessities of life are sold by petty shopkeepers. There is sometimes even a money-changer in a corner of the village market who changes coppers and cowries for silver and makes a small fortune in the process of conversion. Sometimes, the services of the local goldsmith come to his aid in testing the purity of the metal of a coin. The periodical fairs serve for bigger exchanges of commodities and for the supply of what one might call the luxuries of peasants, e.g., copper and mixed metal utensils, lead and tinsel ornaments, children’s toys, etc. The Indian village is not without its local politicians and even statesmen. The *chowpal* is full of discussions about individual quarrels and questions of caste behaviour. Somebody is even deeply thinking of the dangers of commercial wealth of village shopkeepers and expounds his political theories with all the pretensions of a Demonsthenes.¹ But outside their particular village or group of neighbouring villages, the rest of the world is one big mystery for them. This has been the structure of an Indian village in Hindustan, though signs of its decay are fast approaching under the strain of new economic forces.²