Socio-cultural Processes and Livelihood Patterns at Tirurangadi - CDS

they received was being used to buy the products available in the market there, brought
obviously though the railroads. This also meant that once the goods brought from the
rural areas were no longer in demand, the kadavus and the rural Chanthas had to decline.
The picture drawn so far has been one of stagnation, and the picture may have been a
little overdrawn and require further examination. It is possible to draw one conclusion
from the above observations. The agrarian change brought about by the British resulted in
siphoning off about one–third of the produce as revenue by the British, and their
economic policies in general resulted in the decline of local trade and exchange, and
facilitated the appropriation of the local products by the growing urban centers such as
Calicut under the regulatory devices of British Colonialism If there has been expansion of
cultivation and increase in agricultural production , that was compensated by the new
forms of exploitation by the Colonial State. The lot of the ordinary people was possibly in
the medieval milieu, but that misery continued and even exacerbated under the Colonial
era. It is in this background that we have to examine social and political changes taking
place in the Tirurangadi region during this period.
Land relations
As we saw earlier, the landlords that established themselves in the medieval milieu
continued as a powerful group of landed proprietors under the ‘rule of property’ by the
British. This meant that despite the legal specifications introduced by the British, a large
part of the customary privileges enjoyed by the lords continued unabated, and they might
have extracted the same dues and exercised the same privileges in the rural areas. During
the end of eighteenth century itself, there is a complaint by the settlers of Puthen theru
and Pazhayatheru in Parappanangadi that the raja of Parappanad was collecting dues for
Onam and vishu, although such a practice was forbidden by the Government (Logan,
1879; 342) The saliyas of the two therus were organized, and this is an indication that