Turtle Talks -1

(Indigenous fisheries talks and debates series. ‘Turtle’ is a strong outer layered, maintaining the ocean organisms’ balance by eating jellyfish and other small fishes species though it is endangered one, it is the reason behind the title of this series)

After a long time, at night time, aside from the sea shore I got a chance to participate in a serious talk about the fishing community among a group of researchers from one of the private research institutes in Bengaluru. Unlike many of the earlier talks, this time the group was combined by people from outside the fishing community and two were from different states as well.

1)      The very dominant culture question they have asked me was; why don’t I and my organization choose fishing as a livelihood though we always praise our ancestral profession and write about it too?

I have given them an explanation and they have agreed.

First of all, we academics from the fishing community through our student groups are currently trying to read how this mainstream is badly portrayed and demotivating us from empowerment. As we are an ethnic group having very little social capital, eradicating the oppressor ideologies against us is the most priority work for us. We want to contribute more to the intellectual area for that, which was historically denied to us.

And we are not turning our face from traditional fishing, I went fishing while I was studying in college, and my seniors did the same. Our aim is to bring back the deserved dignity for all downtrodden jobs. If we will go full time fishing, then who will eradicate the ideology which is existing against us?

2)      In earlier times, why didn\’t most academics, businesspersons and government and private sector employees from the fishing community work for the social reformation which make the fishing community a respectable society?

The reason was high oppression by dominant cultures (castes and class) which threatened them with humiliation whenever they tried to unveil their geographical identity. So they adapted the mainstream cultures as a better way to grow more. Same time they ridiculed their own culture with anti-poverty, anti-indigenous jokes and comments. The unawareness of social realities made them do these injustices. And they feel superiority over their own people by continuously devaluing and depreciating.

Now the new wave culture in Kerala is exposing these “brutuses”. Today’s generation showing very less inferiority due to fishing group identity. Social media played a very well role to come out from this intentionally depreciation by oppressors. Fortunately fisher folk children are embracing new fashion out looks as well as they are very talented in sports, dance and other entertainment fields. Due to the historical deprivation from documented or institutional intellectual exercises (graduate education and academic research), in academics still a very big gap needs to be filled.

3)      Is it possible to make fishing an academic course?

From observations I cannot say, it would be possible with our limited academic documenting tools or weak academic system nature. Fishing is an international thing. Every country has their own fishing communities. Every fishing community has their own methods of fishing which depend on the specific climate, ocean current differences, available fishes in the regions, etc they own. Inside the fishing region they have different methods to catch different fish. Fishermen usually use hooks, various nets, Kacchal (a net bag), etc for catching fishes. In Day and night times. In inland and ocean. I have an experience in my childhood one African man came to my village and showed the hooks they used for fishing to my villagers. That seemed really different from our own hooks. That means the same tools vary with fishing regions. For example, the man who makes boats cannot make boats which American fishermen use. Because both have different devices and learnings to make a boat. Their available resources are different. They have to make a boat which is suitable for their own climate.  

Tamil Nadu is the nearest state to Kerala, their fishermen have very different boats compared to the Kerala boats.

Available fishing techniques are another important subject, here at my village, people use the Global Positioning system (GPS) to save the locations and particularly fish available regions on the ocean. We call it computer in our dialect because some who sold this device told them that this device called computer, and this term spread all over the coastal belt, before the real computer (for the mainstream world) came to the fishing villages. Nowadays my coastal belt uses advanced technologies like fathometer or Echo Sounding as well; which is used for understanding the ocean bed and fishes available in under water.

These kinds of devices came to my region just because some youngsters were introduced to the Arab country job vacancies and they found the devices from the foreign countries, then they imported the devices here. It is the impact of that theory “Medium is the message” theory we say in mass communication.

The new devices make the fisherman adapt new fishing methods.

@ So first thing is, it is very difficult to document and separate fishing techniques and make them into an academic course structure.

@ We as an academics from fishing communities trying to document fishing methods

@ My understanding is if anybody would get interested to document fishing methods that would be really helpful in future for outsiders to learn fishing as well as for fishermen from other parts can also learn from it.

4)      What is your opinion regarding outside people learning fishing?

Lots of daily wagers from northern states of India are currently fishing to earn money in Kerala. So anybody can participate in traditional fishing and learn it. Fishing is not a deprived job for mainstream people by indigenous fisher folks but the mainstream is actually marginalizing us by portraying it as a no dignity job with their cultural dominance. If an oppressor caste person (Brahmin, Menon or Nair) wants to learn fishing they can learn it from my dad; he has a small boat. But they have to do physical work and obey my illiterate father’s instructions.

And the biggest problem in this region is now, the entry of corporations. The corporations have big ships. After finding out the traditional fishing hubs of our indigenous people, they are catching all the fishes in an unsustainable way. They are catching excess fish with advanced technologies, as they are very rich to buy it. Very little fishes are also trapped inside their small pore nets. Traditional fishermen don’t catch very small fishes hence it has to grow more for next season; they have sustainable way of catching fish.

(To be continued…)