ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Mobilizing Refusal to Save What is Left—Njavara

• In Event: Collection Stories and Indo-Pacific worlds 2

English Abstract

Plants seem like ordinary objects, mostly of interest to farmers and gardeners, but we do not understand how science can make such small, mundane, yet absolutely essential beings that humans have known and manipulated for 14,000 years, into coherent objects, such as varieties of crops like rice, that can be collectively understood, stabilized, acted upon, and translated across different knowledge practices. I follow a particular variety of rice that has evaded capture by global agribusiness and continues to serve the communities that were crucial to its development. Njavara is a charismatic Indigenous variety of rice that grows in the uplands of Kerala, a southwestern state of India. Famed for its nutty fragrance and deep red hue, Njavara is not grown for food but for its role in the traditional medicine of Ayurveda where it is used in the treatment of arthritis, skin diseases and neurological conditions. Njavara is also at the brink of extinction, is only grown for medicinal purposes, but could be the source of endemic resistance to pests and climatic stresses. The story of the green revolution in Kerala provides an example that detracts from its mythology of ubiquitous success. While almost all farmers in Kerala were lured by the higher yields promised by the ‘miracle rice,’ IR8, some farmers refused the switch. The essay charts how the rice variety Njavara which had been grown for its medicinal uses for centuries became enrolled as the source of resistance to endemic pests to which IR8 was incredibly susceptible.

Author

• Xan Chacko, Brown University