ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Canning the Caste: A Cure for Tainted Fisheries in Colonial Madras, India

• In Event: Fishing for Science

English Abstract

In 1907, Madras Fisheries Bureau was established as the pioneering Institution in Colonial India to not only foresee, study and establish expertise in fishery science but also to modernize as an industry and alleviate food scarcity in the context of colonial famines. Establishing canning industry was one of the initial and main goals of the institution. I focus on the ‘tainted’ fish as central to the orientation of the bureau towards canning and other scientific preservation techniques among the fisheries experts and traders for ‘better handling’ of the fish. In my paper, I argue how the condition of tainted is not purely climatic but also social i.e. caste nature of the laborers and their physical contact of fish. By showing how fish remained a main source of protein for the laboring bodies of ‘slave castes’ in plantations and prisons in colonial India since the 19th century, I problematize the notion and the push for canning and untainted fish as a food source for the larger elitist and caste dominant groups in the 20th century. Thus, I show the idea of tainted fish encompasses the pollution attributed by the fishers who belong to the low caste in southern India. As social values constructed for fish and fishers through the dominant frames of caste-ism and coloniality, my paper argues how the narrative of science-making naturalized the laboring body and knowledge of the fishers – both which were utilized but neglected in the narratives of modern science of fisheries.

Author

• Muthuvel Deivendran, University of Houston