Women in the Agrarian Struggles of North Malabar: Narratives of Resilience and Fortitude

This study focuses on the role of women in the agrarian struggles of North Malabar, in the present state of Kerala. Though women played an important part in these, little attention has been paid to their crucial role and struggles in the written histories of tenant struggles against landlords in the 1930s and 1940s. It needs to be recognised that in the traditional agrarian system, women’s labour comprised a substantial part of agricultural labour input, especially in the North Malabar region, which was the centre of sustained struggles of the verumpattakar or tenants. The extensive participation of women labourers in these agrarian struggles throws up several questions.