WUNRN
Women's Feature Service
India - New Delhi
Sustainable Agriculture & Traditional Food Practices & Healing
Around 800 women from across Punjab came together to participate in the recent 'trinjan' organised in Amritsar. (Photo: Kheti Virasat Mission\WFS)
By Kavitha Kuruganti
Chandigarh (Women's Feature Service) -
I thought that a story on Punjabi women would mostly be about girls preoccupied
with the glamour world, young women waiting to get married to NRI 'mundas'
(men) and older women being silent witnesses to social evils like female
foeticide... stereotypes formed despite the best of efforts.
For people like me, who have been
working to change the current intensive agriculture models in Punjab to
sustainable agriculture, because of the serious environment and health crisis
developing in the state thanks to agro-technologies like pesticides, even
getting rural women to engage in a dialogue on this with the men has been
challenging. They simply say that they have nothing to do with farming and that
it is better to speak with the men only.
But this lack of interest in village
activities was not always the case. What is not well known is that long before
NGOs came up with the concept of Self-Help Groups (SHGs), village women across
Did the men ever object to their wives
being a part of 'trinjans', like they do when women want to join SHGs?
"Why would they object? We used to have all-night 'trinjans', too, and the
men would not mind," recalls Harbhajan Kaur, in her late fifties, from
Dhaba village in Ferozepur district. Elsewhere, when women express the desire
to become part of a local SHG and participate in its meetings, most menfolk
initially dissuade them from doing so. Only once they start reaping the
benefits of their work - for example, through micro-finance activity - do the
men relent and start respecting the "SHG activities".
Even though Punjabi women had been way
ahead of the SHG movement, these collectives gradually got dissolved due to the
onset of the Green Revolution and subtle changes in lifestyle over the years.
With the 'trinjans' vanishing so did the use of traditional food and cropping
systems. "I don't recall when was the last 'trinjan' I took part in - we
seemed to have slowly stopped holding them without anyone realising why and
how. I think it was because we got used to buying everything from
outside," ponders Sarabjit Kaur, 60, of Seerwali village in Muktsar district.
Sarabjit is an amazing treasure of knowledge of traditional healing practices
that women in Punjabi households used to follow. Today, this knowledge has been
systematically marginalised along with any status accorded to women possessing
such know-how.
Several things changed, paving the way
for 'trinjans' to become history. Some say that the Green Revolution left its
impact on these spaces; some opine that there were changes in the types of
crops grown that affected this practice. For example, a change in the type of
cotton grown meant that they could not spin yarn on the 'charkha' any more.
Some experts of Punjabi culture feel that the concept of "private
spaces" was the end of 'trinjans' - enclosures and the closing of doors on
individual houses meant that women no longer walked into each other's homes
with the same degree of comfort as in the past. In addition to 'trinjans',
other women's activities too vanished. Many do not recall when they stopped
saving their own seed; and younger women hardly have any knowledge about
traditional food systems/practices.
While these collective spaces
disappeared and the roles of the women in society diminished some decades ago,
the crisis unfolding across
Realising the need for reviving
traditional food systems (mainly organic), cropping systems as well as
re-tapping into the knowledge base of older women, 'trinjans' are now being
re-established in some villages, albeit in a slightly different form with help
of groups such as the Kheti Virasat Mission and Pingalwara Charitable Society.
Traditional food festivals are being celebrated in villages where the women are
keen on recreating new age 'trinjans', which are like 'melas', where older
women pass on their wisdom and knowledge to the younger ones.
One such state-level 'trinjan' was
organised in
Traditional food and healing practices,
local seed diversity, the adverse impacts of pesticides and GM (genetically
modified) foods, especially on women, were the themes for the 'mela'. Women
were also seen enthusiastically spinning yarn on charkas brought by some
participants. Led by Bibi Amarjeet Kaur, 40, women of Bhotna
Those who participated in this
'trinjan' went back inspired, wanting to do their bit for their environment.
Many young women participants promised to revive traditional food systems and
also get involved in ecological farming and developing chemical-free kitchen
gardens. Some women also came forward and expressed the desire to hold a
'trinjan' in their villages as well. As a result, two village-level 'trinjan
melas' are now being organised - one in Jida village on September 23 and the
other in Chaina village on September 31. The start has been encouraging. Now it
remains to be seen whether this first step would lead to 'trinjans', once
again, becoming foras where Punjabi women will be able to showcase the power of
collective work and of sharing knowledge and resources, even as they regain
their own status in society.
(The writer is a volunteer with Kheti
Virasat Mission in
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