Missionaries, Administrators and Planters: The Dynamic of British Colonialism In Kavita Philip’s catalytic analyses of the interlocking of development and modernity, she focuses on the triumvirate of colonial administrators, missionaries and planters. Her aim is primarily to show that the guilt feelings of post colonial studies needs to be re-examined. Toward this end, she uses technology and science as an index to understand commerce and capitalism in the 19th century. Importantly, the significance of objectivity in social science lies for her in the courage to take on the past in a way that makes contemporary events more comprehensible. By looking at the dilemmas and questions of colonialism in relation to the elites of both Britain and India, she wishes analytical entry in to the ‘whited sepulchres’ of history. This curiosity is part of the way in which riddles are first posed, then answered. Getting past the friendliness quotient, and the tacit assumptions of how elites hold hands in the pursuit of wealth and status, becomes the primary indication of how reading the archives and secondary texts gives us the motives for aggrandizement and expansion (Philip 2003). Her book is an interesting guide post into the question of how lower caste communities were socialized into industrial work force through the missionizing movements of the London Missionary Society and the Basil Mission. The motif was as much to do with crafts such as the handloom and masonry industry, as it was to do with the preparation for an industrial work force. Evangelising movements such as Hindutva have long been known to do the same, using many of the principles of colonial Christian mission to organize working class movements into a religious framework conducive to a one nation, one religion format which the colonial authorities were well known for (Visvanathan 2000, 2007) Similarly Poornima Paidapati argues that it was militarization that produced the initial categorization of local communities as “primitive” demanding tribute from them as part of the imperial project. She communicates very emphatically that colonial and nationalist anthropology played a part in projecting through its concepts a fashioned and refashioned world view appropriated for development projects, braiding together the disciplines of military technology, anthropology and race science (Paidapati 2010: 13)). Her argument is that imperialism depended on the soldier- explorer- administrator who took on the task of reordering borders with the help of modern communication systems in a world where globalization required the framing of boundaries (ibid 25). Thus military officers of the colonial army were more genteel than the acquisitive traders and military scientists, and the former presented themselves as gentlemen invested in knowledge or as anthropological writers (31). Ofcourse, in Queen Victoria’s time, the combined role of providing order in a hierarchical colonial construction brought in the missionary as well (Visvanathan 2000). John Sullivan is one of the interesting characters that colonial historiography throws up among many. He is associated with the cultivation of potatoes in the hills (Visvanathan 2022) and a gregarious character who had many friends in colonial Shimla whom he hosted at generous hunting parties. Records of his dealings begin in the 1820s in the Nilgiris, and he is the subject of much curiosity. Frederick Price in his report of 1908 to Lord Ampthill, Governor of Madras, spends much time laboring over his account of the time when John Sullivan was in the Nilgiris.. The book “Ootacamund: A History” begins with an enquiry about medieval times, after the Synod of Udeyamperoor in 1599, whether the Toda were ancient dispersed Syrian Christians. Search parties were sent out through difficult terrain in 1602 but the information brought back was not ‘desirable’. Another search party was sent out, in 1603 by the Portuguese, but returned with a lot of information but no evidence of Christian belief among the Toda (Price 2012: 2). Sullivan is thought to have accompanied Whish and Kindersley in 1819 on the 2nd of January, considered to be a second tour of the Nilgiris by those British Collectors. The description of the products to be found were wheat, barley, peas, opium, garlic, mustard, and various species of millet, pointing as Price says, to the presence of the Badagas who were a cattle keeping community who practiced shifting cultivation in the Nilgiris (ibid 15). In May 1819, Mr Sullivan visited the Nilgiris again in the company of M. Leschenault, and the letters of this explorer are translated from French to English, providing details of climate, inhabitants and production by Rev. Hough in 1829 ( ibid 16). By the end of 1823, Sullivan was able to live in the house which he had constructed in Badaga country as it was near completion (ibid 17). According to the German missionary Metz, it was the Collector of Coimbatore, John Sullivan who had discovered Ootacamund. A friendly Badaga had invited him, seeing how much the Collector suffered in the heat, saying that, ‘It is so cold there the water becomes transformed into glass’ (ibid 18). Stonehouse, Sullivan’s home, was the first of many hundreds of houses that turned Ootacamund into a government sanitorium. For this to happen there had to be large swamps which were drained, and many forests cut down, which affected the streams. The visits that John Sullivan made in 1819 were kept a secret, or not made at all depending on one’s view of the reporting of it, which was nil. However, there are two orders, giving metreological information, dated 8th and 16th April 1822, which are attributed to John Sullivan. Letters signed by him go out from the Nilgiris in the month of May 1822. A professional gardener had been imported by him in late 1821, or early 1822 and was thought to be an overseer on behalf of John Sullivan. Kavita Philips quotes from a commentator Molly Panter Downes, “Gardening was a passion with Mr Sullivan. He sent for a gardener from England, a Mr Johnson, who was left in charge of building operations when the Collector had to tear himself reluctantly away to attend to the affairs of his district. With Johnson, in 1821, arrived the first English apple and peach trees and strawberries, the first seeds of flowers and vegetables. ...Potatoes were introduced and flourished. … A few years after Mr Sullivan’s arrival, gargantuan wonders were being compared as proudly as though their owners were competing in a village show at home. A beet is recorded as being nearly three feet round, a radish three feet long, and a cabbage plant eight feet high. Geraniums grew in hedges, and somebody’s verbena forgot its place and shot up to the sky in a trunk like that of a robust tree. English oaks and firs were planted…. in 1829 there were wild white strawberries, wild Ayrshire roses, and small, deep damask roses growing in Ooty. A convalescent young officer described Ooty as ‘presenting to the eye a wildered paradise’ (cited in Philip 2003: 44). It was during this time he was building his cottage Stonehouse, and applying for a lease on the land, which was the custom before occupying land. In 1835, he records being conversant with the custom of the Todas, and paying them for property which he occupied (Price 2012:20). On 5th July 1820, he is recorded as having visited the Nilgiris again, perhaps in the company of his wife and other members of the party, but where it is not stated. Price considers it impossible that they could have gone further than Dimhatti as it was the monsoon. The first visit that Sullivan made to Ootacamund is in 1821, and as his hut was built on the site of a single Toda hut, which the Badagas called Whottakamund or the single Toda house. This is offered as the origin of the name Ootacamund. (ibid 32). The Badaga guide having taken him there in April 1822, he started building his cottage, and left it in the care of his English gardener. By the 1830s administration was acting upon the widespread usurpation of lands in the Nilgiris by settlers, so John Sullivan produced a note saying that he had paid 100 rupees to the Todas on the area taken by him, at the rate of one rupee per acre. By 22nd May 1823, Stonehouse was sufficiently habitable for Mrs Sullivan to visit and stay. The first baptism of Ootacamund was of their son, recorded on that day, at Stonehouse. The child was born in February, as the Sullivans were at Coimbatore all of that month. Almost all of 1823 and 1824 were spent in Ootacamund, including the winter months, finishing Stonehouse, and establishing the lake (ibid 34).The source of stones for the building of the house was not established, but they still existed in the first decade of the 20th century and were incorporated into government offices. Copying the Sullivans, all of the Europeans in the government in the Coimbatore district built themselves houses too. They were given the directive that they should observe hierarchy of status and build lower than the Collector (ibid 35). In 1827, Sullivan rented his house to Government for Rs 490 a month, and it was converted into a sanatorium for sick officers. This arrangement continued till 1834 when it was returned, as the lease to government had expired. Sullivan may have used it sporadically till his retirement in 1841, for the rest of the time it was rented out. It was sold sequentially to various purchasers, and in 1858 it was opened as a school by the bishop of Madras. In March 1859, it was sold to the Lawrence asylum, and the school reopened at Lovedale (ibid 37). By 1875, Stonehouse became the site of government meetings though ‘ no native clerks were taken up’ (ibid 38). The house was renovated to accommodate married clerks at the edges of the property in what were called Connemara cottages, and in 1871 cypress trees were planted as ornamental trees. In 1872, fencing of 16 acres was completed with the planting of rosa multiflora at a cost of 800 rs. Old Ootacamund was to be planted with grass, rose and trees in the manner of the English garden, and the cost was put at 4000 rs, and administration was shocked but sent 2000 rs for the project, which entailed 60 or 70 acres to be enclosed as park and walk ways (ibid 40). In the long run there was no sign of expenditure, work or relics of the proposed park, and the land was left to develop by the rules of nature ( ibid 41). Northeast of Stonehouse is the first British cemetery with a soldier called Harrington buried there in 1823, and in 1830, Miss Eliza Mcleod was also interred there. It not being a consecrated cemetery, an oak tree planted by Mr Sullivan was the only witness, and his son secured its continuity by not permitting it to be chopped down when Stonehouse became a government building ( ibid 41).The tree was still in existence in 1908 when Frederick Price wrote his forward to his book, which was a detailed report on land relations and property transactions in the 19th century ( ibid 42). John Sullivan promoted the idea of a sanatorium and set up gardens in Dimhatti and later in Ootacamund. Here he cultivated British fruits and vegetables and planted apple and peach trees as early as 1821 (ibid 43). Sullivan rented his houses to the government at a very high cost, and promoted the idea of horticultural experiments, for which he officially received 1910 acres, of which he fenced 200 acres for his personal use, never sharing his ambitions with anyone, or leaving sign of his proposed work on growing trees or planting vegetables. In 1829 the Government complained to the Court of Directors that Sullivan had ownership of land five times above the collective of settlers put together (ibid 44). Price concludes that because Sullivan failed in his agrarian pursuits, the land remained beautiful. Eight years of Sullivan’s control was followed by Kelso who brought in the institutional mechanisms of colonialism specifically the barracks, or the cantonment as it was called. Roads, residences and sanitation all improved for the utility of the British colonial presence. The discovery of Ootacamund was not Sullivan, according to Price, but attributed to the Collectors of Tanjore and Guntur, Kindersley and Whish. The lake was certainly in Sullivan’s plan of making Nilgiris accessible to administration, military and native functionaries but it was done by the simple expedient of damming up several streams. Further, the reflections of the government was that Sullivan neglected his duties in the districts apportioned to him, and spent most of his time in the Nilgiris ( ibid 47). Sullivan wanted credit for his contribution to the discovery and development of Nilgiris, but he was publicly denied them in a report by Government in 1830 (ibid 45). The Paper Trail of Colonial Transactions Deborah Sutton’s careful analyses of government documents follows the narrative of Frederick Price’s book Ootacamund, which is a commissioned report (1912) on the evolution of the town of Ooty. Methodologically, Sutton’s book ‘Other Landscapes’ is important because it works with local archives in India and UK, following the trail of Fredrick Price and hisbibliography to contest imperial preoccupations with taking over the land of local communities. It sets up a dynamic between local communities and their claims over ‘land, people, objects, structures’ and the strategies of colonial bureaucracy and vested interests of plantation settlers. (Sutton 2009: 8). In trying to understand the nature of transformation of the ‘village, the forest, the settlement and plantation’, she wishes to understand resistance as the basic substratum of indigenous peoples to colonization. The forms of continuous evolution of these categories also points our attention to concepts which we use in Sociology such as migrants, caste, class, race and tribe. Sutton’s basic questions are about sedentarization of land, revenue collection in the colonial state, the intermediaries permitting accommodation between local communities and colonial forces. (ibid 9). She sees this process of transformation in the setting up of stabilizing institutional structures such as houses, hospitals, barracks, clubs, schools and gardens, along with the imposition of colonial law. This facilitated the entry of civilians, administrators, military and police. Since entry prioritized laissez faire policy of the early visitors to the Nilgiris, who climbed the hills and built houses, then sold them or leased them or gifted them, the rule of Law was often at variance with the actions of mercenary traders or settlers ( ibid 15). In 1829, nine Todas wrote a petition saying that they had lived in the Nilgiris ‘since time immemorial’ and had been considered to be the masters of these forests (ibid 18). The petition was witnessed by Sullivan who had built the first stone house and mediated between the Todas and the colonial bureaucracy while being a member of the latter. The term “gudu” was used by them to say that the received compensation, for lands which had been alienated was not sufficient for the building of public institutions. The petitioners did not contest colonialism, they wanted higher compensation matching the payments made by individual settlers like Sullivan and protection of their grazing lands. The petition meant that the Todas would demand the codification of their rights and the possibility of reinterpretation and interrogation in courts of laws and revenue offices ( ibid 18,19). The relation between Todas, Kotas and Badagas was complementary, and their co -relation was understood in relation to what the colonists called wastelands, but which for these forest inhabitants was certainly the commons. Clearly there was forceful appropriation by the colonists by offering small sums of money to a nomadic community/pastoral community and then when refused, just taking over the land. Sutton writes, that in the case of the Badagas, they remonstrated against the usurpation of their lands in Old Coonoor. Thomas who mediated out of self interest said that the Badagas had said to the Madras Government, ‘True, you give us money for our land, we take it and spend it, on cattle or jewels–but our land is irrevocably gone and what are our children, who must live by the land, to do?” ( ibid 96) Thomas was what Sutton calls a synechdoche or a representational figure for the colonial administration. “A petition written in 1863 recalled Thomas’ part in the violence of the displacement. Badagas remembered Thomas as the man who ‘Took 12 canies [sic] of land ... we refused ... and at that time he ordered to keep us in the Cutcherry and took our former ground.’ (ibid 97). Further, as the local communities had long memories of the deprivations forced upon them, The barracks had unleashed upon the land a new society of soldiers, engineers and camp followers who knew and cared little about the arrangement and priorities of the local communities (ibid 98) While the British had given assurance that their would be no trespass over the lands of local communities by their people, the camp followers spilled over, and preferred to live outside the barracks, fearing molestation by soldiers (ibid 98). There was no recording of the everyday terrorization of people by those who wished to appropriate land. Between 1828 and 1832, land was classified in 15 different ways. British settlers thought the commons was uncultivated land or wasteland. In Ketti, the local revenue pattas were burnt by ‘accident’ in 1832. Since the Badagas practiced shifting cultivation, the pattas or witness representations of land ownership were found hard to decipher, as they asserted that they had farmed the lands for four generations before houses were built ( ibid 57, 58). The British established evidence for the “absence of cultivation” from the memories of European informants. In April 1837, the Badagas from Keti accepted Rs 853-4-5 in compensation for the land lost during the six years that it had been included in the government farm. They refused, however, to accept the compensation for the land now kept by government, claiming that ‘we have possessed these lands from time immemorial, they have been manured and tilled in a manner suited to the best cultivation ... in addition to this, ... our deity lives there and ... if we sell it, we shall be unfaithful to him’( ibid 62 ). The Badagas, like the Todas at Ootacamund, chose to recognise the money on offer to them as part of a transaction from which they were free to withdraw. The British saw refusal as tantamount to getting the land for free. After one year, the compensation offer would lapse, and money be returned to the treasury (ibid 63. The Badagas, unlike the Todas, received less preferential treatament and were typecast as indolent and savage. Badaga land tenure was thought to be in need of reformation at the end of the 1850s. By the late 19th century, the land was sought to be revenue lands, in order to control shifting cultivation, which had been abolished by the British in 1862. (ibid 48). The manual of 1849 had asserted that the colonial state was the primary landlord. The cadastral and cartographic survey carried out by Captain J. Ouchterlony, both settler and owner of coffee plantations in Wynad was to set up the limits of a nebulous landscape and provide a survey of the manufactures and products of the hills as well as the scientific aspects of botany and ethnology (ibid 53). After measuring existing agriculture of local communities at 23, 772 acres, Ouchterlony generously allowed 200,000 acres for colonial intervention (ibid 34).When the manual passed into law, the British started to use maps only to define the administrative limits of settler occupation, a jigsaw puzzle of ownership to be assessed rather than the picture of a landscape. Since the manual demanded that ownership be defined in terms of leases the notion of ownership was always in question, and there was tension between settlers and administrators. Until 1857, in mediating between, ‘advancing European and the receding native occupier’, Collector Edward B. Thomas had deliberately discouraged the grant of new lands to indigenous communities nearby the three European settlements, preferring to keep hill communities settled in ‘distant localities’ (ibid 38). As a result, it was local communities who were to be spatially restricted ( ibid 56). The building of the barracks meant that indigenous people were edged out, and did not access their traditional pasture lands (ibid 85). Captain Francis, the Military Engineer who oversaw the construction of the barracks planned the building of a dam which would flood Badaga land (ibid 86). Ouchterlony, (the colonial surveyor) had included in his map certain areas outside of the barracks, which was Badaga land. Old Coonoor had also been assimilated into the property of the British state. In 1851, the military decided to appropriate this land in practical terms. The Badagas resented this and demanded the safety of passage for their cattle, and the holy stone belonging to the neighbouring Todas to be protected (ibid 87). The shola or evergreen forest was destroyed, and the stone too was damaged (ibid 88). In 1852, the Badagas of Old Coonoor refused to accept the Rs 150 annual compensation granted to them two years before (ibid 89). This led the Collector W. E Underwood to believe that the precedent of paying compensation would later be used by indigenous communites as an obstacle to land transfer to the British (ibid 37). Artisans and camp followers encroached into protected Badaga land, as they did not want to be in the proximity of soldiers, fearing molestation ( ibid 38). Land considered to be sold by manipulated pattas as having been formerly shifting cultivation was condoned by the British ( ibid 39) Protests from local communities were met with baffled incredulity by purchasers ( ibid 57). There was no question either of equality or of visibility of the local vendor. The colonists represented Badaga villages as being a couple of ‘wigwams’ which had to be bought off rather than constituting a settled village. Settlers with proposed plantations needed to be near Toda and Badaga villages, to benefit from manure, firewood and labour ( ibid 58) On the other hand, administrators and plantation owners continued to complain about Badaga and Toda cattle using pathways on settlement land ( ibid 59). Tension between grazing lands as legitimate Badaga grounds, and the ambition of tea planters with pattas was the matter of much dispute. The British were also able to harness much land by neglect of registering pattas, and simultaneously submitting claims with nervous or eager anticipation (ibid 63). Suppression of the natives was required in order to establish plantations, they were summarily told to resettle on the other side of the river. When told that was Kota land, the colonists maintained that the grass lands they appropriated from the Badagas and Todas were unworthy of breeding cattle, and were wastelands. When the Badaga cattle breeders used their customary paths, the colonists complained saying that they were walking over their fields ( ibid 64). Benefitting from the illiteracy of local community, the settlers were able to put individuals who had promised grazing land sale but then defaulted, into jail ( ibid 69) Settlers often claimed more land than they had actually procured, thereby ousting indigenous populations, but were implicated in law court cases only if they had provided proof that they had usurped forest land, which was under the rule/ ‘monopoly’ of the British ( ibid 72). By taking away wasteland from indigenous communities in order to tax cultivable land, the commons was rendered a redundant category (ibid 73). Since cultivable land had to be distinguished from grazing land, the Collector John Sullivan had systematized the soil classification without increasing the previous taxable amount (ibid 82) Eight classifications of soil used by Badaga cultivators were noted by the Malabar Collector for the purposes of tax collection, a figure which, by the 1850s, had increased to nineteen. These classifications, reduced to levels of revenue assessment by systems of fiscal administration, were derived from a complex typology of soil classifications. Fields bore names according to their location, crop and soil. It seems that the Badagas, though an expanding, settled agricultural community, adapted their agrarian regime to the fragility of the soil, limiting permanent agriculture to valley floors and using extensive fallow over the thin hillside soils. This strategy is in stark contrast to the techniques employed by early settlers who were convinced that the landscape could be manipulated and reworked. Ouchterlony, for example, noticed that the Badagas ‘failed’ to strip the top soil from swamps, a strategy immediately used by settler agriculturists to enrich thin soils elsewhere ( ibid 82) Badaga sale of grains, butter, opium, honey, plant products for material, ritual and culinary purposes, and milk products happened in Coimbatore, and Kota and Toda members would join them. Most of this cash transaction for hill goods was conducted between communities, and among their own people. They were able to buy jewellery from Malabar, and procure what they needed such as iron bars for their axes and ploughs, and currency for tax payments, from their sales of wheat, wax, honey and opium. Their cultivation cycle was from April to December, while in January to March, they repaired houses, collected firewood and prepared for the long season of work on their lands and with their cattle ( ibid 83). Land rights remained abstract, as descriptions provided by settlers were vague, and could not be verified. Badagas too were accustomed to use value of land, and could not specify when and where their cattle grazed The state was not in possession of any comprehensive cadastral or cartographic knowledge in the mediation of land grants and sales. The only authoritative knowledge held by the state over land was its possession of the power to grant land. While the local authorities could question, and very occasionally reverse, the purchase claims of settlers during disputes, the claims in this case were against not only the settler but also, by merit of his grant, the authority of the state. The state could find for the indigenous claimant against the colonist only when involved as a third party, ostensibly mediating between indigene and settlers ( ibid 65). The utilization of the commons by Badagas was now limited by the category of waste lands owned by the British. They would now have to compete with settlers at public auctions to retain or buy land from the colonial state ( ibid 97). Inability to pay rents and taxes meant that hill communities were absorbed into labour in tea plantations. Since by the late 19th century the shifting cultivation was seen to be deleterious for revenue cultivation and production of taxes, the land which was once grazing or cultivable lands for local communities became taxable plantation land. Revenues from plantations were higher than those of the commons.To meet revenue demands, Badaga turned to wage labour, and when plantations were low in production during famine or drought years, they were not paid, but had outstanding credit with merchants. Once they were paid, they reimbursed the merchants but did not have much money remaining to them (ibid 99). The Badaga took to selling firewood to the barracks which used two tonnes a day, as approximately 400 fires burned everyday in colonial hearths ( ibid 109). However cutting of forests was statistically higher by the forest department which needed clearing for coffee, cinchona and tea plantations. However local communities were blamed for deforestation though the felling by them was not statistically equivalent to the colonial authorities ( ibid 111). Since de forestation and the coming of settlers led to the appropriation of springs for private uses, and other consequences the administrators set down certain rules regarding “wastelands” and cutting of the sholas. The Director of forests decreed that springs must be protected, trees above 4500 feet should not be cut to protect rainfall, and the aesthetics of the landscape must be preserved (ibid 115).The tea planters challenged the directive saying that tea could not be propagated below 5000 feet and there were already precedents for deforestation by other planters. However, it was the local communities who were thought by forest officers and planters to be the greatest threat to the forest by practices such as grazing, hunting and shifting cultivation ( ibid 116). The protection of sholas was now seen to be the purview of colonial administration, and the reservation of shola forests to marginal spaces such as swamps and ravines promoted. Taxation of forest dwellers for constructing cattle pens of homes was part of the manner in which the forests were defined as belonging to the British. After castigating the Badagas for causing forest fires, the British planters started to invent a whole new forest for commercial use with imported acacia saplings from Australia. By the late 19th century, the total area of gum tree plantations for construction and fire wood purposes was 1019 acres. Once the shola were cleared, the acacia, coffee, tea and cinchona plantations were accorded the status of aesthetic landscapes. The relations between planters and local communities were based on indifference on the part of the latter who refused to take interest in planting acacia and cinchona on their lands, and continued to use old grazing pastures which were now planters cash crop gardens (ibid 123). The planters also demanded that given the profitability of cash crops, it should be understood that plantations should be on shola lands, not on grasslands( ibid 125). The London and Madras governments was against the belligerence of the Shola protectors and the destruction of the forests by the planters. Forest officers however were protective of the planters, as the acacia and eucalyptus plantations had proved to be extremely rotten, vulnerable to disease, and as saplings eaten up by hares ( ibid 126).There were ideological differences between administrators. Men like H. E Sullivan protested about the large acreage put under reservation, but the counter argument was that this would lay restrictions on Badaga grazing, which would benefit the planters ( ibid 138). From those who were biased toward the planters, being proprietors themselves, the argument was that felling Shola would promote tourism, as visitors to plantations would now be able to access the waterfalls (ibid 140). The preservation of shola forests was entirely because of the aesthetic promotion of leisure tourism, but these too were under threat from the plantations. The exoticisation of the Toda was a necessary aspect of creating surveillance and classification as a mode of administration, according to Kavita Philip ( ibid 159). The problem with colonial classification was that the Toda were a dispersed population, with many different names for the same topographical features, and prohibitions for entry or naming for specific individuals including women ( ibid164). One of the problems of alienation of Toda patta through lease to planters, was that it was considered invalid and posed the contradiction of being part of the commons on which the Toda munds or settlement was paying taxes, though the land had been sold for individual gain. These were then called ‘Toda cases’ as they went to court, and the resolution was that such land either went to the Government as waste land, or could be retained by the buyer, who was a planter ( ibid 166). All the varied contestations over dubious land deals led to the Toda being, in the name of spiritual and religious integrity, forced to remain in reservations which consisted of shola, buildings and cattle pens. In 1883, the British legally decreed that all privileges to the Toda were to the tribe, not to individuals, and so no individual could sell land. The Toda resisted pattas without individual names, and it was thought by the tehsildar that such erosion of individual names would mean no control over tax payers ( ibid 167). Both Kavita Philip and Deborah Sutton have used interdisciplinary methods, bringing into focus the manner by which colonial anthropologists played a political part in domesticating the landscape and people for imperialist profit. Tea plantations in particular played an important part in post globalized economies, as climate change made many latitudes incapable of growing tea, as monsoon patterns became variable. Universities, according to Baldeep Singh,( a former President of the Tea Planter’s Association in India and in Uganda) became a necessary platform to understand the future of tea production and consumption. Labour relations and life in the lines for cooli labour continued much as in colonialism, with the possibility that co operative tea estates, as in Munnar, Kerala could be the resolution of disparities. For this, ethnography will provide answers. References Paidipaty, Poornima. L. 2010. Tribal Nation: Politics and the Making of Anthropology in India 1874-1967 Unpublished PhD thesis Columbia University. Philip, Kavita 2003 Civilising Natures: Race, Resources and Modernity in Colonial South India Delhi: Orient Blackswan Price, Frederick 2012 Ootacamund, A History Delhi: Rupa Sutton, Deborah 2009 Other Landscapes Chicago: NIAS Press Acknowledgements: This review essay was made possible by the kindness of Saagar Tewari, Renny Thomas, Tanweer Fazal, Lam Khan Piang, Rabi Prakash, Rukun Advani and Deborah Sutton, who facilitated my access to books and internet materials