55 



cost and stored, and the larger kind of fish were cured with the 

 bazaar salt. The old men and women of the community even now 

 assert that fish cured with salt-earth, provided that they were well 

 cleaned in sea water after being taken out of the salting tubs, was 

 in no way inferior to that cured with the Tuticorin salt and had 

 decidedly a better flavour. When the collection of salt-earth was 

 prohibited owing to the introduction of the salt tax and fish-curing 

 yards were opened for enabling fish to be cured with duty-free salt, 

 these people were reluctant to do so owing to their timidity and the 

 fear that any slight infringement of the rules would result in their 

 being sent to jail. Moreover in Tellicherry there was no proper site 

 near the beach to locate a fish-curing yard afi"ording accommoda- 

 tion for more than a hundred curers. It was at this time that the 

 Mappillas, who were till then merely petty traders who purchased 

 the cured fish from fisherwomen and sent it to the interior and dis- 

 tant markets for sale, stepped in and became ticket-holders in the 

 fish-curing yard. With cheap salt at the disposal of the Mappillas 

 the fisherwomen could not compete with them, and all the fish caught 

 by the fishermen went to them at a very low price. After some years 

 the fisherwomen also became ticket-holders but it was too late as the 

 Mappillas had by that time practically monopolised the curing 

 industry. These women were therefore obliged to serve as labourers 

 under Mappilla curers and merchants. Hence a community who had 

 lived in comfort on the income derived from the conjoint labour of 

 their men and women, lost the niajor portion of the benefit derived 

 from their industry, and being obliged to depend on the earnings 

 of their male members alone, gradually lost their prosperity and 

 are at the present time largely indebted to Mappillas who control 

 their boats and thereby keep down the price of fish they catch. It 

 has been said that the fisherfolk should be better off now because 

 the price of fish has gone high and they get double the price their 

 forefathers got. But not only fish but all other commodities have 

 increased in price, and though the fisherman gets better prices for 

 his fish he has also to pay much higher prices for everything he 

 buys; rice and other provisions and the necessaries of life, cotton 

 and hemp required for his nets, the wages of carpenters and other 

 labourers whom he employs, bamboos, timber, coir, thatching and 

 other materials which he requires, have all gone up heavily. More- 

 over the spirit of the times which has affected all other communities, 

 from the highest Brahman to the humblest Panchama has not left him 

 alone and as other communities are going in for a higher standard 

 of living he is also doing it. Hence it cannot be said that the fisher- 

 folk have been deriving any peculiar benefit by the mere fact of 

 increase in the price of fresh fish. Moreover many fishermen are 

 not ticket-holders and being without the i^aeans of curing their 

 catches with the labour of their women-folk as was done in the 

 days of their grandmothers, they are obliged to sell their fish to the 

 Mappilla and other ticket-holders at a very cheap rate. This is 

 especially the case as regards the more commercially valuable fish 

 such as cat-fish, kora, mackerel, etc., which at times come in large 

 shoals and which if cured and sold would fetch good prices. That 

 the fish-curing industry has brought in large fortunes to some 

 people other than the fisherfolk is also a significant fact. In 

 almost every fishing centre there are men of non-fisher castes who, 

 beginning life as labourers or petty dealers, with hardly any capital 



