Identity Statement

Reference Code

HU OSA 206-2-58

Title

Etikoppaka

Date(s)

2008

Description Level

Series

Context

Name of creator(s)

Open Society Archives at Central European University

Administrative / Biographical history

Etikoppaka is a village with about 12,000 inhabitants in Andhra Pradesh in South-East India, near the city of Visakhapatnam. Mahatma Gandhi visited this village in 1930 on the invitation of his friend, the freedom fighter C.V. Narasimha Raju, who belonged to a family of Etikoppaka’s feudal landlords. C.V.N. Raju understood and accepted Gandhi’s ideal of trusteeship, which the Mahatma (the Great Soul) proposed to the rich; so he founded India’s first sugar cane cooperative, initiating an India-wide movement which has made India the largest producer of sugar in the world.




In 1989, one of the descendants of the Raju family, C. V. Raju, founded a new cooperative – Padmavathi Associates to revive a craft for which the village of Etikoppaka was traditionally famous: the manufacture of turned-wood objects coated with vegetable dyes diluted in natural lacquer. Raju’s idea was to preserve traditional village arts and, also, to enable villagers to earn a decent living and arrest their drift to the slum quarters of the nearby metropolis Visakhapatnam to make a living. The cooperative produced exclusively eco-friendly products in an atmosphere that excludes beauty and craftsmanship.




The village also had a milk cooperative, part of the all-India milk cooperative movement founded by another great Gandhian who has rural India, especially its poor, close to his heart, Dr. Kurien Varghese. Dr. Kurien started the milk cooperative movement in the 1960s, in Gujarat state, and the initiative has made India, once largely dependent on food aid programs, the largest milk producer in the world. Besides Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh was the center of the milk cooperative movement and of cattle breeding.

Archival history

The exhibition introduced the village of Etikoppaka in its traditional and modern aspects, while also giving the historical background and setting it in the framework of Gandhi’s ideas of trusteeship, village industry, self-reliance and caring for the poor, as well as Fritz Schumacher’s principle of an intermediate technology. Etikoppaka is a traditional picturesque Indian village, similar to the ones Henri Cartier-Bresson photographed some 50 years ago. At the same time it has a dynamism that can be a model also in East Europe, where village development is one of the most neglected fields.  On display at the exhibition were still and moving images of Etikoppaka’s agriculture, village industry and craftsmanship, with special emphasis on the cooperatives. It also presented the everyday life of the village, including the schools, the post office, temples and devotions. Finally, it also showed the places in the village "touched by the Mahatma". Some of the village’s crafts are on display; the musical background to the exhibition is taken from a concert by C. V. Raju and Sheikh Chennamastan, a Muslim musician singing Hindu devotional songs – an ancient tradition prevalent in villages, towns and cities throughout India. Gandhi’s relevant ideas were presented through citations, as well as directly illustrated by the material in the exhibition, showing that Gandhian thought cannot be reduced to the principle and practice of passive resistance but is, first of all, realized in everyday life. The message of the exhibition was that the same spirit of frugality, ingenuity, accommodation and cooperation could also be pursued in other parts of the world.  The Etikoppaka exhibiton was part of the academic conference: GANDHI IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD, December 1-3, 2008 Central European University, Budapest - Organized by Central European University and the Embassy of India, Hungary. Open: December 2, 2008 - December 23, 2008 ​

Content and Structure

Accruals

Not Expected

Conditions of Access and Use

Conditions governing access

Not Restricted

Languages

English